HICKEY Read online

  When we were in high school, every once in a while Bran would surprise me with a ‘Hey, Cecily,’ as we passed each other in the school hallways but I’d never thought much of it because Bran said hello to everyone. He was that kind of guy. And my heart might have beat a little faster when he said my name but I wasn’t enough of a dreamer to think there was anything else to it.

  His life wasn’t all sunshine and privilege though. His beloved older brother had died of alcohol poisoning at a wild party during our freshman year. Caden had been like Bran - gorgeous, charismatic and a name to be reckoned with - but I’d heard other things about him too, how he dodged trains when he was drunk and performed headstands on the edge of the old factory roof. I went to his funeral even though I didn’t know him. Everyone from school went. Throughout the service I stared at Bran, thinking that I’d never seen a sadder boy. I considered going to him and saying something kind but then I figured he might have had enough of well meaning people pretending like they knew how he felt.

  Even as we got to know each other, Bran never talked about his brother. And the rest of his family life sounded like kind of a dumpster fire. We had that in common.

  A month went by and Bran was still hanging around me every day. I liked him. Enormously. I started thinking about him all the time, always impatient for the chance to see him again. All the ways I’d been feeling sorry for myself since graduation weren’t important when I was with him. He was funny and insanely good looking and interested in everything I said. We could talk for hours.

  When I called Antha to relay all the exciting new details I asked, “Why me, Antha? It’s Branson Hickey for god’s sake. Why would he pick me?”

  She was indignant. “Why not you, Cecily?”

  Bran was blunt about the fallout following the car accident. He was bitterly disappointed over the loss of his scholarship. We talked about college and he said he still might like to go someday. He wanted to study geology. But for now he just wanted to work because he didn’t have the money to go and he wouldn’t take anything from his dad. Anyway, his dad was having a hard time. Eric Hickey wasn’t in great health, plus he’d never really gotten over the loss of his eldest son and his wife’s abandonment. He was remarried to a flashy, rather silly woman named Nell but after Bran’s car accident he started drinking more.

  “You get along with your dad?” I asked him once as we sat on the empty bleachers at Hickeyville High.

  He thought about the question, squinting into the distant darkness at something I couldn’t see. “Not really. Sometimes it’s like we’re speaking two separate languages, you know?”

  I didn’t. Even before my dad skipped out the front door with my college money we just kind of stayed out of each other’s way instinctively. But I just nodded and squeezed Bran’s hand. He smiled at me, then leaned in for a kiss.

  Late summer turned to fall. The air grew smoky and cool and every day my heart was more stubbornly fixated on Branson Hickey. Of course we were the talk of a town that had little else to talk about. My mother was delighted. Antha was excited. My well-meaning boss, Berto, warned me to be careful. I didn’t want to hear words of caution. I didn’t want to be careful.

  When high school football season was in full swing once more, Bran and I would head to the bleachers with everyone else on Friday night. He was greeted like a celebrity. His arm remained firmly around me while people watched, some openly a bit puzzled that he would choose to attach himself to mousy little Cecily Barnett. He endured their probing questions and answered politely.

  Yes, his knee was feeling better.

  No, he wouldn’t be playing football again.

  Yes, the hometown boys certainly did have a shot at winning state this year.

  Still, there were less optimistic moments that left me wondering what was going on between us. All the gossip had always pegged Bran as a careless, if lovable, player. He wasn’t a guy who would stick around.

  “You don’t believe everything you hear, do you, Cess?” he asked gravely when the subject came up. Then to prove his point he took my face in his hands and kissed me with such soft tenderness my eyes welled with tears.

  Soon kissing alone wasn’t enough. Bran sort of had his own place in that tiny apartment above his dad’s garage but I felt funny about going there so we’d drive out to the reservoir. I hadn’t done much fooling around and what little experience I had was awkward and hesitant. With Bran nothing was awkward. When he touched me, kissed me, put his mouth on my breasts and whispered that I was beautiful I actually believed it was true. Sometimes we came daringly close to going the distance but then he would pull back, refusing to push me even when I wanted him to.

  One night we were out by the reservoir, lying in the bed of his truck on an old wool blanket. Soon it would be too cold to come out here at night but in the meantime I loved the wild, irresponsible feeling of teasing each other out here beneath the stars.

  Bran was kissing me hard. His shirt was off. He rolled on top of me and I welcomed the burden of his weight, running my hands down the delicious hard muscles of his back.

  Suddenly he stopped and propped himself up on his strong elbows. “Cess, did I ever tell you how long I had my eye on you?”

  “No.”

  “A long damn time.”

  “Really?” I asked, a little doubtfully.

  He grinned and pushed my shirt up, stroking my breasts in their lace captivity and then deftly reaching underneath me to unhook my bra. “Absolutely,” he said.

  I bit my lip. “I wouldn’t have guessed. It always seemed like you had eyes for a lot of girls.”

  Bran’s fingers explored my nipples and then played down my belly, moving lower, sliding over the button of my jeans before unsnapping, then slowly unzipping. I squirmed, wanting to keep going but knowing this was where he usually stopped. He was watching me, his eyes dark and serious.

  “Cess, I never messed around with half those girls who went around bragging about it.”

  Bran had incredible hands and he knew exactly what to do with them. I couldn’t think straight when they were touching me like this.

  “And the other half?” I squeaked as his fingers brushed against the most sensitive part of my body.

  “Never said I was an angel,” he said gruffly.

  His fingers were inside my panties now and I was melting. He stroked me slowly and deliberately, searching, pressing, finding the button that made me bite my lip and stifle a shriek.

  “Do you trust me?” he asked, breathing hard.

  I struggled to talk. “Should I?”

  He took his hand away and began sliding my jeans over my hips. “Yes.”

  Once he had my pants off, Bran paused on his knees for a moment. The move made him wince. He’d endured months of physical therapy but the damaged knee still troubled him now and then. Seeing the flash of pain in his face tugged at my heart and I wanted to soothe him, to make him happy.

  Bran recovered in a hurry and yanked his own pants down, his black boxers scarcely containing his thick arousal. I stared up at him, marveling over the sight of his body under the full moon. He swooped down and kissed me and it wasn’t gentle. It was a kiss of passion and ownership, a kiss that told how much he really wanted. I already knew I’d give it to him.

  He got on his back and pulled me into a straddle on top of him. I gasped as he pushed himself against my plain underwear. He liked that, I could tell. He liked shocking me.

  “Shirt all the way off,” he commanded, his hands around my waist. When I hesitated he tugged at the hem, sliding his hand over my skin. “Do it,” he urged. “There’s no one to see. There’s just us.”

  As I slipped my shirt over my head I felt his response between my legs, how he got even harder. Bran pushed my arms away when I tried to cross them over my breasts. I’d always been embarrassed by my breasts. They’d arrived too soon and had always seemed too large to me.

  “You’re crazy gorgeous,” he said, massaging them.

  “To
you,” I stuttered, self-conscious.

  “Does anyone else matter right now?”

  “No,” I whispered. “No one else matters.”

  “Don’t hold back,” he said. “Just go with it and let me see your face. Fuck, I’ve wanted you for so long.”

  His hands traveled down to mold the curve of my hips and show me how to move. When he rocked me back and forth the pleasure was almost unbearable. I threw my head back and felt the erotic tickle of my long hair down my back. We moved together, hard and a little rough, just a little bit of thin fabric separating us. I should have felt chilled by the night air but instead I felt flushed and powerful as I rolled my hips back and forth. My underwear was soaked and I was so ready I ached. The powerful climax was unlike anything I’d ever felt when I guiltily touched myself under my bed covers. It shook me to the core and for a few seconds I knew nothing but the spasms wracking my body.

  Bran groaned and I felt a colossal shudder roll through him, heard a roar rip out of his throat, and impulsively I reached down to hold him in my hand. He said my name and came in my palm.

  We were both breathing hard and sweating but some of my common sense had returned and I glanced around, relieved that the area still seemed deserted. I shivered as I hastily replaced my clothes. Bran was still lying down, watching me.

  “Come here,” he said.

  “I am here.”

  He chuckled gently and pulled me to his chest.

  I cleared my throat. “Bran? Why haven’t you, um…”

  “Fucked you yet?”

  “Well, you don’t have to put it that way, but yeah.”

  He kissed my forehead. “I’m saving that, Cess.”

  “Saving what?”

  “You,” he said simply.

  A warm feeling curled inside my chest. I cuddled closer to him. “Is this a dream?”

  Bran pulled his pants up and then wrapped his arms around me. “No, this is real. That’s the only thing I’m sure of right now.”

  We held each other and listened to a soft wind rustle the crisp leaves. I didn’t know what time it was and I didn’t care. My mother never minded how late I stayed out anyway as long as I was with Bran. The silence between us was easy and comfortable. I was nearly startled when he suddenly spoke.

  “I don’t miss it,” he said. “Football, I mean. I never played because I loved the game. I played because I was good at it and I was expected to play. There was such a huge weight of expectation. I never even stopped to think about whether it was what I wanted.” He tugged gently on my hair. “It’s not like you and your art. That’s a part of you. Sometimes at school I’d watch you as you’d sketch something in the margins of your notebooks, oblivious that anything else was happening. The thing is though, now that I don’t have football I don’t know what the hell I’m supposed to be doing.”

  A sudden pang hit me as I remembered that I was supposed to be at school in Chicago. “I wanted to teach,” I whispered. “I wanted to learn everything and then teach others how beautiful the world could be. I wanted everyone to know that all you had to do was learn how to really look at it.”

  Bran rolled over and propped himself up on one elbow. He was regarding me seriously. “You’ve taught me how beautiful the world could be.”

  I touched his face. “You want to know something, Branson Hickey? I don’t even mind being stuck in Hickeyville anymore.”

  He kissed my hand softly. “You’re not stuck, Cess. You’re home.”

  Bran sat up suddenly and stared out at the lights the town two miles in in the distance. The hulking structure of the shuttered factory was not visible in the darkness but we knew it was there anyway.

  “You know,” he said, “I bet the town’s best days are still to come. We’re weathering a storm, that’s all. Something big is just around the corner. Hell, my dad said that Mayor Grundy told him an umbrella company was touring the old factory last week because they’re thinking about moving their manufacturing back from overseas. I bet a few years from now this place will be booming and there will be founder’s day celebrations again and Fourth of July parades again.”

  People had been speculating about the factory reopening ever since the day it closed. There was always this opportunity or that possibility. Yet nothing ever came of any of it and the population continued to leak. Half the shops on Center Street were closed and every street had as many empty houses as occupied ones. Berto sat on the local Chamber of Commerce and said there was even talk of closing the high school in a few years.

  I said nothing to Bran of these doubts. I wanted to share his optimism for the future, for this town. We were tied to this place and if it could succeed then so could we.

  “I bet you’re right,” I said. The smile he gave me was magnificent and I knew right then that I loved him.

  “I know I’m right,” he said.

  “You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me,” I blurted and then felt myself blushing furiously.

  Branson Hickey didn’t flinch. He took my face in his hands and gazed at me earnestly.

  “Marry me, Cess.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  Branson

  Kevin had sent me two texts while I was at work.

  The first one was an obnoxious plea to stay out of the room until ten p.m., presumably so he and his girlfriend Maura could screw their silly brains out.

  The second text was cryptic: Forgot name of girl who was looking for you.

  I responded with a series of question marks but wasn’t surprised when I didn’t get an answer because he was probably busy doing something obscene. It was too much to hope for that the girl was Cecily anyway. It was probably one of the giggling freshmen that were always trying to get my attention. With a sigh I set the phone down and gave up trying to reach Kevin.

  Of course I didn’t begrudge the kid for finding somebody. He and Maura had careened past the filthy hookup stage over the past two weeks and they were intense, whispering ‘I love you’ and ‘I love you more’ and sucking face so powerfully I feared someone might suffocate. But they were sweet together. I wouldn’t have been bothered by their sideshow of young love except for the fact that I kept getting booted out of my own room.

  And I tried not to think about how watching two eighteen year olds fall for each other reminded me of what I’d once had. And lost.

  Cecily and I hadn’t spoken since that frenzied ride on her bed two weeks ago. I hadn’t gone there with plans to touch her but the way she stood there in her sexy shirt that did nothing to hide her nipples and challenged every damn thing I said just pushed me right over the edge. The air in that pitifully plain dorm room was buzzing with sexual energy and she was almost daring me to take her, to make her fucking remember how it had been between us.

  So that’s exactly what I did.

  My khaki uniform pants got uncomfortably tight as I remembered how eager Cecily had been to pull me inside her. I hadn’t expected that, hadn’t expected her to drop her inhibitions as easily as I dropped my pants. It just proved my point that there was still so much intensity between us.

  But then right after we were done crashing together she was furious. With me, with herself. After she ordered me out of her room I was already cursing myself for what had just happened, no matter how psychotically good a fuck it was. I knew that the next move had to come from her and I was ready to wait as long as it took. In the meantime I couldn’t stop myself from wondering what she was thinking any more than I could stop my dick from rising over the memory of her rutting against my hand, desperate to be touched.

  “Fuck,” I muttered. Since I was walking into the guard shack to clock out I tried hard to make my boner stand down by thinking of the dead coyote I’d seen on the golf course today.

  “You gettin’ off now?” asked Hennessy, a cheerful fellow who was in his sixties with failing vision and a bum knee. Management was good enough to station him inside at a desk all day.

  “Getting off now,” I said, trying to carve th
e irony out of my voice before I clocked off and bid the man a good night.

  There was an hour to kill before I could head back to my room, unless I planned to risk walking in on things I didn’t want to see. My gym bag was already in my truck so I headed to the university’s athletic complex and prepared to sweat for a while.

  The weight room was packed so I went out to do some laps in the Olympic-sized swimming pool, hoping no one would make a big deal out of the fact that I was swimming in gym shorts. I’d learned to swim in the deep reservoir outside Hickeyville and I’d never bothered to cultivate good form but I was fast when I wanted to be. My limbs sliced through the water at a savage speed and I lost track of the number of times I went back and forth in the hopes I’d exhaust myself to the point where I might stop thinking about Cecily for one evening. When I’d had enough I hoisted myself out of the pool and tried to catch my breath.

  “You training?” asked a female voice on my left. A girl was sitting at the edge of the lane beside me and tucking her long brown hair into a tight bathing cap as she peered at me curiously.

  “Not training,” I told her, running a hand across my forehead to stop water from dripping into my eyes.

  “You looked fierce,” the girl said, kicking a shapely leg into the water. “I figured there had to be a reason.”

  “There is,” I said. “Just not an athletic one.”

  The girl looked me over and nodded. “I get it. Whenever my boyfriend was being a dick it would always help to work out my anger in the pool. “ Then she winced. “Meant to say ex boyfriend. We broke up last month.”

  It was an invitation to continue the conversation. She was pretty and she had an air of maturity about her that made me guess she was a few years older than most of the other students. The problem was I had no interest in meeting anyone new.

  “Well,” I said, climbing to my feet and dripping all over the concrete. “Don’t want to keep you from your workout. You have a good night.”