I’d imagined my own bridal shower and wedding colors a million times before. But I’d never thought about adjusting them for anyone specific.
I had just thought about my wedding to Max.
Whooooooooa.
I sat down, only half listening to the girls’ chatter as they tried to guess which celebrity brides had worn which gowns.
Shouldn’t I be panicked that I was thinking about Max in wedding terms? That wasn’t “no strings attached.”
But I wasn’t panicked.
“Aren’t you glad, Lila?”
I looked up, not sure what Jaimie had asked me. “I’m sorry, what?”
She laughed. “I bet I know what you’re thinking about. Or make that who.” That set Jorie and Hailey to laughing while the other two belles immediately turned to their neighbors to figure out what Jaimie meant. “I asked how the YSA conference is shaping up. Two of the belles met their fiancés there.”
“It’s coming together,” I said. “We’ll announce the details soon.”
“It wouldn’t be the same without you,” Jorie said. “You’ve gone to every conference since I turned eighteen. It’s weird for me to think I won’t be going after this year. I’ll miss it. Oh, I know! Del and I will chaperone next year.”
Nothing like publicly getting called out as an old maid, even if Jorie hadn’t meant it to be mean.
Kate caught my eye and grimaced. She cleared her throat, and all eyes turned back to her. “All right, ladies, it’s time for Jaimie to open her gifts.”
Once Jaimie had opened and exclaimed over two negligees and a set of Egyptian-cotton sheets, I decided the attention had faded from me enough to sneak into the kitchen and clean up. When I’d done enough to be useful, I escaped to my car, texting Kate before I drove off. Cleaned in kitchen. Need to go home and grade. Feel better!
Kate’s replay was instant. Jorie has always been an idiot. Love you. Come back in and eat some cake.
I didn’t answer, instead putting the car in gear and pulling away. I wasn’t in the mood to celebrate anymore.
Chapter 19
Jaimie’s shower put me in an odd head space, and I didn’t trust myself to stay cheerful or even rational around Max that evening. Instead, I crawled into my Lincoln High sweatpants and an LSU shirt, pulled my hair into an “I don’t care” topknot, and swapped my contacts for glasses. Maybe that was why I wasn’t super thrilled when he texted an hour later to tell me not to be mad but that he was standing on my front porch.
I went downstairs to open the door and found him looking way too cute in a sage-green polo and tan shorts, flip flops on his feet. In general, I liked a guy who made a more thoughtful shoe choice, but the rest of him was perfectly preppy, and I frowned. Not fair. I had such a weakness for a well-dressed boy.
“I said don’t be mad. I brought you food.”
“I’m not mad you’re here so much as I’m mad that you look cute and I look like a scrub.”
“You think I’m cute?”
I rolled my eyes at him. He grinned and leaned down to kiss me. “You’re cuter. If you were my teacher, I would have a crush on you. Wait. I do have a crush on you.”
“You think you’re going to get through this door on charm?”
“Yes.”
I stepped out of his way. “Come in.”
I led him to the kitchen and helped him unload the bags. “What is it today? It smells ridiculous.”
“I found a soul-food place and picked up some takeout. Red beans and rice and hot links.”
“My favorite.”
“I want to be your favorite. I’ll bribe you with food all day long.”
My stomach fluttered. He’d been saying things like that more and more—that I was cute or his favorite or he had a crush on me. My insides curled up and purred like a cream-fed kitten every time.
I fetched plates from the cabinet and slammed the door shut, setting them on the counter with a clatter. His eyebrow shot up. I didn’t meet his gaze, but I silently dared him to say anything, coiled and ready to snap back with a response. He kept his mouth shut.
Oh yeah. He had sisters. He was no dummy.
I set the table while he transferred the food from the Styrofoam containers to serving bowls and brought them over. “I got enough for your mom too. She’s not here?”
“No. She went over to Brother Lewis’s house this afternoon to help him get some tomatoes started. She thought it might be therapeutic for him to learn gardening.”
“It’s getting dark. I’m surprised she’s still over there.” His voice held a hint of something I couldn’t identify, a slippery feeling that disappeared as soon as I reached for it.
“I’m sure she’ll be back soon. Unless she’s decided that they’re in danger of starving, in which case she’ll take over their entire kitchen and feed them until they pop.”
“Sounds about right.”
I took a bite of the red beans and rice, but I was too distracted to enjoy them. I finished chewing and set my fork down. “You have kind of a tone right now.”
Surprise flashed over his face. “Do I? Sorry. I don’t mean to.”
“‘I’m surprised she’s still over there,’ and ‘Sounds about right,’” I repeated in the exact same tone he’d used. “Are you getting at something?”
This time he was the one to set his fork down. “No. I’m sorry though. You said you wanted to work and have some space from me tonight, and I elbowed my way in. I’m going to take mine on the road to eat and let you get back to your work.” His voice wasn’t tight, and his movements weren’t angry when he pushed back from the table and retrieved the takeout box from the counter, but my stomach clenched like it did when I had to confront a student about something.
“I wasn’t trying to make you mad, I swear. It just sounded like you had some deeper thoughts about my mom, and I wanted to hear them.”
“Maybe you aren’t mad at me, but you feel mad at me. And I don’t want to press my luck, so I’m going to take off.” He packaged his food and walked back over to me. “To be clear, I’m not pouting and leaving. I’m also not going to stay here getting on your nerves. I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?” He leaned down to steal a quick kiss before heading out of the kitchen.
I watched him go, frustrated with myself but frozen, not sure what to do. Hearing the front doorknob decided it for me. “Wait!” I said, running for the foyer. He was halfway out the door. “I’m sorry. I’m being a basket case. Why don’t we finish dinner and not talk so my brain can unwind? Then I’ll make a minicobbler, and while it bakes, we can go for a short walk. That should cure me.”
He looked confused. “It’s okay, Lila. I like you as much as I did twenty minutes ago, I want to kiss you as much as I always do, and I should probably warn you that I have every intention of sitting next to you in church tomorrow and holding your hand, but the last thing I want to do right this second is get in your way. Eat, refuel, get back to whatever you were doing. We’re fine.”
How had this Philly boy learned to speak so sweetly? It was like Daddy had trained him. I took a giant step back and pointed at the ground in front of him, on my side of the door. “Look, I made a safety buffer for you. You can step in that with no repercussions.”
His half smile appeared. “Like this?” he asked, letting go of the doorknob and taking a step forward.
“Yes, that’s good,” I said like I was coaxing a puppy. I took another step back. “There, more safe room. Try another step. You can do it.”
He took another step, this one bigger. “Lila?”
“Yes?”
“I’m a fast learner. I think I’ve got this down now. And that means if you don’t take off running, I’m going to catch you. And then you’re mine.”
I widened my eyes and whirled around, heading for the kitchen—in extreme slow motion. His bag of food thumped to the floor about two seconds before he grabbed me from behind and lifted me up to plant kisses wherever he could reach—the top of my head, my cheek, my neck. I squirmed
until he let me down, and I turned around and hugged him. “Sorry I’m being so moody.”
“I get it. Stress morphs you into a porcupine.”
I let go of him enough to punch him in the stomach.
He laughed again. “I’m still hungry. Can we go eat and not talk while you get to feeling better and then make cobbler and walk and then talk finally? I don’t mean a serious talk either,” he clarified. “I mean have a conversation with no subtext?”
I stepped back and zipped my lips. We took our seats and ate without a word, although every now and then we’d catch each other’s eye and laugh.
It felt right to have him sitting there with me. Every time my head got involved, my anxiety over the future spiked, but when it was only about how it felt to be with him, any time, that wasn’t confusing. That was clear. Clear like spring rain, clear like the lake outside. I remembered a GA talk, from Elder Holland maybe, where he said that if something was right when you asked about it the first time, then you shouldn’t give in to the temptation to doubt that answer later.
Dating Max right now was the right thing. I laughed as he caught my eye again. No, there was no escaping this. If a small piece of me had wondered for ten years what those first glances under that rowboat had meant, how long would I be doomed to wonder about what might have been if I decided to walk away now? No, this was about trust. Trust in an answer to a prayer. Trust in Max.
Dinner was fast. By the time we both qualified for the Clean Platers club, I was so full I didn’t want to think about dessert. “Do you think you’re going to have room for cobbler?”
“Not for a week.” He groaned and dropped his head in his hand. “The sad thing is, if there were more food, I’d eat it.”
“I better hide my mom’s in the fridge for her, then,” I said, standing up to clear the table.
When he had the dishes washed and dried, he smiled at me. “Now we walk?”
“Now we walk.”
I didn’t want to go down by the lake. We’d never had a walk down there that wasn’t fraught with some kind of emotion, good or bad. Instead, I led us down the driveway. When we reached the road, he took my hand and sighed, a small one, the kind of sigh I made when I caught a whiff of gardenias in the summertime or listened to the last notes of a Rascal Flatts song. It sent a shiver down my back. When did this boy not send a shiver down my back? Or flutter my stomach? Or weaken my knees?
He squeezed my hand. “Does talking through stress help you? Because I’d love to listen if it does.”
When he’d shown up, I’d been dealing with Max stress, but it had dissolved, fog to his sunshine. “I’m a public school teacher. I will always be stressed. Do you know how many hours you’re in for with that kind of offer?”
“Lay it on me. I want to hear it.”
“Okay, but I need to confess something first.”
“Uh, okay. Should I be worried?”
“No.” I wasn’t going to tell him I’d daydreamed him right into our future wedding. But I wanted to be honest in a non-scary way. “I want to tell you why I was stressed when you showed up. Don’t run away screaming, okay?”
His only answer was to hold my hand tighter.
“The way I feel about you is my crazy Mia Maid crush times ten. Or maybe to the tenth power. I don’t know. I like how that feels until I freak out about you leaving. Then I shut down. That’s what was on my mind when you showed up. But when I don’t think and I listen to my instincts instead, I’m calm. Like now.”
Max stopped and turned to look at me, and I knew he was about to kiss me.
It was so . . . mmmmm. Good. So good.
He lifted his head far enough for his words to feather over my lips as light breaths. “I don’t want to make you feel calm,” he said. “Far from it.” And he kissed me again. When he let go and stepped back, “calm” had turned to a riot inside me. He laced his fingers through mine again and started back down the road. We walked long enough for my breathing to settle almost back to normal before he spoke.
“Whatever this is between us right now is definitely how I felt ten years ago to the tenth power, not times ten. It’s weird and not, which makes no sense, but that’s how it feels. It’s awesome. What I know for sure is that this is going to work out. We’ll work through the details.”
His certainty washed over me, and I grinned into the dark. When I told Mom about this, she was going to smile like she hadn’t in forever.
“Max? You did kind of have a tone when you were talking about my mom being over at the Lewises. Not a bad one, but I can’t figure it out exactly. What were you thinking?”
His shoulders rose. “I honestly don’t know. Maybe . . .” He trailed off, his voice thoughtful. “Maybe I watched too many Hallmark movies to shut my sisters up, but it seems like it would be pretty awesome if your mom and Brother Lewis turned into a thing.”
“Whoa,” I said so quietly I didn’t even realize I’d said it aloud until Max pulled me against him.
“Oh, man, I’m sorry, Lila. I was thinking out loud, trying to figure it out, that’s all.”
“It’s okay.” I was too dazed to know if I was telling him the truth. Mom and Brother Lewis? No way. She was barely starting to smile without a flash of pain in her eyes, and it had taken her two years to get to that point. She wasn’t even close to jumping into a new relationship after being married to my dad for almost thirty years, and Brother Lewis’s grief was much newer than hers. Besides, even if both of them were ready for romance, he was nothing like Daddy. Brother Lewis had always been plain-looking, quiet, and steady. I couldn’t imagine Mom would ever be up to dating again, but if she was, she would choose someone handsome, with charisma.
“No, seriously, I’m sorry. I feel like I’ve ruined the mood.”
“Which one? I’ve had about seven since you showed up.”
He laughed. “That’s true.”
“Don’t make me punch you.”
“Go right ahead. I’m here to tell you the truth, and the truth is that you’ve cycled through a new mood about every ten minutes tonight, and I love that you let me see all of them, and I’m not going to apologize for noticing them.”
“Can we stop talking about me?”
“Sure, whenever you do, you egomaniac.”
“Too far, too far.”
“Truth hurts.”
“I have two brothers. I’m a dirty fighter. You better watch it.”
“I’m not even a little scared.”
“It’s too early in our relationship for you to have lost your awe of me.”
He scooped me into a hug that lifted me off the ground and spun me in a full circle before setting me down again. “Now that is never going to happen.”
“Max? You’re kind of the best.”
“Take it back. I wanted to say it first.”
I grinned and leaned into him.
“So tell me what’s stressing you out that’s not me.”
“Conference. And work.”
“What’s stressing you out about the conference? Everything on the list is getting done, right?”
“Yes. But I keep worrying about all the things that could go wrong. What if we don’t sell enough tickets to cover the cost of the Creole Belle? What if everyone thinks our ideas are lame? What if we can’t find any awesome speakers? What if we can’t get the service project done? What if—”
He held a finger over my lips. “It’s going to be fine, I promise. Bishop Gracely says it’s pretty much the same enrollment every year, maybe a little higher the last two years, and if those are the numbers we get, we can definitely pay for the boat, no problem.”
“I don’t relax very well. I won’t feel better until we get the paid registrations.”
“I know I can’t make you not stress out, but I think it’s great that you care so much.”
“You’re not witnessing me being great as much as you’re witnessing me being totally neurotic.”
“Lila?”
“Yeah?”
>
“Take the compliment.”
“Thank you. I am great.”
“Good job. Talking about the conference isn’t going to help you feel better. Noted. What about work? What’s stressing you out there? I mean, besides the fact that your entire job is dealing with teenagers all day.”
“Kiana.”
“Something wrong with her?”
“Yes and no. She’s excited about her project idea, but she’s hitting a brick wall in other ways, and I don’t know how to help her.”
“What kind of brick wall?”
“She came in the other day, and it almost broke my heart to see her so happy.” He tilted his head at me, an “I don’t quite get that” tilt. “It’s so hard to make her smile like that. I realized she doesn’t get to feel that very often, and it killed me.”
“I can’t even imagine that. It’s hard to think that people have long strings of hard times punctuated with rare good things and not the other way around.”
“You and I are privileged,” I said. “That’s something I’ve figured out. Living on a tight missionary budget for eighteen months is not the same thing as having to go to a food pantry a couple of times a week and still skipping meals. I don’t know if either of us could ever really understand that.”
By now we’d wandered almost a mile away from my house, even at our slow pace, and I turned the corner that would send us winding back toward home. “Kiana doesn’t expect much out of life. And then, when she finally comes in and gets all excited about something—” My voice hitched. I hated even remembering what had happened next.
Max hugged me and rubbed my back. “Hey, shh. It’s okay. What happened?”
I sniffed a few times, trying to pull myself together. “It went very wrong, and it’s all my fault.”
Chapter 20
He held me away from him and waited until I looked up to meet his eyes. “Tell me,” he said.
I took a shuddering breath. “She found a way to do her project. It’s a performance piece, but she doesn’t want to dress up like Madame CJ Walker and do a monologue. She wants to use quotes and documentation from original resources to tell the story of CJ Walker’s empire, but she wants to make it real for her classmates. So she told me her idea, and”—I swallowed, disbelieving that I had ever said this once, much less that I had to repeat myself—“I told her it couldn’t be done.”
Southern Charmed Page 16
