Part 4:
You Don’t Even Know Me
Now
“Are you running from the cops or something?”
Kara said, eyes widening, body suddenly stiff.
“No, no.”
Nick reached out a hand to touch her shoulder, laughing at the serious
look in her emerald eyes. “Not those
kind of cops and robbers. I meant the
game cops and robbers, like you play when you’re a kid.”
He noticed her body relax at the quick
realization that he wasn’t some crazy serial killer on the loose. “I loved playing cops and robbers when I was
a little girl,” she said, lying back in the rough grass. “I always had to be the robber, though,
because my older sister wouldn’t have it any other way.”
Nick lay down beside her, their heads
touching. “Older siblings can be a pain,
huh?” he said.
“You’re an older sibling, aren’t you?” She knocked her elbow into his arm. “I can tell because you’re a big pain.” Their dialogue flowed like old friends, simple
and sarcastic.
“If it makes you feel any better, I always had
to be the robber, too.” Nick raised his
arms up, pointing his fingers at the clouds in the sky, thinking that one
looked an awful lot like A.J. falling off of the stage.
“You know what the funniest thing was?” Kara raised her arms, too, tracing her
fingertips around the outline of a cloud that reminded her of a rabbit. “I didn’t even mind being the robber when my
sister and I played because being the robber meant that I would get to throw a
punch at her at some point in the game, and I knew she couldn’t tattle on me.”
“Did you throw a lot of punches when you and
your sister played?” Nick spotted a
cloud that reminded him of a wave.
“You bet!
Hey, if you can’t throw punches in cops and robbers, then where can you
throw a punch. Besides, she punched me enough when we weren’t playing, so I had
to get her back somehow.”
“What was your favorite game when you were
little?” Nick was enjoying being the one
asking the questions for once. He had spent the better part of his life
answering so many questions about himself – favorite color, favorite movie,
favorite TV show, favorite actress… the list went on and on – that he had
gotten to the point where he didn’t have to have a real favorite anything
anymore; the magazines took care of all of it for him.
“Hmmmmm….. I think I liked playing make
believe the best. Just me and my
imagination.” Pulling her eyes slowly
across the sky, she wondered if maybe that was what she had been doing for the
last five months? Playing some sort of
game of make believe that she hoped would take her away from the grief and
sadness of losing her parents?
---
“You never cry.”
“I cry.”
“No you don’t, Kara, you’re a cold
bitch.”
Kara and Allie sat across from each other in
the lobby of the funeral home, waiting for the mourners to arrive. It had been six long days since the news of
their parents’ death, six days that seemed like six years.
“What do you want me to do, Allie? Do you want me to break down sobbing? Would that make you feel better?”
“You act like they aren’t even dead,
Kara. You act like they are going to
come walking through that door any minute, shouting ‘Surprise!’ This isn’t one of your stupid games of make
believe. Mom and Dad are dead…”
---
“Kara, I wish I would have known you when we
were kids.” It was a spontaneous
statement that spilled sweetly from Nick’s mouth into the summer air. They both turned to look at each other, their
foreheads lightly brushing as Kara cupped Nick’s face gently in her hands and
sighed.
“But Nick, you don’t even know me now.” Her voice sounded sad when she said the
words, making Nick feel tongue-tied and awkward by the shared intimate moment.
God, he so sucked at being intimate. Every girl he had ever been really close to
had told him so. When the moment called
for warm embraces and declarations of love, Nick resorted to noogies and
knock-knock jokes. When the girl longed
for roses and lingerie, he showed up with a six pack of beer and nachos from
Taco Bell.
It wasn’t like he screwed up on purpose. Nobody in their right mind enjoyed getting
beamed in the head by a flying beer can or having nachos smeared in their face
by a girl screaming, “YOU SUCK, CARTER!” on her way out of his life. But that was just the way things always
seemed to go for him. He wanted to be a
different kind of man, he wanted his life to be different, but there never
seemed to be enough time to change things.
And now it looked like there never would be.
They stayed that way, his face in her hands,
foreheads touching, for a brief moment before Nick slowly rolled away.
“Listen Kara,” he began, “I’m really sorry, but I can’t get involved
with anybody right now. It just wouldn’t
be fair.”
She pushed herself up to a sitting position,
amusement tugging at her features until she couldn’t hide it anymore, and she
burst out in laughter. “Nick, what in
the hell are you talking about?”
“Huh?”
“Huh?” she mimicked him. “Look, I think you’re
a nice guy and all, but I’m not looking to get involved with anybody
either. And just because I slept with
Roy doesn’t mean I sleep with every guy I see!”
“No, that’s not what I… well, I guess… I… I
don’t know what the hell I’m talking about.”
Suddenly, Nick was laughing, too, as he slapped his palm into his
forehead. “You know what, let’s pretend
I didn’t say that, okay? Let’s rewind
that part.”
“Okay.”
She lay back in the grass, looking up at the sky, patting the ground for
him to lie beside her. “I’ll start
over.”
“But Nick.”
She tried to keep from laughing as she repeated the words again like she
was reading a script. “You don’t even
know me now.”
“You’re right, I don’t know you, Kara,” he
replied, propping himself up on one elbow, his hand fisting in his hair. “So what do you say we spend the day changing
that? We’ll spend the day getting to
know each other; we’ll spend the day becoming friends.”
“Okay.”
Her mouth turned up into a warm smile.
“You got yourself a deal.” She
stood up, wiping her hands on her shorts.
“So what are you doing the rest of the afternoon, Nick?”
“I dunno.
I thought that maybe I’d drive into town, check things out. Maybe we could go and get some lunch?”
“Wrong.”
Kara extended her hands to Nick, dragging him to his feet.
“Wrong?”
“Yes, wrong.
You are going to get me out of hot water with my family for hanging out
with you and taking such a long break.
You’re going to help us out selling at the fruit stand.” Turning, she marched back across the field in
the direction of the blue pickup truck they had pinched the apples from, Nick
tripping on her heels like a little puppy.
“You’re making a huge mistake,” he said, as
she walked to the back of the truck, plucking an apron from a box with a huge
grin. “I don’t know anything about
selling fruit. Besides, now that I’ve tasted fruit and know what I’ve been
missing all of these years, I’ll probably eat more then I can sell.”
Walking back to him, ignoring his lame
excuses, she tied the apron around his waist and stood back to admire him. “Perfect!”
Grabbing his hand, she pulled him through the flap in the back of the
tent.
“Okay, okay, wait.” Nick tugged her backwards, bumping her off of
his chest as he rested a hand on her shoulder.
“What?”
“If I do this for you, then what’s in it for
me?” he said, looking out into the sea of patient and impatient customers
waiting for their turn to order.
Kara noticed Allie staring at them as she
loaded some apples into a brown paper bag.
She could tell that Allie was wondering who the hell this tall, blonde
stranger dressed in an apron, standing in their grandparents’ fruit stand was,
and Kara could have cared less.
“I guess you’ll just have to wait and see,”
she replied, smiling at the disgusted look that Allie now had on her face.
“Allie, Grandma, Grandpa.” Kara raised her voice over the din of the
crowd. “This is my new pal Nick, and
he’s going to be helping us sell at The Market today.”
***
Nick quickly came to the conclusion that he
was a born salesman as he spent the rest of the morning and early afternoon
hocking fruit in the blistering hot summer sun.
“I feel like freaking Donald Trump here!” he
shouted over his shoulder to Kara, as he packed up another crate of grapefruit
for a customer who had originally only come to the stand for a few pears, but,
after some smooth-talking and a flash of his smile, was instead leaving with
two crates of grapefruit and a whole sack of pears.
“They like you,” Kara said, enjoying Nick’s
enthusiasm. “You’re a natural for sure.”
“And you’re beautiful!” Nick called back,
taking another customer’s order for a bag of oranges.
“What?” Kara stopped loading her crate and
stared at him, wide-eyed.
“I said you’re beautiful.” He tossed a few more oranges into the bag
before wiping the perspiration from his forehead.
Kara’s grandmother stood off to the side,
chatting with a longtime customer, glancing back at Nick with a smile.
Allie stood beside Nick, plucking up three
oranges for her customer.
“And you’re not so bad yourself, Allie,” he
said, waggling his eyebrows at her as Kara stood behind him, trying to keep
from laughing.
“Eat shit,” Allie hissed, shoving him out of
her way as she grabbed for another orange.
“You make me want to puke.”
“If I only had a dime for every girl that told
me that,” he returned, as Allie heaved out a disgusted sigh and walked back
across the tent.
“Oh my God, that was too classic.” Kara came up alongside Nick, pushing her face
into his arm to disguise her laughter.
He hooked an arm around her, pressing his nose into her hair.
“Did you see her face? Man, I thought she was going to spit on me!”
Kara’s grandmother broke away from her friend
and walked over to the two kids. “Okay
you two, you’ve had enough fun at Allie’s expense. Let’s get selling, and if you two can behave
for the next two hours, I promise you a home-cooked meal you’ll never forget.”
“Deal.”
Nick shoved Kara away from him, laughing, visions of food dancing in his
head as he smiled brightly at her grandma.
“You make me a home-cooked meal, and I’ll sell fruit for you for the
rest of my life!”
***
