Matt Hults - Husk

She exhaled with relief when she returned to find BJ sitting up, nestled against her dad. The stranger stood beside them.

“He’s okay,” Paul said when she ran up.

BJ clung to her dad. An occasional sob escaped him, but he seemed to be unhurt. She turned to face the stranger who’d come to her brother’s rescue.

The boy appeared to be about her age, maybe younger. He stood off to the side with a skittish and uncomfortable expression. Drenched from head to toe, his short hair clung to his brow. Their gaze met for an instant, but he immediately looked away.

“I don’t know how to begin to thank you, young man,” her dad said to the kid.

“That’s okay,” the boy replied. “I heard him calling for help, so I just jumped in.”

“Do you live around here?” Mallory asked.

The boy glanced at her, but looked away again with a hint of red in his face.

She studied him, wondering what was wrong, when her dripping hair reminded her where she’d just come from. She looked down at the skimpy towel clinging to her body and quickly stepped behind her dad while the boy made a second attempt to answer.

“I’m Tim Fleming. I believe you know my mom? She mentioned she saw you and your family in church today, so I came over to say hi and welcome you to town.”

“Rebecca’s son,” Paul said. “My God, I don’t know how I’ll ever thank you for saving BJ, but believe me, I’ll think of something. Come on, let’s go inside and get you dried off.”

Mallory hurried up the steps ahead of them, holding the back of her towel in place with one hand and feeling a hint of red on her own face.

Tim waited in the small, tile-floor room off the Wiesses’ kitchen for Mallory to return, having turned down an offer of spare clothing from her dad. In the kitchen, Mr. Wiess paced back and forth, speaking on the phone with their family physician about what had happened. BJ sat on the countertop beside him, placated by a lemon-lime popsicle.

Tim pulled the Valleyfair tickets out of his pocket and shook them off. Fortunately, the paper had a waxy coating and the pool water hadn’t turned them to mush.

“What do you have there?” Mr. Wiess asked with the phone still to his ear, apparently on hold.

“They’re tickets to Valleyfair. I was wondering if Mallory might… if she’s free sometime… maybe she’d want to go.”

Mr. Wiess grinned. He tore a few paper towels off a wall spool and handed them to him so he could dry the tickets. “That’s awfully nice of you,” he said. “I’m sure she’d love to.”

Tim returned the smile and fidgeted in place, uncertain what else to say.

The doctor on the phone must have come back, because Mr. Wiess resumed his conversation. Before turning away, he gave Tim another friendly smile and a nod of confidence that seemed to say, “Don’t fret it; just ask her.”

Mallory reappeared carrying a pair of fluffy blue towels.

Tim’s heart rate tripled at the sight of her.

Her hair was still damp, but she’d brushed it neatly back from her forehead, perfectly outlining her face. The wet ends hung just above her shoulders like obsidian rain.

She’d dressed in white shorts and a pale-green tank top, the kind that left her midriff exposed. He quickly averted his gaze as she approached, realizing her new attire actually provided less coverage than the bath towel he’d first seen her in.

He tried not to stare when she handed him the towels.

“Here you go,” she said.

“Thanks.”

Paul Wiess hung up the phone. “Mallory, I’m going to take BJ to see Doctor Neil, just to be sure everything is all right. Will you two be okay here?”

“Sure, Dad, I’m only a teenager.”

Paul dug a set of keys out of his pocket. “That’s what worries me,” he teased back. “Tim, it was nice meeting you, and later we’ll see about fixing you up with some kind of reward for your heroics.”

“That isn’t necessary.”

But Paul wouldn’t let him finish. “No, no. You earned it.”

Carrying BJ, he exited out the garage, leaving them alone in the kitchen.

After a few moments of awkward silence Tim said, “He really doesn’t need to give me any reward.”

“I think you deserve one,” Mallory answered. “That was a brave thing you did.”

“It wasn’t brave.”

“Sure it was.”

“Good timing, but not brave.”

“Yeah? Well, my brother can’t swim, and you saved his life. I say you’re a hero.”

“A hero?”

“A regular knight in shining armor.”

“Am not.”

“You should ride a white horse instead of a mountain bike.”

“Quit it.”

“I bet your middle name is Galahad.”

He laughed and used drying his hair with one of the towels as a way to hide the blush blooming on his face.

“So, you’re from Loretto?” Mallory asked, taking a seat at the table.

He laid the second towel on a chair and sat down across from her. “Yeah,” he replied then sniffed when a watery sensation tickled a nostril.

“What kind of stuff is there to do around here?”

“Well, it’s not a really big place…” He sniffed again. “But there’s still stuff to do.”

“Like?”

He sniffed a third time, realizing he must seem like a slobbering idiot. He started to ask for a tissue when the run of liquid came too fast for him to stop it. Two droplets of blood raced down the curve of his upper lip and dripped onto the tabletop before he could cover his nose.

Mallory straightened up. “Are you okay?”

He pinched his nose and felt another blush of embarrassment. “I juss neeb sum tisoos.”

She got him some paper towels.

He nodded. “Thankths.”

“Tilt your head forward. Isn’t that supposed to help?”

He shrugged, only certain of the fact that his chances at getting a date with Mallory had washed down the drain and into the sewer.

“What happened?” she asked.

He stared at the blood, mentally scrambling to find an explanation. Then he remembered how the gate had slammed into his face. “Something hit the fence gate on the side of your house and it plowed into me when I tried to get through to help your brother.”

“That’s weird,” she said, bending to look at him. “Oh, you’re right. There’s scrapes over your temple and ear. I think you got some splinters, too. God, it must have really whacked you.”

“I thought you might own a big dog.”

She shook her head. “Not us. Let me get a tweezers and some first-aid cream.”

In less than a minute she returned from the downstairs bathroom. Tim accepted the tweezers and felt around for the slivers of wood.

After several failed attempts, Mallory knelt beside him. “Here, let me try.”

Working slowly, she extracted the five splinters lodged in his forehead and face. She kept his head steady with one hand, resting it gently against his right cheek. Her touch landed on his skin like sunlight, warm and inviting, and he had to concentrate to keep his cool. His gaze flicked to where gravity pulled the neckline of her tank top into a V, but he quickly looked away. Their contact, coupled with the fact that no one else shared the empty house with them, gave the experience a secret quality he didn’t want to end.

“There you go,” she said, giving the side of his head one last look. “I think I got them all.”

“Thanks, I appreciate it.”

They sat in silence for a moment, passing enough time for Tim to work up the courage to ask Mallory the one question that had been floating around in his mind since before he’d even met her.

“So, do you have… a boyfriend?”

A strange look flashed across her face, a sort of hopeful look. “No,” she said in a bashful tone. “Not right now.”