by Cara Colter
Stan gave him a T-shirt almost every year for Christmas. Gifts were a tricky thing among the members of the A.G.M.N.W.N.C. Nothing too sentimental would do, and a few years ago Stan had discovered T-shirts as the ideal macho-type gift. Most of Stan’s selections J.D. had never worn, because you didn’t want to spoil a perfectly good new T-shirt pulling wrenches when you already had a dozen shirts with holes in them or grease stains on them.
That would be good—giving her a brand-new T-shirt. Very classy. It would look like he just kept a spare T-shirt around all the time. For company.
Which maybe, come to think of it, was not quite the impression he wanted to give.
But when he looked over the Stan collection of fine T-shirt apparel, he remembered that maybe them being new wasn’t the only reason he hadn’t worn them. One was a souvenir shirt from a place called Boobers. It joined Snow Removal by Chris on the floor. Then there was the one with a woman’s body in a bikini, but the neck joined the wearer’s neck, something like those wooden photo stand-ups where you put your head through the hole. Several were not nearly as tasteful as the first two.
Tally was not ready for Stan’s sense of humor. They joined the others on the floor. He had seen her in that awful purple sweater, and knew purple was definitely not her color, so the plain purple shirt ended up on the floor, too.
With relief, he finally found a plain white T-shirt at the bottom of the drawer.
However, if her bra was dirty and he had to assume it was, she wouldn’t be wearing that piece of underwear, either. Her nipples were going to show through it, and that would be as bad as having her in the house with the jeans that were a little worn through in the rear. He tossed the white one on the floor, too.
He found a navy blue T-shirt that only had a little emblem over the left breast, for the Dancer Volunteer Fire Department. You weren’t supposed to wear them except for official fire hall duties, but he figured this was an emergency as real as any the fire department had dealt with in recent history.
He opened the door and shoved the clothes out to her before she could glimpse in and see the mess his room was in.
He closed the door before she could say thanks.
Now something for him. The great thing about being a bachelor was that you could get dressed in the dark. You didn’t have to—
“Have you got a T-shirt I could slip onto Jed while I wash his clothes?”
The white one would do for Jed. J.D. opened the door a crack and shoved it out at her. Who could have imagined this when he’d answered his door a very few nights ago in a towel? That he would be making wardrobe decisions considerably more complicated than the one he had made that night? He should have never answered the door.
But since he had, he had. He kicked through the T-shirts, frowning at the selection and finally stopped himself dead. What was he doing?
He was acting like a teenage boy going to the prom. Which he had been once, and he remembered he and his father trying to figure out the protocol for the evening. A kindly neighbor lady had come to his rescue, lending him the suit her older son had worn a year or two previously.
But there was no neighbor lady now, and he felt that same need for rescue. He despised himself for acting as if his choice of T-shirt mattered. The truth was he had a limited time to get that engine off the counter!
Whether it is getting that engine off the counter or selecting exactly the right T-shirt, you are trying to impress Tally Smith, a voice inside his head warned him.
He wished he had more time to contemplate what that meant, but he heard the water turn on in the bathroom, and felt he was in a race against time to get the engine off the kitchen counter.
Still, something defiant in him had to answer that accusing voice in his head, so just to prove he didn’t give a damn what she thought he chose the Boobers shirt. At the last minute he turned it inside out so that Tally wouldn’t notice the emblem and reach the erroneous conclusion he had ever been in the restaurant chain that featured waitresses with large chests. Even he was not enough of a chauvinist to think that would be entertaining.
He’d leave on the muddy jeans until after his own shower. He went out of his room. He could hear Jed splashing merrily in the tub, her voice moving around his like a melody. He wasted precious moments listening to them, letting the warmth of their voices wrap around him like the peach-colored light of early morning.
Then he charged into the kitchen, telling himself the whole way that moving the engine wasn’t about impressing her either. He tried to think what it was about, but didn’t come up with anything satisfactory, and he had a more immediate problem to solve anyway. What to do with the engine? Moving it all the way out to the shop would be a bigger job than he had time for.
He opened the cupboard door under the sink, and took out the garbage can. He lifted the engine, grunting under the weight of it, and shoved it under the sink. The cupboard door wouldn’t quite close, and the garbage can was now in the middle of the floor, but the counter space was improved.
Was that the bathroom door squeaking open? He heard the banshee yell of Jed freed, looked at the garbage can, opened his oven door and jammed the garbage can into the oven. The oven door didn’t quite close, either, but it was hardly noticeable.
J.D. grabbed a scouring pad and was trying to get the grease off the counter when Jed erupted into the room, tripping over the white T-shirt that swam around him. Beauford skittered along the floor behind him, as dirty as ever.
J.D. heard the tub draining, and the shower turning on. So, he still had a few minutes. Not enough time to order stainless steel appliances obviously, but enough to change into the purple T-shirt.
No way. The insanity stopped here. He had a few minutes to be with his son, and that was what he was going to do.
“Hey buddy,” he said, picking him up and setting him down on his newly cleaned counter. “All clean?”
“Yup. Aw cwean. Baf Beaufewd?”
“Um, well bathing Beauford is not something to be undertaken casually.” It was not something to be undertaken at all if you were trying to make your kitchen pass muster, since the only place it was possible to control the dog was in the kitchen sink.
“Pwee?”
Well, who could resist that? Besides this nonsense about trying to impress Tally just had to stop. J.D. had a right to be himself. He was a bachelor! That meant the dog got bathed in the kitchen sink.
Besides, his son wanted to bathe the dog. How could he refuse one of the first direct requests Jed had made of him?
“Beauford,” he called. “Come here, boy.”
Beauford, whose instincts were so finally honed he usually could not be found at bathtime, skulked toward him, aware something was up.
“That’s love,” J.D. told the dog as he scooped him up, and wedged him into the sink. “It gets you into hot water before you even know what happened.”
The dog was so in love with the kid, he couldn’t think straight. He just sat there as they ran the water around him, not wriggling or whining or doing any of his normal highly effective escape maneuvers.
It occurred to J.D. that Beauford was not the only male in the house not thinking straight. Because he wasn’t using any of his own repertoire of highly effective escape maneuvers, either. What kind of member of A.G.M.N.W.N.C. was he, hiding his engines and searching for the right outfit?
The Ain’t Gettin’ Married, No Way, Never Club suddenly seemed highly juvenile, a ridiculous creation of two men dying of loneliness and afraid to admit it.
By the time Tally emerged from the bathroom, J.D.’s only job was to keep a light hand on Beauford’s collar while Jed lovingly scooped bubbles onto the dog’s head. It was a testament to his newfound love that Beauford was so easy to hold. It usually took all of J.D.’s muscle, a couple of C-clamps and three bungee cords to keep the dog in the sink.
Jed worked a facecloth into every wrinkle and between each toenail.
“What’s this?” Tally asked.
J
.D. turned and looked at her. No underwear. You could tell even through the navy blue shirt.
She looked absolutely gorgeous, her hair towel-rumpled and curling, her face pink and scrubbed from the shower. She should have looked like a scarecrow in those too large clothes, but she didn’t.
She had the shirt tied in a knot above her belly button, and the belt tied in a knot around her waist. The jeans were rolled up to the knee and her feet were bare. She looked just like one of those hillbilly girls. J.D. had the evil thought she would look nice laying down in a haystack, or a meadow filled with yellow wildflowers. Or in his bed.
She would look damned nice lying down anywhere.
As long as she was waiting for him. It was A.G.M.N.W.N.C. treason to think such a thought, but J.D. thought it anyway, and to hell with the A.G.M.N.W.N.C.
She looked relaxed and happy, like a girl who knew how to have fun. She came across the kitchen and in a second was up to her elbows in suds, laughing at Beauford’s woebegone expression.
When had that happened? She liked his dog!
That was it. J.D. was officially retiring from the club. And he wasn’t looking for that ridiculous list anymore, either.
She’s hell-bent on marrying someone else, J. D. Turner.
Yeah? Well, we’ll just see about that.
He felt himself go very still. Over the sounds of the water slopping and Jed and Tally laughing, he could hear the beat of his own heart.
And it seemed to be spelling out her name.
He’d only ever felt this way once before. With Elana Smith. This way, only different, too. With Elana the excitement had sizzled in the air, nonstop, vaguely exhausting. They had pursued the things that made them feel that way: clubs, eating out, car races, sex.
For the first time he understood much of the excitement between Elana and him had been generated by events outside of themselves.
And that was what felt so totally different this time.
The feeling of well-being was deep and good, and it came from inside of him. From his heart. It was the most genuine thing he had ever felt.
He was falling in love with Tally Smith.
In a daze, he turned from the quizzical look on her face and turned on the oven. Tonight, he would dazzle her. He’d cook her dinner and they’d put Jed to bed, and hold hands and exchange kisses.
And maybe he would tell her about this funny feeling in his chest and his heart.
Or maybe not.
He turned his attention to the menu. He’d grill steaks, which he was good at. And he considered baked potatoes one of his most notable culinary accomplishments. He had stuff for salad, and ice cream for dessert—
“J.D., there seems to be smoke coming out of your oven.”
He came out of his reverie, and looked at the thick black smoke curling out of the burners and the slightly ajar oven door.
The garbage can! He leapt across the kitchen and threw open the oven door, enveloping them all in a cloud of thick black smoke. The smoke detector started to squeal.
Beauford, no dummy, leapt from the sink, and headed for the door, trailing a wide swatch of bubbles behind him.
Fifteen minutes later, once the garbage can and Beauford had both been hosed off, they all sat in J.D.’s backyard beside the melted blackened garbage can and watched the sun go down.
Tally sat on the grass, Beauford wrapped in a blanket on her lap.
She had braved the smoke-filled kitchen to go back in the house and get a blanket for the dog. She wasn’t pretending. She really liked his dog!
“Okay,” she said, quietly, “enough. I want to know why the garbage was in the oven, and why there is an engine sticking out from under your sink causing a hazard to anyone with shins, and why you have that horrible Boobers T-shirt on inside out.”
He went very still, for the second time in less than an hour. A million things came to his mind, but not one of them came out. He looked at his foot.
“I better go have my shower now.”
“Not until you answer the question.”
He glowered at her. She wanted to know? Okay, he’d tell her. “The embarrassing fact is, Tally Smith, I seem to be doing my damnedest to impress you. And I’d say, from the smoke still billowing out the kitchen window, that I’m doing a poor job of it.”
She touched him. She leaned toward him. She smelled like a wet dog and plastic-y smoke. “The embarrassing fact is, John David Turner, that you did that a long time ago, without even half-trying.”
He stared at her. She looked back at him, long and level.
He cleared his throat. “Well, I’ll just go have that shower now.”
“You do that. I’ll be here when you get out.”
That’s what I’m afraid of.
Tally did a little jig around the backyard. When she saw Jed staring at her, she took his hands and jigged around with him. The dog wriggled out of his blanket and leaped ecstatically around them.
“He’s trying to impress me,” she said told her nephew. “He likes me.”
It had never felt like this with Herbert. Never. They did things. They had had dinner in the finest restaurants in Saskatchewan. They had gone to live theater, and charity balls. They collected things like those stainless steel appliances.
But they didn’t feel things.
Here she was happy, with a stinky wet dog jumping on her, and smoke pouring out the kitchen, and the blackened remains of a garbage can beside her.
The bathroom window was open, and she could hear J.D. singing.
Oh, he had the most terrible voice when he shouted his song like that, and yet she was not sure she had ever heard such a delightful noise.
So, she and Jed and the dog danced, to the sounds of “Annabel was a cow of unusual bovine beauteeee….”
She finally collapsed in the grass, hugging herself, while the dog and the child continued to celebrate the magic that tingled in the air around them.
There was a wonderful excitement in her, a sense of the world being brand-new and open to all kinds of possibilities. It had just never been like this in her whole life.
After she had enjoyed her hug for a few seconds, she shut the gate on the small yard and gave Jed and Beauford strict instructions they were not to leave. Beauford looked like he got it, and like he would defend Jed with his last breath if he had to.
Then she braved the kitchen. It stank! Still, J.D. had taken steaks out, and they were thawing in the microwave. In the top cupboard she found a little box of candles labeled Emergency Road Candles, and since she couldn’t find candleholders, she melted them onto saucers and scattered them around the kitchen.
She went back outside and picked wild grass and daisies and tiny, dainty flowers she didn’t recognize, and brought them in the house and put them in a water pitcher.
J.D. came out of the shower, as she was lighting the candles. “Wow. What’s this all about?”
Embracing life. Trusting the universe. Believing in miracles. Whatever it was about was too big for words, even with her vocabulary, so she just shrugged.
They took the steaks back outside and lit the barbecue and took turns turning steaks and chasing the boy and the dog.
They snuck looks at each other, and smiled silly smiles and their hands touched more often than was necessary.
I’m falling more in love by the second, she thought, and I can’t get enough of it. Jed was asleep before supper was halfway done, and J.D. picked him up in his arms and carried him through to his spare room, tucked the covers carefully around him. Beauford jumped up on the bed, sighed, and put his head between his paws.
They finished dinner, trading stories about high school insecurities until her face hurt from laughing.
“I’ll do the dishes,” she said, when they were done.
“Nah. I’ll just throw them in the oven, and do them next week. The sink will need to be sterilized before I use it again, anyway.”
“J. D. Turner, you’re talking as if that dog has germs,” she scolded
lightly.
He laughed. She liked making him laugh. She thought she liked it best of all, until he said to her, his voice a low growl, “You ever been much of a dancer, Tally Smith?”
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “Hated it. Felt self-conscious.”
“Well, we can’t have you leaving Dancer feeling that same way, can we?”
Leaving. She registered the word, but refused to hear it. For once in her pathetic life she was going with her heart, not her head.
He led her into the living room, taking the candles with them. It was a plain room, with plain furniture and a hardwood floor, no rug.
But the candles and the look on his face transformed it into a ballroom. He turned, selected a CD and put it on his stereo.
“That’s not the type of music I would have expected you to have,” she said as the soft sounds of a beautiful female voice filled the room. J.D. opened his arms and she went into them, felt them close around her.
The sensation of homecoming was fierce, and she decided it wasn’t making him laugh that she liked best of all. It was being with him, just like this, their bodies pressed together, his breath stirring the hair on the top of her head.
“Don’t tell Stan,” he folded her tighter against him, “He thinks the only music I own is country and old time rock and roll.”
Stan, another member of that bachelor club J.D. was so fond of. But again, she would not allow her head to go there. It was trying so hard to mess with her heart.
“Your secret is safe with me,” she murmured.
“Why do I have a feeling all my secrets would be safe with you,” he said, his lips stirring the hair on the crown of her head.
And then the words stopped between them and they just swayed to the gentle, soaring notes of a beautiful song.
She melted into him, feeling his strength, his hand on the small of her back, the heat of his thigh where it touched hers. This couldn’t be right. She was engaged to someone else. This couldn’t be right at all.
And yet, she could not think of a time that had felt more right for her, ever.
