Free Tumbleweeds by Leila Meacham

memory.
Wolf Man’s word!
Trey had forgotten it, but John had remembered. Now he understood the man’s meaning. But… John not in the equation? Hell no, that wasn’t what he meant at all! John was his buddy. He was like the stake his aunt tied her tomato plants to—not that he felt he couldn’t stand on his own, but John was his support system, even when half the time they were at odds over something.
    “That came out wrong,” he’d protested. “I mean that I want her to go steady with me in a different way. You know, wear my letter jacket. We’ll hang out like we always have—you and me and Catherine Ann—but she’ll be my girl and your friend. That is okay with you, isn’t it? You love her like a brother, but I love her like… a girl. You do think of her like a sister, don’t you?”
    “Sure I do,” John had said. “Cathy’s… the sunshine in my day.” He’d punched his shoulder in a brotherly way. “You’re the dark cloud.”
    He’d grinned back. “I knew it’d be all right with you, but I wanted to make sure. Catherine Ann loves you, too, you know—just in a different way.”
    “I know, TD.”
    He’d asked her Saturday night in front of Miss Emma’s after they’d dropped John off at his house. They were sitting in Trey’s new Mustang that Aunt Mabel had bought him for his birthday. “Catherine Ann, I want to ask you something,” he’d said.
    She’d turned her blue eyes on him. “Okay.”
    “Uh…” He’d had to swallow, hoping she wouldn’t notice. “I don’t know exactly how to say this.”
    “Say what?”
    “Say how I feel about you.”
    “I know how you feel about me.”
    “No, no, I don’t mean like—like you’re thinking.” Hot with embarrassment under her steady blue gaze, he wished he hadn’t brought upthe subject until he was sure she felt the same way about him. They’d never even held hands, let alone kissed! She liked him, he was sure of that, but did she
need
him like he needed her? She was so… so
independent
!
    “That is,” he said, “I want… you to go with me and… only me, like in… go steady, but only if you want to, Catherine Ann. I don’t want to… ruin anything between us.”
    She’d smiled and shocked the bejesus out of him by scooting closer to him and wrapping her arms around his neck. They were soft and fragrant as flower petals, and her face was like an angel’s, framed by hair so blond and silky, he could have melted in it. She’d stared straight into his eyes. “I already am going steady with you,” she said softly. “Didn’t you notice?” She had the look she sometimes got when she pointed out the answer to a calculus problem staring him and John in the face.
    His reply had stuck at the back of his throat, but he found his arms going around her, and, small as she was, her body filled them as if it had been made for them. “I’m… afraid I didn’t,” he said, sounding as if he had a bad case of laryngitis.
    “Now that you have, don’t you think you ought to kiss me?”
    “I… would really like that,” he said, and when he pressed her lips it was like dissolving into the deliciousness of a chocolate cake.
    And that was that. As easily as his boat’s sails catching the wind, they were under way, and he felt no sadness at all.
    He pulled on his helmet behind the players grouped around Coach Turner in the locker room. Usually he sat with John at the front to hear Coach’s last instructions before heading for the field and he never put on his headgear until he trotted out to the huddle, but he couldn’t risk one of the coaching staff noticing his jaws. Only Cathy knew he wasn’t quite up to par, but he’d made her swear she wouldn’t tell his aunt or John. He’d ride this out on his own until spring practice was over.
    F ROM WHERE SHE SAT WITH Rufus near the top row of the bleachers, Cathy looked down in concern on the field where Trey and John were practicing their pass and catch routine. “You never throw