by Erynn Mangum
I nod. Stef’s husband, Mason, probably appreciates the cooking. “What does Mason do?”
“He’s a pharmaceutical rep.”
“Travels a lot?”
“Mm. Kind of. More just around the San Antonio area, so he gets to be home every night unless there’s some kind of conference he has to go to. He hasn’t had to travel since Kamden was born, so that’s good, I guess. It’s good according to Stef, anyway.”
I stayed with Natalie for two nights when Rick was out of town right after their daughter was born. Claire was nocturnal, basically, and after being around her for two nights, I was fairly convinced that it would take an act of God for me to even want kids anymore.
Every so often, I see a baby or a picture or a toddler who is just so cute that it makes me all soft and squishy for what might be someday.
More often, though, I see kids throwing tantrums in the grocery store, boys with their fingers up their noses, or babies sobbing as loud as humanly possible, faces all red from the effort. And then I remember why I am very content to be single and waking up at whatever time I want to in the mornings.
Around noon, Tyler asks if I want to go get something light to eat, and we find a little smoothie shop for lunch before heading over to the theater. There’s a romantic comedy showing and Tyler shrugs his okay.
He begins shaking his head the second the movie starts and still has not stopped by the time we are walking back to his truck.
“Seriously? You have to have the worst headache in the world now.” I look at him as he holds the door open for me.
“That . . .” he mutters, as his hand cradles my elbow as I climb in, and a tiny part of me tingles at the touch.
“That,” I start for him when he stops, “was adorable?”
He is back to shaking his head.
I grin.
He closes my door, walks around the truck, and climbs into his seat, then turns on the ignition. “How . . . ?”
“Wonderful?”
“I mean . . .”
“It was the best movie you’ve ever seen?”
He starts laughing. “Oh, Paige.” Then he grins at me, reaches across the console, and laces his fingers through mine. “I have missed you so much, beautiful.”
It’s the first time he has ever called me anything other than my name. My whole chest warms and I smile back at him.
“Me too.” I nod.
He starts driving toward Rick and Natalie’s house, and he doesn’t let go of my hand. We talk about random things. Preslee’s wedding. Layla’s ugly dog. Peter unintentionally putting the dog into anaphylactic shock.
Tyler thought that one was hilarious.
We get to Rick and Natalie’s right at five, which just gives me this sense of pride because I got Tyler to actually be somewhere on time.
It’s a miracle, folks.
Natalie opens the door all suspiciously, squinting at us. “You can’t possibly be Tyler Jennings.”
Tyler rubs his smooth chin. “I finally shaved.”
“No, I mean, it’s five o’clock. Exactly. I can’t even remember the last time you got anywhere on time. I haven’t even put the chicken in yet because five o’clock is five fifteen to you.”
Tyler rolls his eyes. “You guys exaggerate.” He lets me go inside first.
Natalie just looks at me and I shrug. “You are often late,” I tell him.
“We can’t all be perfect.”
We walk into the kitchen. Rick is sitting at the table, reading possibly the thickest book I’ve ever seen in my life while drinking a cup of coffee and using his foot to bounce Claire in a little bouncy seat.
He doesn’t say anything, but he looks up at me and Tyler together and just smirks in this knowing look.
“So, I am making chicken,” Natalie says, sliding a Pyrex baking dish into the oven. “It’s a new recipe so if it’s awful, don’t blame me, blame Pinterest.”
I grin. “If that isn’t the sound of confidence, I don’t know what is.”
“Oh it gets better.” Rick sips his coffee and closes his book. I peek at the title. Systematic Theology. I’m immediately thankful that reading books like that are not part of my job description.
“The chicken or the confidence?” Tyler reaches over and unbuckles Claire out of the baby seat. He picks her up easily and settles her into the crook of his arm like he’s come over and done this a million times.
I just watch him and then look at Rick and Natalie for their reactions, and they don’t have any.
How often is Tyler over here? Apparently more often than I thought.
Claire’s pacifier bobs in her mouth as she looks expressionlessly up at Tyler.
“We’re clean eating,” Natalie declares.
“Were you eating off of dirty plates before?” Tyler asks.
I’m impressed. That means she’s stuck with this for over two weeks. “Wow,” I say, trying not to seem too shocked.
If there were a land of people who went through fads like chewing gum, Natalie would be their queen.
The first time I met Natalie, she was super into natural cleaning products. She tossed every commercial product out the window and made all of her own stuff. Her own laundry detergent, her own dishwasher detergent, even her own Windex.
Then she got tired of mixing up the batches of ingredients every time she wanted to clean her windows, so she went back to the stuff from the store.
She’s done gluten free, Paleo, and CrossFit. At one point at the beginning of the summer, she was really into decorating cake pops. There was always a big arrangement of cake pops every day when I went into the office.
That was not a bad phase for her.
“No.” Natalie rolls her eyes at Tyler. “It’s all about eating things that are free of artificially produced ingredients. So no sugar, no white flour, nothing refined.”
“Two weeks strong, huh?” I ask her.
She grins, all proud of herself.
“Wait, I’ve been here in the last two weeks for dinner. What did you feed me those times?” Tyler asks.
“Clean food.”
“Is that why y’all have been eating so many salads lately?”
Rick sighs. I laugh.
Dinner is strange but we are at Rick and Natalie’s house, so I kind of expected it. The chicken is actually delicious, but the cookies Natalie “whipped up” left a lot to be desired.
“Aren’t these amazing?” Natalie raved. “It’s whole-wheat flour, honey, and smashed bananas. I think these are just wonderful.”
“Yeah,” I manage between chewing. It’s amazing I could say anything at all, seeing as how the cookie sucked all of the saliva out of my mouth.
“Mm-hmm,” Tyler hums enthusiastically, but I notice he only takes one cookie.
Rick just looks defeated and depressed.
Poor man. I decide right then that I will bring Krispy Kreme doughnuts to our staff meeting on Monday.
Hopefully Natalie won’t make that one.
We end up leaving about nine, which has become kind of normal for Rick and Natalie’s house. Before they had Claire, I would stay over until after midnight some nights, watching movies, playing games, or just talking about the most random things in the world. Now that Natalie is up a couple times a night with Claire, though, she starts to fade quickly.
And Natalie has never been shy about kicking people out of her house. One time there were a bunch of us over, and she looked at us and said, “I wish I was at your house so I could go home and go to bed.”
We all took the hint.
Tyler opens the passenger door for me and I climb into his truck. He goes around and slides into the driver’s seat, puts the key in the ignition, and then just sits there, hands on the wheel, frowning.
“What’s wrong?”
“So. That cookie.”
I grin.
“Was it just me, or did it taste like what I imagine the slop they feed the monkeys at the zoo tastes like?”
“Well, I’
ve never tried the slop at the zoo,” I say, making a face. “So I couldn’t really say for sure.”
“Seriously, though. I mean, I know I’m not the world’s healthiest guy—”
I interrupt him with my laugh. “Oh come now.” I roll my eyes. “Surely the most carnivorous plate and a cobbler at Cracker Barrel make you into the picture of health.”
He brightens and looks at the clock on the dashboard. “Cracker Barrel? We could go get cobbler!”
I shake my head. Tyler is like an eighty-year-old living in a twenty-five-year-old’s body the way he loves that restaurant. I shrug. “Why not?”
He drives there chatting the whole time about how much he loves their cobbler. Like he has to remind me.
I smile at him, but my thoughts are someplace else.
I watch the way the red lights glint off the windshield and glow on his face. I think about what he said to me at the mall and start chewing on my bottom lip, worrying that he’ll look over and notice my not paying attention to what he’s saying.
It’s so hard for me to imagine Tyler before he became a Christian. Maybe that’s a good thing. I look at him now, and it’s just difficult to picture him any other way. His blond hair is curling like crazy right now—which is probably a good indication that the rain the forecasters were predicting for later tonight and all day tomorrow is a good possibility. His blue eyes are shining as he smiles at me while he talks, head relaxed against the headrest, one hand lazily gripping the steering wheel while his right hand reaches for mine.
He looks innocent. And incredibly cute.
Luke’s voice echoes in my brain. “So you’re still a prude, huh?”
I’m back to chewing on my lip and praying silently. Please, Lord, just take that memory away!
“What do you think?” he asks me and I realize I didn’t hear the question.
“Sorry, what did you say?” I blink away the thoughts racing through my head.
“Have you ever ridden on a motorcycle?”
I just look at him.
And maybe innocent was the wrong word.
“No . . .” I say, drawing the word out. “Have you?”
“I actually used to ride one back in high school and college,” Tyler confesses, turning into the Cracker Barrel parking lot.
I am really having a hard time marrying the guy who used to ride a motorcycle and do all kinds of other things with the guy who leaves a youth pastor’s house at nine and then hits up the local Cracker Barrel for cobbler.
He looks over after he shifts the truck into Park and grins at my expression. “And you’re officially shocked.” He lets go of my hand so he can release his seat belt.
“Not shocked,” I say, though I’m not sure I ever got away from shocked after his last confession to me. “What else do I not know about you, Tyler Jennings?”
He squints out the windshield, thoughtful creases between his eyebrows, flipping his keys over and over his index finger. “I once owned a box turtle I named Wally. I fed him every single day for two months before I realized he had probably died when I first put him in the cardboard box.” He looks at me sadly. “There was like a two-month supply of leaves and mulched-up dandelions in there that never got eaten.”
“The smell didn’t clue you in?” I ask, gagging. My second-grade teacher had a box turtle that died over one of our three-day weekends. We all came back to the class and the stench was so bad, our teacher made us sit in the hallway for the next three days while she alternated holding her nose and throwing up into a trash can.
We found out a little later, though, that she was pregnant at the time—my teacher, not the turtle—so that probably had something to do with the hall sessions.
Poor lady.
“A nine-year-old boy’s room stinks regardless of whether or not there is a dead turtle in there,” Tyler says.
I gag.
“Earth to Paige!”
I blink and look up at Layla holding up a single yellow long-stemmed rose and waving it in front of my face.
“Yes?” I ask.
“Yellow roses. Iconic or traditional for a Texas wedding?”
I frown. “Is there a difference?”
“There’s a huge difference! Iconic is one thing but traditional is so not me, Paige.” She paces the floor and her gauzy, Easter egg–colored short skirt floats and tangles as she walks.
No. Layla has never been traditional about much. The wedding is about as traditional as I’ve ever seen her.
“I say iconic,” I tell her. Mostly because I’m tired of having this conversation. Her wedding is four weeks away. She already ordered the flowers months ago, she’s just now in the stage where everything is done, ordered and paid for and now she’s second-guessing everything.
“I really worry that I should have gone with a round cake,” she says, flouncing on my couch next to me.
I look over at her and bite back a yawn.
I have not slept well the last few nights. It’s Tuesday and I have a packed-full day of girls tomorrow on top of teaching the small-group lesson on peace.
Which I should be studying for instead of listening to Layla change her mind about everything wedding related. But part of me feels bad. Between the job change, finally spending more time with Tyler, and seeing Preslee on some weekends, I haven’t spent a lot of time with Layla lately.
And as I imagine how much a sympathetic audience Peter is, no wonder she needs some girl time.
I cup the hot mug of chai tea in my hands and look over at my best friend. Her brown hair is yanked into a sloppy ponytail and she’s not wearing any makeup.
Which, for Layla, is usually a sign that the end of the world is near. If her life were a movie, Will Smith would be suiting up for his role by now.
“Hey.” I nudge her with my shoulder.
She looks over at me and sighs, rubbing her cheek. “Paige. I’m so nervous.”
I force a smile at her because I know she is and there’s nothing I can do to help. “I know,” I say quietly. “Why?”
She shrugs, looking at the blank screen of my TV. “It’s just such a big change, you know? Married. I’m going to be married. What if it’s not what I think it’s going to be? What if I find out I can’t stand Peter or his weird ways, and there’s nothing I can do about it then?”
“Layla.”
She sighs again and messes with her ponytail. “And then there’s you.”
I look over at her. “What about me?”
“That’s my question. What about you? Are we even allowed to be friends after we get married?”
“Yes?” I say, but my voice ends on a questioning note. “Why wouldn’t we?”
“My mom doesn’t do anything with any girlfriends of hers. She just stays home with my dad every night.”
“Well maybe your mom doesn’t have any close friends.” I start to get worried. Maybe I shouldn’t have been all supportive of this upcoming wedding. Not if it meant losing Layla.
“Maybe.” Layla seems so forlorn I have to say something.
“Look.” I set my tea down on the coffee table and lean forward to look at her. “I don’t know what it’s going to be like after you get married, but I know we are never going to stop being friends. Okay?” I stare at her right in her brown eyes. “Never.”
She reaches over and gives me a big hug. “Thanks, Paige.”
“Sorry I haven’t been able to answer any more of your wedding problem questions.”
“Eh.” She shrugs. “I know I’m flipping out for no reason.”
I grin.
“Panda?” she asks, and I realize that neither of us ever ate. Layla came over right when I got home from meeting Tonya at Starbucks and has been questioning every detail of her life since then.
No wonder I’m tired.
I smile at her. “My grandfather would have told you that you’re going to turn into a piece of orange chicken someday.”
She shrugs at me. “It’s my curse.”
We do something dif
ferent and actually go to the restaurant to eat. Usually one of us just picks it up on the way to the other’s house.
We order our Americanized Chinese food and sit at one of the uncomfortable plastic booths. Now I remember why we prefer to eat in the comfort of our own apartments and in our jammies.
“So.” Layla stabs a piece of orange chicken with her plastic fork. “Tell me about you.”
“My name is Paige. I’m twenty-three years old. I live in an upstairs apartment that I—”
“Paige!”
I smile at her. “What about me?”
“Well, okay, not about you singular but you plural.”
I squint at her while I chew. “The test came back negative for multiple personality disorders, Layla.”
“Paige!” she says again, but this time she laughs. “No, you and Tyler, weirdo! How is it going? I haven’t talked to you about him since y’all started being all cute together again.”
I shrug, poking at a square of pineapple on the paper plate, half smiling. “It’s fine,” I say, because I’m not about to confess Tyler’s past to Layla.
Besides. I’m attempting to forget about that. If God can take my sins and remove them as far as the east is from the west, then surely I can do the same for Tyler.
Layla shakes her head. “Nope. Not enough details. How did you guys patch things over? And what ever really happened?”
I still haven’t breathed a word to her about the Luke Incident at the beginning of the summer, and I don’t plan on ever doing so. It’s over, it really didn’t have much to do with the awful summer Tyler and I had, so it doesn’t make sense to tell her.
Besides, I haven’t even seen Luke since the day she bought Belle, the world’s ugliest dog who is also apparently allergic to peanuts.
I shrug her question off. “It was just a big misunderstanding.” Sort of, anyway. “We got it all sorted out and he’s back to acting totally normal.” Not quite. He’s different, somehow.
Maybe it’s just my imagination.
Layla nods, chewing a bite of fried rice. “That’s really good to hear. I was worried about you guys for a while.”
“I’ve been worried about you for basically your whole life.” I grin across the table at her.
