Chapter Eleven
Curtis
It had been nearly two weeks since Allie agreed to move into the tiny house. Since then, I had been feverish with anticipation waiting for the day. I kept myself busy in the meantime by going out on the trail once a day.
On the day before Allie was scheduled to move in, I helped Darren move into his new lodgings.
“Has anyone told you how hot your girlfriend is?” Darren asked as we were dragging his couch up the stairs in the sweltering heat. “I feel like you maybe don’t fully appreciate it.”
“First of all, she’s not my girlfriend,” I said, pausing to mop my brow, “and yes, I’m aware that there is a certain level of hotness.”
That was putting it lightly. Lately it was all I could think about. There was something so charming in the way she wore a dress, the way her shoulders perked up when she giggled, in the intricate braids she was always wearing. Growing up in Sulphur Springs, I hadn’t known many women of intelligence and class, and most of the ones I had known had moved away right after high school and never come back. Then this woman had entered my world like a meteor from some distant place.
“You’d better get a move on if you wanna go out with her,” said Darren as we eased the sofa through the front door. “I would totally bang that—just sayin’.”
“Just because we’re not dating yet doesn’t mean I won’t kill you if you lay a finger on her,” I said.
He brought up a good point, though: at some point in the next couple of weeks we would need to define our relationship. I was really into her, and she seemed really into me, but until we talked about it, I could never be sure. It definitely felt like she had been flirting with me the last couple of times we had talked, but I didn’t want to assume that only to find out later that she had no such thing in mind.
Later that afternoon as we were sitting on the floor of the living room eating hot ham and pineapple pizza out of a cardboard box, I asked Darren about it.
“Darren, how do you know when a woman’s flirting with you?”
“You mean to tell me you’ve been married and you don’t know this?” said Darren. He gawked at me like a zoo animal.
“With Christine, it was never really an issue.” I reached into the cooler and pulled out a long-necked beer bottle, which I twisted open with the hem of my shirt. “From the get-go we were both very direct about our intentions and what we wanted out of the relationship. Christine wanted a family and a couple of boys to run around the yard with. I wanted a little girl, so we never agreed on that, but there was never any question that she was into me and I was into her.”
“Did you never date anyone in high school?”
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.”