Page 9 of Trick or Tease

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.