The Best Man

“Which made it okay for you to hate me all these years.”

“I don’t hate you, for crying out loud.”

“No. You just ignored me and made me feel like a lump, and God forbid we should ever be friends.”

“You wanna be friends? Fine. We’re friends. Let’s play Barbies and go to the movies.”

She rolled her eyes and bent down to tie another vine. “I never understood why Jeremy thinks you walk on water. I think you’re a jackass.”

“Now, see? I want to be friends, and you’re calling me names.”

“Jackass.”

“Does this mean no tea party later on?”

She glared. He grinned.

And then she blushed, her cheeks growing pink, color staining her throat and chest. Her eyes fluttered down his bare torso. Then she jerked her gaze back to the vine and fumbled for a tie. Dropped it.

Well, well, well. Levi’s smile grew.

“You’re doing a crappy job,” she said, glancing back at his row. “You need to use more ties, or the grapes will be too heavy, and you’ll lose the fruit.”

“Is that right,” he murmured. Actually, his work had gotten spotty only since she’d arrived.

She came over to his row and demonstrated. “This one, see, it’s off the ground for now, but when the grapes mature, they’ll get too heavy. See?”

“Yep.” She smelled like grapes and vanilla and dirt and sunshine and sweat. The stir of lust became a throb.

“Tie it up higher,” she said, kneeling down to demonstrate. Faith Holland, on her knees in front of him. How could he not picture what he was picturing? “Just go back along what you’ve already done and make sure you got everything.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said. Her shirt brushed his ribs as she stood up and went back to her row.

Keep your eyes to yourself. And get going. The Lyons are paying you. You can jerk off later.

The mental advice worked for an hour.

She was much faster and steadier than he was, he had to give her that. He looked at the sky, which was a perfect, endless blue, and decided it was time to eat.

“You want some lunch, rich girl?” he called. She was twenty yards or so ahead of him.

“I brought my own,” she answered.

“Then do you want to eat with me? Now that we’re BFFs?”

“Such a jackass.”

“Is that a yes?” He lowered his chin and gave her a patient look, something that had always worked well with girls.

“Sure,” she grumbled.

Hey, idiot, his brain chided. She was dating your best friend a few days ago. What are you doing?

But the facts were blurring fast. First of all, there was the whole Jeremy-shouldn’t-be-dating-a-girl thing. Speaking of Jeremy, he wasn’t even in the Empire State at the moment. Then there was the breakup, or whatever they wanted to call it.

And let’s not forget the sight of a dewy and dirty Faith Holland in cutoff jeans and a shirt tied under her generous chest, and the fact that she was irritated with him, which Levi had learned generally meant a girl was interested.

She came over to him, taking out her braids and retying her hair in a ponytail. “There’s a nice place about five minutes from here. By the falls. Do you know it?”

He shook his head, looking at her steadily. She had blue eyes. He never really noticed before. Freckles.

She swallowed.

Oh, yeah. Faith Holland was feeling some feelings.

“Come on, then,” she said. They walked up to her father’s truck, the dog running ahead. Levi grabbed his shirt from where he’d dropped it and pulled it on.

John Holland’s truck smelled pleasantly of old coffee and oil, just as dirty inside as the outside, the dashboard and seats covered in dried mud and dust. Smiley jumped, his feathery tail hitting Levi in the face. “Sit, pooch,” he said, and the dog obeyed, his furry side pressed against Levi’s arm. Seemed like the Hollands always had a Golden retriever or two. There was always one in their brochures.

“You guys breed these monsters?” he asked Faith as she started the truck and put it in gear. The fact that she could drive a made-in-America pickup truck with a standard transmission only increased her hot factor.

“We belong to the Golden Retriever Rescue League,” she answered. Smiley licked her face as if thanking her.

“Just another act of mercy from the great Holland family,” Levi said.

“Jeesh! Stop being such a pain or I’ll push you out of the truck and eat your lunch.”

The truck jolted and rocked over the grassy, rutted paths that ran between fields, causing Levi to practically crack his head on the roof of the truck (but also treating him to a great view of Faith’s bouncing cleavage). After about five minutes, they stopped at the edge of a field that was being cleared...the Holland family owned a ton of land. Woods were thick on one side.

Faith grabbed a blanket from behind her seat and a thermal lunch box (Hello Kitty, could’ve called that one). The dog raced off into the woods, and she followed on the little path without waiting for Levi.

Birds called and fluttered in the branches. From somewhere not too far away came the rush and splash of a stream. Levi tried to imagine looking out and seeing land, acres and acres of field and forest, all the way down to the lake, and knowing it was yours, and had been in your family since America had been a baby. Levi’s mother’s family was from Manningsport, too, but there were people who’d been around, and then there were founding families.

Over to the left was the ruin of an old stone barn, the rocks covered in lichen. A sapling grew in the middle, the roof long gone.

“You coming?” Faith called from up ahead.

Thick mounds of moss blanketed the ground, and the leaves were so green the air seemed tinted with it. They passed a huge grove of birch trees, the white bark glowing, and the edges of hemlocks brushed Levi’s cheek as he walked. He slapped a mosquito, and a chipmunk peeped and ran across the narrow path.

The sound of rushing water was louder now. Faith had spread out the blanket on a rock and sat down. Juicy as a ripe peach. An image of her under him, legs around him, practically made him stagger.

He really had to stop thinking this way.

They were at the edge of a deep gorge, a waterfall cascading into a round pool about twenty feet below them. He wished he had a camera so he could look at this picture when he was deployed, baking in the sun of Iraq or Afghanistan or wherever the Army would send him. He’d show it around. This is where I’m from. I had lunch with a pretty girl right on this rock.

“Nice,” he said, sitting next to Faith.

“The pool’s pretty deep,” she said, pointing as she took a sandwich out of her lunch box. “Maybe twenty, thirty feet. Jack says it’s bigger underwater. Like a bell. He used to jump off that rock there.”