Chapter 6 #2
The glasses rattle softly against the metal as I walk down the porch steps, careful not to spill any.
People move around me in every direction, crossing the yard, waving each other down, calling for extra napkins or hot sauce or their kids.
I make it halfway across before Logan backs up right in front of me without looking, bumping my shoulder just enough to throw me off balance.
The tray tilts.
I catch it before everything goes over, but one of the glasses tips and a full splash of sweet tea spills down the front of my shirt. Cold liquid soaks through the thin fabric instantly.
For one second I just stand there.
Then I hear laughter.
Not cruel, not really, just the automatic kind that bursts out when something unexpected happens in the middle of a crowd. But humiliation hits me so fast and hard it burns.
“Oh shit,” Logan says, turning around. “Allie, I didn’t see you.”
“It’s fine,” I say too quickly.
It is not fine. I’m standing in the middle of the yard with tea all over my chest, my shirt clinging in a way that makes me want to die on the spot, and every inch of skin from my neck to my forehead feels hot.
“Here,” Logan starts, reaching for the tray.
I step back before he can take it because if he does, everybody’s attention is going to settle right on me, and I will actually dissolve into dust.
“I got it,” I mutter.
Then my heel catches in the edge of a rut in the yard. My ankle twists. Pain lances sharp and sudden up my leg, enough to make me suck in a breath and stumble hard to the side. The tray slips from my hands this time for real. A glass tips over. Ice scatters across the grass.
“Damn it,” I whisper, because that somehow feels less humiliating than the fact that my eyes are already watering.
The world narrows into too much noise and too many people.
Logan is apologizing. Somebody else is saying watch it.
One of the old ladies calls for towels from the porch.
I hate all of it. I hate the sticky front of my shirt and the stupid twist in my ankle and the fact that my throat feels tight for no reason other than I’m embarrassed and sixteen and apparently still fragile enough to cry over something this dumb.
Then Jimmy is there.
One second he’s thirty feet away near the kids with a football in his hand, and the next he’s in front of me, dropping into a crouch like nothing else in the yard matters.
“Easy,” he says, voice low and steady.
Everything else fades.
I blink at him, breathing too fast.
“What happened?”
“Nothing,” I say automatically, because apparently humiliation doesn’t stop me from lying.
His mouth twitches like he knows that’s bullshit too. “Looks like a whole lot of something.”
There’s not a trace of teasing in his tone, though. He says it gently, like he’s trying to keep me from spiraling any further. One hand comes to my elbow, careful and warm, steadying me before I even realize I’m swaying.
“My ankle,” I admit quietly.
“Did you go down on it?”
I nod my head.
“Can you put weight on it?”
I don’t know why the questions make me want to cry more than the pain does, but they do. Maybe because he asks them like it matters. Like I matter. Like he’s not doing me some favor by paying attention.
“I think so.”
His eyes lift to my face for a second, and something in them softens. “You think so or you know so, Allie?”
Allie.
Nobody else really calls me that except the people closest to me. Hearing it from him, in that voice, does something weird to my chest.
“I know so,” I whisper.
“Good. Let me see.”
Before I can process what he means, his hand slides lightly down to my ankle. He doesn’t touch bare skin because I’m wearing sandals, but his fingers bracket just above the strap, careful and deliberate, and I stop breathing altogether.
It’s insane. He’s checking my ankle. That’s all he’s doing. But it feels like every nerve in my body wakes up at once.
“Hurts here?” he asks.
“A little.”
“And here?”
I nod.
He glances at the ground around us, then at the overturned tray and spilled ice, and his expression shifts. Not angry exactly. Just sharp.
“Logan.”
Logan straightens immediately. “Yeah, my bad. I backed into her.”
“No shit,” Jimmy says.
Logan lifts both hands. “I said I was sorry.”
Jimmy doesn’t answer him right away. His focus comes back to me. “You dizzy?”
“No.”
“You gonna pass out?”
That startles a laugh out of me before I can stop it. “No.”
“Good.” He stands in one smooth motion, then offers me his hand. “Come on.”
I stare at it for half a second too long. His brows lift. “Unless you want to stay out here sticky and limping.”
Ana and Shania are for sure watching me dying right here in front of everyone, so I put my hand in his.
That’s somehow worse.
His palm closes around mine, rough and warm and firm enough that I feel it all the way to my shoulders. He doesn’t tug me hard. He just waits until I’ve got my footing, then steps in close enough that if I lean even a little, I’ll hit his chest. “Try it,” he says quietly.
I take one cautious step. My ankle twinges, but not enough to make me suck air through my teeth or collapse in dramatic teenage misery. “I’m okay.”
“You’re limping.”
I look down, annoyed to find that he’s right.
“Come sit down,” he says.
“I can do it myself.”
He gives me a look that says he’s already decided otherwise.
This should probably irritate me. It doesn’t.
He takes the empty tray from the ground with one hand, passes it off to Logan without looking, and keeps hold of my hand with the other while he guides me toward the porch.
People part for us without me asking them to.
Aunt Nikki calls out asking if I’m all right.
My mom starts to get up from the table, but Jimmy says, “She twisted it. I got her,” in that same calm tone, and somehow that’s enough to settle everybody back down.
I don’t think I’ve ever wanted to both disappear and stay exactly where I am more in my life.
He gets me to the porch steps and releases my hand only long enough to brush the wet front of my shirt with a quick glance. “You need a towel too.”
“I’m fine,” I mumble.
“Sure are.” His mouth pulls at one corner, not quite smiling. I can’t tell if he’s making fun of me or trying to make me feel better. Maybe both. He nudges my knee lightly. “Sit.”
I do.
Not because he told me to. Because my legs are suddenly unreliable.
He disappears inside the clubhouse for maybe thirty seconds and comes back with a towel slung over one shoulder and a cold bottle of water in his hand. He passes me the towel first, not looking at my shirt, which somehow makes me feel better than if he pretended not to notice the spill at all.
“Thanks,” I say.
“Mm-hmm.”
He crouches in front of me again while I dab awkwardly at the front of my tank top and try very hard not to think about the fact that Jimmy Baker is kneeling between my knees in broad daylight while half the club is twenty feet away.
He looks at my ankle again. “Let me see you move it.”
I do, wincing a little at the pull.
“Probably just tweaked it.” His fingers close gently around my foot, lifting it an inch so he can look at the swelling already starting near the outside bone. “Ice it tonight.”
My brain catches on one word and trips over it.
My mom appears on the porch with concern all over her face. “Alison, baby, are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” I say before she can start fussing.
Jimmy looks over his shoulder. “She twisted it, but she’s okay.”
Mom eyes him for a second, then me, then the damp towel in my lap. “How?”
“Logan,” Jimmy says flatly.
Mom snorts, which means Logan’s getting chewed out later by somebody and she’s already accepted that. “I’ll grab you another top, honey.”
“I can do it,” I tell her.
“You can limp your stubborn little butt inside in a minute,” she says. “Sit.”
Apparently everybody in this club has the same disease where they think I’m incapable of basic function.
Jimmy glances back at me, and I swear there’s amusement in his eyes now.
I glare at him.
He doesn’t look even a little sorry.
My mom disappears back inside, and the noise of the party swells around us again.
I can hear Dad and Uncle Whip arguing over the burgers like nothing happened, hear the football game restart out in the grass, hear one of the little kids crying because somebody stole their chips, hear Aunt Nikki telling Shaina to get off the railing before she falls and cracks her head open.
But right here on the porch, the noise feels farther away.
Jimmy unscrews the bottle of water and hands it to me already open. “Drink.”
“You always this bossy?”
“Pretty much.”
I take the bottle because saying no at this point feels useless. “That’s a terrible personality trait.”
“Hasn’t hurt me yet.”
I take a swallow and try not to smile into the bottle.
He rests his forearms on his thighs for a second, still crouched in front of me, and tips his head slightly as he studies my face. “You gonna cry?”
Mortification hits me all over again. “No.”
“Good.”
“That would be embarrassing.”
He shrugs. “You’re sixteen. You’re allowed.”
I blink at him. “That’s not helpful.”
“It’s true.”
“That makes it worse.”
This time he does smile, slow and quick and crooked enough that my stomach does something completely traitorous.
God.
It should be illegal for boys to look like that.
“You’re okay, Allie,” he says, and there’s something about the way he says it that makes me believe him instantly. “Nobody’s gonna remember you spilled a drink in ten minutes.”
I look down at the towel in my lap. “I will.”
He huffs a quiet laugh. “Yeah, probably. You hold onto dumb stuff.”
I look back up, startled. “How do you know that?”
His expression shifts just a little, like the question surprises him too. Then he shrugs one shoulder. “I’ve known you a long time.”
It’s such a simple thing to say. It lands like a blow.