He spots her first, leaning against the far fence, laughing at something a woman in a sequined blazer says. Lila Carter. Jesse’s little sister. She’s 47 now, the annoying 14 year old who used to hang around their garage begging for rides on their beat up dirt bikes, who once spray painted Hugo’s name on the side of the high school gym because she had a crush on him. Her hair is streaked with sun and a few strands of gray, pulled back in a loose braid, and she’s wearing a faded Willie Nelson tee, ripped jeans, and scuffed cowboy boots, a tattoo of a goat peeking out of her cuff—she runs a farm animal rescue an hour outside of town, he remembers someone mentioning that a few years back. She smells like coconut sunscreen and cedar shavings when she walks over, and she grins so wide the corners of her eyes crinkle when she sees him.
“Thought you were dead,” she says, and she punches his arm light, the same way she did when she was a kid, but her knuckles linger on his bicep half a second longer than necessary. He hands her a cold Lonestar from the cooler, and their fingers brush when she takes it, the callus on the pad of her index finger—from hauling hay bales, he guesses—catching on the scar across his knuckle from a bike crash when he was 20. She leans in close to talk over the band, her shoulder pressed to his, and he can feel the warmth of her through his flannel shirt, the faint scent of peppermint on her breath when she says she knew he’d show up eventually, that Jesse always said he’d grow out of being a stubborn jackass one day.
He tenses up at Jesse’s name, and she laughs, soft, leaning back a little to look him in the eye, holding his gaze so he can’t look away. “He’s not here,” she says. “Moved to Ketchikan three years ago, runs a fishing charter. Sends me postcards every month, still complains about you bailing on the shop.” The knot in his chest loosens a little, but another one tightens lower down, because he’s suddenly hyper aware of how close she’s standing, how the neckline of her tee dips just enough to show the faint scar at the base of her throat from when she crashed the dirt bike he taught her to ride when she was 16. He’s spent 30 years thinking of her as off limits, Jesse’s little sister, the kid he used to buy slushies for at the corner store, and now he’s fighting the urge to tuck that loose strand of hair behind her ear, to see if her skin is as warm as it looks.
A group of drunk former cheerleaders stumbles past, yelling about old football games, and Lila steps in closer to get out of the way, her chest pressing against his for a split second. He hears her breath catch, soft, and she doesn’t step back right away, just looks up at him, her dark eyes glinting in the string lights strung across the patio. “I had a huge crush on you, you know,” she says, quiet enough only he can hear, like she’s sharing a secret she’s been holding for 30 years. “Used to hang around the garage for hours just to watch you work on bikes. Jesse knew. Teased me about it for years.” She pauses, and the corner of her mouth tugs up in a half grin. “Told me last year when he called, if you ever came back to town, I had permission to stop being a coward and ask you out. Said you were the only idiot he’d ever let date his little sister.”
The last of the tension drains out of him, and he laughs, rough and surprised, shaking his head. He’d spent 29 years carrying guilt over that fight with Jesse, convinced he’d burned every bridge with the Carter family for good, and now here he is, leaning against a brick wall with Lila, the kid he’d once thought was too young to even cuss around, and all he can think about is how much he wants to kiss her. He asks her if she wants to ditch the reunion, says he’s got his 1972 CB750 parked out front, a cooler of iced sweet tea in the saddlebag, and he knows a spot by the creek outside of town where the fireflies are out this time of year, no loud music, no drunk former classmates.
She nods, fast, and laces her fingers through his when he holds his hand out, her palm calloused and warm against his. He leads her to the bike, pulls his old leather riding jacket—frayed at the cuffs, the same one he’s had since he was 19, with a patch of his old high school mascot sewn on the shoulder—out of the saddlebag and holds it out for her. She slips it on, the sleeves too long, rolling them up to her elbows, and the faint smell of motor oil and his pine hand soap wraps around her like something he’s been meaning to give her for 30 years.
