Authors: Kieran Kramer
True couldn’t lie to herself anymore. She was secretly aghast that he’d seen her freak out—not the
Entertainment Weekly
A-Lister, but the guy who’d brought her to wild and utter completion on a beach when she was eighteen years old. It irked her that Harrison was the only person who’d ever witnessed her out of control.
Ever.
Yes, that meant the big O had never happened with Dubose. He didn’t notice, and she didn’t care. That was what a vibrator was for. It was a poor substitute for the real thing, but the real thing with Harrison had been a fluke. Right? An utter freak occurrence, like a 75 percent off sale on boots the same day your best pair gets chewed up by your dog.
“Are you sure you don’t want a drink?” Harrison asked. “We could stop off for a quick beer—”
“No, thank you.” After the barroom brawl, he’d probably kiss a girl up against a wall. Feel her up, too, while he was at it, his long, golden-brown hair hanging like a curtain to block the view.
“A Coke then?”
“I wish.” A bead of sweat popped out on her brow, and she swiftly wiped it away. “But somebody’ll recognize you in the drive-through. Chicken nuggets will go flying, and mothers will leave their children in the play area just to catch a glimpse of you. I’m fine, Harrison. Thank you.”
“I hope so.” He pulled out a pair of sunglasses and put them on.
Sickening. Truly sickening how good looking he was!
She picked up her book. “I really don’t like the page corners getting bent.” She didn’t like her life getting bent, either, so he’d better not try.
“Then put it back in your dress,” he said. “I don’t care.”
“Fine.” She knew she sounded starchy. But not caring was her new theme. Especially now that she knew
he
didn’t care. She looked pointedly at him and stuffed the musty paperback down her high scooped neckline.
Shoot. It wasn’t very comfortable. It felt somewhat akin to a mammogram plate wedged between her breasts. But the book would warm up, she was sure.
A hand would feel better. A big, warm male hand.
“There.” She hitched her shoulder and tried to think of Dubose. Washboard-ab and well-endowed-in-every-way Dubose—who had cold hands. But it wasn’t his fault. He got it from his mother Penn’s Puritan side of the family. “You can’t be too careful with print books these days. Heck, this could be worth some money in a few years.”
Harrison shook his head and held the passenger door of his car open.
True slipped inside and looked up at him. “Been in any fights lately?”
“
No
. Why?”
“No reason.” She wouldn’t dare ask him how many girls he’d kissed up against honky-tonk walls since he’d moved away from Biscuit Creek.
“I’ll drive you home.” He got in the cream leather driver’s seat and put the car in reverse.
“Thanks,” she said, feeling guilty. Then remembered it was
his
idea to take her home in the first place.
“Not a problem.” He flicked on the radio. Then flicked it off immediately. His latest number one hit was playing: “Snack on This.”
“That’s a sexy song,” she said.
“Yep.”
“But people like it because it’s funny, too.” Like Harrison. He was flirty and fun. Real. Adorable, even—and she saved that word for special occasions. “The part about the Fig Newtons is cute.”
“Yeah,” he mumbled back.
She’d forgotten that he’d never taken compliments from her well. “How’d you come up with it?”
“You really want to know?”
“Of course.”
He gave a little chuckle. “Late one night, I couldn’t sleep. So I got up and had a handful of Oreos and some milk. I’d just drifted off when
pow
”—he made his fingers do a fireworks burst—“next thing you know, I was sitting up in bed singing, ‘That damned tootin’, Fig Newton, highfalutin girl of mine—”
“Junk food lover, undercover—” True sang.
“—I’m her Twinkie, and she’s MoonPie fine.” His velvety twang wrapped around True like a caress.
“Wow.” She felt short of breath. “Straight from the horse’s mouth.”
He grinned. “It’s your lucky day.”
Her heart pounded like crazy. “I heard a bunch of kids singing it yesterday. Yelling it at the top of their lungs coming out of Sunday School.”
Harrison stuffed a bunch of papers under his seat. His ear was red. “Some people might look at it as racy, but it’s meant to be pure fun, okay? That’s something you’ve never understood too well.”
True felt her whole face heat up. “I do, too, get fun.” Had he forgotten? She’d shimmied up and down his body like he was a stripper pole that night on the beach. She’d been so fun that it had scared her.
Harrison finished adjusting his mirror and looked over at her. “It comes off you in invisible waves. You and your mama both. Some sort of disapproval of the rest of the world.”
“That’s nonsense.” She felt it again—the old gap between them. Nothing had changed after all these years, and it made her sad. “I’m as fun as they come, Harrison.”
Or she wanted to be. Hadn’t he seen long ago how her life had been locked into place, and there was no room for maneuvering—except maybe once in a lifetime? That night on the dunes at the Isle of Palms had been her once. The cool sand, the full moon, the scudding clouds, his salt-spiked hair, her prom dress flung over a clutch of sea oats …
They’d had fun, all right.
“I like ‘Snack on This,’” she said. “A
lot
. So does the whole world. You’re the king of hick hop, and you’re gonna win a CMA easy with that one.”
“Thanks.” He stared out his own side window for a long moment.
She could tell he heard compliments all the time. It must suck not to suck—at least at something. She prided herself on being hopeless at whistling. And making cookies. They always burned. And she was short-tempered in the worst way. That was a biggie—not that she was proud of it.
“Can you get me home by five?” she asked, hoping to distract him from the funk that seemed to settle over him.
“I’ll have you there by quarter to four.” He sounded a little peppier.
“But you can’t—you’d have to—”
The sports car took off like a shot. It was a manual shift. No country boy worth his salt drove an automatic. They all learned to drive on tractors, as True had, as a matter of fact.
“I know a back way off the interstate,” Harrison said. They’d returned to normal, whatever that was. “The paparazzi will never find us.”
“Are you sure they’re looking?”
“They’re always looking.”
A car was better than a plane, True reminded herself as they took a curve at a ridiculously high speed. And it was impossible to have two panic attacks in a row, wasn’t it?
She sure hoped so.
“You okay?”
Her eyes popped open. “Sorry. Yes, I’m fine. There’s a couples wedding shower for Dubose and me at seven in Charleston. So we have to leave by six, and if I factor in time to fix my hair—”
“I’ll get you home in time, so stop worrying. I want you to tell me about what’s going on in Biscuit Creek. But how about resting a few minutes first?”
“I don’t need to.”
“I’d rather you try.” He flung her a quick look. “Whatever happened to you back there took a toll. Your voice is a little thin. Close your eyes again. Relax. We’ve got several hours to catch up.”
“Okay,” she said, “but only for a minute or two. I can’t sleep in a car.”
“That’s fine.”
She put her hand on the door rest, took a moment to be proud of the French-tip manicure she’d given herself—she hadn’t had a real manicure in years—and closed her eyes.
CHAPTER THREE
Eighteen years earlier, True was on the porch with her father, which was her second favorite place to be. The honeysuckle bower at Sand Dollar Heaven with Harrison was her first. Harrison was her secret best friend. They’d met in front of Wyatt’s Pharmacy under the awning. Mr. Wyatt never turned kids away, even the ones like Harrison who didn’t always have money in his pocket to buy candy.
“Cumyeah, birthday girl,” Miss Ada called to her in her Geechee accent. “Time for your favorite dinner.”
Lunch was called
dinner
, and
supper
was the preferred name for the evening meal around these parts. True was excited about her pimiento cheese sandwich, sweet pickle, and potato chips.
“Give us another minute, Miss Ada?” Daddy asked their housekeeper. “I was just about to tell my girl something mighty impoh-tant. She’s ten today, old enough to heah some things.”
Daddy spoke with the same Lowcountry drawl as Miss Ada. So did Honey. They were white, and Miss Ada was black, but it didn’t matter. Lowcountry born and bred—your words stretched like taffy, curled like smoke, and lingered … saltwater sounds. For True it was like listening to a fairy language. Her people said “boe-at,” for
boat
. “Fohd,” for
Ford
, “coat” for
court
. And don’t ask them to say the letter
H
. “Ey-yuch” is what you’d get.
“Better make that birthday speech quick, Charlie Maybank.” Miss Ada had known True’s father since he was a baby. “True’s got to ride her bike to choir practice.”
“All righty, then.” Daddy stood up from the bench they were sitting on, and beckoned True to follow him to the top of the house steps. True leapt up and raced to his side. Her father surveyed the property with a look of utter contentment. “You got yourself a special piece of the world right heah,” he told her. “Better’n any birthday present your mothah’s gonna buy you on Main Street.”
“I know it, Daddy.” True looked out over the sparkling wide body of water known as Biscuit Creek. The brown-green reeds of the marsh fronting it held all sorts of treasures: fiddler crabs, pluff mud, egrets, and tiny wrens. “My favorite part is the water. I love when the dolphins come.”
“Me, too, sweetheart.” He put his hand on her shoulder. “You know why it’s called Biscuit Creek?”
“No, sir.”
“A long time ago, an old Sewee woman lived up the creek. She made hardtack for the travelers going through.”
Harrison said he was one-sixteenth Sewee. They played Sewee warrior and tribal princess all the time at Sand Dollar Heaven.
“And after a while,” Daddy said, “the other women—the settlers—joined in with their own recipes. But that Sewee woman started it all. So eventually the creek was called Biscuit Creek in her honor.”
“I love Honey’s biscuits,” True said.
“Don’t we all.” Daddy chuckled. “You know how she treasures her recipe? You have to do the same for this property. Don’t you ever let it go. And make sure you keep the Maybank name prominent in these parts. I know you’re gonna marry someday, but Maybank would make a helluva good first name, right?”
“Yes, sir, Daddy.” True could tell he wished he’d had a boy. “I don’t care what my husband says. I’m gonna be True Maybank forever.”
“No, no, no,” her father said. “You take your husband’s name, like a good girl. Maybe you’ll be True Maybank Waring. You marry Dubose, and bring our families together, then you’ll have done your mother and me real proud.”
She tried her best to look obedient. She felt sorry for Daddy. None of the women in his life listened to him. He called Honey his crazy spinster aunt, all because she refused to “settle down and behave,” Mama’s favorite phrase.
But Mama had misbehaved, too. Just last week, True heard Daddy and Mama fighting late at night after a party. Daddy found out that Mama had their new baby with another man’s help. Daddy told Mama she hadn’t behaved like a Maybank should. But Mama said he’d driven her to it by marrying her for her money and then slowly forgetting about her. Daddy cried. And Mama cried. And they both said they were sorry, and then Daddy pulled Mama onto the back porch and called her “Helen, my love.” True didn’t know what happened after that.
But she cried, too, from where she was sitting on the stairs. The next morning, she asked Ada what it was all about, and Ada said that all Daddy meant was that another man helped Mama pick Weezie up at the baby store. It was all in the past, Ada assured her, so it didn’t matter. But True was ten, for goodness’ sake. She knew babies didn’t come from a store.
Her father looked down at her with a slight frown. “Warings and Maybanks are the two oldest families in Biscuit Creek. And we’ve never married.”
“Why is that, Daddy?” True wasn’t too crazy about Dubose. He was a tattletale. Once she stole a piece of ham off his mama’s table before they were called in for Sunday brunch. And he told their cook. All because she’d sunk his battleship and beaten him at Go Fish.
“Rivalry,” Daddy said. “And none of us have ever fallen in love with each other. No Romeo and Juliet stories. But these are harder times. We could lose everything our families have fought for and stood for these past two hundred yeahs. It’s about time we unite, and you and Dubose would make a fine pair.”
“But I’m only ten years old, Daddy. So is he.”
“So?” He pulled out a cigar and lit it. “You just keep him in mind. You’ll both be grown up before you know it.”
“Yes, sir.”
After that, True’s father spoke to her on the porch every year on her birthday. When her twelfth one came along, she was wearing a bra even though she didn’t need one, and she had a cheap lip gloss from Wyatt’s hidden in the secret pocket of her purse. She was almost a woman, especially now that Harrison had kissed her—kissed her right on the lips—not three days ago. And it wasn’t anything like that kiss they’d shared when they’d gotten married two years before in their fake Sewee marriage ceremony in the honeysuckle bower. She didn’t know why things had changed between them. All she knew was that one day she was watching him, and his profile suddenly looked like the handsomest thing she’d ever seen. When he’d turned to smile at her, her heart had literally stopped in her chest and she couldn’t breathe for a second.
She was madly in love. And as soon as she could escape, she was meeting him on the dock at Sand Dollar Heaven. He had a birthday present for her.
Now her daddy said, “The sheriff was over at Sand Dollar Heaven the other day.”
“Oh?” True’s heart sped up.