And, though I fight it, my sappy brain imagines Lincoln, bouncing off the diving board, tucking his knees to his dark, muscular chest and flipping in a few tight circles before he breaks the calm surface with a splash so big, it disrupts everyone. We’d all be annoyed until his head pops up and he dazzles us with that irresistible smile.
That smile got him out of so much trouble. That smile sometimes made me scared I’d never be attached to another guy, because I’d never seen anything more beautiful in my life.
I know I was wise to put a thousand miles between me and it. Me and him.
“¿Qué lo que carajito? I feel like you’re not even trying,” I scold the sickly little tree to divert my attention. “Trust me, I get how hard it is to be a transplant, but you can’t go down without a fight. You’re here now. You might as well attempt to thrive.”
So I’m talking to plants now. Doyle really is rubbing off on me.
Despite my pep talk, the tree looks zero percent better this mosquito-filled, muggy evening than it did yesterday, and I’m willing to bet that’s a trend that will continue for weeks on end. The gusts of rain that blew through and chilled things for a nanosecond this afternoon are long forgotten, and the leaves sprouting out of this poor excuse for a tree look parched and overly delicate. While the hose soaks the earth above the tree roots, I wander to the edge of the pool and drop my feet into the still water, then lean back on my arms and tilt my head up. I’m attempting to untangle the few constellations I know when a voice on the other side of our white picket fence makes me jump.
“Stargazing?”
It’s a romantic word anyway, but twisted around his drawl it sounds delicious.
“What exactly did you do before I moved here, Doyle? Because it seems like I take up a lot of your time.” I watch as he climbs over the fence and jumps into my yard without asking permission, his legs stretched long and sure as he walks my way.
“You’re gettin’ ahead of yourself, Nes. I’ve spent a grand total of maybe two hours with you, not countin’ English class, which is required.” He kicks off his boots, throws his socks on top of them, cuffs his jeans, and slides down next to me so that we’re shoulder to shoulder, our feet nearly touching under the water. “Know any constellations?” He juts his chin up.
We gaze at the black sky dotted with a few pale white stars, and I try hard to ignore how much I want his arm around me—both because he’s got beautiful, muscled arms and because the reality of Doyle’s arm will blot out the memory of Lincoln’s.
“I know the big ones. The Dippers and Orion. And...that’s all, I guess. Can you enlighten me?” I covertly side-eye him, but he’s looking at me.
Coño. Caught!
“Nope. Now, if you wanna know the plants growing ’round here? Or the bugs? That I can help you with. But when I look up, I don’t see nothin’ in particular.” His foot brushes mine under the water, and a chill swims up my back.
“You mean you don’t know Shark Attack on a Half Shell?” I point, and he leans over to get a better look, his ribs pressing tight to my back. I move from word to word carefully, because my brain is mushy when I’m this close to him. “Those three, see, are sort of like a shell, if you squint when you look, and that kind of triangle—”
“Maybe more like Rabid Goldfish Attack on a Plank?” He wraps his arm around my shoulder and points to the left, pulling me closer as I tilt my face to the sky. “And that one? I’d say Four-Wheeler Running over a Hog.”
I laugh because I’m supposed to, and I train my eyes at the stars in the sky, but I’m not sure all the beauty I see overhead is strictly astronomical. Some of that sparkle has to be because of my close proximity to Doyle. I swear the sky wasn’t exploding with all this gorgeous light before he sat down next to me.
“Why are you here?” I blurt out. He drops his arm, letting it graze my side.
“My grandfather needed me to check up on the pecan orchard across the street. They’ve got weevils—”
“You’re seriously trying to tell me that I’m just a side visit after you took care of pecan weevils?” His face is Norse-hero handsome in the moonlight.
“Hell no.” His grin tentacles around my heart, squeezing tight. “Truth is, I don’t think I’ll ever run out of excuses to get over here and see you. The Dickersons think they might have a spider mite infestation in their cotton, but their fields are fifteen miles in the other direction. I convinced my cousin to take a look at them.” He brushes the hair from my face with the back of his calloused hand. “I came here to see you, and I’ll keep doin’ it till you’re back in New York City, forgettin’ this all like it was a bad dream.”
He slings my own words at me like the nasty slap of a rubber band on my skin. I pull back from him. “Don’t.”
“Don’t what?” His voice never loses its evenness.
“Bring on the guilt. I mean...it’s stupid.”
We just met, he has no right. But if that were true, it would be simple to blow him off. So why isn’t it?
The truth is, something stuck fast the second I met him. He walked up, and I had this feeling like, oh, there he is, that person I just met, but who I’ve been waiting for. Like I’d always known he was coming, and then—there he was.
Here he is.
But that’s just a weird gut feeling, probably intensified because I’m so damn lonely and out of place right now.
“We don’t even know each other,” I muse, half-surprised to hear myself speak the words out loud.
“We could fix that. We should. Right now. We never even met properly, what with you bein’ all flustered by my manly pecs the other day.” My laugh skips over the pool water and echoes back at me in a friendly way. He faces me and holds out his hand. “I’m Doyle Ulysses Rahn. Pleased to meet you.”
My mouth swings open like my jaw is set on faulty hinges.
He ducks his head and squints my way. “Yeah, it’s weird, right? My granddaddy’s side always middle-names every second son Ulysses after some Confederate soldier who saved our family farmstead during a Civil War battle... It’s a long story.”
I press my palm against his, squeeze hard, and shake. “Well, Doyle Ulysses Rahn, I’m Agnes Penelope Murphy-Pujols.” I wait for it...
“Pretty.”
“Pretty?” I shake my head. “Doyle, I’m middle-named after Penelope. From The Odyssey.”
His face blanks, then lights up with recognition. “Uh, okay. I remember that one. Where he goes home after all those years, the bow, the crazy ladies who drive sailors wild with their singing, and the cyclops and the special bed, all that? We read that back in junior year.”
“Ulysses is the Roman name for Odysseus.” The look of pure adoration that splits across his face makes my skin tingle and itch all at once—hives of feeling.
“Holy hell. Your brain works overtime, don’t it?” He rubs his thumbs over my knuckles. “So you’re saying you and I have these weirdo middle names that connect us? Like maybe it was fate that we were meant to get to know each other?”
“Don’t read too much into it. You didn’t even get the reference until I explained it to you.” My voice is too breathy to be convincing, but Doyle doesn’t buy into my protest anyway.
“That’s the beauty of it though. You teach me about things I don’t know about, like old Greek books—”
“Roman books. You know the Greek version.”
“Right. You teach me about the ancient Romans and all that nerd stuff, and I make this year better than purgatory