Chapter 6 #3
Because he has. Of course he has. We all have.
That’s how this place works. Everybody grows up under everybody else’s feet, running through the same halls, falling asleep on the same couches, hearing the same stories repeated around the same fire pits year after year.
Jimmy has known me forever in the way people here know each other, easy and unquestioned and tangled into daily life so thoroughly that sometimes it feels like breathing.
But hearing him say it out loud does something to me.
I’ve known you a long time.
Like it means something.
Maybe it doesn’t to him. Maybe it means absolutely everything to me.
The screen door bangs open behind us, and my mom comes back out with one of my extra tops from the room the girls use when we crash here too late to go home. She hands it to me, then looks between Jimmy and me with an expression I can’t read before she tells me to come inside and change.
Jimmy stands and reaches a hand down again before I can push myself up.
I look at it, then at him.
He gives me a look that clearly says don’t start.
I put my hand in his.
Again, he doesn’t yank. He just braces me until I’m standing. My ankle aches, but it’s manageable. The sticky front of my shirt is another matter entirely.
“Can you make it?” he asks.
“Yes.”
“You sure?”
I roll my eyes, which makes him grin a little. “Yes, Jimmy.”
“All right.” He steps aside but doesn’t move far, like he’s prepared to catch me if I wobble. “Go change. Ice after.”
“Okay.”
I should go.
I know I should go.
Instead I stand there for one extra second, looking up at him while the evening light catches the sharp line of his jaw and the breeze lifts the front of his dark hair.
He looks older than everybody else, even the ones his age, and not just because he’s taller or broader or because people already listen when he talks.
There’s something steady in him, something solid, and I can’t explain why that matters so much all of a sudden.
Maybe because when the whole yard felt like too much and I wanted the ground to swallow me, he was there.
Maybe because he didn’t laugh. Maybe because he made it feel small.
Fixable. Nothing worth crying over. Maybe because he called me Allie like he’s been doing it for years and never realized what that one stupid name can do to me.
“You good?” he asks.
I realize I’ve been staring again and nearly die on the spot. “Yep.”
His mouth twitches.
I limp toward the door before I can embarrass myself worse, aware of him behind me for every step. My mom holds the door open. Ana and Shaina are inside the hall waiting for me, both of them already looking far too interested in whatever just happened. Shaina’s grin is downright evil.
I hate her too.
“You okay?” Ana asks, taking in the towel, the shirt, the bottle of water, and probably the fact that I look like my soul just left my body.
“She twisted it,” Jimmy says from behind me before I can answer.
Ana’s eyes flick to him, then back to me, and something knowing sparks there so fast it makes panic flicker in my chest.
“I’m fine,” I say.
“Mm-hmm,” Shaina says, drawing the sound out.
I shoot her a glare.
Jimmy says, “Ice it,” one more time, then steps back off the porch like his part in this is over now that he’s sure I’m not about to collapse.
That should be the end of it.
It probably is for him.
He heads down the steps and back into the yard, getting intercepted almost immediately by Cain, who tosses him the football with no warning.
Jimmy catches it one-handed and says something that makes Cain laugh.
A second later he’s back in the middle of everything, easy and sure and completely unaware that he just tipped my entire world sideways without even trying.
I stand in the doorway longer than I should, the extra shirt clutched in one hand, watching him.
Not because he’s the biggest guy in the yard, though he might be. Not because he’s Uncle Whip’s son or because all the little kids trail after him like he hung the moon. Not even because he was nice to me just now.
It’s deeper than that already, and that realization lands slowly and all at once.
I know the exact second it happens.
It happens while I watch him toss the football back to Logan.
It happens while he glances toward the grill to make sure Uncle Whip doesn’t need something before heading back to the game.
It happens while he moves through the yard like he belongs to it and it belongs to him, rough-edged and steady and so completely himself that it makes my chest ache.
This isn’t a passing thing.
It isn’t just that he’s cute, even though he is. It isn’t just that he’s older, or that he’s nice, or that he looked at me like I mattered when I felt stupid and small.
It’s him.
It’s always going to be him.
Something tight and tender settles in my chest, almost like fear and almost like joy and maybe too much like both.
I don’t have words for it yet. I only know that whatever this is, it’s bigger than the silly, fluttery crushes girls at school talk about in the locker room.
It feels heavier. Meaner. Like something with roots.
Like something that’s going to stay.
“Allie,” my mom says gently from down the hall. “You gonna change that shirt or stand there all night?”
I blink and force my feet to move.
Ana falls into step beside me immediately. “So.”
“Don’t.”
“Jimmy was awfully attentive.”
“Shut up.”
Shaina comes up on my other side, full of delight. “Oh, she’s got it bad.”
“I don’t have anything.”
Ana laughs. “You practically stopped breathing when he took your hand.”
I nearly trip over my good foot. “I did not.”
“You did,” Shaina says. “I saw it.”
“Traitor.”
“I’m your friend, not your priest. I’m not keeping your secrets for free.”
I shove her shoulder. She only laughs harder.
By the time I change shirts and come back out with an ice pack wrapped in a dish towel, the sky has gone softer at the edges, streaked pink and gold above the tree line.
The party rolls on like it always does. Plates are fuller now, beer bottles emptier, voices louder.
The kids are dirtier. The old ladies have settled into chairs with the ease of women who know they’ll be here until they decide otherwise.
The men are spread across the yard and porch and driveway in easy groups, talking business and bullshit in equal measure.
Jimmy is leaning against one of the bikes now, listening to Logan run his mouth while Cain laughs from beside them. He looks over when the porch door opens, eyes skimming automatically across the people coming out.
They catch on me for one brief second.
Not even long enough to mean anything.
Long enough to mean everything.
He glances at the towel-wrapped ice pack in my hand, then lifts his chin once like he’s checking that I listened.
I hate that I like that.
I hate that I like him.
I hate that one small moment has managed to wedge itself so deep under my skin that I already know I’m not getting rid of it.
Maybe I should be scared of that. Maybe I am, a little.
But as I settle back onto the porch steps between Ana and Shaina, with the ice pack pressed to my ankle and the evening air warm against my skin, I look out over the yard and find Jimmy again.
He says something to Cain and smiles, and the sight hits me low and hard and hopeless.
That’s the first night I realize Jimmy Baker is going to ruin me, and the worst part is I don’t even mind.