Carpool

When I was twelve, Marcus Greene was sixteen—a cocky boy with the worst reputation in town. He smoked and drank and rode a motorcycle he’d fixed up himself. We live in Sterling, a town of four hundred people in the rolling hills of south-central Virginia. Marcus was the only bad boy in town, and he made a serious impression on an imaginative, impressionable girl.

I remember seeing him around Sterling. He was good-looking like all the Greene boys, but he was also dangerous with his torn-up jeans and his penetrating blue-gray eyes. His family owned a farm that was the closest property to my grandmother’s house, and Marcus’s three older brothers were nice and hardworking and safe.

But Marcus…

I’d shrink whenever I ran into him in town. I’d heard stories. My grandmother would shake her head and warn me. “Jennifer, you stay well away from that boy. He’s nothing but trouble.” I believed her. I was one of those smart, well-behaved girls who thought too much and lived in fear of disappointing people who counted on me. I didn’t want Marcus’s bad attitude or dangerous ways to rub off on me.

Sixteen years later, a lot has changed. We’ve both grown up. He’s settled down enough to get and keep a decent job, but he’s never been married or had a relationship last for more than a month. He converted one of the outbuildings on his parents’ farm, and he still lives there. His brothers all married and moved away, but his parents are getting older and they need help with the daily chores. The fact that Marcus has stuck around to help them speaks well of him, so I assume he’s not as bad as my childhood mind believed. I’m still living in my grandmother’s house, although she’s been in a nursing home for two years.

Things are different now, but I still feel the same surge of excitement, dislike, and danger I experienced as a girl when he walks into Hal’s Diner this Friday night.

His jeans are ripped like they always used to be—torn from being worn thin rather than bought in that condition. They fit his long legs and tight butt in a way that’s impossible not to admire, but I do my best.

I don’t like the man. I don’t need to be leering at his body.

His dark hair is cut fairly short, and I’m convinced he doesn’t even comb it. It’s not long enough to really tangle, but it always dries in different directions. He needs to shave, and his jaw is square, and his mouth is thin but mobile in a way that gives the impression of humor and intelligence.

His eyes are that same penetrating, too-pale blue gray, so distinct I can see their color from across the restaurant.

They land on me almost immediately, and one corner of his mouth quirks up.

I look away quickly and smile at my friend, Beck, who is sitting across from me, finishing her chocolate milkshake.

“What is it?” she asks.

“What do you mean? I didn’t say anything.”

“I know, but you looked like something happened.” She glances around until she spots Marcus, who has moved to the counter with long, lazy strides I’m very familiar with. “Ah.”

“What, ah?” I demand, immediately defensive in that way we all get when someone realizes something about us we wish wasn’t true.

“I see now what’s happened.” Beck is pretty in a round-faced, very curvy way. She’s got wavy dark hair and dimples in both cheeks and very impressive cleavage she’s not afraid to show off. Her voice lowers to a teasing whisper. “He’s happened.”

“Would you stop it? You know very well I don’t even like the guy.”

“I know you don’t. But you think he’s hot. And why wouldn’t you? Those eyes. That ass.” Her tone is playful, but the good thing about Beck is that she’s always discreet when it matters. Nothing in her manner will reveal to Marcus that we’re currently talking about him.

“I really don’t care about his eyes and his ass. It’s fine to admire them from a distance, but I can only be into a guy if I like his personality too.”

Beck’s huge blue eyes sparkle. “I know. But I talked to him some when my department was redoing our suite, and he seems like an okay guy. He’s pretty smart, and he’s good at his job, and he’s got a sense of humor.”

Beck is an assistant professor of history at Milford College, a small liberal arts college about a forty-five-minute drive from Sterling. I work in the financial department there, and we met each other and hit it off shortly after she got her job two years ago. Marcus started working maintenance at the college right after high school, and he’s been there ever since, getting promoted every couple of years until he’s now the director of facilities for the whole college.

“I know all that,” I say to Beck. “But he’s also always secretly laughing at people like an arrogant jackass, as if he has no respect for anyone else. He’s been doing it all my life. I just don’t like him.”

“I’ve never noticed him acting that way. He seemed perfectly polite and competent to me.”

I sigh and shake my head. For some reason her declaration makes me dislike Marcus even more. “Maybe he just does it to me since I’m from his hometown. I don’t know. I just can’t stand to be around him, and I never have.”