Chapter Thirty-Three
Curtis
We walked outside into the back pasture. It was the hour between late afternoon and evening when the world is a hazy gray. Around us, we could hear the faint buzz of crickets and cicadas. Jake barked at a fleet figure that looked like a squirrel rustling through the tall grass, but might have been a bandicoot or possum.
“When I was in community college,” I told Allie, “some guys I know got together one night and went possum-hunting. They came back carrying two possums on the end of a harpoon, waving ‘em around like a couple of South Sea cannibals. They put ‘em on a spit and built a bonfire at the back of the school—”
“Eww, don’t tell me this story,” said Allie, placing her hands to her ears, a disgusted look on her face. “It’s so sick and disturbing that they would do that. Why would you tell me that?”
I felt myself growing red behind the ears, cursing myself for being an idiot. How could I have thought this would be a story she would appreciate?
We stood there together in silence for a minute, watching Jake wrestle with Gandalf. The older dog grabbed the pup by the scruff of his neck with his teeth and pulled him down into the grass. Gandalf barked in a frenzy of excitement.
“Well, anyway,” I said with my hands in my back pockets, “my family sure does seem to like you.”
“Don’t they?” said Allie, perking up at once. “You’ve no idea how much this pleases me. I just wish your dad had let me win a game or two.”
“He’s not that kind of dad, unfortunately,” I said, beginning to feel better. “And whatever you do, don’t ever let him talk you into playing against him for money. He’ll clean you out. He will steal the shirt off your back.”
Allie smiled up at me. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
I smiled irresistibly. “As long as he wasn’t there to see it. Anyway, you wanna know something else? As much as my family’s startin’ to like you, I think I’m startin’ to like you, too.”
“Really?” said Allie, a smirk playing at the edges of her mouth. “’cause I was beginning to wonder.”
“I mean, it was up in the air there for a while, but you’re growing on me.”
“Well, as long as I’m one of your forty or fifty favorite people, I can’t complain too much.”
“You’re fifty-three, just behind George Strait,” I replied.
Allie balked. “I’m not even ahead of George Strait? Is your dog on that list? You know what, don’t even tell me. I don’t think I want to know.”
“You would be crushed.” By now we had come to the edge of the garden, where the cucumbers and tomatoes and onions grew. The hogs hadn’t come around here in a few days, and as I motioned to the ground at our feet, it became clear why. The perimeter of the garden was girdled with half a dozen large, rusty red iron traps.
“See these?” I said proudly. “I went out and bought ‘em after our fight. Now you don’t have to worry about me killing the hogs. They’re smart creatures, and once they saw these, they knew better than to come around this part of the yard anymore.”
Allie beamed up at me, her eyes glowing with pride. Quietly, we made our way down the driveway and back to my house.
“Okay, so,” she said once we were inside. “I know we agreed that you were going to cook for me, but after I made those pancakes this morning, I’m feeling pretty reckless.”
“Oh yeah?” I asked, grinning. “How reckless?”
Allie shrugged and smiled. “Reckless enough to maybe make dinner?”
“Is the dinner pancakes?”
She slugged me playfully in the arm, and the argument might have gone on if we hadn’t been startled just then by a knock on the door. “Who could that be at this hour?” asked Allie, looking at me in alarm.
“Couldn’t be Mama,” I said as I strode to the door. “She always texts before she comes over, and she never comes over this late.”
But when I peered through the peephole, it wasn’t Mama. It was Elizabeth Davies.
“It’s her!” I whispered, backing away from the door as if it was on fire and looking helplessly around. “I don’t know what she wants. I didn’t invite her over!”
I was at a loss what to do. Allie, however, looked enraged. She stared at the door as if trying to burn it down with her eyes, her jaw clenched. “Let me talk to her,” she said through gritted teeth.
Before I could talk her out of it, she had marched to the door and flung it open. I stared horror-struck as she and Lizzie confronted each other for the first time. Allie gave her a withering stare, and Lizzie stared back, cool and unperturbed.
“Let me talk to Curtis,” she said. “I know he’s in there. I can see him.”
“Curtis doesn’t want to talk to you,” said Allie.
“Maybe let him be the judge of that?” said Lizzie, pointing into the house. I was standing behind a potted plant watching the dispute with a mortified look on my face.
“No, you listen to me,” said Allie, getting between us and shoving a finger in Lizzie’s face. Lizzie stepped backward, startled, looking scared and indignant. “You’re going to turn around and walk right back up that driveway. And you’re not gonna come around here no more, because he doesn’t want to see you, he doesn’t want to speak to you, he doesn’t want to look at you. Is that understood?”
Lizzie began walking backward toward her car, never taking her eyes off of Allie. “Yeah, okay, got it,” she said, adding in a low tone, “Bitch.”
Allie waited until she had climbed into her truck, then shut the door. Now that Lizzie was gone, she looked pale and shaky, but she blushed with pride as I came toward her.
“Are you mad at me?” she asked. “Did I cross a line?”
I shook my head. “That,” I said, “was just about the hottest thing I’ve ever seen.”
“You mean no one’s ever stood up for you like that?”
I ran my lips along the side of her neck. “Not like that,” I said quietly. “There any way I can thank you?”
Allie grinned slyly. “I can think of one way.”
Taking me by the hand, she began running up the stairs, two at a time. I followed behind, flushed with hunger and excitement.