A Date with a Turkey Read online

  “I don’t think my story is going to end up like yours, Jeremy. I didn’t have many friends in school, and I was made fun of for being homely and plain.”

  Jeremy bursts out laughing. “Well, you’re not like that now. You’re edgy and full of fire. There’s not a guy in this town that would pass up the chance to go on a date with you.”

  He parks the ambulance, and I smile at him. “Thanks, Jeremy. I appreciate it.”

  “You’re welcome.” He opens his door and waves me out. “Now come on, we got work to do.” We get out, and he sets up the canopy while I drag out a couple of our medical bags. Over the years I’ve attended the festival, there’s never been a time when paramedics were needed. I look around at all the different booths of various foods, crafts, and treats, and there are people everywhere. The festival has grown a lot over the years.

  “Good afternoon, everyone.” The voice comes from a man at the podium in the center of the park. He waves at the crowd and smiles as everyone gathers around. “I’m Mayor Jim Hayes. The Turkey Trot is going to start in five minutes. Would all the runners please get into position at the starting gate.”

  I’m curious to see who all is competing. When I was younger, I wanted to run it but was always too shy to do it. I hate it took me so long to break out of my shell. Jeremy stands with me and scans the lineup.

  “Nice. I bet you’ll recognize a couple of the racers. You graduated with at least one of them.”

  The sun peeks out from behind the clouds, making it hard to see, but I get a good look at the contestants as soon as it disappears again. Jeremy is right. I do recognize one of the racers. He’s none other than Kyler Groff, star quarterback in high school who never gave me a second glance. I wasn’t in the cool crowd like he was. I was one of the people he and his friends would make fun of. I couldn’t wait to graduate just to get away from them all. And, of course, time has been good to him. He looks the same as he did in high school, only now there’s a little bit of gray in his light brown hair. I’m too far away to see the color of his eyes, but I know they’ll still be the same hypnotic blue as before. All the girls used to go crazy over him.

  At that moment, it’s as if Kyler can hear my thoughts. He turns his head my way, and our eyes connect. He smiles at me like he used to at all the girls in school. Sorry, buddy, but that’s not going to work on me. “Oh yeah, I recognize golden boy,” I say, making sure Kyler can see I’m nowhere near interested. I stare back at him, unamused by his flirtatious grin. I hope he breaks his leg.

  The mayor clears his throat. “You have five seconds. Five. Four. Three. Two. One!” The race is on.

  2

  Kyler

  Finally, the Turkey Trot is here. I have trained all year for this event, and I fully intend to be the first one to cross the finish line. Okay, all year is a slight exaggeration, but ever since the gym next to my office opened, I’ve been going at least three times a week with this race in mind. Back in the day, I was a star athlete who could run circles around my competition. I was the same in college, but adulthood is taking its toll, and I’m determined to strengthen my core and get my physique back. My trainer tells me I need different goals, though, because looking I did in high school and college is probably a reach. I’m going to prove him wrong.

  Mayor Jim Hayes tells everyone to get to the starting line. I’ve been standing here for about twenty minutes, stretching my arms and legs, and jumping up and down to keep them warm. I adjust the headband I wore for all my football games and track meets. It has never failed me, and I doubt it’ll let me down now.

  “Please tell me you’ve washed that thing on your head,” Teddy Pierce says as he stands next to me. His eyes are focused on my headband, and there’s a look of disgust on his face.

  “Of course,” I say, although I’m questioning myself. I think my mom washed it, but maybe she didn’t. That could explain the odd odor I smell and thought was coming from the chicken curry booth.

  Crap.

  Oh well, not like I can do anything about it now. It’s my good luck charm, and I’m superstitious.

  “My God, what is that smell?”

  I glance to my right to find Dotty Lovell with her nose scrunched. She’s waving her hand back and forth in front of her face, and I think her eyes are watering.

  “Dude, it’s you,” Teddy leans in and says too loudly for others to hear.

  Now that all the attention is on me, I have no choice but to remove my headband. I grab the cloth from the back of my head and slowly let it fall in front of my face. When it’s in reach of my nose, I inhale deeply and gag.

  “Shit, this is the most putrid thing I have ever smelled.”

  Teddy slaps me on my shoulder and says, “Clearly, you never smelled yourself on the football field, Kyler. You stunk the place up back in high school.”

  I push Teddy away and throw my headband at him. “You’re just jealous because I kicked your ass every year.” Teddy is from a rival high school but lives in Plymouth now. The only time he’s beaten me at anything was my freshman year, in a track meet. He crossed the finish line first in a 400m race. It was a photo finish, and he’s never let it go since.

  While in the act of pushing Teddy away, I happen to lock eyes with the newest EMT in town. She was the shiny new toy among the locals when she first arrived. As soon as word spread that she had grown up in Plymouth, the hype of her arrival died down. I’ll admit, it took me a few weeks to realize we had gone to school together. I even pulled out my old yearbooks and looked her up because I couldn’t remember her. I still can’t, really. Everything I read says we were in the same class, but I would’ve remembered a beauty like her.

  Over the past few months, I’ve waited for her to come into the bank so I could put myself in her path, but she never does, and it’s not like I can walk into the fire station without cause. The chief and every other firefighter and EMT would wonder what I’m doing there. “Oh, hey, yeah, I’m here to flirt with your newest member,” would not go over very well. There’s a brother/sisterhood in the station, and I’m guessing they protect each other from unwanted advances. At least, this is how I am at the bank. I don’t appreciate people hitting on my staff while they’re working. There’s a time and place for romance, like the Turkey Festival. After I win the race, I’ll happily stop by her booth and show her my prize.

  Finally, the mayor starts his countdown. I give my arms and legs a good shake and then ready myself. I’ve trained for this race, running miles upon miles on the treadmill. I’m ready.

  The shotgun fires and I’m off. People bump into me, crowding my space. I pump my arms and my legs. Inhale and exhale. I do everything I’ve trained for. Up ahead, I see Teddy and wonder when he passed me.

  “Shit,” I mutter as I continue to run along the pavement. My muscles burn. My shins ache. I shouldn’t feel like this; I’m in shape. There’s a twinge in my knee, almost like a pinch.

  I ignore it. It’s nothing, I tell myself. Just runner’s knee. Everyone gets it. It’s common. I continue to run, staying with a small pack of people who are around me. We head for the turn or, as the racecourse map called it, the bend in the road. It’s a corner, plain and simple. Someone sprints by us, taking the inside like they are Usain Bolt. Doesn’t he know this is a marathon and not a sprint?

  I make the mistake of turning my head to look behind me. I don’t know why I do this. Maybe it’s my ego of needing to be the best, or perhaps it’s because I want to know who’s behind me. Either way, I shouldn’t have done it.

  My knee twists and something pops.

  By the time I realize what is happening, it’s too late to stop my body from falling forward. My hands reach out for the guy in front of me, but he’s too fast in his gait to help me break my fall. My arms flail about, and a string of cuss words emit from my mouth as my feet stutter to try and stop myself from face planting onto the pavement.

  As soon as my knee hits the surface of the road, I roll. I learned this in football and used it to av
oid an onslaught by a defensive back coming to tackle me. Although, most times, they held onto you to break their fall. However, no one is here to take me down to the ground, and I’m not wearing my pads.

  Or my lucky headband, for that matter.

  The stinging of my knee scraping against the road causes me to cry out. Rocks are poking my ass, but I’m in no shape to worry about those right now. Runners race past me, not giving a shit that their local bank manager is on the ground, injured, and in pain. They’re much like me; they race to win. I try to stand, but the pain is excruciating, and I collapse onto the ground and clutch my knee.

  Once every racer has passed by, I see a volunteer coming toward me with a wheelchair. Great, if this wasn’t already embarrassing enough, now I’ll be on display for all to gawk at until I get to the medic tent.

  The medic tent.

  “Can you stand, sir?”

  I shake my head and hold my hand out. The young kid hooks his thumb with mine, grips my wrist, and heaves my ass up. His friend holds onto the chair and keeps it steady as I sit down. My savior props my leg up and surmises that I have a “nasty gash” on my knee cap. I don’t bother telling him that I think I tore my ACL. I’ll leave that diagnosis to the cute medic. This must be a sign, albeit one that hurts like a son-of-a-bitch.

  “Hey Maeve, I have a live one for ya,” the young kid says when we arrive at the booth. She looks at me quickly and then smiles at the boy.

  “Put him on the table.”

  He and his friend do as they are told and lift me with little to no effort. I try to fight them off, thinking I can do it myself, but they don’t move away. After they set me down, Maeve thanks them, and they leave with their wheelchair.

  “Hey, Maeve,” I say, breaking the ice.

  She ignores my greeting as she slips her gloves on. “Took a fall, I see.” Her thumbs press into the area around my cut, and I hiss. “Does that hurt?” she asks, keeping her eyes on my wound.

  “Yeah, a little bit,” I lie, needing to keep up my bravado.

  Maeve goes to her big black bag and rummages through until her hand is full of medical supplies. “Can you lay down?” she asks, once again avoiding eye contact. “Make sure your injured leg is close to the edge.” She returns the table and examines my leg once more. I can’t take my eyes off her. It’s not because I’m fascinated by what she’s doing, but because she’s so damn beautiful.

  “So, where’d you go after graduation?” I ask, figuring this is a great opening line.

  Instead of answering, she pours something onto my leg, which makes me groan out in pain.

  “This might sting a bit.”

  Now she tells me.

  “Hold still, please,” she says as she shows me the longest set of tweezers I have ever seen.

  Holy shit.

  “Um, what are you doing with those?”

  “Pulling the rocks out of your wound. If they don’t come out, they might cause you serious damage once the cut heals.”

  “Oh,” is all I can say. I decided that I should lay back while Maeve’s working. Watching her makes my stomach queasy. I make another attempt at small talk, but she ignores me each time I ask her a question.

  Once she has the bandage in place, she tells me I can go. I sit up and slide down the table until my feet touch the ground. I wince and let out a yelp. Maeve turns and looks at me and then down at my wound.

  “Did you do something else to your knee?”

  I start to shake my head but stop when she’s crouched down in front of me. All I can think about is a nasty crotch odor because I’ve been sweating. Teddy and Dotty’s words come running back to me, reminding me that I stink.

  “Uh, maybe I should sit back down.” I heave myself back onto the table and marvel at the fact that Maeve barely moves and continues to assess my knee. She starts poking around my kneecap with her thumbs and slides her hand down my leg to lift it.

  “What happened to make you fall?” she asks.

  “I had some pain. I might have heard a pop.”

  Still, she won’t look at me.

  “How often do you run on the pavement?”

  Never. “All the time.”

  Maeve continues to work on my leg, pushing and moving, and each movement causes me pain, but I don’t let her know. She steps away and then says, “Cameron to Wilcox,” into the radio device attached to her shirt’s shoulder.

  The radio squawks, and I hear, “Wilcox.”

  “Can you bring me a set of crutches from the truck? I have a knee injury.”

  “Oh, I don’t need—” Her lips purse, and she stares daggers at me, daring me to finish my sentence. It figures that the first time Maeve looks at me, it’s to shut me up.

  “Roger.”

  “My partner will be here in a minute with some crutches. You need to ice your knee, twenty minutes on and then off. You can take Tylenol for the pain and Ibuprofen for the swelling. Every two hours take one or the other, but not at the same time. Call your doctor on Monday and tell them what happened. You likely need an MRI.”

  “You can tell all of this by looking at my knee?”

  “It’s my job . . .” she trails off.

  I feel as if she’s trying to remember my name, so I blurt out, “Kyler Groff. We went to high school together.”

  Again, she ignores me. Maybe, I need to turn on the charm. “Do you make house calls?” I ask jokingly.

  “I’m a medic and just doing my job.”

  Before I can come back with some witty rebuttal, her partner returns. I expect Maeve to show me how to use the crutches, but she leaves the tent.

  “Sup, Ky,” Jeremy Wilcox says as he unwraps the plastic around the metal armpit killers.

  “Not much, Jeremy.” I sigh and look out over the festival to see if I can find Maeve. “Not much at all.”

  3

  Maeve

  “Mom, can you take me to the festival today!” Logan shouts from his room.

  Groaning, I finish making his peanut butter and jelly sandwich, hoping he doesn’t hear my dismay. Since I worked at the festival yesterday, I was given today off. It wasn’t easy dodging Kyler’s questions and keeping the topic strictly on the subject of his injury. I do not doubt if I go to the festival, I’ll see him again. From what I hear, he’s a big shot banker in our little town. Everyone loves him just like they did in high school. I always thought he’d be a star quarterback in the NFL one day. I don’t know what happened there. What shocks me is that he knows we graduated together. I didn’t think he’d know who I was.

  Logan’s footsteps thump down the hallway, and he turns the corner to the kitchen. I hold out the plate with his sandwich on it. “You never answered me,” he says, taking the sandwich off the plate. “Nana says the parade is today. I want to go, but she has an eye appointment. Can you take me?” He clasps his hands together, holding them up in the air with his puppy dog brown eyes staring at me. “Please. It’ll be mommy and Logan time.”

  Rolling my eyes, I can’t help but smile. “Yeah, at least until you see your friends.”

  He pouts his lips. “Please? I’ll get you another caramel apple. This time I’ll use my allowance money and not yours.”

  I don’t want to go, but I’ll do it for him. “Okay, we can go. Let me change clothes first.” I ruffle his hair. “I might even let you play a few of the games.”

  He fist pumps the air. “Yes!” Taking a bite of his sandwich, he hurries off to the couch and turns on the TV.

  “Don’t you dare watch Cobra Kai without me,” I warn him.

  He giggles. “I’m not.”

  I hurry off to my room and change out of my yoga pants into a pair of jeans and a thick gray sweater. The wind is brisk, and I know it will be cold by looking out the window. When I was still married to Ethan, we had talked about moving away from Maryland to a warmer state, but it never happened. I can’t imagine living anywhere that doesn’t get cold. I’d miss the snow. It wouldn’t feel right having a warm winter.

&n
bsp; Grabbing my cell phone off the dresser, I call my parents. Since they only live three houses away, I know they’re home because their cars are in the driveway.

  “Hey,” my father answers.

  “Hey. Logan said that Mom has an eye appointment and she can’t take him to the festival. Do you want to go with us?”

  “Oh, honey, I can’t. I’m going with your mother. She has to get her eyes dilated, and we both know she drives like crap when both of her eyes are good. Imagine her trying to drive with blurry vision.”

  “Seriously, Dan,” my mother scolds him in the background, her voice coming through the phone. “I’m not that bad.”

  My father and I both laugh. “Yes, she is,” I say to him. I can hear Mom grumbling at us, but I can’t tell what she’s saying. She loves to threaten my dad when he gives her a hard time. Mostly she says she’ll put mushrooms in his food if he doesn’t leave her alone. I love hearing them banter back and forth. When I was younger, I always thought I’d find someone I could joke around with. Ethan and I did for a while until he was never around for me to talk to. It was only a matter of time before we grew apart. There were days I didn’t even feel like I was married.

  My mom takes the phone away from my dad and huffs. “Stop talking bad about me.”

  “I’m not,” I giggle. “Just stating the facts.”

  “Oh, whatever.” She laughs and blows out a sigh. “Tell Logan we’ll see him at the festival. We’re going to stop by after my appointment.”

  “Sounds good. We’ll see you there.”

  We hang up, and I slide my phone into my back pocket. When I get into the living room, Logan already has his shoes on and is ready to go with his Baltimore Ravens hat on his head. I grab my keys off the kitchen counter and wave for him to go out the door.

  “Let’s go.”

  We get in the car and head on our way to the festival, which only takes a few minutes. Cars are everywhere, much more so than how it was many years ago when I was younger. With all the people, I know it helps the local businesses. I find a parking space, and Logan is out of the car quick and fast. I’ve never seen him so excited about a festival before. When we lived in Baltimore, we went to many events together, but it never had that small-town feel. It’s one of the things I missed. I like small towns, but I don’t like how everyone knows about everyone else’s business. When I moved back, I had numerous people come up to me and ask about my divorce. My mom claims she only told her closest two friends, but word travels fast.