Chapter 3

Jenny was bored silly. She’d read all the books she’d brought and it would be a few more days before she would get the new ones her Mom promised to send. There was no computer and the television only picked up three stations--one of them the local Public Access channel that was filled with religious zealots and wanna-be country and western singers.

The nearest telephone was at the main house and her dad had thrown a fit the two times she’d asked to be allowed to call Brock. Plus she’d have to ride one of those damned horses the three miles from the cabin to the main house.

So she let her imagination run wild. She had already determined she wanted to move her relationship with Brock forward. He seemed like the perfect boy for her. He could hold his own with her in a conversation about anything and he was content to allow her enough personal space to do things she wanted to do alone.

It was so nice that she could sit beside him on her couch while reading a book and he didn’t feel the need to be entertained or entertaining. He was just content to be beside her. She had wondered if she’d ever find that in a boy.

Contrary to her mother’s beliefs, Jenny was not uninterested in boys. In fact she was very interested--sometimes they were all she thought about. She’d had a crush on Wes Mansfield since fifth grade. Wes was the star midfielder on the soccer team and he was the star of Jenny’s nightly fantasies. Or at least he was until the quiet boy next door took center stage.

Now Brock’s was the face Jenny dreamed of at night. Well, most nights anyway. Sometimes Wes sneaked back into her mind. But Wes was just that--a dream. He didn’t even know she existed. All last year he’d sat beside her in Algebra and at the end of the year he called her “Jamie.”

She’d been crushed. Brock knew her name, that’s for sure. The kiss they had shared that night after the movie had sent jolts of electricity to all of Jenny’s interesting spots. But that’s as far as Brock had gone--kissing.

He hadn’t tried to touch her breasts. He hadn’t put his hand on her butt. Hell, they hadn’t even French kissed until she had taken the initiative and slipped her tongue into his mouth. That was the night before she had to come to this god-forsaken place.

It was an absolute shame that Brock had been alone in his house the whole summer and she’d been 400 miles away smelling horse shit. But every night, in her dreams, she paid a visit to the house next door as soon as her mother had left for work. And in her dreams she and Brock had gone a hell of lot farther than kissing and holding hands.

Now if only she could figure out a way--short of showing up naked at his house--to turn things into reality when she returned home.

Melanie started to college earlier than high school started and she returned home a week before Labor Day. She and Brock had spent little time together during her brief summer stay in Corbly but she seemed eager to get to know him when she returned from her father’s. In fact, she’d be waiting for him on his porch every night when he got home from practice.

“Jen about had a cow when she found out you were playing football,” Mel told him the first night. “She didn’t even realize you liked football. Then when you wrote to her and told her you were going to be the starting quarterback she couldn’t believe it.”

The first month of Jenny’s visit to Wyoming she and Brock had written to each other almost every day. By the time football season started the letters’ frequency dropped to two or three times a week and Brock had written and received only one letter per week since practice had started.

“How many times can I write to tell you I didn’t do anything,” Jenny had written in one of the last daily letters. “I hate it here. There’s hardly anything to do and I don’t like to do the things there are to do. I miss you and I think of you all the time.”

From that point on she would write if she had something interesting to tell Brock--but even her weekly letters were filled with how much she wished she were home.

“So, did you play football at your old school or is the team just that terrible this year?” Mel asked with a smirk. “I mean the team only won a couple of games last year and now you show up and you’re the quarterback. It sounds like it’s going to be a long season again.”

Brock shrugged.

“I played when I was a freshman,” he replied. “There was no team for me to play for last year. I think the team will surprise some people.”

Brock had played against a school from his new conference as a freshman in a playoff game. That team was pretty good but he thought Corbly was probably better this year than the team he’d faced. Truly, the team compared favorably with Lafayette when it won the district title two years before.

“You should come to the game Friday night before you head back,” Brock told her. “I think your Mom is coming. She said last week she wasn’t sure if you’d be leaving for school on Friday or Saturday. It’s a shame Jen won’t be back until Sunday.”

Mel smiled.

“She was trying her damnedest to get Dad to let her come back early,” she said. “But it was no go. He told her that he only saw her for two months a year and he was going to keep her every day the court said he was allowed to. That didn’t make her too happy--not that you could tell much difference.”

“I offered to pick her up at the airport Sunday but your Mom vetoed that idea,” Brock said with a laugh. “I think she’s afraid we’ll run off to Vegas or something.”

Mel shot a knowing look at Brock.

“Jenny might just want to,” she said. “I got so sick of hearing your name that I’d walk away from her every time she started to talk about you. And believe me, she talked about you often.”

Brock felt a little guilty. His role as quarterback had brought newfound people into his life--including a couple of girls who had expressed not-so-subtle interest in him. But at least he’d always deferred, telling each girl who had asked him to a party or to the movies that he had a girlfriend.

He’d only realized the depths of Jenny’s anonymity when barely a handful of people he’d met even recognized her name. He’d wished he’d never gone out for football because a hidden existence was all he longed for. But he couldn’t complain. Being back on the football field brought him a lot of happiness--an emotion he was sure at one point he’d never experience again.

Mel did stick around for Friday’s game and she and Leslie were witness to one of the greatest opening game performances in Corbly High School history. The Conquistadors--an homage to the town’s Spanish roots, Brock guessed--had played a team they hadn’t defeated in almost 10 years. And Corbly beat them handily.

The town was abuzz about the football team and the new quarterback that no one knew anything about Saturday morning when Mel and Leslie stopped for coffee on their way back to Langley.

It occurred to Mel that he’d been her mother’s neighbor for almost three months and she knew nothing more about Brock than the rest of the town.

“I’ve asked him about his past,” her mother had told her. “And he flat out told me it was none of my business. I tried to get a friend’s husband to run a background check on him but he told me it was useless. Since he’s 16 there would be no way to get information even if I had his Social Security number. But I’ve spent a lot of time with him while you two were away and he seems nice.”

Mel agreed. “But there’s still something about him that strikes me funny,” she said. “Or maybe he’s just a typical teenage boy and he sees the air of mystery as a benefit. Judging from the conversations from a few of the girls in coffee shop, Jenny better get home soon. Some of those girls are a little too eager to learn more about Brock.”

Leslie wondered silently how eager her own younger daughter might be to learn more, too.

Brock and Jenny enjoyed a quiet homecoming upon her return. He had greeted her with a warm hug but she’d been the one to grab his jaw and plant a kiss firmly on his lips. The duo spent most of Sunday and all of Labor Day together--in public, much to Jenny’s chagrin. Even after two months apart she couldn’t convince Brock to try to sneak her into his house.