Page 12 of First Love, Second Draft

Buck smiled like a student trying to please his teacher. “I finished my prune juice first thing this morning, ma’am.”

Her left brow slanted upward. “And you?”

It took Matt a moment to realize she was talking to him. He pointed at his chest. “Me? Drink prune juice?”

She hit him with a frosty glare, waiting for some sort of response.

“I uh... no. I mean, I don’t need... Do I? I don’t think I do. Maybe I do? I mean, sure. I guess I could drink some.”

Her lips twitched, her frosty glare thawing, the same moment Buck and Shorty burst into laughter. Matt’s face flushed with heat. “Okay. I see what’s going on here. Wow. Funny. You guys are a bunch of Jerry Seinfelds, aren’t you?”

The smile on Wanda’s face transitioned all the hard angles out of it. “We have to have some sort of fun, don’t we, boys?” She winked and left the room with a promise to check back in an hour.

When all the chuckles had died down, Buck told Matt to take a seat. As expected, he asked about Gracie. Even though Gracie called Buck every day and assured him she was healing and would be back to visiting soon, Buck wanted a full scouting report on her reaction to Noah’s arrival.

When Matt told Buck yesterday that Noah was moving into the rental on Gracie’s property, Buck had gone into such a coughing fit, Matt thought for a moment he’d killed him with the news. Turns out, he was just laughing. “So how did it go? Did she look happy at all to see him?”

“Happy? Uh, well...” Matt tugged on the brim of his baseball hat. “You know, I think maybe beneath all the sweat and anguish, there was a glimmer of happiness, yeah.”

“And you?” Buck asked when they’d finished talking about Gracie and Noah. “What’s going on with you?”

“Oh, you know. Not much now that mowing season’s over. Doing some odd jobs here and there. Volunteering at the animal shelter. Just trying to stay busy until snow removal season kicks in.”

“Uh-huh. And what about your love life?”

Matt almost wished for a mouthful of prune juice right now so he could spray it all over his grandpa for asking such a silly question. Would’ve been more fun than merely raising his eyebrows and saying, “Excuse me?”

“Have to say I was mighty surprised when Mona let the cat out of the bag that you were engaged. The girl only moved back to town, what? A week or two ago?”

“I keep telling Mom we’re not... Wait. Moved back to town? What are you talking about?Whoare you talking about?” Matt removed the worn baseball cap Noah had given him in high school, rotating the brim of it around in his hands. Surely he wasn’t talking about—

“Rachel. Who else?”

Matt jumped to his feet. Too bad there was nowhere to move in a tiny patient room with two beds. So he sat back down. “Rachel? Rachel’s not... Why would you think... She doesn’t live... No. Is she?” Matt cleared his throat. “Are you saying Rachel’s back in town?”

Buck was coughing and laughing and coughing some more, clearly amused at Matt’s rambling.

Was it too late to find that can of prune juice?

Buck finally settled down enough after several more coughing laughs to say, “She took some sort of temporary position upstairs on the dialysis unit since half of the department is out on maternity leave. Who’d you think I was talking about?”

“Aimee.”

“Aimee.” This time his laugh was more wheeze than cough. “Why would I be talking about Aimee? I thought you broke up with Aimee.”

“I did break up with Aimee.”

“Then why are we talking about Aimee?” Buck made a face like he’d just bitten into that pureed meatloaf slathered in sanitizer. “Good night, I saw more spark between a dead fish and a limp worm than I ever saw between you andAimee.”

“Aw c’mon, that’s not true. Aimee’s a sweet girl. Besides...” Matt stood, really wishing he could do more than march in place to burnoff some energy. He sat back down. “Sometimes too much spark can lead to an explosion. Look at Noah and Aunt Gracie. Sometimes it’s smarter to date a dead fish. Not that Aimee was a dead fish. Or I’m a limp worm. That’s not—” He shoved his hat on his head. “Just because Aimee and I broke up doesn’t mean something’s going to happen between me and Rachel.”

“Really? As I recall, you two used to be awful chummy. Some might even say...sparky.”

Time to go. Matt stood. “You got it all wrong, old man. I mean yeah, we were friends. Good friends.” Some might even say best friends. “But not sparky. Nowhere even close to sparky. And that was a long time ago. That was, you know, back in high school.”

“Ah. Well then. Practically a lifetime ago,” Buck said. “What’s it been? Three, four years?”

“Closer to five.”

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