Chapter 8
Chapter Eight
Thirteen Years Before
Raine
“ I f I didn’t know any better, I would say that Honeysuckle is your favorite friend.” Ryland snickers beside me as we walk along the trail that takes us back toward the farmhouse. A light breeze pushes past us, cooling our skin from the intense heat from the sun, and not a cloud is in the sky.
I push my shoulder into his and attempt to hide the smile spreading across my face with my hair. I look down at Honeysuckle, a male mallard duck that has been my pet since I was little, and rub his feathers. He is a tad bit spoiled and lets me carry him everywhere. He’s right—Honeysuckle is my favorite.
“If I didn’t know any better, I would say that you’re jealous,” I tease, planting a kiss on top of Honeysuckle’s head, who quacks in response.
Ryland bumps back into my shoulder, causing me to trip, and a giggle escaping my lips. “Oh, I’m definitely jealous,” he adds, and my heart does one of those flipping motions, stealing my breath for a second. I try not to dissect the meaning behind his comment. He could’ve meant nothing by it, but I like the idea of Ryland being jealous over me .
Every weekend for the past year, minus a few holidays or illnesses that kept us apart, Ryland and I have been joined at the hip. Our friendship was easy to establish. Like we’ve known each other for years. We can be silly together one minute and have deeper conversations the next. I love that about us.
I love him.
I’m not sure if I’m in love with him or anything, but the feelings I have for Ryland are deeper than the love I feel toward my other best friends, Luke and Olivia. Olivia would be upset if she knew this, but Ryland knows all of my secrets, even things I’ve never told her—which isn’t a lot, but still, she can never know.
It’s easy with Ryland. When I open up to him, he does the same in return. Even after months of getting to know one another, I still crave to know more and more about him. I want to know everything.
“Is he the reason why your Papaw calls you Little Duck?”
I giggle again as the memory surfaces of how I earned the nickname and nod my head. “Yeah, actually, he is.” I hand Honeysuckle over to Ryland, a quack of protest escapes before he settles into Ryland’s arms, and I take the basket full of honeysuckle flowers from his hands.
I grab a handful of flowers into my palm and bring them toward my nose and inhale. Scents of sweet honey, vanilla, and hints of jasmine wrap together in a heady nectarous concoction. It’s my favorite scent.
“I was eight years old and went out to pick honeysuckles, like we did today, and I heard a little quack underneath a bush. He was so scared, but he let me pick him up. I tried to find his mama, but I never could, so I took him back to the house and asked Papaw if we could keep him.”
“That doesn’t sound like something you’d do,” he jokes, knowing full well that I have a problem with finding stray animals and bringing them back to the farm. He’s helped me a time or two this past year. What can I say, I have a huge soft spot for animals. Why live on a farm if you can’t have lots of pets?
“Anyway,” I add and bump into him again because I like feeling his warmth on my bare shoulder. “I was trying to get Honeysuckle to trust me, and so I started acting like a duck. Papaw caught me and started calling me Little Duck, and it stuck.”
“Please reenact this for Honeysuckle and me. I’m curious to see how you won him over with your duck impersonation.” Ryland strokes his feathers and gives me a brilliant smile, revealing his super-straight teeth, thanks to the work of his braces, which were removed last month. I thought his smile before was attractive, but without the metal, I’ve found myself staring at his mouth more often than I’d like to admit.
What would it feel like to kiss Ryland?
This question keeps popping into my head, and I have to constantly remind myself that he’s my best friend . Plus, I’m too scared to take that next step to see if we could be something more than friends. He hasn’t shown me any clear signs that he feels the same and hasn’t made any moves toward me. Instead, I tuck the thoughts away, only bringing them out to mull over when I’m alone.
The scent of charred meat fills the air around us, and so does the sound of my stomach gurgling. “As fun as that sounds, we should get inside. I can smell dinner, and I’m starving.”
I give Honeysuckle a pat, Ryland does the same before setting him down on the ground. It makes me grin watching him waddle toward the chickens. Ryland reaches over and takes my hand into his, tugging me behind him until we’re up the porch steps.
His hand is callused from all the hard work his grandpa and Papaw have been putting him through lately. I like how it feels and the fact that he’s a hard worker. My thumb strokes his rough skin, and he looks over his shoulder, giving me a smirk that makes my knees quake .
Mamaw is at the screen door, eyes snapping to our hands, and Ryland quickly releases his grip. Thanks, Mamaw! She grins at me and motions for us to come inside. “Dinner is almost ready. Come in and wash up.”
She takes the basket from me and hums in approval. “Thank you for picking these. It looks like we will have enough for me to make some jelly and brew some tea for that old man over there.”
We laugh and look over at Papaw, who pushes himself out of his favorite recliner, grunting in protest as he stands. “Now, listen here. Age is just a number. In here”—he pats his chest—“I feel just as youthful as I did when you first laid eyes on me and fell in love with my good looks.”
I make my way to the sink and wash my hands, listening in on their conversation because I always love how they playfully bicker back and forth. Ryland is behind me. My skin seems to buzz every time he’s near, as if alerting me that he is close. Attention, Raine. That hot guy you claim is your best friend but you secretly have feelings for is near! Try not to act weird.
“Did you forget that I despised you at first?” Mamaw deadpans, and Papaw gives one of his intoxicating belly laughs. “You were such a pain in my butt. Still are some days.”
“But I was persistent and knew that you would have to eventually give in.” Papaw looks over at Ryland and gives him a wink. “Take notes, son. This is good advice.”
Ryland shakes his head, grinning at Papaw, and I study his face for a moment, taking in the way Ryland’s eyes crinkle as his smile grows, how the gold in his eyes seems to shine in the sunlight, and the honeysuckle that is stuck in his messy golden-brown locks. I reach up and snag the flower, tossing it into his face with a laugh, and run around the kitchen island to avoid his hands as he chases after me.
I let him catch me, his fingers tickling my ribs until he stops and places the flower behind my ear. Mamaw watches us with a sparkle in her eye and motions for me to help her prepare the salad. She hands me a tomato to cut and plants a kiss onto my temple. The scent of her—coffee grounds, dirt, and fresh roses—fills my nose, and it instantly comforts me.
“Ryland, would you care to set the table?” she asks and opens the oven to pull out a peach pie that she made from scratch. My mouth waters thinking about pairing a piece with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. Ryland looks at the pie and licks his lips. He must be sharing the same thought as me. I focus on distracting myself with work, or my mind will start to wonder about his lips again.
I chop up the tomato and place the pieces into the bowl of lettuce. Once Ryland is out of the room, Mamaw walks over to me, leans close to my ear, and whispers, “So…”
“So what?” I ask, keeping my focus on the tomato I’m chopping and not the way my heart picks up its beat.
“You and Ryland seem to have grown closer lately,” she adds, nudging me slightly with her elbow.
“Yeah, we’ve spent most weekends together since he moved here.” I know where she’s going with this, and I don’t want to discuss it when Ryland is closeby. However, my Mamaw is relentless when it comes to girl talk.
“I saw you two holding hands and the way he tickled you in the kitchen.”
I roll my eyes and look up at her. She is a few inches taller than me. Just the right height that when I hug her, I fit perfectly within her arms and neck. Her hair is pulled back today, but most days, she lets it lay down past her shoulders. She embraced her whitish-gray color as it began to take over when I was just a baby and gets it permed every so often. I've always loved her hair.
“Friends hold hands and tickle each other,” I admit, swallowing back my nerves and look toward the opening that leads into the dining room.
“I often hold your grandmother’s hand and give her a tickle too.” Papaw chuckles from behind us and grabs a hold of my Mamaw, tickling her sides, earning a loud squeal from her as she jumps away from his embrace and swats at him.
“Now stop that!” she hisses but doesn’t contain her smile.
“You know I can’t keep my hands off of you,” he adds and gives my Mamaw a pat on the butt.
I laugh at the sight of them. This type of hands-on flirting is normal around my grandparents, and I adore how much they love one another. Even when they bicker back and forth some days, it always ends with a playful comment or a kiss. I’m blessed to have them in my life and want a marriage just like theirs when I’m an adult.
“Stop it!” She swats at him again, and the smile spreads on her face, lighting her up like a Christmas tree. “I was just saying, Raine, that it seems like?—”
“Do you want me to carry anything else into the dining room?” Ryland asks, and all three of our heads snap to him. He stops in his tracks and stares back at us, a dark brow rising up his forehead in question. “Did I miss something?”
“Nope,” I say quickly and grab the bowl of salad. “Just Mamaw and Papaw being gross.”
“Hey now! I’ll show you two gross,” Papaw argues and takes my Mamaw into his arms and plants a kiss onto her lips. I smile at them and make a gagging sound. Mamaw moves away from Papaw to toss the rag in her hand at me. Ryland laughs, and I can’t get past him fast enough as I escape into the dining room.
We sit down and enjoy grilled lamb chops, a salad made with vegetables from the garden, and finish with Mamaw's award-winning peach pie. We are stuffed and stay at the table for an hour afterward, playing cards together. The phone rings and steals Papaw’s attention right as I shout, “UNO!” I’m so close to winning my second game in a row.
“How are you so good at this game?” Ryland asks from across the table.
“Because I taught her how to play,” Papaw adds before he answers the phone. “Hello. Where ya been today? Yeah. Yeah.” He laughs and looks over at Ryland. “He’s been a good help today. Alright, I’ll tell him. See you soon.”
He hangs up the phone and walks over to the table to retrieve our dishes that have been pushed to the side. Mamaw stands up to help him. “Your Pops is on his way to pick you up.”
“Okay,” Ryland says, a frown taking over his face.
I can feel a frown on my face as well. I know it takes about twenty minutes to get from the cabins to the farmhouse, so we don’t have much time to hang out until we see each other tomorrow at school. Ryland is supposed to be a grade ahead of me, but when his family made the move to Covewood, his mother decided to hold him back a grade. He was bummed about it, but I wasn’t. I loved sharing a few classes with him and getting to see him in the hallways at school. It makes the time in between the weekends more bearable.
“Wanna come to my room so I can show you that Polaroid camera I thrifted with Olivia and her family last week?” I ask, wanting some alone time with him before he has to leave.
“Leave the door open,” Papaw adds. I groan and roll my eyes at his comment. I don’t miss the way he smirks at us before we rush up the stairs.
Once we’re in my room, I close the door just a bit but leave a crack. Ryland takes a seat in the chair by my vanity, and I hop onto my unmade bed. My room is very girly. I decorated my bed with bright pinks and purples. A few of Mamaw’s paintings hang on the light-cream walls as well as photo collages I made from magazine cutouts and photos I’ve taken with my small digital camera. It’s my happy place. At my mom’s, I’m not allowed to decorate my room, and it feels more like a prison cell than a bedroom.
I push the dark thoughts away and grab the shoebox from underneath my bed. I set it on my lap, and Ryland moves over to sit in front of me. He removes the lid, and I pull out the light-gray, boxy camera.
“I love that I instantly get a photo when I use it.”
“And you’ve used it a lot,” he adds as he starts to sort through the photos in the box.
“It’s been fun. Oh, I need a photo of us together,” I add and scoot closer to him.
I hold the camera out and bring my face closer to his. Butterflies make their appearance in my stomach as I catch the scent of sunshine, earth, and peaches from Ryland.
We say cheese at the same time, and a bright light blinds us for a moment. The film moves out of the camera, and I shake it until the image starts to bleed through. It’s a good photo. We both look happy. He pulls it from my hand and studies it for a moment before placing it into the box.
He goes back to sorting through the photos as I peek out my bedroom window to see if his grandpa is here yet. The weekends fly by too fast. I always dread saying goodbye.
Suddenly, panic zaps through me when I remember that I snapped a photo of him this morning without him knowing, and it’s in the box. I have to find it before he sees it, or I’ll be so embarrassed.
“Hold on!” I yell, his eyes snapping to mine in confusion. I leap and grab the box from his grasp. I start digging through the images, and I feel him watching me.
Thankfully, I find it. I remove it from the others and stand up to hide it from him, but he’s faster than me. “What are you hiding?” He laughs and jumps on top of me. My back hits the mattress, and my nostrils are filled with the scent of him again. His hot breath hits my face, and I would enjoy this if I wasn’t so worried about hiding this photo from him .
“Nothing. Ryland!” I squeal and try to hide it behind me without wrinkling it.
His hand squeezes behind me and is able to grab the photograph before he jumps away from me and turns around to look at it. I attempt to jump onto his back, but he dodges me, and I fall onto the floor with a loud thump. He starts laughing, so hard that he has a few tears in his eyes, and all I can do is cross my arms and pout.
“Everything okay up there?” we hear Papaw shout from the bottom of the stairs.
In unison, we both reply, “Yeah!” and share a laugh. I use it as a distraction to try to steal the photo from him again, but of course, he’s much faster than me.
“What’s this?” he asks as he studies the photo, his smile dropping slightly.
My face is burning hot. I try to hide behind my hands and curl into a ball on the floor. Why did I take that stupid photo in the first place? And why did I forget that it was in the box?
“When did you take this?” he asks, and I spread my fingers so I can peek at him but keep my hands over my face. He moves down until he is sitting with me on the floor and tugs my hands free from my face so I can look at him.
“This morning. I just thought it would be a cool photo, like artistic or something.”
He raises a brow like he doesn’t believe me and goes back to studying the photo. He had his shirt off, dripping with sweat from the heat of the sun and the hard work he was doing with Papaw. I wanted to freeze that moment in time, and once I caught him looking away, I snapped the photo quickly from the kitchen window and ducked down to hide. In my haste, I tossed the photo in the box with my others.
“Cool,” he says and hands the photo back to me.
I take the photo from him, glancing at it for a moment before I look up at him. He stills, waiting for me to do or say something. I notice how close we are on the floor. He’s only inches away from my face, and I catch his eyes drop to my lips for a split second before returning to my eyes. What is this ?
It’s like we have this magnetic pull between us, and I’m completely absorbed in him.
“Raine,” he whispers. The sound of him swallowing fills the air between us, and all I can do is stare.
“Ryland. Your Pops is here!” we hear Mamaw shout up the stairs, breaking our trance, and as much as I love her, I’m so mad at her right now.
Ryland blinks away the cloudiness within his eyes and pulls away from me. He clears his throat and stands up. As he extends a hand to help me up, I panic and push myself up, and rush out of the bedroom without a second glance at him. I take the stairs down, skipping a step to get to the bottom faster, and run outside. I need air. I desperately need some space.
Did we almost kiss?
Was I reading into things that weren't really there?
Could Ryland want something more than friendship with me?
How could he? I’m just… me . Simple, plain, Raine. And he’s so much more than that and deserves much better too. Am I even willing to test the waters and put our friendship on the line? I’m not sure that I’m ready to chance that.
“Hello, Raine,” a deep Southern voice calls from the bottom of the porch. I turn to see Cliff tilting his head in greeting. “Have fun with my grandson today?”
“Yes, sir.” In more ways than you know , I think to myself.
Cliff’s dark bushy eyebrows raise, watching me for a moment before humming a sound and turning his attention toward Ryland, who makes his way down the steps.
“There he is. Ready to go?” Cliff asks and gives Ryland a pat on his shoulder. Ryland flinches, and an apologetic look washes over Cliff's face.
“Hang on, I need to do something real quick.” Ryland says.
My Papaw shuts the screen door behind him and gives Cliff a wave. “Smells like you have an exhaust leak.”
“No, that's just power steering fluid leaking.”
They move into a conversation, like they always do, which means Ryland and I can have a few extra minutes together. He usually calms the storms inside of me, but right now, he is creating one. My stomach is in knots, my heart is about to break a rib, and my palms are starting to sweat.
“Come here,” he says, his tone sounding smooth.
Either he’s ignoring what just happened, or I was imagining everything. Maybe it’s for the best. I don’t like how uneasy I feel right now, and I want us to get back to our easygoingness. Ryland points for me to stand in front of the large oak tree that sits in front of the farmhouse. Once I’m standing in the right spot for him, he takes a few steps back, keeping one hand behind his back, and looks me up and down.
“What are you doing?” I ask, rocking back on my heels and lacing my hands together behind my back.
“No, don't stand like that. Here.” He walks toward me and places his hand onto my arm and moves it until it’s relaxing on my upper thigh. He places his fingers under my chin, tilting my face up just a bit, and gives me a satisfied look. What is he making me do?
He takes a few steps back again and pulls the Polaroid camera out from behind him. Before I can argue, he holds a finger up, and I shut my mouth. “Now, I want you to think about that time Lucy chased me up a tree.”
The memory is impossible not to laugh at. Ryland thought I was crazy for being so scared of a tiny rooster, but Lucy showed him just how terrifying he can be. He flocked Ryland’s legs a few times, making him bleed, and cornered him by the barn. His only way out was to climb up the small tree next to the barn. As I laugh, a flash startles me, and Ryland snatches the photograph from the camera.
“No!” I shout and run to him. He holds the photograph to his chest, dodging my grabby hands, and cackling at my failed attempt to snatch the photo. “Give it to me.”
“Nope. You have a photo of me, and now I have a photo of you. It’s only fair.”
I drop my hands and feel my jaw go with it. “You want a picture of me?” I ask.
“Yeah, why wouldn’t I want a photo of my best friend?” He smiles, but it doesn’t quite meet his eyes.
For a second time, we stand there in complete silence, Ryland waiting again for me to say something. But what does he want me to say? I don’t get to find out because Cliff is hollering for Ryland to come on, and I have to say goodbye.
I walk him over to the old truck, and he gives me a small wave, promising to see me at school. I stand in the driveway and watch them drive away, not hearing Mamaw’s footsteps on the porch.
“Everything okay?” she asks.
I exhale a breath and make my way up the porch. “Yeah. Just tired.”
She wraps her arm around me, pushing me against her, and wraps me into her comfort. “Ah…young love is a fickle thing.”