by Pamela Morsi
“So Vernice is... Well, she’s ‘light in the loafers’ as they say.”
D.J. was pretty sure that “they” didn’t use that phrase for lesbians, but she didn’t bother to correct Suzy on that.
“We serve all the citizens of this community,” D.J. pointed out. “A public servant cannot be a respecter of persons.”
“Huh?”
“We treat everyone equally,” she clarified.
“Sure, of course,” Suzy agreed. “But treating them and being them is two different things. Miss Grundler is making it sound like you had lunch with Vernice because you’re old friends. Like you’re one of them.”
“Oh.” D.J. would have smiled and shook her head if that had been only slightly more expected. Naturally Amelia would take the very first opportunity presented to her to try to make D.J. some kind of pariah.
“I know you’re thinking that nobody would believe it, because you’re pretty and feminine,” Suzy said. “But Vernice’s partner is, like, the most gorgeous woman in town. She was Autumn Queen in high school. She had the biggest wedding the town had ever seen and then dumped her husband for Vern. Honestly, a lot of people have never gotten over it.”
Suzy’s words were as dramatic as if she were speaking of some terrible tragedy.
“I’m sure it wasn’t as bad as all that,” D.J. reassured her.
“Well, it was pretty shocking,” Suzy said. “And people in Verdant really, really don’t like to be shocked.” Suzy’s blue eyes were wide with concern.
“I’m sure that anyone new coming to the community will have a few rumors spread about her,” D.J. said, reassuringly. “Once people get to know me, they won’t be swayed by idle gossip.”
“Oh, they will,” Suzy insisted. “They will. Idle gossip is almost a sacred duty in this town. People love it. And they pass it on. And a lot of folks act upon it. There are people in town who never speak a word to Vern or her girlfriend. They’d cross the street to avoid them. And they grew up here, their families still live here. How would they be treated if they were outsiders?”
D.J. was pretty sure that they would not have fared well.
“We can’t let that happen to you,” Suzy pleaded. “You just can’t get run out of town. Not when I’ve gotten so hopeful about things changing around here. You can’t let Amelia win. And she will, if you’re not careful.”
“It’s ridiculous to judge people by who they talk to,” D.J. pointed out.
Suzy shrugged. “I guess small towns can be ridiculous places. I’m sure not smart enough to understand it,” she said. “Maybe it’s looking at the best in folks all the time sort of makes us eager to see the worst.”
“Well, I intend to be the best librarian this community has ever imagined,” D.J. declared. “This is my hometown now. I intend to embrace it. And I refuse to believe that I can be ruined by a bag full of gossipy lies. People are smarter than that.”
Suzy didn’t appear convinced. “We may not be as smart as you think. I was voted president of my senior class.” She was all solemnity and concern. “I have such hope for you and the library and all of us,” she said. “I don’t know if I could bear having Amelia take that away.”
“Don’t worry. I’m not a woman who can be brought down easily.”
For all that Suzy was silly and dramatic, she also made a good point. In order to make a success of running the library, D.J. had to earn and hold the support of the community. She knew she was up to the task. Though, admittedly, thinking about it made her tired. Or maybe she simply was tired, a reasonable reaction to the combination of restless sleep, first-day jitters and not a bite to eat since popovers for breakfast.
But her long day was not yet done. She’d accepted Mrs. Sanderson’s invitation to dinner. It had sounded like a good idea when she’d agreed to it. But as she closed up for the night, she wanted nothing more than to soak in a tub of hot water and go to bed.
Still, she was hungry and there was nothing in her apartment to eat. So, dutifully, she showed up in Mrs. Sanderson’s kitchen at six.
It wasn’t a terrible sacrifice. Though certainly a bit pushy, Viv was also funny, vivacious and entertaining. D.J. leaned against the kitchen counter amid the fabulous smell of dinner cooking and sipped on a small glass of dry white wine.
Dew had completely made himself at home on the throw rug beneath the kitchen sink. Mrs. Sanderson was forced to step over the dog every couple of minutes.
D.J. was surprised when she set a small dish of food on the floor.
Dew sniffed at it, but moved away.
“He doesn’t eat people food,” D.J. reminded her.
“It’s meat.”
She shook her head. “Sorry, he doesn’t have any interest in table scraps or really anything cooked, even roast beef.”
Viv’s tone was incredulous. “I’ve never even heard of a dog that wouldn’t eat anything and everything.”
D.J. shrugged. “I didn’t train him to be like that. He’s been picky since the day I got him.”
The terrier perked up, wagged his tail against the floor and turned his head slightly, as if aware that he was the subject of the conversation.
Viv laughed at the sight. “He’s certainly a very unique little fellow,” she said.
“I really appreciate that you took him for a walk today,” D.J. said. “Believe me, I don’t expect you to do that. It’s way too much trouble.”
“Oh, it’s fine,” Viv assured her. “I kind of like having him underfoot, it keeps me on my toes.”
The dining table was set for three and Viv confessed that she’d invited her son to join them.
D.J. clearly recalled Vern’s suggestion that Viv was trying to fix her up. Well, the woman was welcome to try, but D.J. was sure there was little danger of it working out. Over her dating years, she’d been fixed up with friends, brothers, cousins and colleagues. The spark was never there. She almost regretted even knowing “the spark” existed.
When they heard the sound of a car door outside, Viv became almost giddy with excitement.
“That’s going to be Scott,” she said. “I know you two are going to be great friends.”
D.J. nodded vaguely and pasted a benign but welcoming smile upon her lips as she turned to the back door.
“Hey, Mom,” her son called out as he opened the screen.
The glare from the sun momentarily obscured his visage, revealing only a tall male stranger with broad shoulders and a white shirt. Then he stepped inside.
D.J.’s heart leaped for one instant before the blood drained from her face. The one man in the world that she never wanted to see again had just walked into the room as if he were right at home.
Eight
South Padre Island (Eight years earlier)
Three women, friends and roommates from college, stepped through the open doorway of the Naked Parrott. The place was crowded to the point of crazy and everyone there seemed young, loud and intoxicated.
It was exactly the atmosphere that D.J. wanted. Her brain was buzzing happily after a few drinks, and on the edges of her peripheral vision were teeny-tiny stars that seemed to appear and explode at irregular intervals. This was the third such joint on tonight’s tour of beach-side pickup bars. The evening was no longer young. And D.J. was determined to be likewise.
Beside her she heard Heather whisper, “Total meat market.”
“Perfect.”
The three young women had consumed several glasses of bubbly alcohol before they’d even left the motel room. It was D.J.’s birthday, and that was a cause for celebration after what had been a long spate of depressing and dreary months. But bouts of laughter earlier in the night had eventually turned into tears of self-loathing, and finally to steely-eyed determination. D.J. had confessed, to the two women who knew her best, how much she lagged behind her contemporaries and how inadequate she felt. She’d admitted to feeling stuck, as though her life was on hold, still waiting to really get started. So with their can-do, problem-solving attitudes, plus an impre
ssive amount of alcohol, they conspired to change all that tonight. It was time to take action.
“You don’t have to do this,” Terri pointed out as they hesitated at the front of the bar. “It’s a crazy idea.”
D.J. was unwilling to hear any last-minute voices of reason. “It’s a crazy idea whose time has come,” she said. “I’m twenty-one and I haven’t been a teenager yet.”
“This seems like a terrible place to become one.”
At that moment, a girl at a nearby table wearing a cropped tee and bikini bottoms accidentally, or on purpose, poured beer down her chest, revealing her breasts in a way that was more exposed than actual nakedness.
The men around her laughed, cheered and applauded the behavior.
Terri efficiently guided them away from the scene. “I could do something like that,” D.J. suggested.
“You won’t have to,” she assured D.J. “You look good enough that setting your hair on fire won’t be necessary to draw attention.”
D.J. did look good. In fact, she looked amazing. Terri and Heather had made sure of that. The makeup alone had taken nearly a half hour, and a second bottle of champagne, to apply. Her typically pony tailed hair was not only hanging long and loose down her back, but Heather had sprayed in some shiny blonde highlights. She’d also loaned her “lucky” sequined bikini top. The glittery eye-catcher drew attention to D.J.’s not completely insubstantial assets. The leather skirt was Terri’s idea.
“When all the other girls are in skimpy swimsuits,” she’d said, “a skirt can be an advantage, especially if it is short enough.”
The one D.J. was wearing couldn’t have been much shorter. And the five-inch Plexiglas heels they’d gotten her as a birthday gift made her legs look a mile long.
“Those shoes definitely say, ‘Do me!’ loud and clear,” Terri told her. “If a guy can’t read that, he’s too stupid for you.”
“It’s the stupid ones I want to attract,” D.J. said. “A smart guy would be able to see right through me.”
“No worries there,” Heather assured her. “On spring break, all the guys are stupid.”
As they were weaving through the crowd of hot, sweaty bodies smelling of beer, seaweed and suntan oil, D.J. caught sight of herself in the mirrored wall behind the bar. If she’d not been standing between Heather and Terri, she’d never have recognized herself. That was good. That was very good. Tonight she was someone else. Dull, boring Dorothy Jarrow was back at school tonight, nose stuck in a book, undoubtedly. This sexy- looking stranger wouldn’t dream of wasting her last night of spring break that way. This stranger was some ridiculous girl-gone-wild.
She knew she could act. She’d won a major role in the Hockaday/St. Mark’s Fine Arts production of Oklahoma. Of course, it was her singing voice that won them over, but she’d been able to competently embody her character. She enjoyed acting, pretending to be someone else. And she could do that here, tonight, in this place.
With resolve, D.J. raised her chin and flashed a big, fake smile on her surroundings. If a woman was looking for a good time, half of the search was to act like she was having one.
Terri ushered them to the far side of the room where a row of booths was raised two steps above the main floor, giving the occupants a clear view of all that was happening below. She went over to a group of four very drunk, slightly sunburned girls who were already seated in the choice booth.
“Which one of you is Jennifer?”
The four looked at each other stupidly.
“Nobody’s Jennifer, I’m Ginny...”
“Oh, then it must have been you,” Terri said. “There’s a quartet of really hot guys outside that said they met you on the beach today. They’re looking for you.”
With a shriek of excitement, the young women vacated the booth, which Terri, Heather and D.J. immediately took over.
“I didn’t see any hot guys outside,” D.J. pointed out.
Terri grinned. “There are always hot guys outside somewhere. We need this perspective to find your Mr. Right.”
“Not Mr. Right,” Heather corrected her. “Mr. Right Now. Mr. Right Tonight. Mr. I-Know-How-To-Do-You-Right.”
All three women fell into giggles.
They ordered drinks and surveyed the occupants of the bar.
“When it comes to plucking men out of a crowd, it’s all about balance,” Heather told her. “If you pick one who’s in the middle of a tight testosterone group, you run the risk of being taken for granted or handed off. But if you go for the total loner boy, he could be, like, a Freddie Kruger or something.”
“What?”
“Heather, you’re going to scare her silly,” Terri said. “Look, we’re sticking close until you send us away. Don’t go anywhere you don’t want to go. Don’t do anything you don’t want to do. If you’re feeling threatened or you simply change your mind, holler out a name and we’re right beside you. Now let’s check out your choices for Birthday Surprise from a nice safe distance.”
It didn’t take them long to get the measure of the men in the room, and each of the women had her own preferences.
“The dancing dude is the one,” Heather announced. “Look at those moves. If he can make his body flex like that standing up, just think what he can do in the sack.”
“She doesn’t need an acrobat,” Terri disagreed. “I like the gentle giant sitting at the bar.”
Heather’s brow furrowed. “He looks slightly biker to me. He’s probably got his whole gang outside.”
D.J. thought they both looked... well, pretty ordinary. She wasn’t attracted to either of them. But this night wasn’t really about attraction, it was about efficiency. She was ready to get past this last step into adulthood as simply and conveniently as possible.
“What about the guy with the ‘hook ’em horns’ in the chair near the dance floor?” Heather suggested. “He’s big and quiet and not nearly as scary.”
“He’s quiet because he’s about to pass out on the floor,” Terri said. “She doesn’t want somebody she has to sober up.”
“Well, there’s always the guy behind you,” Heather said. “He’s been nursing the same beer since we got here. And he’s looking over the crowd just like we are. Maybe he’s looking for you, D.J.”
Terri and D.J., who were sitting across from Heather, slowly turned to get a look at the man in the booth behind them.
He was definitely hot, D.J. decided immediately. His Foo Fighters concert tee was stretched across very broad shoulders. He was muscled, but without the thick-neck look that some guys get. And he had a handsome face with strong, masculine features and neatly clipped sandy-brown hair. Totally gorgeous.
“Nice,” Terri whispered beside her.
D.J. hoped that wasn’t a word that defined him. Although he was attractively tanned, a day at the beach meant a certain amount of redness in the cheeks of light-skinned visitors. There was none of that. He definitely hadn’t spent the afternoon in sun and surf. He hadn’t come on spring break for the beach. He’d come for the girls.
Just then he caught sight of her. Their eyes met. D.J. would have sworn that an actual spark of electricity passed between them. She had felt it. Then again, maybe it was another one of those exploding stars. Her initial reaction was to look away, but she didn’t. She would not be cowed by her own uncertainty. Instead, she raised her chin and looked him over, unsmiling, assessing. That brought his eyebrow up.
She held his gaze. That’s what sexy, confident strangers did with men. They held the gaze. They held their own. And she was playing her role perfectly.
Then he smiled at her. It was a beautiful smile. Warm, welcoming and incredibly sexy.
“Oh, no,” Terri said. “He’s not the one.”
“He might be,” D.J. told her.
“Don’t do it. He’s probably an Eagle Scout.”
“You’re kidding, right,” Heather said. “He’s got serial killer written all over him.”
“What?”
“That’s exact
ly what they look like,” she insisted. “They’re always clean-looking, the boy-next-door type.”
“You’re crazy,” D.J. told her.
“She is,” Terri agreed. “But still, he’s not the one for you. You’re looking to get laid, not fall in love. This guy is one you could fall in love with.”
D.J. thought about the spark. Terri was probably right.
“Look at the guy at the table right below us. Now he looks like a genuine guy. A little bit pudgy, but he’ll work harder to make it good for you.”
“Terri, he’s got a World of Warcraft tattoo,” Heather pointed out with derision.
“Well, at least it’s not Dungeons & Dragons,” Terri said.
Heather laughed. “The D&D tat is probably under his shirt.”
D.J. hardly looked at the tattooed option. She glanced back behind her again. The guy in the booth was still looking at her. Still smiling. He seemed pretty comfortable. As if he knew exactly what he was doing. He probably made hookups six nights a week in places like this.
“Come on,” Terri said, standing and pulling D.J. up beside her. “You can’t really decide from this distance. Let’s go dance.”
Terri and Heather took turns hanging out with her on the dance floor, making the rounds, meeting the guys at the bar. D.J. completely threw herself into the new alter ego. She was a wild child, sexy through and through. Every moment was choreographed to portray the unrestrained, sultry and very available woman she wanted to be tonight. She even added a kind of Ado Annie east Texas twang to the performance, and it seemed as if the men around her were completely buying it. She was going to get her pick. She was going to get to choose. It was a heady sensation of power for a young woman who’d felt powerless for far too long.
She was catching her breath from a very athletic pairing with “dancing dude” when suddenly the hot guy she’d seen in the booth stepped in front of her. He filled the entirety of her vision until there was nothing except him.
“Oh...hi,” she said, forgetting the fake drawl.
He was even taller than she’d thought, and his dark brown eyes looked down at her with warmth that seemed to penetrate her skin.
