Page 3 of Trick or Tease

SAbrINA

I shifted in the back seat of Billy’s beat-up Ford, trying to find a comfortable position that didn’t involve my tailbone and a spring. The truck had seen better days. I was pretty sure it was older than our twenty-six years on this earth.

“You sure this thing’s gonna make it?” I asked, patting the cracked vinyl seat.

“She’s gotten us this far,” Billy said, glancing at me in the rearview mirror. “Besides, can you think of a better way to make an entrance in the big city than rolling up in authentic farm transportation?”

“You could have at least swept the straw out of the bed,” I muttered. “We’ve been blowing straw the last sixty miles. We look like hillbillies.”

He grinned at me. “Grab me some straw to chew on. I want to make sure I look the part.”

I rolled my eyes. “You’re an idiot.”

Lucy unwrapped another sandwich from the cooler she’d packed and handed it back to me. Turkey and Swiss on homemade bread, with that honey mustard she made from scratch. My stomach had been too twisted up with nerves to eat much at breakfast, but the smell made me realize I was starving.

“Thanks,” I said after taking a bite. “God, you’re going to make some lucky guy a great wife someday.”

Billy’s ears went red, and Lucy leaned into him playfully. “Smooth, Sabrina. Real smooth.”

The radio crackled with some classic rock station, scratchy in the old speakers. The truck did have a cassette player but who had cassettes?

Sabrina reached out to push the button to scan for another station.

“Hey!” Billy complained.

But his protest died when Johnny Cash’s voice filled the truck. That was a song we could all get behind. Ring of Fire felt appropriate, considering where we were headed.

Billy drummed his fingers on the steering wheel in time with the beat.

I ate my sandwich and stared out the window.

We’d been driving for about four hours. The landscape had slowly shifted from rolling farmland to suburbs to whatever you called the maze of highways and overpasses we were navigating now.

I pressed my face to the window, watching the endless stream of cars and towering buildings getting closer. The skyline looked intimidating. It was all glass and steel. Buildings competing for dominance. It felt like a dick-measuring contest that had gotten out of control.

“Who would choose to live stacked on top of each other like that?” I asked.

“Greedy people,” Billy said simply. “Lots and lots of money in that city.”

“Broke and happy is better than rich and miserable,” I said.

“Don’t tell that to Garrett,” Lucy said, grinning.

The GPS on her phone kept barking directions in that soulless robot voice, leading us deeper into the concrete jungle.

The traffic was wall to wall. There were more cars in one block than we’d see in Greenleaf in a week.

Maybe a month. Horns honked constantly, like some kind of urban symphony of impatience.

“Are you sure he’s going to be okay with us just showing up?” I asked.

I was suddenly very nervous. We were crashing Garrett’s little party. The guy wasn’t known for being Mr. Congeniality. I shouldn’t really care what he thinks, but it was impossible not to.

Garrett was… well, Garrett.

“Don’t worry about it,” Billy said. “I know how to talk to him.”

“You sure he won’t be mad?” Lucy asked, clearly sharing my own reservations.

“Once he sees our pretty faces, he’ll be fine,” Billy said.

I glanced over at my bag. “Then why did we bring the mask?”

“Well, I want to see how scary it is.”

“And you couldn’t just send him a picture?” I asked. “Text him like a normal person.”

He chuckled. “Well, we’re here to bring his stubborn ass home. The mask is just for a bit of fun.”

“So you’re going to scare him?” I asked.

He laughed. “I’m going to try.”

I felt like it was my job to remind him of past scare attempts. “Last time you did that, he didn’t talk to you for a month and then he left town for good.”

“Well, he had always planned on going to college.” Billy shrugged.

I thought back to that night. It had all been in good fun. We all decided to prank Garrett. It was the summer after my freshman year. Garrett had graduated from high school that May.

We were dumb kids having fun. We weren’t trying to be mean or really upset Garrett.

We had all been friends, despite our age differences.

Living in a small town, we had to get creative with finding ways to have fun.

There wasn’t much to do but hang out. Billy had told Garrett we were going to have a party in the back cornfield, where our parents wouldn’t find them.

It wasn’t the first time. Parties in fields were pretty common. Billy, Lucy, and I were a little young to be going to the keggers but that didn’t mean we didn’t know about them and had even managed to sneak into a couple.

But that night was not a kegger. I grimaced just thinking about my part in the prank that night.

My job had been to walk with Garrett out to the spot where Billy and Lucy were waiting.

Billy was dressed as a scarecrow, standing up against the pole the regular scarecrow normally went on.

When we walked by, Lucy was supposed to turn on the spooky sound effects on her phone. Billy would jump at Garrett.

And boo.

A harmless prank. Brothers doing what brothers did.

Billy had popped up and rushed his older brother, howling like a wild man. Garrett jumped like he’d been hit with a cattle prod. As scared as he looked in that moment, he had also stepped in front of me, putting his body between me and the charging thing in the darkness.

It was such an instinctive, protective gesture. My younger self had fallen in love with him right then and there. He’d always been handsome, but it was like seeing him for the first time.

Before that night, he’d just been Garrett. Best friend number three. Billy’s big brother. Garrett had seen me in the weird tweens. My buck teeth and pimple face. I think I always thought of him as a big brother, but that night everything changed.

Unfortunately, nothing ever happened between us. But in that moment, Garrett had taught me what a real man acted like. He had stepped in front of me and reached behind him to hold me close at the same time.

Just thinking about it made me feel all warm and fuzzy.

And dammit, I would never forgive him for doing that.

Because now I had been measuring every guy I ever briefly dated against Garrett.

Not intentionally and I tried to tell myself I wasn’t doing it, but when I sat down to dinner with a guy, that night was what I thought of.

Would the man I was on a date with put himself in front of a charging beast to protect me?

If I couldn’t definitively say yes, it was difficult to muster up any interest in a second date.

If there was a maybe, I would give the guy another shot, but unfortunately, none of them ever made me feel like they would take a bullet for me.

Or take on a rabid scarecrow.

Billy’s laughter had tipped off Garrett it was his brother.

They had wrestled in the dirt, with Garrett cursing and Billy nearly pissing himself with laughter.

But all I could think about was kissing the man who stood up for me against the unknown.

It was the hottest thing a man had ever done for me, and we hadn’t even been a thing. Just friends.

I hadn’t seen Garrett in a few years. When was the last time? Was it two or three Christmases ago?

I closed my eyes and let myself drift back to summer days swimming in the lake. Climbing trees and racing four-wheelers. I wondered what he looked like now. Did he get all soft and pale?

Back when we worked on the farm, we were all tanned.

Garrett and Billy were both in really good shape from all the manual labor.

I smiled remembering the time Lucy and I had been at the lake swimming and they showed up.

We had been out of sight behind some trees when they jumped in wearing only their underwear.

When they saw us, they freaked out. It had been so innocent back then. I missed him. At least, I missed the guy he had been. Over the years, Garrett had put as much distance between the farm, and ultimately us, as he could.

He was the city mouse now and we were all the country mice.

A horn honking startled me. I must have drifted off. I sat up and looked out the window.

We were driving, more like inching through traffic. Yellow cabs zoomed through gaps in traffic like physics didn’t apply to them. It seemed like everyone thought slamming their hands against their horns would part the lanes like the Red Sea.

It was so obnoxious.

I had been to New York before but it felt different this time. It was different. I was nervous about seeing Garrett. I had no idea how he would react. Would he run us all off? That would be embarrassing. I reached for my phone and turned on the camera, flipping it around so I could look at my face.

It wasn’t like he would care what I looked like. The man lived in Manhattan. He was surrounded by celebrities and supermodels. I doubted he would even look twice at my country bumpkin ass.

Another blaring horn sounded. Billy shouted and flipped off the driver of a BMW. “You have to speak to them in language they understand,” he said.

I was so ready to go home. I hated the city. There were just far too many people in one spot.

“I really hope this isn’t a waste of time,” I said. “If we can’t convince him to come home, then what?”

“Then you get to use the rope,” Billy said.