Raleigh & Ezra
CHAPTER 1
Women my age are supposed to be able to look suave and sophisticated while walking in heels. Me? I manage to trip over thin air.
-Raleigh’s inner thoughts
RALEIGH
If there was one thing in this world that I never wanted to do, it was embarrassing myself in front of him.
Ezra McDuff, the town bad boy, high school football and baseball coach. was everything I was not.
Suave. Cool. Coordinated.
Then there was me.
My name conjured fear in the hearts of all residents of Gun Barrel, Texas.
Why, you ask, would an innocent woman like me, the woman that every single kid in town screamed a hello to because she was the ‘best teacher ever,’ strike that kind of fear?
That’d be because I, Raleigh Jolie Crusie, was the clumsiest person in four counties.
And normally when I went down, I took people with me.
For instance, moments before, I’d been walking.
Sure, I’d been looking down at my phone because I was reading…but that’s beside the point.
Who the hell put clearance Christmas shit in the middle of a godforsaken aisle?
Target, that’s who.
There I was, walking and minding my own business while I caught up on my latest read, and the next thing that I know, I ran into a large box of wrapping paper.
And when I say ‘large,’ I mean large.
There wasn’t just one box, either.
There were multiple boxes.
Fifteen, in fact.
But, I’d walked past four such boxes before I’d tripped on thin air—like always—and took a header to the left.
I managed to cradle my phone to my chest and tuck and roll, but that also made me into a human bowling ball.
I took down not one, not two, not nine, but eleven boxes jam-packed with wrapping paper.
And every last roll of wrapping paper fell out of the boxes and started rolling in every which direction.
Meaning that not only did it get me, but it got four other people in the process.
Jennifer Marie, the beauty consultant at Ulta that was here getting a coffee. Brian McAdams, the young sales clerk that I’d taught three years ago and was now an assistant manager in this fine establishment. Larry Conway, the electrician. And finally, Ezra freakin’ McDuff.
Though, Ezra didn’t exactly go down like the rest of the people did.
He only tripped on one and dropped what looked like an armful of undershirts and underwear.
Boxer briefs.
Boxer briefs that landed directly next to my face.
But apparently, clothing hadn’t been the only thing Ezra had been holding.
He was holding a box of condoms, too.
Why do I know that particular detail?
Because the box smacked me in the face, and, like the loser my nose was, it started to bleed.
He made me bleed by dropping a box of condoms. On. My. Nose.
Dear sweet baby Jesus on a cracker.
I grumbled and held onto my nose as I felt the blood start to pour out.
The only good thing I could say about it was that it was one of those value sized packs, not just the small ones that had like twelve condoms in it…not that I would know. I’d never bought condoms before, so who knew? Maybe the value size was really the smaller package.
The closest I’d ever gotten to the condoms was when I was buying tampons, and even then, they were still half an aisle away from the offending pieces of latex.
I wailed and rolled onto my hands and knees.
Instead of waiting around for cleanup, and knowing what a bleeder I was, I started to make a mad dash toward the bathroom where I could find something to hold over my nose.
The first thing I came to once I was inside were the paper towels.
I moaned as I covered my nose with a handful of towels, cursing the stupid machine when it only spit out a small square of paper at a time.
God.
Anybody. Anybody in the freakin’ world could’ve hit me in the nose with those condoms, and I would’ve been okay. Anybody but Ezra McDuff.
Shit.
Shit. Shit. Shit.
I panted into the paper and rested my head against the cool, white-tiled wall beside the dispenser.
Then I counted to one hundred, hoping that would help.
It didn’t.
But what it did do was give my nose enough time to stop bleeding.
I reached for my phone, thinking now would be a perfect time to call my best friend, Camryn, and tell her about my humiliation.
But…it wasn’t there.
I closed my eyes and realized what had happened.
When those condoms had hit me in the face, I’d dropped my phone to immediately raise my hands to my nose. And in doing so, had left my phone wherever it happened to be when my hand had discarded it.
Garnering the courage, I walked to the door and pushed.
When I opened the door, bloody paper towel still in my hand in case it started to bleed again, it was to find the best backside in Gun Barrel, Texas blocking the door.
“Uhhh,” I hesitated. “’Scuse me.”
Ezra turned around, saw my face, and blanched.
“Are you okay?”
He was looking at me like he’d never seen me before.
To be perfectly honest, he probably hadn’t.
I wasn’t exactly in Ezra McDuff’s social circle.
I was more like that quiet girl in the corner at a party, while Ezra was the town hero and star quarterback all rolled into one.
The sad thing was, we worked at the same damn place. We probably passed each other in the halls half a dozen times every school day, if not more.
He was also staring right at me, and I was finding it hard to breathe.
I’d dreamed of this day so many times.
So. Many. Times.
In high school I used to sit behind him, studying his every move.
When I’d been a junior, and he’d been a senior, we had our first class together.
My last name started with a C, and his with an M. But, since he couldn’t sit in the back thanks to some rule that the coach of the football team at the time had made, he’d had to move to the front, and I’d been pushed back a chair.
And, by doing so, I’d gotten to see his every single feature for an entire year.
Which had been how my infatuation with the man had begun.
At first, it’d only been my appreciation of his body.
He was six-foot-four, muscled, and strapping.
He was also funny, intelligent, and sweet.
He was a caregiver. He was a nurturer. And he also had no clue that I was alive, even then.
Now, he’d grown up quite a bit from that boy that I used to obsess over, but he was still no less captivating.
Today, he was in a simple pair of jeans—covered in dirt and grime from whatever he was doing—probably working on his old truck that he got in high school, and still drove on Sundays to this day.
His white t-shirt was stained, too.
And he had grease on his cheekbone.
His dirty blond hair was longer than normal, and some of it fell into his eyes. Those eyes that were a mix between a golden honey and a seafoam green.
At times, I wasn’t able to tell which color was more prevalent, but I’d decided long ago that it was dependent on the color of shirt he was wearing at the time.
I swallowed when I got a load of the newest tattoo that peeked out from under his shirt sleeve.
It looked like a sugar skull, but honestly, I wasn’t really sure without actually pulling his shirt sleeve up and looking. And that was creepy. I tried not to be creepy.