Cream of the Crop

  Sunday morning at Oscar’s meant lying around in a big old antique iron bed covered in layers of quilts and blankets, feeling the sun shining in through old rattling windows, and playing Connect the Scars on his beautiful, scarred naked body. I’d been playing this game for a while now, and was nowhere near running out of scars.

  “Hairbrush.”

  “Hairbrush? How could a hairbrush give you a scar on your eyebrow?” I laughed, settling back against his leg. He was sitting with his back against the headboard, sheets puddling low on his waist while I faced him, his propped-up legs acting as my headboard.

  His hand closed around my ankle, his fingers gentle and soothing on my skin. “I pissed off my brother Seth, he threw the hairbrush, next thing I know I’ve got blood seeping through my hands and my brothers are all running down the hall screaming for my mom. Seth ran the opposite way to hide in the barn, convinced he’d killed me.”

  “How old were you?”

  “I was eight, he was ten,” Oscar said, smiling at the memory. “I’d been teasing him all night about finding Cindy Montgomery’s school picture folded up in his wallet.”

  “What were you doing in your brother’s wallet?”

  “That’s exactly what he asked me, right before he threw the hairbrush.” Oscar laughed. “Ended up in the emergency room, with eight stitches. And this scar.”

  “I think it’s sexy,” I whispered, crawling up his body and perching with one leg on either side of his waist. “It was one of the first things I noticed about you. Now tell me about the big one.”

  “The big one?” he asked, lifting his hips up into mine with a suggestive grin.

  “The big scar on your knee,” I said, looking over my shoulder at the mess of white lines and scar tissue there.

  “Oh, that big one.” He sighed, running his hands through his hair until it almost stood on end. “You don’t want to hear that story.”

  I smoothed his hair down, petting and patting it back into shape. “I asked, didn’t I?”

  “Surgery. Blew out my knee. You hungry? I’m hungry.” He lifted me off his lap with one mighty bicep, his strength unfathomable, and climbed out of bed. He seemed uncomfortable.

  “How’d you blow out your knee?” I asked, lying back against the pillows as he started to get dressed. He looked around the room, spied a pair of jeans thrown across a wing chair (I’d thrown them there last night in an effort to get at the goods), and he stabbed his legs into them quickly.

  “In a game. No big deal, shit happens. I’m gonna go put on the coffee; come on down when you’re ready.” He dropped a quick kiss on my forehead, then left, pulling on a T-shirt as he went.

  Huh. Snuggled under the still-warm covers, I wondered what in hell had just happened. I could hear him banging away down in the kitchen. Coffee grinder, water running, cups clinking.

  I slipped into one of his T-shirts and found a pair of heavy woolen socks that I could pull up over my knees. The floor was chilly, and as I peeked out of the window over the bed, I saw a thick layer of frost across everything. Fall was most decidedly here, and winter was not far off.

  A match scraping on sandpaper told me he was firing up the old Franklin stove in the kitchen, and I knew it’d be warm down there soon. After sweeping my hair up into two pigtails, I headed down the back stairs that led into the kitchen.

  “So, what kind of game?” I asked, watching him taking out what looked like everything from the fridge at once.

  “Eggs okay with you? I can make toast,” he said, juggling a package of bacon, a carton of eggs, and some potatoes.

  “Eggs are fine. What kind of game?” I asked, tugging at my shirt to pull it down a little lower.

  “Football,” he said, his face hidden from me in the pantry. “Do you know how to make biscuits?”

  Football—of course. A bunch of pieces clicked into place. The physique. The coaching. The scars. The smashed knuckles. The overall beefiness.

  “You played football? For how long?” I asked, sitting down on a step, tucking my legs up under my chin.

  “Forever. Biscuits?” He looked at me over a bag of flour.

  “Hmm?”

  “Biscuits. Know how to make them?”

  “Hell no. I’d scorch the earth if I tried to cook something.”

  “I thought you went to culinary school with Roxie.”

  I snorted, resting my chin in my hands. “Sadly, going to culinary school and being good at culinary school are not the same thing. Ask Roxie to tell you about the time I burned water.”

  “You can’t cook? Like, at all?” he asked, assembling everything on the counter.

  “No, not all women can cook, you know,” I replied, arching my eyebrow toward him. He didn’t respond, too busy beating up on some eggs. “Do you get the Times?”

  “Should be on the front porch. I think I heard it hit the door earlier.”

  I stood up, brushing off my behind. He whistled at me, and I flashed him as I walked away. Was it a coincidence that I heard what sounded like six eggs cracking all at once? Or was my ass just that sweet?

  I peeped through the lace curtains on the front door, and did indeed spy the Sunday Times sitting on the welcome mat. Wincing at the sudden guilt that washed over me that I wasn’t at brunch (well played, Ma, I’m ninety miles away), I wrapped a throw blanket around my shoulders and darted outside to snatch it up. Brrrr, it was really cold this morning! Seeing my breath puff all around me as I bent down, I almost didn’t see the basket by the front door, with a red-and-white-checked cloth tucked in and a note addressed to Oscar. Grabbing the basket and the paper, I headed back in.

  “The Times, and something else,” I announced, setting them down on the counter. He looked up from the bacon, saw the basket, and then looked at the newspaper.

  “I get the financial section first,” he said, returning to the bacon.

  “Um, okay,” I said, picking up the basket and dangling it off one finger. “Don’t you want to know what this is?”

  “I know what it is,” he answered, and went back to his bacon. Silence in the kitchen.

  “Shit, I want to know what it is, too!” I said, sitting down on the stool across the island from where he was, looking everywhere but the basket.

  “A hundred bucks says it’s muffins,” he said, nodding for me to go ahead and open up the basket. I lifted up the corner of the red and white checks.

  “They are muffins,” I said, looking back up at him. “What are you, on some kind of muffin delivery?”

  “You could say that. Try one, they’re delicious. Pumpkin is my guess,” he said, nodding me forward.

  “Yeah?” I asked, picking one out and sniffing it. “I’ll be damned, it is pumpkin.” I bit off a corner, then swooned. “Ah mah guh thih ih hayvon.”

  “Told you,” he said with a laugh, flipping the bacon with tongs and impressively stirring a panful of eggs at the same time.

  I chewed, then swallowed. “Sign me up for this delivery; these are the best muffins ever.” I took another monster bite.

  “I’ll tell Missy you liked them,” he said, an amused look on his face.

  I stopped midchew. “Meffy mah dees?” I sprayed pumpkin crumbs everywhere, and didn’t even care. I scrambled back to the basket, opening the note that was pinned to the outside.

  Thanks for everything Friday night, you’re the best.

  Missy

  XOXO

  My mind reeled, rolling back to Friday night. Whoa, wait a minute. He didn’t leave me to go to—

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on a minute here. You left me to go see your ex-wife, and then you knowingly feed me her thanks for the Friday-night fuck muffins? What the hell?” I picked up the note and read it aloud with the most sickeningly sweet voice I could muster. “You’re the best. Come on, why doesn’t she just say, Hey ex-husband, thanks for th
e penis, thanks for visiting my vagina, here’s some fucking awesome muffins?”

  “She bakes me muffins all the time—”

  “Oh, is that what they call it up here?”

  “Is that what they call what up here? What are you talking about?”

  “Well then, what the hell did I do last night: churn your butter? You better not have whipped her cream, or so help me God, I will—”

  “I fixed her hot water heater.”

  I froze. Then blinked. And glared.

  “What the hell kind of sick sex act is that?”

  “Did you smoke crack when you were outside?” he asked, the bacon now smoking and the eggs a curdled mess. Even not directly touching it, I can ruin a meal.

  “Did you or did you not leave me Friday night, after fucking my brains out, because your ex-wife called?”

  “Yes.”

  “And she baked you muffins just for fixing her water heater?”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t buy it.”

  “Her water heater’s been on the fritz for the last year. She doesn’t want to buy a new one unless she has to. So when it goes out, she calls me, I come over, I fix it, and she bakes me muffins as a thank-you.”

  “Oh,” I said, sitting back down on my stool. Oh.

  “What the hell was that about churning my butter?”

  “Never mind. So nothing happened with you and Missy Friday night?”

  “Nope.”

  Shit. “Well, don’t I feel like an asshole.”

  “You should,” he said, lifting the pan of burned bacon and dumping it in the trash. The eggs followed.

  “I’m so sorry,” I said. “I’ll clean the pans. Maybe we can go grab some breakfast in town?”

  He looked at me for a moment, really looking at me. I tried a half smile, which coaxed one from him.

  “You’re a bit loony—you know that, right?” he asked, reaching out and grabbing a handful of pigtail.

  I grinned. “Comes with the territory.”

  We did go into town for breakfast. Tucked into the last empty booth at the coffee shop, we ordered up a big mess of waffles based on the waitress’s recommendation.

  “These are special, the last of the blueberries for the season till next year.”

  “Then that’s what we’re having,” I said, not bothering to open my menu.

  “Done,” Oscar agreed, handing back his menu as well. “And coffee, lots of coffee.”

  “I’m not surprised. The way you two were carrying on at Pat’s last night, you should need some caffeine.” She raised her eyebrows at the two of us, and went off to put our order in.

  “You think the town’s talking about us?” I asked, looking around the busy restaurant. There were definitely some interested looks being thrown our way. And we had been a little ridiculous last night.

  “Do you care?” he asked, leaning across the table and picking up my hand, then kissing it slowly, his lips just barely brushing the backs of my knuckles.

  “Do you?” I breathed, already knowing the answer. Oscar did what he wanted, when he wanted, and really didn’t care what anyone thought.

  His answer was in fact another kiss, leaning across the table and giving me one hell of a lip smack.

  “You’re determined to make us the town topic, aren’t you?”

  “People are gonna say what they want to; I can’t stop that,” he replied, a teasing look in his eye. “Besides, they’re always trying to figure me out. It’s been that way since I moved here; best to keep them guessing.”

  “How long ago was that?” I asked, enjoying the warmth of his hand in mine.

  “Hmm, five years now? Six?”

  “And where were you before that?”

  “Dallas.”

  “Is that where you grew up?”

  “Nope,” he said, chewing on his bottom lip. I noticed he did this when we were talking about something he didn’t really want to. “Cream?” He gestured to the silver pitcher that a busboy had just set down on the table, along with our coffee.

  “Please,” I nodded, tearing open a sugar packet and adding it to my cup. “So you didn’t grow up in Dallas. Where were you before Dallas?”

  “LA.”

  “You lived in LA?” Holy shit, my country boy in Los Angeles was hard to envision.

  “I didn’t live in LA, I just went to school there. I didn’t like Los Angeles much.”

  “What school did you go to?”

  He chewed his bottom lip again. “USC.”

  A lightbulb went off. “You played football there, didn’t you?”

  He nodded. “Full-ride scholarship.”

  I squeezed his hand. “That’s incredible!”

  He squeezed it back, then let go. “It’s not that incredible.” He looked out the window, watching the clouds. “Looks like we might get rain today.”

  “Wait a minute, you went to one of the best colleges in the country on a full-ride scholarship and you say it’s not that incredible?”

  He shrugged. “I come from a football family. We all played, all my brothers.”

  “Did any of them go pro?” I asked. Finally, a reaction on his face. He blushed and smiled sheepishly. “You played pro football?”

  He shrugged once more. “Dallas.”

  My head exploded. “You played for the Dallas Cowboys?” My shriek caused several to look our way, and he winced.

  “Could you not yell, please?” His expression was guarded now, closed off somehow. “Yes, I played pro ball.”

  “How long?”

  He didn’t answer for the longest time. When he did, his voice was quiet, and harder than I’d ever heard it. “Six and a half.”

  “Years?”

  He shook his head. “Games.”

  I remembered our conversation from earlier, all the scars. The broken fingers, the busted elbow, the blown-out—

  “You blew out your knee playing, didn’t you?”

  He sighed, a sigh that seemed to go on and on and carried such a heavy load. “Yes,” he finally said through gritted teeth. And when he met my gaze, those piercing gray-blue eyes were full of so much hurt.

  “Here we are, waffles for everyone!” the waitress chirped cheerfully, setting down two platters of waffles studded with enormous blueberries, pulling a container of syrup out of her apron pocket.

  Oscar nodded his thanks, poured on the syrup, and then started eating. The conversation was over.

  After the quietest breakfast ever, he looked at his watch and swore. “I’m late for practice, want to tag along?”

  “Sure,” I said. I knew he had kids’ football today, I just hadn’t known if I’d be invited along. He paid quickly, and we headed out into the sunshine for a short walk over to where the kids were starting to gather. As we walked he stayed quiet, but he held my hand. That meant something.

  Once there, he deposited me with some of the players’ moms on the bleachers, threw me a woolen blanket he’d grabbed from the truck, kissed me quickly on the forehead, then headed out to his team. I watched as he greeted his players with real joy, the first I’d seen since we’d started talking about something that he clearly didn’t enjoy discussing.

  I watched him tease his players, slapping a few on top of their helmets, chasing a few others, truly in his element. Ignoring the stares I was getting from some of the moms who doubtless enjoyed the view of Oscar each week while their sons played, I pulled out my phone and did the modern-day-dating equivalent of asking around.

  I Googled Oscar Mendoza.

  And in three seconds I had access to everything about him. He grew up in Wisconsin on a dairy farm, the son of a former professional football player and a high school English teacher. Oscar’s entire life seemed to have revolved around football, and he’d been poised to be the next big thin
g ever since he started playing. Originally coached by his father, he then played for a highly competitive secondary school, eventually being selected for All County, All Region, All State, and, his senior year, selected as a High School All American. Sought after by all the major football schools in the nation. Played three years as inside linebacker for USC. Picked third in the second round of the NFL draft by the Dallas Cowboys.

  Taken out of his seventh professional game when he was injured. Spent the next year rehabilitating his knee after surgery for those injuries. His contract was dropped when he failed to regain the speed he’d once had, and his football career was over at twenty-three.

  Oh, Oscar.

  I stopped reading and watched him coach his team the rest of that morning, not wanting to know the rest of his story until he was ready to tell me. When practice was over, I walked out to him on the improvised field in the middle of the town square, a million miles away from where I’m sure he intended to end up but seemingly happy. He looked up from his clipboard with a genuine smile, also seeming happy that I was here, with him, in his world. As soon as I could, I wrapped my arms around him and kissed him. Just once, soft and sweet. And when he kissed me back, he lifted me against him, his arms so tight around my waist, the autumn sun dancing around us, and I felt very happy to be here with him.

  When we got back to the truck, he threw his gear inside and looked at me expectantly. “Feel up for a walk?”

  “Sure,” I said, letting him slide his long arm around my shoulder and tuck me into his side. We headed down Main Street, turning right on Elm, and walked with what seemed no real direction, no real hurry. Just walking. We went right again on Maple, right on Oak, then finally right once more on Main, having walked all around the town square. He started talking when we made the next turn onto Elm.

  “Football was everything in my family—you should know that first.”

  I exhaled, relieved that he was trusting me enough to tell me his story, and pleased that he wanted to. I tightened my hold on his waist, my hand resting along his hip under his jacket, warm and cozy.

  “Football. Got it.” I nodded and looked up at him. The sunlight was encircling his head a bit like a halo.