by Merry Farmer
“Has he got a big ding-dong?” Myrna interrupted.
Chastity choked and sputtered over her laughter. “Mrs. B.! Christopher was your student.”
“Twenty years ago.” She shrugged. “He’s grown up a little since then.”
“Yes, he has.” Chastity arched a brow. “Quite a bit.” She held her hands out in front of her, showing exactly how much he’d grown…plus an inch or two, just for fun.
“Goodness me.” Myrna fanned herself. “That’s enough to short-circuit the pace-maker.”
Chastity giggled like the two of them were fifth-graders. “Yeah, but I kinda broke it last night.”
Myrna’s eyes flew wide. “You broke Christopher’s doodle-doo?”
“Well, I took it out of commission.” Chastity had no idea how she was having this conversation without laughing herself silly. “I knit him a very special sweater as a wedding present, only it turns out he’s allergic to wool.”
“Oh.” Myrna nodded sagely. “I could have told you that.”
Chastity’s eyebrows shot up to her forehead. “What?”
Myrna batted her arm playfully, nodding to the knitting Chastity had pulled out of her bag. “I’m a life-long knitter too, you know. I used to knit my students hats for Christmas every year.”
“Really? That’s awesome.”
“I knit one for Christopher out of one hundred percent wool one year. About ten minutes after he popped it on his head, his ears and forehead broke out in terrible hives. Thank the good Lord that he had a full head of curls, even back then, or his whole head would have turned as red as Rudolph’s—” She gasped, clapping a wrinkled hand over mouth. “Land sakes, poor Christopher’s little head.”
“Like a cross between a beet and a cucumber,” Chastity confirmed with a sigh. “Couldn’t do a thing with it for the rest of the night. I felt so bad.”
She might have felt bad, but Chastity could see the moment the visual came clear in Myrna’s imagination. She burst into laughter, shaking her head and rocking back in her chair.
“Sounds like we’re having a lot of fun back here.” Denise waltzed into the room, her game face back on. As soon as she saw Chastity and Myrna in stitches while Chris and Destiny had their heads together at the other side of the room, her head whipped back and forth, as if she didn’t know which parade she wanted to rain on first.
“Oh, I’m just getting to know Christopher’s new wife,” Myrna answered. “She’s delightful.”
“Is that what they’re calling it now,” Denise muttered, loud enough for Chastity to hear her.
“Your mom and I have a lot in common,” Chastity met the venom with a smile. “We’re both knitters.”
“Oh yeah!” Chris perked up at the other end of the room.
Denise’s smile stretched like a rubber chicken. “Isn’t that sweet? Mom is always knitting little odds and ends and stuff.”
“That’s cool.” Chastity’s smile was genuine. “Maybe you could bring your current project in and we could knit together during Chris’s classes.”
“I wouldn’t mind that,” Chris added. “As long as you keep the wool at that end of the room. Maybe there’s some way to work it into a lesson. A way to demonstrate chemical bonds or something.”
“Yes, exactly.” Chastity’s heart did the cool, fluttery thing it’d been doing since the moment she first clapped eyes on Chris. It was like they were on the same wavelength, like they ‘got’ each other.
“Oh, I’m afraid I don’t have a project right now,” Myrna said, bringing Chastity’s warm-fuzzies to a crashing stop.
“No?”
Myrna shrugged. “I was knitting a scarf a couple of months ago, but I ran out of yarn.”
“That’s tragic.” Chastity put a hand on her arm. “How about I bring you some next time I come out?”
“You will not!” Denise snapped, lips curled in a sneer.
Everyone in the room stared at her. Myrna sighed and shook her head.
Denise saw the frown come to Chris’s face and let out a tense laugh. “I mean, Mama, you know that I will bring you more yarn if you just ask.”
“She does ask,” Destiny spoke up with typical twelve-year-old sass. “You keep forgetting to bring her anything.”
For a split-second, Denise’s expression pinched to what Chastity was sure would turn out to be an epic scolding. Denise even raised her finger to point at her daughter. Her mouth formed words, but at the last minute, she forced her lips to loosen and brushed off the comment with another laugh that was as fake as her hair-color.
“I guess I’ve just been a little busy,” she said instead, patting her hair and batting her over-mascaraed eyelashes. “Some of us have businesses to run and can’t sit around doing hobbies all day.” She turned up her nose at Chastity. “But I’ll tell you what, Mama. As soon as I can, I’ll pop down to Craft Palace and pick you up enough yarn to keep your speedy little hands busy for months.”
Before anyone could contradict her, she skipped across the room and away from the conversation.
“I’ll believe it when I see it,” Myrna muttered to Chastity.
“Don’t worry, I’ll smuggle some sock yarn in next time I come,” Chastity whispered.
“Just don’t let the warden catch you.”
They were stopped from having any more conversation as Denise sidled up to Chris’s side.
“You know, I could pick up some turkey and fixin’s when I’m out getting Mama’s yarn.” She swiped her finger down Chris’s arm, sent a killing glance over her shoulder to Chastity, then went on with, “I know how much you like turkey dinners.”
“Uh…” Chris stepped carefully away from her, taking a small pile of books about stars to Chastity’s end of the table. He gave Chastity a look that begged for help.
Between that look and the way Chris had reacted to Denise out in the salon, Chastity wasn’t the least bit worried that she had competition. In fact, she was more than a little curious to see how her sexy hubby would get out of the honey-trap he’d walked into. She crossed her arms and raised an eyebrow.
“I think it would be a great idea to have Mr. and Mrs. Culpepper over to supper one night.” Destiny saved the day, stepping in front of her mom as she tried to follow Chris. “What do you think, Mr. Culpepper?”
“I think that girl is getting an A+ on her next assignment,” Chris whispered to Chastity. He faced Destiny and answered, “It might be better to wait a couple of weeks. Chastity and I are newlyweds, after all, and we want to spend as much time together as possible.” He sent Chastity a wink.
“Someone else is getting an A+ too,” Chastity murmured.
“Someone else will try for extra-credit later,” he murmured back.
“So, are you two, like, having sex in every room of your house on every surface?” Destiny asked, planting a hand on her hip and smirking.
“Destiny!” Denise blanched, but Chastity could tell it was much more because she wanted to be the one messing up surfaces with Chris and not from embarrassment.
“Pretty much,” Chastity answered, figuring Denise could use a reality-check.
“Well, not every surface,” Chris corrected her. “We’ll need to invest in a harness before we can make it work on some of those bookshelves.”
Myrna erupted into laughter, lifting her feet off the ground as she rocked back. Chastity didn’t need to do a thing to drive the point home further. All she had to do was smile, and Denise turned bright red.
“Well, I…I mean…I’ve never…” Denise sputtered out. She pursed her lips and planted her hands on her hips, glaring at Destiny, as though her thwarted romantic dreams were her daughter’s fault. At last, she cocked her head to the side and said, “I think I hear the bell. That means a customer. Unlike some people, I don’t have time to chit-chat all day.” She turned and rushed out of the room, turning up her nose as she did.
“Sorry about that,” Myrna sighed. “I love my daughter, but she is the queen of getting her hopes up and he
r nose out of joint.”
“I wish she’d date someone more in her league,” Destiny added.
“You’ll have to find someone for her,” Chris said, full of good humor. Although he did frown as he headed back to his place at the other end of the tables. “You didn’t hear me say any of that, by the way. It was way too inappropriate for your young ears.”
“Puh-lease, Mr. Culpepper. I’ve said much worse on the playground at school.”
“I sure hope not,” Chastity said. “You’re far too young for any of that.” Although in that moment, she had a shocking idea of what her sisters had seen in her when she was that age.
“Kids grow up too fast these days,” Myrna lamented. “Except for the ones who never seem to grow up at all.”
“You can say that again.” Chastity settled back on her chair and picked up her knitting to figure out where she was in the pattern.
Chris and Destiny finished setting up for the lesson, and within minutes, other students began to arrive. The initial storm had passed, and the lesson began. But Chastity had a much harder time paying attention to all of the facts and information that Chris so expertly conveyed to his class. She was too busy thinking about the mixed-up situation she’d just walked into.
5
“Wow. I wish we’d had science classes like that when I was growing up,” Chastity said at the end of the lesson as she helped Chris carry classroom supplies out to his truck. “You made all that stuff about how scientists calculate the orbit of planets actually interesting.”
Chris chuckled and lifted a box of plastic planets into the bed of his truck. “It is interesting,” he argued. “The solar system is fascinating, not to mention everything else in the rest of the universe. There’s just so much out there, stuff astronomers haven’t even begun to calculate yet. The number of exoplanets alone grows practically every second. And don’t get me started on dark matter. Why, last year alone—”
He stopped, settling his weight on one hip, laughing, and shaking his head as he leaned against the truck.
“I’m sorry. None of that is the lease bit interesting to you, I bet.”
“No!” Chastity was on the opposite side of the truck bed from Chris, but she plunked her hands on the edge and looked as though she would vault over the entire truck to prove how interesting anything he said was. “It’s all interesting. I never learned any of that. I didn’t even know what an exoplanet was until I heard you talking about them today.”
“Really?” Chris pushed away from the truck and walked to the back. Chastity followed. “Let’s just pop across the street to pick up the mail, then we can head home for supper,” he said, then went right back into science talk. “I thought everyone did a unit on exoplanets these days.”
“Not us,” Chastity laughed. “I don’t think I learned a single interesting thing in any science class I ever took. Except maybe Human Anatomy. I really enjoyed learning about the reproductive system.”
Chris chuckled with her as the two of them crossed the lazy Culpepper street. “I have to admit, that was one of my favorites too. And I don’t care how generic and stylized you try to make the illustrations in those textbooks, teenage boys see only one thing.”
“Yeah, well, my mom glued white index cards over top of all those pictures.” Chastity rolled her eyes at the memory as they ducked through the front door into the post office.
“You should have just pulled them off.” Chris made a bee-line for one of the boxes, opened it with a key on his keychain, took out a few envelopes and magazines, then shut the box. Three seconds, and they headed back out and across the street to the truck.
“I did try to pry the cards off,” Chastity told him as they went. “Of course I did. I mean, you don’t read about gonads without wanting to see what they look like.”
“Naturally,” Chris said with a straight face, though his eyes glittered with mirth.
“Unfortunately, I ripped up the page when I tried,” Chastity went on. “And Mama knew exactly what I’d been trying to do when she saw the ripped book. I had to stand at the supper table and watch everyone eat without getting any myself, then go right up to bed.”
Chris’s brow flew up as he walked up his side of the truck and Chastity up hers. “People actually send kids to bed without their supper?”
“I don’t know about ‘people,’ but my parents sure did.”
He shook his head. “The more stories I hear, the more I can’t decide if you guys were raised well or treated horribly.”
The conversation paused as they each opened their doors and slid into the truck’s spacious cabin.
“Well, we never ran into trouble with drugs or alcohol, we never ended up in juvie, and none of us got knocked up,” Chastity said, in all fairness to her parents.
Chris snorted. “That’s more than some people can say.” He nodded through the windshield to the salon’s large front window.
Denise was busy brushing cream hair color onto a customer’s head and talking. She must have felt someone was looking at her, because she turned to glance out the window at the truck. For a moment she burst into a wide, flirty smile and wiggled latex glove covered fingers at Chris. Then she spotted Chastity and her smile dropped to a disgusted sneer.
“Aaw, somebody doesn’t like me,” Chastity cooed, waving back as though she and Denise were best friends.
“Sorry about that,” Chris chuckled. He turned the key to start the car, then backed out and away from the salon. “Denise has had this idea in her head for years now that she and I would make the perfect couple.”
“Would you?” Chastity did her level best to keep a straight face as she asked the question.
Playing right along, Chris shrugged. “I’m pretty sure she’d be willing to go down on me.”
“Oh, well, then the two of you were meant to be.” Chastity leaned back in her seat, lips twitching with the effort of not laughing out loud.
Chris snuck a peek at her as he pulled onto the road that led back to the ranch, brow lifted in surprise. For a split-second, he looked like he might not know whether she was teasing or serious.
“Although, I’d be willing to go down on you too, so…” she added, nodding to his crotch.
A grin pulled at Chris’s lips, reassuring Chastity that he really did know she was teasing after all. He was quick to swallow it and said with a straight face, “Really? All right, then.”
He shifted his hips and reached for his fly with one hand while keeping the other on the wheel.
Chastity couldn’t stick to the joke. She laughed and swatted his arm. “Not now, doofus. It’s incredibly dangerous to give someone head while they’re driving.”
“Right, right.” Chris put his other hand back on the wheel. “I think I got that one wrong on the driver’s test.”
Anyone listening to the two of them would have thought they were out of their minds, and fairly nasty to boot, but Chastity couldn’t remember the last time she’d had so much fun. She’d always wanted to have a bawdy sense of humor, but her parents’ idea of comedy was kitschy songs from reruns of the Lawrence Welk Show. She leaned against the side window, smiling up into the late afternoon sunshine, saying a quick prayer of thanks to God and Dr. Lachele for sending her the perfect husband.
“So is that really what happened to Denise?” she asked after a few minutes. “Did she get knocked up in high school?”
“She did,” Chris answered with a regretful sigh.
“It wasn’t you, was it?” Chastity snapped straighter.
“God, no!” For a moment, Chris looked genuinely horrified. Then his shoulders dropped, and he went back to looking vaguely sad. “No, Denise and this guy, Wes, were one of those die-hard couples in high school who everyone knew would end up together. At least, right up until Wes got a football scholarship to the University of Wyoming.”
“Uh, good for him?”
Chris glanced sideways with a shake of his head. “He celebrated by knocking Denise up, then dumped her when
she told him she was pregnant. Told her he didn’t want a girl and a baby cramping his style in college.”
“What an ass!”
“Yep.” Chris nodded. “Denise has been a little…desperate since then. But Destiny turned out to be a great kid, thanks to Mrs. B.”
“Well, I’m glad she has at least one stable adult influence in her life,” Chastity said. But thinking about Myrna looped her right back around to the burr that had gotten under her saddle for the duration of Chris’s lesson. “Ugh! I could have strangled Denise with my bare hands over the way she talked to her mother. Telling me I can’t bring yarn to a sweet old lady who obviously wants to have something to knit? That’s a jerk move.”
“Yeah,” Chris agreed with something between a growl and a sigh. “I wish I could say that Denise appreciates all that her mother’s done for her.”
“Well, making Myrna sit back there in the salon classroom all day without any yarn or projects is just cruel, if you ask me.”
“Mrs. B. never complains,” Chris said, though without conviction. “I’ve asked her about it before, but she says she’s fine with that little TV in the morning and watching me teach classes in the afternoons.”
Chastity huffed and crossed her arms. “It’s elder abuse, if you ask me. And I don’t care what Denise says, I’m bringing Myrna yarn next time I come.”
Chris pulled his eyes away from the road long enough to smile at her. “You’re a good person, Chastity.”
It was a simple compliment, but it just about made Chastity melt down to her toes. “I just don’t like to see oldies taken advantage of.”
“Oldies?” Chris’s smile widened.
“They’ve had such interesting lives,” Chastity went on. “If not for that generation, none of us would be here. I hate it when people walk all over them. In fact, I really wanted to be a nurse and specialize in geriatrics so I could stand up for people like Myrna on a daily basis.”
“Really?” There was nothing fake or teasing about Chris’s reaction now. He lit up. “So why didn’t you become a nurse?”
The question hit a little too close to home. Chastity’s arms were already crossed, but now she hugged herself. “Mom and Daddy wouldn’t allow it. They put their foot down, and after a while, I stopped begging them to let me major in something other than Homemaking. Hope was smart enough to take business classes without letting them know, but there was no way I could take nursing classes in secret. There were too many labs, and I never would have been able to pull off sneaking out for a nursing practicum.”
