Chapter 3 #2
Knox, meanwhile, wore the Sunday brothers’ uniform of a button-down shirt over dark jeans and boots, except Knox’s shirt was well tailored to his tapered frame.
I had no idea how a numbers guy had maintained a physique like that while living in the city.
I imagined him belonging to one of those gyms that had people flip tractor tires instead of doing simple squats, and a pang of something deeper than longing made my stomach clench.
Confession time: I had jerked off to the mental image of Knox’s laughter the night before.
And, yes, that might actually have been the weirdest, least sexual thing I’d ever jerked off to.
And, yes, thank you, I found that concerning also.
Particularly since the object of my lumber-crush was about as into me as I was into the 1970s game show reruns that my stepmother watched for hours each day. Survey says, not at all.
Which was why I was probably almost definitely for sure going to find a random guy to hook up with tonight, before I was tempted to beat DJ Tony over the head with his own microphone for the good of Little Pippin Hollow.
“Thank you, Herzogs! That was… beautiful,” the man in question yelled, ignoring the feedback screech that made us all flinch.
“Now! Marianne Palmer? Marianne? Where are you, Marianne? Ah! Marianne, Christina Miele has pledged $40 for the pleasure of your company as you dance to Meatloaf’s ‘I Would Do Anything For Love.’ What do you say?
Are you going to tell her you won’t do that?
” Tony laughed at his own joke so hard that I rubbed my forehead and made a pained, whimpering noise.
“Tsk. Anthony Rivera,” Helena said with a sigh. “I swear that boy hasn’t had new material since high school. Now, what were we talking about?”
“Actually, do you mind if I borrow Goodman for a minute, Ms. Fortnum?” Knox interrupted, shocking the hell out of me. “I need to speak to him for a second.”
I frowned. Since when did Knox speak to me voluntarily?
I couldn’t imagine what offense I’d committed this time, but I was in no hurry to hear my crush tell me what an irredeemable person I was, and that must have shown on my face.
“Actually, I do mind. I was just about to tell Gage tales about having you as a student, Knox Sunday,” Ms. Fortnum teased.
She added to me in a low voice, “Do you know, Gage, in nearly four decades of teaching, I never had another like him? Knox was an original. On his very first day of third grade—”
“Oh, wow! Okay, then! As fun as that conversation promises to be,” Knox cut in, “I really need to—”
“Is this an emergency?” I demanded.
He hesitated. “No. Not exactly.”
“Then I’m sure you can wait. Be polite.”
Knox looked up at the Averill Union Beavers’ basketball championship banners hanging from the steel rafters.
“Now would be a great time for an intervention, FYI,” he told the ceiling.
“Avalanche? Fire alarm? Alien invasion?” He flicked a lightning-fast glance at me and added, “Stampede of Orwellian cows hell-bent on revenge for millennia of oppression? Any interruption, really. I’m not picky. ”
I narrowed my eyes and told myself he was not funny. “Don’t even joke about the cows.” I leaned closer to Helena. “You were saying?”
Knox tipped back the last of his drink and scowled. “They don’t put nearly enough alcohol in these things.”
Helena peered at him curiously. “It’s a high school fundraiser, dear. I don’t believe there’s any alcohol in them.”
“That would explain it,” Knox muttered.
The level of enjoyment I obtained from his discomfort probably made me a bad person… and I was okay with that.
“So what did third grade Knox do?” I wiggled my eyebrows. “Did he shake fifth graders down for their ice cream sandwich money?”
“Oh, no. That was Emma,” Helena said fondly. “But it was usually for charity, of course. Save the dogs, save the bees, save the wild spaces.”
“Hmm.” I stared up at Knox’s handsome face and tapped my lip thoughtfully. “Did he eat paste with a Popsicle stick? He has the shifty-eyed look of a paste eater about him.”
Knox rolled his eyes and said in a bored voice, “Takes one to know one, Goodman.”
“No, no, the paste eater was Reed, the third brother. Bit of an odd duck, that one.” Helena chuckled. “He still down in DC, Knox?”
Knox nodded. “Still working for a think tank down there. He gets home less often than I do.”
I looked Knox up and down thoughtfully. “Then Knox must’ve been the tattletale. The rule follower always making sure the other kids stayed in line.”
“Wrong again!” she crowed happily. “The tattletale was Porter, the fourth Sunday. But he wasn’t a rule follower so much as a… a… what’s the word I’m looking for?”
“Con artist,” Knox supplied grimly. To me, he said, “When he was five, he threatened to tell our dad that he’d caught me and Reed drinking out on the roof of the back porch.
I was over twenty-one, and Reed was like sixteen, and this kindergartener wanted to shake us down for candy money to keep quiet. ”
I laughed out loud. “You totally paid up, didn’t you?”
“What do you think?” he asked, and maybe he meant it as a challenge, but it came out softer, like a question. Like he really wanted to know my opinion.
His green eyes met mine, and it was like a shot of adrenaline to my system. My heart swooped down into my belly before getting stuck in my throat.
Fuck. This man twisted me up so badly.
“You know,” Helena went on before I could get myself un-stuck, “I sort of imagined that if TruCrimeTV ever came to my house to interview me about a former student, it would be because Porter had been living a double life, pretending to be a lost Latvian prince.” She almost sounded disappointed that she might not get the chance.
“But then the man decided to go to college.”
“Yeah, well, don’t give up hope just yet,” Knox said, breaking our staredown so he could focus on Ms. Fortnum. “He’s majoring in English Lit, so I’m thinking he might need to pursue a life of crime if he wants to make a decent living.”
Helena gave a high-pitched huff of amusement before turning her attention back to our original conversation.
“Before you ask, Gage, the animal-loving Sunday was Hawkins. He used to take our class hamster home with him every weekend, because he was so very afraid that our class snake, Pansy, would somehow get loose and eat her.”
I laughed. That sounded exactly like Hawk.
“That’s because Webb was an animal lover also, so we had a whole huge collection of Nature Planet DVDs by the time Hawk was old enough to watch them,” Knox explained.
He smiled lopsidedly. “I remember coming home for summer break when I was in college, and Cara—Hawk’s mom,” he added as an aside to me, “would plunk the kid down in front of a video. He wouldn’t move for hours.
And some of the videos were cute, but some of them were very circle of life, if you know what I mean.
” He lowered his voice and made a respectable attempt at David Attenborough.
“‘And soooo the mighty stork stalks the baby bird who’s fallen out of his nest…’ It used to scare the crap out of him.
But every day, he’d ask for more.” He shrugged.
“Because he’s brave,” Helena said. “Takes a brave person to be sensitive and unafraid.”
“How are we doing, Averill Union?” DJ Tony squawked into his microphone as the song ended, and Knox and I jumped at the same time.
“We’ve been better,” I muttered, rubbing my ear.
Knox’s eyes found mine, and we shared an amused glance—one single glance—that made my whole body go warm.
Since the cider wasn’t spiked, I had no idea what made him so peaceable that night.
I didn’t expect it to last—I figured any minute, Knox was going to cut in with something about how I’d hung the dish towel in our shared efficiency kitchen on the left side of the sink when the only correct, precise, efficient way to live was to hang it on the right—but in the meantime, I was going along with it because everything about the guy sucked me in like the Enterprise’s tractor beam.
The person he’d been in that photo, the guy he was now; the way he was cute when he was cranky and downright beautiful when he smiled; and Jesus Christ, the shoulders on the man were—
“Excellent! Thank you, Marianne and Christina! Aren’t they adorable, everyone?
That’s right, give ’em a nice round of applause.
Okay, our next song is a personal favorite of mine from way back, friends.
Webb Sunday? Where are you, Webb? Ah! I see you hiding behind the apple topiary!
Don’t be shy now, buddy! Come on out here!
Katey Valcourt requests the pleasure of your company as you dance to…
” He paused dramatically. “REO Speedwagon’s ‘I Can’t Fight This Feeling’!
And—whoa-ho-ho!—she’s pledged an unprecedented $200 to Averill Union!
That makes her tonight’s Big Pledger! Whaddya say, Webb?
Can you fight the feeling?” Tony guffawed at his own joke.
“Oh my God,” Knox breathed, closing his eyes in satisfaction. “Karmic payback is real.”
“What?” I demanded.
“Good grief,” Helena groaned. “Excuse me, boys. I need to see this.” She pushed her way through the crowd to the dance floor before I could catch her.
“What song is this?” I demanded. “Is it cringey?”
“How do you not know this song?” Knox darted a distracted glance at me before searching the dance floor over the heads of the crowd, probably trying to spot Webb. “It’s… it’s required knowledge, Goodman. It should have been in your history book.”
I shook my head slowly. “You’re a strange man. In the past fifteen days, the only two things you’ve felt true passion for are the location of my coffee mug and this song.”
“Not true.” Knox flushed. “Definitely not true.” He stood on his tiptoes. “Now, hush. I’m trying to watch Webb so I can mock him relentlessly later.”