Page 12 of Licks

Too bad she screwed my brother.

Except that fiasco wasn’t why I’d bailed on my soccer game partway through, why I was standing on her mother’s doorstep now, in workout shorts and a soccer jersey, sweat cooling into clammy patches on my skin.

What happened nine years ago was history. Painful history, but history nonetheless.

Curling my hands into fists, I wrenched my eyes from her body and focused on her face. Her hypnotizing eyes scattered my thoughts. “I’m sorry about your mother.”

She blinked, as though rousing from a dream. “My mother?”

“I should have called. Come in for the funeral.”

Before she could reply, the brunette from the bleachers poked her head through the door and offered her hand. “I’m Rachel, Gwen’s friend. I think you know my boyfriend Jimmy.”

Gwen had friends I no longer knew. She probably had a boyfriend, too. A life beyond the neighborhood we grew up in and years we’d shared. A sudden cramp seized my gut. Probably a stitch, after-effects of splitting on my soccer game without stretching, coupled with all things Gwen. The faster I got this over with, the faster I could breathe easier.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t stop staring at Gwen’s pink lips, how the lower one was slightly fuller, with that damn freckle on the left.

I shook Rachel’s hand. “I’m August. Jimmy and I played soccer together as teens. It was nice catching up.”

“Well…” Rachel glanced between Gwen’s still-gaping mouth and my divided focus. “I need to get going, but—”

“No, you don’t.” Gwen clutched Rachel’s elbow.

“Yes, I do.”

“But we have that thing.”

Rachel patted Gwen’s shoulder. “Later. Our thing is later. Meet us for drinks.” She kissed Gwen’s cheek and nodded to me as she slipped past, leaving us to stew in our tension.

Gwen wrapped her arms around her middle.

I shifted on my feet, wishing I wasn’t in sneakers and shorts. Nowhere to shove my restless hands. Hands that wanted to erase the deep furrow sinking between Gwen’s green eyes. It had always been like this with Gwen, my need to comfort her an embedded impulse. I also wanted to rail at her, our history bubbling below my skin. “Sorry if I smell,” I said, tamping both reflexes and grasping for conversation. “I was playing soccer.”

She cleared her throat. “Considering I saw you there, and you’re sweating on the front step now, I put two and two together.”

“I see your sarcasm is alive and well.” The edge to my tone was also a living, breathing thing. A sharp rasp in my throat.

The crease in her brow deepened. “Sorry. This is awkward.”

To say the least. I could have done this over the phone, called her a week ago, before my procrastination-athon had begun, but this wasn’t the type of news you dumped on someone from afar, no matter our strained past.

She peered at me intently. “Did you swap your glasses for contacts?”

“I had laser eye surgery.”

“Oh.” She looked at her toes, at my knees, at the yard beyond me. “The lawn isn’t as nice as when you lived there.”

I followed her line of sight to my childhood home. I could practically see a path between our front yards, a trail forged by memories of a giggling Gwen and water fights and nights lying in the grass, her head on my lap, my hands itching to stroke her hair. The vivid flashbacks fisted my heart and squeezed.

“The house looks smaller,” I said. Not I miss you. Not why did you ruin us? Not I did something you’ll never forgive.

She kept her eyes on the house. “You’re just bigger.”

“Did the gutters always slant like that?” This I could do. Talk about nothing instead of our past and the reason I was here.

“Doubt it.”

“It needs an overhaul.”