Liz Reinhardt - Rebels Like Us

“You’re gettin’ ahead of yourself, Nes. I’ve spent a grand total of maybe two hours with you, not countin’ English class, which is required.” He kicks off his boots, throws his socks on top of them, cuffs his jeans, and slides down next to me so that we’re shoulder to shoulder, our feet nearly touching under the water. “Know any constellations?” He juts his chin up.

We gaze at the black sky dotted with a few pale white stars, and I try hard to ignore how much I want his arm around me—both because he’s got beautiful, muscled arms and because the reality of Doyle’s arm will blot out the memory of Lincoln’s.

“I know the big ones. The Dippers and Orion. And...that’s all, I guess. Can you enlighten me?” I covertly side-eye him, but he’s looking at me.

Coño. Caught!

“Nope. Now, if you wanna know the plants growing ’round here? Or the bugs? That I can help you with. But when I look up, I don’t see nothin’ in particular.” His foot brushes mine under the water, and a chill swims up my back.

“You mean you don’t know Shark Attack on a Half Shell?” I point, and he leans over to get a better look, his ribs pressing tight to my back. I move from word to word carefully, because my brain is mushy when I’m this close to him. “Those three, see, are sort of like a shell, if you squint when you look, and that kind of triangle—”

“Maybe more like Rabid Goldfish Attack on a Plank?” He wraps his arm around my shoulder and points to the left, pulling me closer as I tilt my face to the sky. “And that one? I’d say Four-Wheeler Running over a Hog.”

I laugh because I’m supposed to, and I train my eyes at the stars in the sky, but I’m not sure all the beauty I see overhead is strictly astronomical. Some of that sparkle has to be because of my close proximity to Doyle. I swear the sky wasn’t exploding with all this gorgeous light before he sat down next to me.

“Why are you here?” I blurt out. He drops his arm, letting it graze my side.

“My grandfather needed me to check up on the pecan orchard across the street. They’ve got weevils—”

“You’re seriously trying to tell me that I’m just a side visit after you took care of pecan weevils?” His face is Norse-hero handsome in the moonlight.

“Hell no.” His grin tentacles around my heart, squeezing tight. “Truth is, I don’t think I’ll ever run out of excuses to get over here and see you. The Dickersons think they might have a spider mite infestation in their cotton, but their fields are fifteen miles in the other direction. I convinced my cousin to take a look at them.” He brushes the hair from my face with the back of his calloused hand. “I came here to see you, and I’ll keep doin’ it till you’re back in New York City, forgettin’ this all like it was a bad dream.”

He slings my own words at me like the nasty slap of a rubber band on my skin. I pull back from him. “Don’t.”

“Don’t what?” His voice never loses its evenness.

“Bring on the guilt. I mean...it’s stupid.”

We just met, he has no right. But if that were true, it would be simple to blow him off. So why isn’t it?

The truth is, something stuck fast the second I met him. He walked up, and I had this feeling like, oh, there he is, that person I just met, but who I’ve been waiting for. Like I’d always known he was coming, and then—there he was.

Here he is.

But that’s just a weird gut feeling, probably intensified because I’m so damn lonely and out of place right now.

“We don’t even know each other,” I muse, half-surprised to hear myself speak the words out loud.

“We could fix that. We should. Right now. We never even met properly, what with you bein’ all flustered by my manly pecs the other day.” My laugh skips over the pool water and echoes back at me in a friendly way. He faces me and holds out his hand. “I’m Doyle Ulysses Rahn. Pleased to meet you.”

My mouth swings open like my jaw is set on faulty hinges.

He ducks his head and squints my way. “Yeah, it’s weird, right? My granddaddy’s side always middle-names every second son Ulysses after some Confederate soldier who saved our family farmstead during a Civil War battle... It’s a long story.”

I press my palm against his, squeeze hard, and shake. “Well, Doyle Ulysses Rahn, I’m Agnes Penelope Murphy-Pujols.” I wait for it...

“Pretty.”

“Pretty?” I shake my head. “Doyle, I’m middle-named after Penelope. From The Odyssey.”

His face blanks, then lights up with recognition. “Uh, okay. I remember that one. Where he goes home after all those years, the bow, the crazy ladies who drive sailors wild with their singing, and the cyclops and the special bed, all that? We read that back in junior year.”

“Ulysses is the Roman name for Odysseus.” The look of pure adoration that splits across his face makes my skin tingle and itch all at once—hives of feeling.

“Holy hell. Your brain works overtime, don’t it?” He rubs his thumbs over my knuckles. “So you’re saying you and I have these weirdo middle names that connect us? Like maybe it was fate that we were meant to get to know each other?”

“Don’t read too much into it. You didn’t even get the reference until I explained it to you.” My voice is too breathy to be convincing, but Doyle doesn’t buy into my protest anyway.

“That’s the beauty of it though. You teach me about things I don’t know about, like old Greek books—”

“Roman books. You know the Greek version.”

“Right. You teach me about the ancient Romans and all that nerd stuff, and I make this year better than purgatory until you’re gone for good.” He slides one hand over my knee, and my breath hitches. All I can see are his eyes, deep as wishing wells. “I get that you’re gonna leave when this is all over. Hell, I respect it. But I think you might wanna reconsider forgetting everything just because a few people are total assholes.”

“Maybe.” The word is meant to be a lazy brush-off, but there’s something about the starry sky and the quiet croak of the frogs that makes it hard to turn my brain on autopilot and go cold. “Can I tell you something weird?”

It pops out, before I can think it through.

“I love weird,” he declares. I let the tips of my fingers brush over his forearm and like the way he sucks a quick breath in. “You gonna tell me you turn into a mermaid during a full moon or something?”

He looks so hopeful, I laugh. “Nope. Not like ‘boy fantasy’ weird. Weird like ‘crap I don’t talk about to anyone except my best friend.’”

I stop and reconsider my path. Once someone knows things about you—things you’ve never told anyone else—they can choose to use them against you. Not that I think Doyle would...but I’d have to move my trust in him from hypothetical to actual, which is a huge step.

“I know how to keep my trap shut.”

He’s not flirting or teasing. I bet Doyle is one of those true Southern gentlemen who lives and dies by his word.

“We moved to Savannah because my mom got into this crazy situation with her coworker—” I don’t get any further because the words petrify in my throat. Before I can get up and flee back into the house, where I can safely avoid any more intimate human interaction, Doyle squeezes my knee gently, like he’s steadying me. He speaks, quietly. Slowly. Like maybe it’s as hard for him to talk about his feelings as it is for me.

“When I was in fifth grade, my mama finally came back again—she left the day before summer break my third grade year, and she was only around real spotty when I was in fourth. ‘Figurin’ her life out’ is what she said she was doing. Never made sense to me, ’cause she had a life at home with all of us, so what the hell was she figurin’ out?”