by Naomi Niles
I shook my head sadly. “No, Christine was my first.”
“Gosh, I don’t know what to say.” Darren looked misty-eyed. “It makes me kinda sad that you missed out on that whole part of life.”
“Darren, have you ever dated anyone?”
Darren shrugged. “I’ve banged a few girls.” He said this like it was the most natural thing, like he wasn’t secretly super-pleased with himself.
“So you must have known they were into you. What were the signals?”
“I don’t know, man,” said Darren. He gripped the stem of his bottle thoughtfully. “I guess just their general attitude toward me, the way they looked at me, the way they smiled, the way they lit up when I walked into a room. It was better than any drug, and it made me feel like the tallest person in the world.”
I leaned my head back against the front of the sofa, staring up at the light fixture. “See, that’s how it feels when I talk to her. Like she thinks I’m the most special, most magnificent, most amazing person in the world. You know how I crack jokes, and how you and Mama will just look at me like I’m from another planet. Allie just laughs and laughs. One time she laughed so hard I thought she was having a stroke.”
“Well, there you go,” said Darren. “If she thinks you’re that funny, she probably likes you. And you should probably get her into bed ASAP.”
As hard as it is to believe, the thought of getting into bed with her hadn’t even crossed my mind until that moment. Her laughter, her self-possession, her fancy way of talking, those were the things that had caught my attention. When I pictured the two of us together, I imagined us sitting in one of those upscale Asian restaurants where the chef cuts up your meat at the table. And we would be laughing and arguing about how one of us thought Armageddon was the greatest movie of all the time and the other one thought it was cinematic trash.
Until Darren brought it up, sex had never entered the picture.
But if he was right and she was really into me, then there was a good chance we would be going out before too long. And if that was the case, then sex was a definite possibility. At the very least, it was something we would need to talk about.
***
I went to bed early that night because I was worn out from helping Darren unpack and because I had promised to help Allie move in the next day. But I couldn’t get to sleep from thinking about what we had talked about earlier, so I lay there for a couple of hours tossing and turning and sweating like I had a fever. At one point, I got up and turned on the air on, but it didn’t help.
I was just drifting off to sleep at around two when I was startled by the phone buzzing. It was Lizzie.
“Hey, what’s up?” I said, grumpy and groggy and in no mood to talk.
“Hey, handsome,” said Lizzie quietly. It was that tone of voice she only used when she wanted something badly. “You doing anything?”
“Tryin’ to sleep,” I said gruffly, rubbing my sore ears. “What do you want?”
She must have sensed I was irritated, because she didn’t sound happy. “Hey, okay. I just wanted to see if you were busy. Guess I’ll try again some other time. Sorry.”
Before I could answer, she hung up.
I turned the buzzer on “silent” and slammed the phone down hard on the nightstand.
Perhaps it was just as well, I thought as I drifted back to sleep. Tomorrow felt like the beginning of a new day, the turning over of a new page, and I wasn’t about to sabotage my shot at future happiness by holding onto things that had outlived their usefulness. I didn’t need to be seeing Lizzie, not now and maybe not ever again.
***
And then I woke up and there it was. Morning. The day I had been waiting for, for so long.
The last two weeks had dragged by so slowly I had begun to fear they might never end. But now here we were: a Saturday morning in late summer, the sun hot on the back of my neck, the air sticky with sweat and heat. As I walked over to the house that morning, Mama’s garden was heady with the aroma of wildflowers and cedars.
“Is today the day I finally get to meet this girl?” Mama asked over a breakfast of scrambled eggs and pork steaks.
“You’ve met her once before,” I said. “Or at least, you’ve said hi to her.”
“We spoke for about a minute,” said Mama. “Maybe less. That’s not enough time to get to know a person. And not nearly enough time to decide whether I want my son to spend the rest of his life with ‘em.”
I laughed. “Well, I think maybe we should let me be the judge of that. Why don’t you cook us one of your famous pot roasts, and I’ll see if she wants to come over and have dinner tonight?”
“I’d like that,” said Mama, beaming. “Are you sure she won’t be too tired?”
“I’ll ask her.”
As I was walking back through my own driveway about an hour later, Allie pulled up in her battered green car. I ran over to meet her.
“Hey,” I said as she rolled down the driver’s side window. “You know I would have helped you get all that loaded up.”
“I know,” said Allie, smiling and tugging at my tie. Her hair was still wet from the shower and smelled of lavender and honey. “But women can do amazing things when left to ourselves. We can even load up our own cars.”
“Amazing. Someday you’ll have to teach me your secrets.”
“Okay,” she said. “If you’re really good. But you can definitely help me unload if you want, and there’s still a bunch of furniture over at my apartment—sofas, a portable refrigerator, sorry, ‘fridge,’ a queen-sized mattress…”
“How did you even fit all that crap into your apartment?”
“Haven’t you ever seen Doctor Who? My apartment is bigger on the inside.”
I had no idea what she was talking about. “I’ve been asked to let you know that my mama’s cooking a huge dinner tonight, and she wanted to know if you wanted to come over.”
It was another one of those moments when seemingly everything depended on her answer. Her eyes lit up with excitement. “Oh, I would love that! I’m going to be so hungry by the time we’re done; packing always takes the wind out of me. Tell her, yes. Is that okay?”
“Yes, of course!” I said, as my shoulders un-tensed and my insides relaxed. “In fact, I’ll text her right now to let her know you’re coming.”
Chapter Twelve
Allie
We spent the rest of the day loading up my furniture and getting me moved into the tiny house. He seemed surprised by how strong I was and remarked on it more than once as we were dragging a sofa downstairs and tossing it in the back of his pickup.
“I just wasn’t expecting you to have so much strength in your arms,” he said as we leaned against the side of the truck catching our breaths. “You’re like an ant.”
“Can a woman not be strong?” I asked.
“Yes, but you’re so small. Looking at you, I’d never have guessed it.”
“I guess that’s what happens when you take three years of weightlifting in college.”
“You’re joking,” said Curtis, incredulous.
“Nope. Have you seen how much I can lift?”
During the moments when we weren’t moving, I walked out into the cool grass and beckoned Jake to come sit beside me. There I sat quietly gathering up my strength as I ran my fingers through his long hair. Jake and I had a natural way with each other, like we had been together our whole lives. Every now and then the dog looked into my face with this keen look of understanding, as if he understood me perfectly.
At the end of the day, Curtis drove the truck back to his place for a quick shower while I stayed behind to unpack my boxes. So far, his parents had shown admirable restraint by not coming out into the yard, although there had been moments when the blinds in the kitchen window moved and I thought I could see her gray eyes peeking out. I had always loved older people and, based on what I had seen of her and some of the things Curtis had told me, she sounded hilarious. I couldn’t wait to meet her, alt
hough I sensed he was nervous about it.
Curtis came striding back over at around six and motioned for me to follow him into my new home.
“Okay, so I think it only fair to warn you before we go in there,” he said in a low voice, “my mama can be really awkward. Especially when there’s girls involved.”
“Awkward, like how?” I asked.
“She gets these funny ideas into her head, thinks every time one of us brings a girl home, it’s because we’re going to marry her. She might do or say things during dinner to hint at that. The thing you’ve gotta do is just learn how to take it in stride. Over the years I’ve learned how to tune her out when she’s being ridiculous, so I forget how offensive she can be to someone who hasn’t lived with her. You understand?”
I nodded, though it felt like someone had just plunged ice water into my belly. Was he suggesting that it was ridiculous to hope for a relationship? That after all the talking we had done, I had to be content with just being friends? He must have sensed I was growing to like him, so this seemed like a pretty cold way to shut me down.
“Yeah, I get it,” I said slowly. “I don’t mind weird, hilarious old people. Back in college, I worked at a nursing home during the summers to pay my tuition. There was this old lady with dementia who used to flash everyone and thought it was the funniest thing. Just about gave the male nurses the fainting fits.”
He smiled, and I felt a little better. “Well, you won’t have to worry about that during dinner. Everyone in this house keeps their clothes on—at least during mealtimes.”
“Noted.”
He took me by the hand and led me through the door and across the yard, only letting go as we approached the back patio. Just then, the kitchen door swung open, and Mrs. Savery appeared, wearing a paisley apron and waving excitedly.
“You’ve no idea how excited I was to have company over,” she said, folding me into a warm hug. “We get so few visitors these days, what with Zach in the Navy and him the one who was always having guests over. Sometimes I really miss cooking for someone other than Curtis.”
“Thanks, Mama,” said Curtis, grinning.
“Oh, you know what I mean,” said Mrs. Savery. “You love my cooking, but by now you’re used to it. There’s not many tricks I could pull out that would surprise you. This girl has never had it, so she doesn’t know what to expect.”
“That is very true,” said Curtis politely. “You could serve zebra with kidney beans, and she’d have to accept it because she’s your guest.”
Mrs. Savery wrinkled up her nose. “You know I hate kidney beans,” she said.
Curtis laughed, his loud, dog-like laugh. It was amazing how comfortable they were with each other and how much he seemed to respect her.
As we stepped into the kitchen, an old man wearing a brown beret and a pair of long khaki pants rose from the table. “Hey, there!” he said in a cheerful voice as he came forward and hugged me. “So good to finally, finally meet you.”
I exchanged a glance with Curtis, who looked about as surprised as I did. “Well, when I heard there was gonna be food,” I said, “Curtis couldn’t keep me away.”
Mr. Savery laughed. “First time in ages we’ve had anyone brave enough to try my wife’s cooking.”
“Is it really that bad?”
As it turns out, I needn’t have worried. Mrs. Savery served us warm green beans, mashed potatoes with our choice of brown or white gravy, coleslaw, potato salad, and the most mouth-watering pot roast. For dessert, she made cherry pie with flaky golden-brown crust and whipped cream.
“So, Allie,” said Mr. Savery, and I could tell by the tone in his voice that the grilling portion of the meal was about to begin. “Curtis tells me you’re a professional.”
I smiled and combed the bangs out of my eyes. “I mean, I guess you could call it that. Veterinarian assistant isn’t exactly the most upscale job. There are kids I went to school with who have got high-paying investment gigs and are working in senators’ offices, and they probably think I’m an idiot for moving out to Texas to work in an animal clinic.”
“Well, animals need to be taken care of, just as much as we do,” said Mr. Savery. Something in my answer must have impressed him because he smiled warmly, and his features softened.
“You must have gone to a fancy college,” said Mrs. Savery.
“It wasn’t exactly Yale, but it was pretty fancy,” I said. “I’m not trying to brag. I actually kind of hated it.”
“I probably would, too,” said Mr. Savery.
“I wanted my sons to attend a fancy college,” said Mrs. Savery sadly. “But we couldn’t afford it. Marshall ended up going to UT, and Curtis spent a couple of years in community college, got his associate’s degree. In fact…”
She rose from the table and bounded off toward the back room. “Mama, no,” moaned Curtis, while I looked on in confusion.
A second later she came wandering back down the long hallway carrying a thick blue photo album in one hand. “You could probably see most of these pictures on Facebook, but I like being able to flip through ‘em. This is Curtis when he was twenty, about ten years ago.”
She passed me the album, ignoring Curtis’ vehement protests, and I guffawed as I flipped through it. He looked so different then—he even had hair—and he was so gawky and skinny and jug-eared. Not at all like the man sitting across from me, who looked like he had wandered off the cover of a country-western album from the pre-Brooks era.
“You were so dorky!” I said, as Curtis fumed and raged. “This is adorable.”
“I’m glad you’re both happy,” said Curtis in a sullen voice.
After dinner, he walked me back to my house. We could hear the cicadas buzzing in the tall grass and the steady chirping of crickets in the fields beyond.
“I can’t believe you still wanna talk to me after looking through all that,” said Curtis, but there was a note of amusement in his voice.
“Hey, we were all dorks in college,” I said. “I think that’s why we have college, so we can have two or four years to get all our young foolishness out and then hopefully forget about it forever.”
“It’s hard to forget when your mama keeps dredging it up,” said Curtis, “but I get your point.”
“Are you really that embarrassed by who you were in your twenties?” I asked, turning around and standing in his way, my hands in my back pockets. He smiled, and I couldn’t tell if it was because of the question or because of how I was walking backward.
“Pretty embarrassed, yeah,” said Curtis. “I don’t even feel thirty. God, where did the time go?”
“I don’t feel twenty-five,” I said.
“You’re not helping,” Curtis replied. “What’s that old Garth Brooks song? ‘I’m much too young to feel this damn old?’”
I grinned. “I wouldn’t know; I only know one Garth Brooks song.”
Curtis waved his hands in the direction of my house. “Go on, get outta here! I’ll see you in the morning, maybe.”
I went inside, feeling exhausted from all the packing. But even after I had climbed into my fox-print pajamas and laid down, it was a long time before I was able to get to bed that night. It wasn’t just that he was handsome, although he was, but that he was so sincere, and gentle, and shy, and self-effacing, and down-to-earth. I’d never known anyone like that back in my college days. All the boys I had dated were—well, they were boys. They may have been smart boys, and they may have been cultured and polished and worn nice shoes, but they were still boys, and they would have run away in shame in the presence of a man like him.
That’s what he didn’t seem to get—he may have been younger once, he may have been stupid and immature and ridden a motorcycle along the top of the tallest building in Waco, but he had grown up now. Getting older and getting some perspective will do that to you. And so, I knew, would losing your wife. His problem was he still thought of himself as that awkward, jug-eared boy who had spent a night in jail for cow-tipping on Friday
nights. He just needed someone to show him that he was older now, that the past was behind him, and that he could proceed, comfortably and with great dignity, into the future.
Chapter Thirteen
Curtis
The next morning over a breakfast of bagels, pork beans, leftover green beans, fried eggs, sausage, and hash browns, Mama gave me her assessment of Allie.
“She’s a smart girl,” she said, choosing her words carefully. “But she doesn’t let it go to her head. It’s obvious she comes from money, went to a good school, but you wouldn’t know it from the way she acts around people. Most kids, they go away to a fancy college and come back strutting around like they own the world. I didn’t sense any of that from her.”
“She’s humble,” said Dad from behind his morning paper. The president was returning from the Middle East and had promised to visit Galveston, which he had declared a federal disaster area. “Humble and level-headed.”
I poured myself a glass of Mama’s celebrated blue lemonade. “Yeah, I guess I hadn’t really thought about it,” I said as I stirred the glass thoughtfully with a long spoon. “But that’s one of the things I really like about her. She’s smart, but I don’t feel like an idiot when I talk to her. Or at least, no more than usual. Like, I can have a conversation with her, and it doesn’t feel like she’s talking down to me.”
“It seems like she really wants to fit in here,” said Mama. “Not just with us, but around here, in general. Did you notice how much she talks like a Texan?”
“I did.” I took a sip of my drink. It was way too sugary and yet somehow just right. “I wonder what she sounded like before.”
“You ought to get on Facebook and see,” said Mama. “I bet there are old videos.”
“I wouldn’t want to do that. Besides, she hasn’t even friended me yet. But it sure seems like you both liked her.”
Dad nodded, which was as close to an endorsement as I was going to get. Mama said, “I don’t have any complaints. When you told me you had met a girl, I admit to being a little worried, but she’s so charming, and she fit into our family perfectly. I’m actually looking forward to having her in our back yard, coming over for breakfast every couple of days, maybe dinner a few nights a week, maybe staying in and watching a movie.”
