Free Evenfall by Liz Michalski Page A

Cort’s feet and rolls over, legs waving in the air.
    “Jesus.” Andie takes a deep breath. Her heart is pounding, and droplets of creek water dot her shirt and her hair. “That damn dog.”
    “She’s something else.” He glances up at the sky. “Shit. It’s getting late—I need to head back and help dad feed.”
    He stands and extends his hand, but Andie ignores it. She’s embarrassed enough by their almost-kiss that she prefers to scramble to her feet on her own. Cort doesn’t seem to mind. He picks up the four empty beer bottles, holds back a sapling at the beginning of the trail, and lets her go ahead of him. All the way home she can hear him whistlingbehind her as she tells herself how crazy this is. He’s not a minor, exactly, but with ten years separating them, he might as well be.
    By the time they reach the clearing, she’s decided their almost-kiss was a temporary lapse in judgment brought on by the beer, the heat, and possibly the fact that she’s miles away and on a different continent from the last man in her life. She’s calm enough to face Cort when he strides up beside her, and ready to let him down gently.
    “Frank never kept cows, did he?”
    “Cows?” She covers her confusion by pretending to rack her memory. “Nope, I don’t think so. He did have one old milk cow when I was a kid, but that’s it.”
    “I bet this field would be great pastureland. Look at the stone walls.” He points, and behind the scrub trees that surround the clearing Andie can just make out the faint outlines of rock. “Somebody must have used it for that.”
    “I know Uncle Frank’s father kept animals. I’ve seen pictures.”
    He stops and looks around the field. “You ought to clear those wild roses. They can take over a pasture so quick that before you know it there’s no room for anything else.”
    “I kind of like them,” Andie says. She doesn’t stop walking. “And besides, in a few months it won’t matter.”
    They don’t speak again until they reach the house. Nina, who took her own path home from the creek, has re-appeared, and Cort bends down to scratch behind her ears. Immediately, she flops over on her side, pink tongue hanging out.
    Andie, standing on the front steps, can’t help herself. “Do you always have that effect on females?”
    “Only the four-legged ones.” He straightens up and walks over to her, leaning against the door frame. “Prove me wrong—have dinner with me Friday night.”
    “Thanks, Cort, but I don’t think so.” Andie turns to go inside, but he puts a hand out to block her.
    “Why not? You have to eat. And dinner with me can’t be worse than Gert’s cooking, can it?” He runs his fingers through his hair until it stands up in little spikes. He looks so woeful Andie can’t help but laugh.
    “You used to make that face whenever it was time to go to bed,” she says, and immediately wishes she hadn’t.
    Cort, to his credit, doesn’t go for the easy line, just arches an eyebrow. “You always let me stay up later, so it must have worked.”
    Andie doesn’t tell him she simply didn’t want to stay up alone. She remembers sitting with Cort on his parents’ brown, scratchy sofa, watching late-night reruns of
The Rockford Files
and eating popcorn from the aluminum mixing bowl between them. No matter how hard he tried, Cort could never stay awake past eleven. He’d stop asking questions, his breathing would slow, and the next time she looked over, he’d be sleeping, his head propped up against the sofa’s high back. His favorite pajamas had green and blue trucks on them, and by age eight he’d worn them so often the cuffs were starting to unravel. His wrist bones showed above the threads, impossibly thin and fragile for a boy.
    “You were just good company,” Andie says.
    “I still am.”
    When she hesitates, he touches her lightly on the shoulder. “Look, Andie, I promise to respect your status as former babysitter, okay? It’s just dinner—no