She shakes her head. “I figured she was just sending another person to keep me company while she’s busy. She always does that, you know. She thinks I can’t manage things by myself, but I am quite happy by myself sometimes.”
I swallow and she must feel like she just insulted me because she looks me in the eyes and immediately adds, “But this is a beautiful day and I always prefer spending beautiful days with friends. I’m so happy you could join me.”
“Thank you. She actually sent me here for a reason,” I say, tangling my fingers together as I try to figure out a way to bring up the subject of her lost love as non-awkwardly as possible. “She told me that you’ve grown up here and you knew just about everyone. I was hoping you could tell me some information about my grandfather.”
She nods, pressing her lips together as if sharing information to a total stranger is an everyday sort of thing for her. “Of course. Who is your grandfather?”
Part of me isn’t sure she’ll even know him. I have no real evidence that he’s ever been to Salt Gap. An old photo sealed in a countertop hardly counts as evidence. So even though this endeavor will be pointless, at least I can check off one thing on my to-do list.
“His name was Joseph Carter. He died a few months ago.”
Ms. Candy frowns and the small fragment of hope I hadn’t realized I was holding onto deflates inside of my chest. Of course she doesn’t know who he is. I was stupid to even try.
She reaches out and grabs my hand, her wrinkly fingers feeling very cold against my skin. “I’m so sorry to hear that. Seems the older I live, the more times I have to say goodbye to friends.”
“You knew him?” My words are raspy over the lump that forms in my throat. A pool of tears forms in the corner of her eyes but she dabs at it lightly with a tissue so as not to smudge her eyeliner.
She smiles and her eyes seem to pierce into my soul as she looks me over. “Yes dear, I knew Joe. I haven’t seen him since the day after Carol died.”
Chills prickle over my arms. Ms. Candy’s head tilts to the side and she squeezes my arm. “How lovely. I can see so much of them in you. Carol had a widow’s peak just like yours and those dark eyes are definitely Joe’s.”
I smile back at her, filled with gratitude and a sort of proudness that’s hard to explain. I’m happy that she sees my grandfather in me. He was a far better person than I’ll ever be. “How did you know him?” I ask.
She clasps her hands in her lap on top of the yarn work as if she’s finished talking. A few seconds pass in silence. Finally, she turns to me and gives me a warm yet coy smile. “Honey I’m not sure you want to know that part.”
My eyebrows narrow. “Wha—” I begin to ask, before the bright red flush in her cheeks makes me realize how naive I’ve been. My mouth hangs open mid-sentence until, a few awkward seconds later, I slap my hand over it.
She bursts into laugher and shakes her head. “Heavens, girl. It’s not as bad as you’re thinking.”
I let out my breath in a slow gush of air. “Please tell me. I need to know. Did he live here?”
“Yes ma’am,” Ms. Candy says. “He lived just down the road from the library in a little farm house. He was born in this town and for a while, I thought he wanted to die in it.” She points off into the distance and I glance in that direction but only see trees.
“That’s so weird,” I murmur. “I guess I figured he grew up in Houston. He never talked about living anywhere else. My mom didn’t have any grandparents because they had died before she was born.”
She nods. “Joe’s parents died very young. He was still in high school. I went to their funerals.”
“So…you were close with him?”
Another nod. Her eyes seem far away. “Girl, I don’t mean to cross a line here, but you want the truth so I’ll tell it to you. I was in love with Joe Carter. Absolutely head over heels for him.”
“So you dated him?” I ask, hoping to god that she’s not going to reveal some secret affair with my honorable grandfather whom I refuse to believe could ever do anything wrong.
She shakes her head. “Nope. I sure wanted to. I remember meeting him in grade school and I’m pretty sure I fell in love with him right there on the monkey bars at recess. But he was always in love with Carol. He was a good man and he loved your grandmother more than anything else in this world. He was a hopeless romantic, you know.”
“Hopeless, eh?” I say with a little laugh. Grandpa was a businessman. Dedicated to his job and his clients. He wasn’t romantic. I look at his watch on my wrist and twist it around to see the time.
“He was incredible. Always doing little romantic things for Carol. He’d have carved their initials in every tree in town if he’d had the time.”
My back pocket vibrates and I take out my cell phone and find Tyler’s name on the screen.
Is your reception good enough to get this text?
Of course he would text something like that. Not wanting to look rude in front of my new friend, I slip the phone back into my pocket without replying. Waiting a little bit for my reply won’t kill the boy.
“When did he leave Salt Gap?” I ask, followed quickly by, “Do I have any relatives in this town?”
“He left the day he buried Carol. He packed up their baby and filled his pickup truck with all of the essentials. His friends all told him to stay and give that baby attention, but he insisted on leaving. Said he couldn’t live in this town without his wife.” She shrugs and gives me a sad smile. “I guess that’s when he went to Houston. I never saw him or heard from him again.”
Grandpa moved across the state because he was heartbroken. And here I am not allowing myself to love out of fear of being heartbroken again. Hell, I’m not even allowing myself to go on a measly date with the hottest small town man around. Ms. Candy grabs my hand, startling me out of my own thoughts.
“Why did you come here looking for answers, girl? What are you trying to learn?”
I shrug. “Believe it or not, I didn’t come to Salt Gap on purpose. I just happened to stop here for food and, well, I haven’t left yet. I found a picture of grandpa in the countertop photos at the Salt Gap Diner and it made me want to figure out why it was there.”
“How wonderful,” she says with a cute little laugh. Her hand flies to her chest and then her fingers grip the cross on the necklace around her neck. She shakes her head as her laughter fades. “It’s amazing what fate does, isn’t it?”
I can’t help but smile. “Yeah, it is amazing.”
Chapter 12
The stop sign at the end of Ms. Candy’s road can’t arrive fast enough. When my tires finally roll to a stop at the four-way intersection, I glance in all directions and confirm what I already knew: there’s not another car in sight. I grab my phone from the cup holder and open Tyler’s text.
I type a quick reply and I don’t spent sixty seconds pondering over which words to write.
Me: Yup. Luckily I was outside so that probably helped.
Tyler: I tried calling but it didn’t go through. Are you busy?
I consider saying yes, but what’s the point? Me: Nope.
Tyler: Great. Meet me at the library. It’s on Main Street.
Nerves filter into my stomach as I put my car in park. Salt Gap Public Library is bigger than I’d imagined for a town so small. It has a red brick exterior and wraparound floor to ceiling windows around the whole front of the building, allowing a great view of the bookcases inside. Libraries don’t usually make me nervous. But of course that’s not why the butterflies are having mini heart attacks inside my chest.
Tyler raps on my car window and I let out a shriek of surprise, tossing my car keys into the air. He laughs and pulls open my door for me.
“Hey…jerk,” I say as I reach into the floorboard to retrieve my fallen keys. “You scared me.”
“You looked pretty serious in there. Were you car meditating?”
I roll my eyes and climb out of my car. “Is car meditating a thing?”
He shrugs. “You’re the big city girl. You tell me.”
I swallow, wanting the expression to calm my nerves but it doesn’t. “Nope,” I say with a smile that I hope hides my nervousness. “We city folk still do our meditating indoors.”
Even though the last time we talked was when he dashed out of the diner, Tyler doesn’t have a hint of awkwardness in his voice. I guess the awkwardness is only on my side. Tyler looks incredibly normal today. Dark jeans as always, white t-shirt that hugs his chest in all the right places. Tanned skin and short black hair. IPhone compressing against his ass in his back pocket. Oh to be that denim…
I shake my head. “So what are we doing here?”
Tyler’s sly grin widens into a full out child-on-Christmas-morning smile. He shoves his hands in his pockets. “I have a surprise for you.”
“Is it a book?” I ask with a wave of my hand toward the library.
“Kind of.” He rocks back on his heels and this little dimple forms in his left cheek and ugh, I wish I hadn’t said no to that date. “Miranda just served me lunch and she got to talking about the photo of your grandfather in the counter.” He pauses and looks at me as if he’s expecting me to have some kind of reaction to this news. Not sure why I would…Miranda has a huge mouth after all.
“So…?” I ask, wondering what he’s getting at. “And since when is she a server? I thought she was a hostess.”
He pushes open the glass library door and motions for me to go inside first. “I have something you’ll want to see.”
The smell of library books brings up memories of my high school years where I spent most of my time with my nose in a book instead of getting blackout drunk at parties with the other students. The librarian greets Tyler by name and gives me a polite hello. She’s unlike any librarian I’ve ever seen, probably because she’s about my age and covered in tattoos. Tyler takes me to the back of the building where the isles stop being shiny and the books smell more like stagnant mildew.
“In my freshman year of high school, they made everyone do a project on the History of Salt Gap. I was really into architecture so I chose to make this poster board documenting all the buildings in town, what year they were built, who designed them…stuff like that.”
“That’s cute,” I say.
He rolls his eyes as he grabs a rolling cart of old books and pulls it away from the wall, revealing a door. “It wasn’t that cute. My poster board making skills were less than stellar back then.”
“I’m sure you could make a really nice poster board now,” I say with an encouraging wink. “I mean, those wood floors in my house are proof that you’re a man who knows how to use his hands.”
I regret them the moment the words are out of my mouth. Tyler blushes and runs his hand over his face. “Thanks. I’ll keep that in mind next time I have to make a poster board.”
The awkwardness I’ve created hovers around Tyler and me, threatening to suffocate us until he opens the door that leads into a small storage closet. I cough at the musty air and follow him inside the room that glows from a single light bulb with a pull string.
Shelves of boxes and newspapers line the small four walls and a stack of filing cabinets fill the floor space, leaving very little room for us to maneuver around. Tyler finds the box he’s looking for and pulls it off the shelf. “Will you clear some space off that table?” he asks.
I swipe some newspapers to the side and he sets down the box. My interest is piqued when I read the words written across the lid: Salt Gap Diner. Chills prickle down my arms when he removes the lid.
Hundreds of black and white photographs stare up at me along with an old newspaper that Tyler pulls out and opens to the front page. I skim over the article quickly because all I want to do is look through the photos.
Salt Gap’s first diner would like you to be a part of history. “The citizens are what make our little town so great,” said Mayor Charles Largess, who is building the diner, set to open in March. “Therefore, we’re asking everyone to donate photographs of their favorite places and people in town. They will be preserved forever in the diner.”
“This is amazing.” My words are a whisper as I pick up the first photograph of a little girl holding a teddy bear on a swing set. The next one is of the same girl, but now she’s standing next to twin boys. I recognize the twins from a photo in the diner…these must be extras. “Grandpa donated his photo on purpose. It wasn’t an accident at all.”
“What wasn’t an accident?” Tyler’s voice makes me jump. He laughs. “Did you forget I was here?”
“A little bit,” I admit, tearing my eyes away from his gorgeous smile to pick up another handful of photos. I flip through each one, recognizing some of the people from other photos at the diner, and recognizing even more of the places around town. There’s a photo of the carnival grounds with an old banner made of fabric with painted-on lettering that advertises the Cockroach Festival.
The next picture makes me gasp. “It’s him.” Grandpa and his wife, standing next to that same old truck, only this time instead of smiling at the camera, my grandmother plants a kiss on Grandpa’s cheek. Tyler reaches into the box and takes out the next photo.
“There’s more.” He hands me a picture of a young Grandpa standing proudly on stage at the Cockroach Festival, holding a ribbon for first place in one hand and a cockroach in the other.
“I can’t believe it,” I say, running my finger down the black and white photograph. “He’s so handsome. I have all these memories of him being…well, old. It’s hard to imagine that he was young once.”
“And very much in love by the looks of these photos.” He holds out the next image and I take it from his fingers. My grandfather holds my grandmother with one hand around her back and one under her knees. Her arms wrap around his neck and they’re eyes are closed as they kiss. I hold it up to get a closer look.
Tyler squints his eyes at the back of the photo. “Too much in love, apparently,” he says, tapping the back. I turn it over and read the words hastily scribbled on the back: reject- too racy for family diner.
“I’m going to frame this.” I put it on top of the growing stack of pictures of my grandparents. Tyler brushes hair away from my eyes. He’s overstepping his boundaries with that brave movement, but I let it slide. He just discovered my past with me, and this is an intimate moment. “Thank you for this,” I whisper.
He swallows and clears his throat. “I guess not every member of the Carter family hates love.”
My eyes narrow as I look up at him. “I never said I hated love.”
His head cocks to the side. “You never said you liked it.”
“That’s because I don’t.” With an annoyed shake of my head, I put the lid on the box and bring it back to its place on the shelf in the corner of the room. I’ve kept all dozen photos of grandpa and can’t wait to show them to Miranda. This is not the time or place to talk about my liking or not liking of something as stupid as love.
Tyler swoops in front of the door as I try to leave the tiny storage room, blocking it with his body that suddenly looks much more massive than usual. “Why are you so against the idea of loving someone?”
My arms fold across my chest and I give him a pointed look. “I am capable of love. I love Miranda and my mother. And I already love nephew and the baby’s not even born yet, so I think that classifies me as someone who loves.”
With one final so suck on that look, I step to the left to bypass him but he slides over and blocks me. Then I stubbornly go to the right, only to be blocked again by a six-foot-two-inch muscular man with a freaking shit-eating grin on his face.
“Would you stop being a child for just one moment please?”
He shakes his head. “I don’t understand why you can’t just go on one tiny date with me.”
“I’m sure there’s plenty of things you can’t understand.”
He shrugs off my insult and lowers his head, giving me a piercing stare with two brown puppy eyes. “
What about a practice date?”
Ugh, I want to so bad. “No.”
“A pretend date?”
“No.”
“A fake date?”
“What does that even mean?” I hold back a smile because I’m trying to act serious while he’s being so freaking ridiculous. As confident as I am in my decision to decline a date with another man who definitely likes another girl and will undoubtedly rip my heart to shreds, I have to admit that it feels awesome to be pursued so intently.
“You should have dinner with me and tell me the reasons that you feel are justified enough to banish dating from your life. It won’t be a date… it’ll be two people…talking about not dating.”
I slowly let out the breath I’d been holding. “I don’t even know what that means.”
He winks and steps out of the doorway. “I’ll pick you up at seven.”
“Why do you keep tricking me into having dinner with you?”
He shrugs. “Why do you keep falling for it?
Chapter 13
The drive home is blissful and nerve-wracking and I’d kill for something to take my mind off thinking about Tyler. I am a grown ass woman after all. I am mature and not a fourteen-year-old so it really shouldn’t be so hard. I’m still kicking myself mentally for being so attracted to someone I am not going to date, (despite having accepted a fake date with him) when I turn into my driveway and find something that makes me forget Tyler even exists.
Marcus’s truck. I cut the engine and scramble outside as quickly as possible, trying to listen for signs of them talking over the beating of my heart. She is freaking pregnant and he needs to stay away. Being knocked up by one loser does not mean she’s open for getting banged by another one.
The door swings open the moment I unlock it and I practically run inside, hoping to catch that boy before he’s got his hands all over my niece. If he so much as makes a move on her, I will treat him the way he treated my car the first night I came to Salt Gap.
A Little Like Love (Robin and Tyler) Page 6
