Carter’s golden eyelashes caught the sunlight as he glanced down at his notebook, his voice slow and careful as he read, like he was worried he might mispronounce a word.
He was very pretty, Ava reflected. All-American, well-built, athletic and benign and popular. Exactly the sort of classmate with which she never fraternized. But he was failing Lit, and their teacher had paired them up as study buddies, asking Ava to tutor him in exchange for an extra English credit. Whatever. The credit was great. And though Carter was disinterested in the material, he wasn’t much like his friends Mason or Beau. He wasn’t cruel, at least not to her face.
They sat on a picnic table just beyond the Lean Dogs’ clubhouse portico, the five o’clock sun slanting golden shadows across the pavement. The calls of bikes served as white noise.
Ava saw Mercy’s shadow before she saw him. It fell across her from behind, across the table, casting Carter’s face in darkness.
She felt her heart jump; felt a smile bloom. At some point during those shy awkward years between girl and young woman, her love for Mercy had taken on a new dimension. With puberty had come a visceral awareness of him. His near-constant presence was warm and masculine; the weight of his arm across her shoulders sent delighted shivers crawling across her skin. Her absolute trust in him, the wonderful way he’d always treated her like an adult – those things had fueled a growing need in her, a restless heat. Her body wanted him, and her heart already loved him. Ava had stopped calling it a “crush” in her mind. She didn’t have any such tepid feelings about this man who’d shadowed her life for so long.
Now, she watched Carter’s head lift, saw the panic flare in his eyes; then her attention went to Mercy as he moved to stand at the end of their table.
He leaned forward and placed his big hands on the tabletop. His bare arms glistened with a film of sweat. His faded old Bell Bar shirt with the cut-out sleeves clung to the heavy muscles of his chest. His expression, as he sent her a fast glance, went from little-boy mischievous, to downright murderous, his brows tucking low over his dark eyes. He was a terrifying sight. He was a vision. Ava wanted to curl her hands around his biceps and bury her face in his throat, urges she wasn’t sure she even understood at seventeen.
“Hey, kid,” Mercy said in his low, Louisiana-tinged voice. “Who told you you could be here?”
Carter gulped. “I…I, um…Ava said…”
“Oh, Ava said? I guess that makes it okay, then.”
Ava bit down on the inside of her cheek to keep from cracking up. Mercy was so stern and serious.
“I-isn’t it?”
Mercy leaned down lower, so he was on eye-level with the petrified quarterback. He looked like a panther about to pounce. It was easy to imagine him with claws and fangs. “What do you think?” he asked Carter in a voice that was truly dreadful.
Carter’s lips quivered; his hands shook until the pencil dropped from his fingers. He took a deep breath…and then bolted. In a flurry of arms and legs, he snatched up his books, pens, crumpled paper to his chest, grabbed his backpack and took off toward his red Mustang.
When Carter was gone, all the tension left Mercy’s body; he laughed and dropped down beside her on the bench, his eyes bright with humor, his smile white and striking.
“That was rude,” Ava said, trying not to smile.
“That was fun,” he corrected. He reached for her notebook and turned it toward himself, studying the tree she’d drawn. “That’s good.”
“It’s just a doodle.” She felt the color in her cheeks and glanced away from his radiant face, toward her paper. She’d drawn craggy roots with grass shooting between, a little bird on a lower branch, the tree’s shadow across the ground. It wasn’t bad, she admitted. But even the faintest praise from Mercy melted her insides.
“What are you doing hanging out with Abercrombie models all of a sudden?” he asked. “I thought you hated that kinda kid.”
Was she imagining it, or was there a thin note of jealousy in his voice?
“I do,” she assured, pencil returning to her doodle. “My Lit teacher asked me to tutor Carter so he’d pass and be able to take his football scholarship.”
“Ah.” No, she wasn’t imagining it: there was relief. Her heart pattered happily against her ribs. “And what do you get out of it?”
“An English credit. And a pat on the back, I guess.” She shrugged.
“Well that ain’t fair.”
She glanced up at him…and got caught in the sharp fall of his gaze, words gluing to her tongue. Sometimes, moments like this, she looked at him, and her body was flooded with a paralyzing physical ache.
“It–” She had to wet her lips. “It’s fine. I don’t mind.”
“ ‘Cept you’re stuck withVarsity Bluesover there.”
Ava glanced away, before she lost complete control of her tongue.
Mercy’s big hand, his finger dark against the stark white of the paper, came to her notebook, and he pointed at the bird she’d drawn. “What’s that?”
Grateful for something mundane and safe to discuss, she said, “A cardinal. I kinda messed up his little hat, though.”
