One To Watch (25 page)

“And being here, in my hometown—in this high school, even—it’s so acute, you know? Like I’m a teenager again, alone on prom night, feeling like a fool. Just some loser who’d only ever been kissed one time, who had no hope of ever finding a real boyfriend.”

“At least you kissed someone,” Wyatt looked wistful. “I never kissed anyone in high school.”

“Really?” Bea had no idea how to square the way this man looked with the things he was telling her. “Can I ask why not?”

“I don’t know, really,” he mumbled. “I was pretty shy.”

“I’m sorry,” Bea said. “I don’t mean to be nosy.”

“No.” He looked at her intensely. “You’re trying to get to know me. I want that, Bea.”

“You do?”

He squeezed her hand. “I really do.”

“I’m glad.” Bea smiled, thrown off guard by how different he seemed from the guys like him she’d known when she lived here. Or maybe that was the point—maybe those guys weren’t like him at all.

“Let’s change the subject.” He smiled kindly. “Why don’t you tell the story of your first kiss?”

Bea’s stomach clenched at the memory—the warm, flat beer, the smell of the woods, the scratches on her face from the branches that scraped her as she ran. The shame she’d felt when her brothers found her waiting by the car and asked if she’d had fun at the party.

Wyatt clocked the ashen expression on Bea’s face.

“I’m sorry—you don’t have to tell me,” he assured her.

Part of Bea didn’t want to tell the story—didn’t want to relive the humiliation, and certainly didn’t want her brothers to find out what had really happened after all these years. But another part of her was moved by Wyatt’s bravery, by the way that everything about him subverted her expectations. By her own desire—one she couldn’t quite explain—to trust him.

“Growing up, my brothers all played sports,” she started shakily. “Their friends were always around the house, and I mostly hid in my room, but sometimes they would be sweet to me, or joke around—make me feel like the kid sister in a movie, you know? They were loud and immature for the most part, but they had this one friend James who was really quiet. He was tall, and had this thick blond hair—he was on the football team with my brother Tim.”

“You liked him?” Wyatt asked.

“Yeah.” Bea felt her face flush, feeling so silly that even now, more than a decade later, while she was starring on a television show and James was who-knows-where, it still made her feel so small to admit she’d had a crush on a boy.

“I thought the fact that he was quiet meant that he was shy, or secretly really deep.” She laughed uncomfortably. “I imagined that he wanted to have these intense conversations, that he would love having them with me. I thought it was some big secret that I liked him, but my brothers knew—Tim said something about it at dinner once, and I was so embarrassed. I left the table in tears.”

“It’s okay that you’re sensitive,” Wyatt said softly. “You shouldn’t be ashamed of that.”

“I wish he’d been more like you,” Bea said. “You’re the version of him that I actually wanted.”

“What happened when he kissed you?” Wyatt asked.

“Um,” Bea took a deep breath, “there was a party in the woods, a couple of weeks into my freshman year. Tim and Duncan brought me along, and at first it was so cool, you know? Talking with their friends, and the girls were so nice to me, making me feel like I belonged. But then … um. Then James asked if I wanted to go for a walk.”

“And of course, you did.”

“Of course I did! It seemed like a miracle, like somehow this secret wish I’d held for so long was becoming real.” Bea paused, a wave of nausea washing over her as she realized she’d used nearly the same words to describe her first kiss with Ray.

“Anyway,” she went on, “he took me a little ways into the woods, away from everyone else. I thought maybe we would talk or something, but he was just on me, kissing me, shoving his hands under my dress. He was really rough with me. And I just—I didn’t want it. I was so afraid, and so confused because I’d imagined being with him for so long, but the reality was awful and terrifying and nothing like I’d hoped. After a couple of minutes I couldn’t take it, I started crying and begging him to get off me.”

“Did he listen?” Wyatt asked carefully.

“Yes,” Bea said firmly. “Thank God, he did. But he looked so disgusted with me. He said he only kissed me because my brothers asked him to. That no one else would want me, and I should be grateful. I said I was sorry—can you imagine? I apologized to
him
.”

“Jeez.” Wyatt shook his head. “What happened then?”

“Nothing. He went back to the party, and I hid by Tim’s car until it was time to leave. I was too ashamed to tell my brothers what happened. I assume James never told them either—or if he did, they never said anything about it to me.”

Wyatt sighed heavily, like he was absorbing some of the weight of Bea’s past, lifting it off her shoulders and carrying it on his.

“Bea,” he asked, “would it be okay if I hugged you?”

“Very okay,” she whispered, and it felt so good to settle into Wyatt’s strong arms.

“Do you think about James much?”

“Not really.” She exhaled as she leaned comfortably against his chest. “But I guess there’s something about men who look like him—who look like you, who look like all the men here, if I’m honest. Some part of me that still feels like I should be grateful for any attention you show me, even if it’s nothing close to the way I want to be loved.”

“What would happen if one of us proved you wrong?” Wyatt touched Bea’s hair gently, tipping her face up toward his. “What would you think then?”

“I guess I’d have to reassess.” She smiled, and Wyatt leaned down to kiss her.

It was a slow kiss, and quiet—a kiss that drew Bea in and spread warmth all through her body, a kiss that broke her heart a little as she realized the same sense of longing she’d felt as a teenager (for romance, for passion—hell, even for prom) was still screaming inside her. And the more she tried to push it down, to tell herself it didn’t matter, that she was fine being single, that she didn’t need any of this, the more it roared to the surface, threatening to dislodge everything she thought she believed.

As they pulled apart, a few of the kids hooted and cheered, and Bea laughed for joy, for awkwardness, for absurdity. It was, she realized later, only the second time she’d ever been kissed in her hometown.