Page 39 of Love Is a War Song

I heard murmuring around me. It was still dark while my body caught up with the fact that I was awake, and it needed to open my eyelids.

“She’s stirring!” A female voice sounded excited and relieved. Where the hell was I? My hands felt around. I was lying on soft grass. It felt like I’d thrown my back out.

“Avery, can you open your eyes?” Lucas’s deep voice was quiet against my ear.

I still couldn’t open my eyes, but I commanded my body to lift my hand and reach for where his face must be.

My fingers brushed across his usually smooth face, but there was a little bit of prickly scruff that tickled the pads of my fingers.

Finally, I forced my eyelids open, and I winced. It was still daylight, but the number of red- and blue-clad bodies around me cast a shadow over me.

“What happened?” I groaned as I slowly tried to sit up. Lucas’s hand was on my back to help ease me into a sitting position.

“You had the ball. I told you to stay away from the ball.” Lucas’s voice was lethal.

I tensed at his anger, unsure if it was directed at me.

He rubbed my back in slow, comforting circles.

“Molly full-on decked ya! She came right around you and knocked you out with her elbow,” one of the players in red explained, a little too enthusiastically, in my opinion. “Whack!” He brought his elbow up to demonstrate.

“Thanks, Brian.” Lucas’s sarcasm made me laugh. Then the crowd gasped in unison, taking a step back as they all stared at me in horror.

“What is it?”

“Aw shit! She knocked out your tooth,” Red said as he came to kneel at my other side while Lottie stood hovering behind him.

“Why is there a tiny sharp tooth there? It’s terrifying!” someone yelled.

“What? Does it look bad?” I looked at Red and when he didn’t say anything, I turned to Lucas.

“I’m gonna be sick. She has two layers of teeth.” Someone else started gagging.

“They’re veneers,” I cried, urging Lucas to reassure me I looked fine.

“No, it doesn’t look bad.” He refused to meet my eyes.

“This is just great.” My eyes watered and my tongue felt around to see if anything else had been knocked loose. On the bright side, no other teeth were loose or even cracked, but on the very not-so-bright side it was my front left tooth.

“We can get it fixed,” Lucas said softly in my ear.

“I found it!” A woman’s voice yelled from behind everyone. It was Molly. She pushed her way through, and it was clear Lucas didn’t want her anywhere near me, and I felt the same.

“Hey, gap tooth,” she said, and nodded in greeting as she kneeled next to Lucas, whose lip was hooked over his tooth as if he would growl if she came any closer. “It’s the whole tooth—if you put it under your tongue and get to a dentist quick they should be able to pop it back in.”

“Is that a thing?” I asked, completely bewildered.

“Hell yeah.” She handed my tooth to Lucas, who then gave it to me. “Welcome to the team,” she said as she popped out her bridge with three teeth attached, showing a big gappy smile. “Now you fit in.”

“Great.” I popped the tooth under my tongue like I was told and Red and Lucas each took a hand and helped me stand.

“We gotta get her to the clinic,” Lottie said.

“It’s Saturday, the clinics are closed,” Red countered.

“I know where to take her.” Lucas clasped my hand in his and started leading me away, but I was still dizzy from being knocked unconscious and stumbled into him. He dropped my hand and scooped me up into his arms before continuing his long strides across the field.

“What about the game?” I asked with a lisp as my tongue held my tooth under it.

“Forget about it.”

“But the flyers!” My urging made me drool a bit, and I had to do a gross slurp to suck down all my built-up saliva.

That made Lucas stop. He turned his head over his shoulder and whistled. “Hey, Davey!”

“Yeah, man?”

“Make sure you handle all our stuff, especially the equipment bags.”

“You got it! Avery, don’t feel too bad about getting your tooth knocked out if the doctor can’t fix it right away. We would never make fun of you.” Though his tone suggested otherwise.

“Where are we going? I don’t even have money or my insurance card. Do they even take SAG-AFTRA Health here?”

“Don’t worry about it. It’ll get sorted.” We made it to the truck and Lucas tenderly placed me in the passenger seat, then leaned down to look me in the eye. “Follow my finger with your eyes.”

I tracked his movement easily and he nodded, relieved. He closed the door, and through the side mirror, I saw him at the back of the truck on his cell phone, talking to someone while kicking a rock with the toe of his tennis shoe.

I couldn’t make out any of what he was saying except for his curt “thanks” before he hung up. I straightened and looked ahead as he settled into the driver’s seat and backed us out of the big dirt parking lot and out onto the road.

“So where are you taking me?” I asked, using my hand to cover my mouth and the terrifying tiny tooth.

“It’s a Saturday afternoon, so I had to call in a favor.”

We were silent for several moments. “I’m sorry I volunteered to play in the game.” I sounded absolutely ridiculous with this tooth under my tongue, but Lucas didn’t seem to care. He looked like his mind was a million miles away as he focused on driving us.

“You’re never doing that again,” he said, surprising me by breaking the silence.

“Well, duh, look at me. I’m a mess.”

“I think you earned everyone’s respect though.” Lucas finally cracked a small smile.

“You mean if I ever see them again, they won’t mockingly sing my song and make sexual innuendos at me?”

“They might still do that, but in a camaraderie kind of way and not a hostile one…?” Lucas shrugged and we both laughed.

He directed the truck out of Broken Arrow and down past rural country. The miles passed quickly, and soon we pulled off the road and into the parking lot of a large medical center. The lot was empty apart from our truck and a security van.

“Could this favor you called in be from your very successful dentist cousin your dad mentioned?” I asked.

Lucas cut the engine and took a deep breath through his nose before slowly letting it out. “Yeah.”

“Are you afraid I’m going to find him devastatingly handsome?”

With a wry grin, Lucas looked over at me and said, “No. I’m sure you will, but you’re missing your front tooth. He ain’t gonna look twice at you.”

I smacked his arm in mock outrage. The booming sound of a loud, souped-up engine stole our attention. A matte black BMW sedan came to a screeching halt and parked along the curb, directly in front of the entrance.

“Shitass,” Lucas mumbled under his breath.

“What was that? Did you just say ‘shitass’?”

Lucas only rolled his eyes and got out of the car.

I moved to open the door, but Lucas motioned for me to wait for him.

Then it was me rolling my eyes. I didn’t need him carrying me in to get my tooth put back in my mouth.

But with our keeping-things-professional promise, maybe having his arms around me wasn’t such a bad thing.

Certainly something that felt this good couldn’t be so bad?

He opened the door and took my hand to help me step down.

I may have feigned my lack of balance so that I’d fall into his chest. Maybe.

I wouldn’t cop up to it in an interrogation.

His strong arm came around me and boy did I love the smell of this man.

I took a deep breath and let him lead me to his cousin.

“All right, so what’s the emergency?” The tall, dark, and exceedingly handsome man stepped out of the BMW. He was wearing a button-down shirt, black jeans, and shiny shoes.

“What, were you on your way to some Holiday Inn dentist convention?” Lucas asked.

“It was the Hilton Garden Inn,” his cousin said in a dramatic sigh.

They were silently eyeing each other up before his cousin smiled and offered his open hand. Lucas clasped his and then he was pulled away from me and embraced in a big bear hug.

“It’s been too long, man. How ya been?”

“Busy,” Lucas said gruffly.

“Man of few words. So, who is this?” He turned his hawkish gaze fully on me.

“Avery.”

“Hi, Avery. I’m Dr. Wyatt Cole, Lucas’s cousin. Wanna show me what I’m working with?”

I made sure to swallow all the accumulated saliva before smiling my most winning smile at Wyatt.

“Oh shit! How did that happen?”

“Stickball accident,” I said with an exasperated lisp.

“What’s going on with your tongue?” he asked.

I spit my tooth out into my waiting palm. “Some people on the field said if I kept it under my tongue then it would be easier to put back in.”

The man only laughed. He laughed and he laughed until tears sprang from his eyes. I was certain my face was as red as the shirts the opposing team had been wearing.

Lucas hit Wyatt on the back of the head. “Shut the fuck up, man, and put her tooth back in. What’s so funny?”

“Sorry, sorry.” Wyatt wiped his eyes with his thumb.

“I haven’t laughed like that in so long.

Avery, those tricks like soaking the tooth in milk or keeping it under your tongue only work for live teeth, often with the root still attached.

What you have is a veneer. Your real tooth was shaved down into that tiny nub of a fang.

Freaky-looking, but effective for creating a whole new smile. ”

“Can you glue it back?” I asked.

“I can do better than that. I’ll cement it back into place, but you’ll probably need to get this replaced with a new one soon. An intense blow like that could have compromised it, and it’s likely it will chip easily with another hit like the one that took it out in the first place.”

“She isn’t playing stickball again,” Lucas said firmly.

“And here I thought I was pretty good and found a new hobby.” I exaggerated a pout, letting my bottom lip balloon out.

“Take up knitting if you need a hobby,” Lucas grumbled. “Can we speed this up?”

Wyatt looked between me and Lucas with obvious giddy delight. “Of course, follow me this way.”