Page 30 of Playing For Keeps

Sebastian stroked her hair, peppering kisses against the crown of her head as she trembled, as she sobbed how helpless she felt. In a strange way, it came at an okay time. She’d just finished up her six weeks at the kindergarten job, not yet committing to a different placement. Technically, she had the time to go, finally. Only now there was someone she was leaving behind, who she would miss very much.

He whispered he’d miss her as well, and after her sobs quieted to little gasps and they ate in front of the television, Farren asked him to stay. To hold her after what was proving to be the hardest day she’d had in a while. In the dark cocoon of her bedroom, she told him about her fight with Corinne, the self-doubt echoed back at her.

“You can do whatever you put your mind to. You’ve been working so hard on this game, and it’s great! I want them all to play it to see how brilliant you are. I’m sorry she didn’t even give you the chance to talk about it.” The words were whispered encouragement against her temple as he held her under the covers.

He’d stripped down to his undershirt and boxers, Farren in her own fluffy pajamas given the chill enveloping her, her emotions overriding the heating she’d only just started turning on recently.

“How is it that you have so much faith in me when I have none?” she asked, a little broken.

“Because you’re… you’re the most alive person I’ve ever met. You’re bright and creative and you make me lose myself in your eyes when they light up in excitement. The way you talk about the things you’re passionate about—makes me wish I felt even an iota of that about my own professional endeavors.” He sounded awed, a little put out by his perceived lacking.

“You’re so driven though, and I don’t have that. Even if I’m excited, or creative, it means nothing if I can’t realize it. Or if I stop myself out of fear. You know what you want and you take it,” Farren said, highlighting the juxtaposition of their personalities.

“Totally untrue. It might be when it comes to work, but personally, I’m terrified. This thing between us is like an ocean, fathomless in its depth, and I’m being flung around by the tide. I’ve never known anything like this, but no matter how much I want this, I can’t escape the worry that when you leave here tonight, you might not come back.” The words fell like pebbles into a pond, spreading out in circles, getting more and more devastating as they sunk in.

“Sebastian…”

“Your job isn’t keeping you here, your friends are here, sure… but you’re in the middle of a fight with Corinne. What do you have to lure you back here?” He stiffened beneath where she rested on his chest. His breathing was uneven and harsh.

“You. Numbnuts.” She didn’t mean to say it out loud. She barely stopped herself from uttering the other three words dancing on the tip of her tongue, spicy and heady. Farren couldn’t bring herself to admit how much of a draw he was to her, how strongly she’d come to feel for him over the last six weeks.

Sebastian’s chest shuddered beneath her head as he gave a shocked laugh, heart pounding under her ear. He wrapped his arms tighter around her and stroked a hand over her loose hair.

“I—” he started and stopped, unable to finish the thought, or perhaps like her, he was unable to voice how much he was weighed down by it.

“I’ll be waiting for you,” Sebastian said finally. The words wrapped her in a surety she rarely felt. When he kissed her, she knew he meant it. He tasted her, savored her skin. His lips sent shivers zinging through her body, and he danced around the boundaries they’d set which felt flimsier by the day. Sebastian slowed when she pushed lightly against his chest, afraid to get caught up in him when she felt so shaken.

His kisses turned sweet, and Farren was running out of reasons to keep things low-key. All she knew was, now was not a good time to give in to this. It wasn’t right to have this be a way to get out of her own head. The last thing she wanted was for it to be purely physical, for her to use him.

They fell asleep twined together, almost impossible for her to extract herself from when the alarm went off under her pillow. She left him sleeping in her bed, a spare key on the bedside table, and a note promising she’d be back as soon as she could. She rolled her bag behind her, a sense of trepidation filling her chest at what awaited her back home.

After hopping on the train and then the bus, Farren stood bleary-eyed outside the Circle K, unsure which of her family members would show to pick her up. She was pleased to note it was Toby, the younger brother she’d always been closest to. His truck rumbled down Main Street and sputtered to a stop where she waited.

“Hello, Dolly,” Toby greeted, and to this day, Farren wasn’t sure if the nickname referenced the musical she’d loved as a kid or Dolly Parton. Being a blonde with big boobs muddied the water.

“Hey, fart-face.” It was the best she’d come up with as a child, an insult carried over to all her brothers, away from her mother’s keen ear at least. “Can’t believe you’re engaged. Wasn’t it just recently you got blackout drunk at your dorm and tried to jump off a roof with an umbrella, stripped down to your undies, convinced you were ‘Mary-fucking-Poppins’ after watching that Marvel movie?”

He cringed at the reminder, giving her the stink eye as he pulled out of the parking lot, the truck rocking slightly as they drove. “That was years ago, and you know it.”

She did know, but it was fun to give him a hard time. It was difficult to shake the feeling he’d slipped away, or she had, sometime in the intervening years. Because the silence between them was not as comfortable as it was before. More than a few of the storefronts had changed, names she didn’t recognize emblazoned on the front of buildings she’d frequented in her youth.

“How’s Linds?” Farren asked. Her mom had given the barest information, filling the call with inane comments about how the neighbors recently repaved their driveway, and how Farren’s dad threw out his back a few weeks ago trying to power-wash the outside of the house. Apparently, he slipped in some water and went down “like that time you belly-flopped in the Anderson’s pool.” All useless information.

“She’s okay. They were worried for a bit she might have complications with the pregnancy, but they all pulled through. Just a head’s up, mom’s planning to throw a baby shower since you’re going to be here. Usually, she’d wait a little bit longer, but she wasn’t sure what you were doing this year for Thanksgiving and Christmas, so she figured she’d get it in while she could.” Toby sounded gruff, a little put out.

His words were meant to hurt, burning through her like hot acid. “Toby, I’m sorry. I’m sorry I wasn’t here for your engagement. And a lot of the other stuff.” She couldn’t even begin to list all the milestones she’d missed, the invitations that went unanswered until they didn’t bother anymore. Graduations and other baby showers, birthdays and cookouts… all the living happening in between when she’d left and now. But it worked both ways. None of them came down to see her in five years, and she held onto that kernel.

“It’s not me you have to say sorry to,” was all he said. Farren wondered who she’d disappointed this time. It seemed to be a constant state of being for her.

The long driveway up to her parents’ acreage was the same dirt road she’d driven over on her way to school, work, and the one unpleasant date she’d had with the Anderson boy of said pool fame. The trees that surrounded the land cast long shadows on the ground and reminded her this time of Sebastian’s scent, not the other way around.

Her mother waited on the porch, a tired look on her face aging her beyond what Farren was ready for, the house looking somehow smaller than she remembered in her head. Its shutters had faded slightly, the old colonial style seeming shabbier than the last time she was up here. It could just have been that the yellowing siding and graying roof tiles were as old as she was.

Toby grabbed her bag from the back of the truck, giving their mother a kiss on the cheek on the way into the house and up the stairs. Donna folded Farren into a tight hug, her mother’s warmth and familiar scent sending a keen ache of nostalgia and longing through her. It had been too long. Her mother said as much to her as she rubbed her arm and gestured for Farren to come inside.

Josh—the youngest of them all at nineteen—was the only one there besides Farren and Toby, and the only one still living at home. Everyone else moved out, settled into their own homes and lives nearby. Lindsay, eleven months younger than Farren, lived thirty minutes away with her husband Logan.

Josh had just launched into a whole tirade about the game he was playing in the family room, explaining to their mom for what Farren assumed was the umpteenth time he couldn’t “pause” it to come and say hi to Farren because it was an online game moving in “real-time.” Donna responded by turning the television off and placing a hand on her hip, daring him to say a word.

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