Page 44 of How to Kiss a Hawthorne Brother
I follow him gladly, uncertain if I’m lured more by the delicious smell of tacos or by the look of him in his shorts andpolo shirt. Sunglasses are hooked over the collar of his shirt in a way that makes him look effortlessly cool.
“When did you stop wearing glasses?” I ask as I slip into one of the metal chairs that surround the kitchen table.
He slides a white Styrofoam container toward me. “I still wear them sometimes. For close work. When I’m at school, mostly. But I don’t need them for everything like I used to.”
“Oh, that’s right. The Captain America super serum would have fixed your eyesight.”
He drops into the chair across from me. “Very funny.”
I smirk. It will never not be fun to tease Brody about his new physique. Especially now that I’ve seen so much of it. Not that I’m spending any time at all remembering Brody’s physique.
And by any time at all what I really mean is always.Allthe time.
Except, that’s not entirely true. I’m not only thinking about his body, beautiful though it is. I’m also thinking about how good it feels to be around him. How much I look forward to seeing him when we aren’t together. I haven’t even been back in Silver Creek three weeks, and he’s almost always on my mind.
I knew I’d want to see him.
I didn’t expect to want to see himall the time.In the six days I waited for him to get off the trail, I must have walked up and down the road twenty times wondering which house was his, anticipating the moment I would see him again.
It was just dumb luck that when I did happen to see him again, all he was wearing was a towel.
I lift the lid of my to-go container to reveal the most beautiful tacos I have ever seen. I breathe out a sigh. “I love tacos so much.”
“I know you do. You’ve never had these though. There’s a stand next to the river school—I swear in the summer I eat there at least three times a week—and they’re better than anythingI’ve had anywhere else.” He pauses, his hands hovering over his tacos. “Try one. I want to know what you think.”
It only takes one bite to decide these are the best tacos I’ve ever had. And I have eaten a lot of tacos in a lot of different countries.
“Oh my word,” I say in between bites. “How do they make these? What do they do differently?”
Brody grins. “I’ve been trying to figure out the same thing. I think it has something to do with how they season the meat, but they won’t tell me. I’ve even taken Lennox, hoping he could figure it out, but he’s stumped too.”
“They’re really similar to tacos I had in Mexico City.” I take another huge bite. “Seriously. These are fantastic.”
“And you can get them right here in Silver Creek.”
I look up to see Brody’s gaze fixed on me.
“Small towns aren’t all bad, right?” he says as he lifts up his taco as if offering a toast. “Sometimes they have tacos.”
His comment is so pointed, I have to wonder if he means anything by it. Is he trying to sell me on small towns? I take another bite. It’s working. Few things woo me quite as well as an exceptional taco.
“Tell me what you’ve found,” he says. “Unearthed any family secrets?”
“My mother was right about my grandmother’s addiction to the home shopping network. Are you interested in an eighteen-inch dancing Santa Claus? He singsRockin’ Around the Christmas Treeand everything.”
“Man. My Santa collection is already full. But thanks for thinking of me.”
I grin and put down my taco so I can reach for my laptop. “Actually, there’s something else I want to ask you.” I open the laptop and navigate to the YouTube channel I had playing the entire time I was eating breakfast this morning. I press play—I’ve already got the video cued up to a certain spot—and turn the laptop around so Brody can see. “Is this you?”
He leans forward and slowly starts to nod. “That’s last year’s race.”
The video is twenty minutes of racing kayakers making their way through Gorilla—a section of Class V rapids in a part of the Green River known as the narrows. The river drops one hundred and seventy-six feet per mile through the narrows, eighteen of which happen in Gorilla. The channels of frothing whitewater, steep descents, and massive boulders look like an actual death wish to me, but what do I know?
That I won’t ever kayak the narrows. That’s what I know. With utter and absolute certainty.
I’ve been watching videos about the race all morning, my shock that this is something Brody participates in growing by the second.
In the video, most of the racers are upside down in their boats by the time they reach the bottom of Gorilla. Even though I’ve watched it more than once, and I know they always roll back up, I still hold my breath when Brody’s boat tips downward and the whitewater swallows him up. But then he emerges, paddle propelling him out of the swirling water at the base of the falls.
