~Leslie~
“Blake, stop that. It’ll be worth the wait if you can just control yourself.”
He drew his hand back from the bowl she was working from, dropping down onto the stool across from her with a grunt.
“I wanted to lick the batter,” he said. “Isn’t that part of this gig?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “You’ve been working with me for three months now. Have you gotten to lick much batter?”
He’d been a great assistant. Not only was work fulfilling and satisfying, but now it was also fun. Blake would accompany her to the weddings, doing all of the work that went unnoticed, right alongside her. They’d work through the reception, until the very end, where she’d tell him that they had to clean up but he’d protest that they had time for at least one dance.
They always did, and she eventually stopped protesting, choosing to let him hold her as they danced together.
She wasn’t sure what had changed in her heart. Well, she knew what had changed. She just wasn’t sure why. Maybe it was the way he’d finally opened up to her, sharing his past with her. Maybe it was the sincerity in how he taught his Bible studies, the truths she heard from what he was learning, the depth of what he believed, and in the integrity in who he was now, an integrity that called her to do more and be more. It was the same in their young adult small group for the church, which they left together most nights, discussing what they were learning and how the text of Scripture was changing their lives.
She was donating more and more cupcakes to charitable causes these days, looking to even cupcakes as a ministry.
Blake had done this. He’d brought her closer to Christ, and she found herself trusting him almost as much as she had in high school.
Was that crazy? She wasn’t sure.
“I’ve never gotten to be here for this part,” he said. “I usually just show up when you’re pulling them out of the oven. Or putting that frosting on them. Or, most of the time, loading them up in the car.”
He was a great worker.
“And I hardly ever get to come here,” he said, indicating the house around them.
The rental house had a great kitchen. If Leslie was being fair, she could admit that it was actually better than the kitchen that Blake’s building currently had. It wasn’t nearly as fabulous as the updated kitchen she’d envisioned having Travis build for her, but it had served its purpose.
She found herself more satisfied with where she was in life. A lot of that was thanks to what she’d been learning as Blake had been teaching at all the youth events she’d been helping to chaperone. About finding your sufficiency in Christ, in living to serve Him, and in trusting Him with the future.
“Well, it may become a regular thing,” she said. “You showing up here like this while I’m working. Especially if I’m going to start teaching the girls like you want me to.”
“I do want you to,” he said, turning to grab his Bible. “We’re going to start breaking into smaller groups, and I really want you leading that. I think you could handle it without us going over it beforehand –”
“I think I’ll feel better with us talking it through before,” she said. “So thank you for coming over earlier than normal.”
“Glad to do it,” he said, smiling.
She was glad he was here.
“What?” he asked, grinning. “What are you thinking about?”
About how much she had liked him as a teenager and how much more she liked the man that he’d become.
“I’m thinking that it’s time for my final ingredient,” she said, studying him with narrowed eyes. “I might need you to go somewhere else so you don’t learn my secret.”
“Secret?” he said, looking intrigued. “You have a secret ingredient?”
“That I do,” she said, watching him and making her decision. “And actually, you can be here to see it. Not like you’re going to go telling anyone anyway.”
She was trusting him a lot these days. It reminded her of how he’d trusted her, how the trust had been mutual, back when they’d been teenagers. She could remember him handing the keys to his car over to her as he taught her how to drive a standard, yelling out instructions as she laughed, the engine turning over and dying each and every time. He’d finally had to put his hand on her leg and squeeze her knee when it was time for her to step on the clutch. She’d finally gotten it, with him yelling, “Clutch! Clutch!” and celebrating when she got it right.
And he’d trusted her in his own way. There had been that one night back at her house, where Blake had come over for dinner, just like he did a lot of nights. But something had been different then, some trouble at home that he didn’t want to talk about. There had been trust still, though, as he’d sat on the couch with her afterwards, put his hand in hers and leaned his head on her shoulder, nearly falling asleep there, peace in his expression at last.
She could trust him with the secret ingredient, then. She was trusting him with far more.
So, she brought out the bottle from the cabinet where she kept her stash.
His eyes landed on it and widened immediately.
“Your secret ingredient is… whiskey?!” he asked, shock in his tone. “What?!”
She refrained from rolling her eyes. Then, considering who exactly it was that she was talking to, she just went ahead and rolled them playfully. “Correction. Bourbon. A more refined whiskey.”
“Are you serious?!”
“Serious as can be.”
“Good grief,” he muttered, going over to the cabinet and peering in, then whistling low. “You’ve got at least ten different kinds of booze in here!”
“Sixteen, actually,” she said, measuring out the correct amount and pouring it liberally into the batter.
“You sell alcohol cupcakes!” Blake kept on, eyeing them all suspiciously. “And I’ve eaten, like, three dozen of them since we started working together. You’ve been trying to get me drunk!”
“I’ve not been trying to get you drunk,” she said, biting back a smile as she stirred it in, watching it disappear.
“Well, that’s what it looks like,” he said, indicating the bottles. “Which is troubling, since I’ve let you give your cupcakes to teenagers.”
“Do you honestly think that I’d serve any kind of alcohol to minors?” she asked.
He pretended to think for a moment.
“Blake.”
“Of course you wouldn’t,” he conceded. “But this –”
“I have other methods for my more mainstream cupcakes,” she said. “Other secret ingredients.”
“That’s a relief,” he said. “You and I would both be culpable to contributing to the delinquency of minors otherwise.”
“They can probably manage that on their own,” she muttered.
“I heard that.”
“Besides,” she continued on, “most of the alcohol gets cooked away on these anyway. But it’s that little bit that gives it something… extra.”
“I’ll say,” he murmured. “Leslie Collins and Jack Daniels, together forever.”
And at this, she couldn’t help but smile again.
“Did you… did you just smile at me?”
She’d been doing it often enough. Surely he knew that her feelings towards him had changed.
“Not because I wanted to,” she said, forcing herself to grimace, albeit playfully, again.
“I’ve been praying for this,” Blake grinned, clapping his hands now, doing a little victory dance around the kitchen, and making it very nearly impossible for her to keep her grim face in place.
“Well, that’s sad,” she said.
“Not really,” he said, coming to a stop. “And I’ve had Jordan praying for it as well. And you know what Scripture says? The prayers of a righteous man availeth much.”
“Jordan would be the righteous man in this case,” she said.
“Of course!”
“Let me get these in the oven,” she sighed, turning from him and smiling even wider. “And then, we need to talk about tonight’s event.”
As far as regular youth events across the board went, it was fairly normal. But compared to the great success and the huge numbers Blake had been seeing, it felt like a letdown.
“Numbers are down,” Blake said simply once the building had cleared and he and Leslie were the last two left sitting on the couches, a subdued silence between them.
The numbers had been down, but Leslie hadn’t had a lot of time to wonder at it. She’d been busy with what felt like too many girls as it was. Her faith had grown since high school, but she’d never had the opportunity to share it so openly or lead others in study, so doing so here in Blake’s group was a challenge.
An exciting challenge, as it had been easier than she would have thought to talk the girls through what Blake had taught, to lead them in some small group discussion, and to get to know them well enough to pray for them.
She was probably more excited than the mood called for, as Blake was looking discouraged.
“The numbers were down,” she conceded. “But you know how it is when school gets busy. The numbers will fluctuate. Some weeks will be better than others.”
“Always were when we were in high school,” he said. “No wonder Matt always looked discouraged.”
Their youth pastor had been discouraged a lot. But Leslie didn’t think that was it.
“I think that probably had more to do with the fact that we were all so… so lukewarm,” she said. “Or at least I was.”
Blake watched her. “I don’t remember that about you.”
“You don’t remember things very clearly, then,” she said.
“I remember all of it very clearly,” he said. And she could hear it there in his voice. Sadness.
Did he regret all that had happened or just how it ended?
“Well, maybe you remember me in a more positive light,” she said. “You always did think the best of me, even if it was unwarranted.”
“Sometimes,” he said, and she could see that his mind was somewhere else, back in the past, caught up in a memory that she wasn’t sure she shared.
“You got out of town, just like you said you would,” Blake said softly.
“Just like I said I would?” she asked doubtfully.
“You told me once, back before we even started dating, that you were going to leave this town behind. Be someone, you know?” He looked down at his hands. “You had plans even then.”
“Well, probably,” she murmured. “I guess I can imagine that I might have said that.”
“Might have?” he asked, giving a rueful laugh. “You did. I remember it.”
There was a change in his tone. She could hear it.
“What?” she asked, honestly confused by the tone of his voice now as he looked away from her. “Why do you say it like that?”
“Like what, Leslie?”
“Like you’re judging me,” she said as he avoided her eyes. “You are, aren’t you? You’re judging me.”
“I’m not judging you,” he sighed.
“No? Then why are you not looking me in the eyes?”
He’d been like this before. Back on that morning when he’d broken up with her, picking her up in his car with the music blaring, barely looking her way, his mood dark and his eyes brooding as they’d stared out ahead at the road.
She didn’t want to remember that day, but there it was.
“Nothing,” Blake said, and she could hear it in his voice. Disillusionment. Hurt. Just like then.
Why was he hurt now? And why had he been hurt back then?
“Did I do something to hurt you back then?” she asked, incredulous over the idea, something that she had never considered.
“Me?” he asked, still not looking at her. “Well, I don’t know if I’d go that far.”
She had, though. She knew it as clearly as she’d ever known anything, watching him like this.
She’d hurt him back then. Because she’d somehow made him think that she was leaving town and this place, because it wasn’t good enough.
Had she made him think that he wasn’t good enough?
Before she could clarify this, he turned to her.
“You acted like it was all beneath you,” he said simply. “There was plenty that was good in this town. Still is. It’s why you came back, to make it better just like the rest of us, because you believed it was a good place.”
True. And true that she’d thought little of it back then.
“I was wrong,” she said thoughtfully. She looked over at him. “If I really thought that, if I made you believe that I thought that… well, I was a teenager. What did I know?”
Exactly. What had she known then? But if she was going to discredit what she’d felt then, didn’t she have to discredit what she’d felt for him?
What she felt for him now?
“You didn’t think you were above me?” he asked.
Where was this coming from?
“Never,” she said. “I’m not sure where you got that idea, but… no, Blake.” She swallowed. “I loved you.”
He looked at her, hearing the truth in her words.
“And I believed in you,” she continued on. “I did. I thought you could do anything.”
He sighed, his eyes back on his hands. “Well, I’m not doing much of anything now, am I? I came back here with all these ideas about making a success of this ministry, being better than my dad…” He shook his head. “Not doing such a great job of that right now.”
“You didn’t do all of this,” she said, indicating the room around them, the mess left over from teenagers who had come here to know God better, “to prove yourself.”
“How do you know that?” he asked softly.
Because she knew him. She’d known him then. She’d known his heart for Christ was genuine, his motivations when it came to Him pure and right.
She knew it now.
“Because you’re a good man. And what you’ve done was for Christ, not for your own acclaim. And He’s honored by that.” Then, as if saying it again might make him actually believe it, “Blake, you’re a good man.”
It wasn’t the first time she’d said it, of course, but he looked as though he was hearing it, really hearing it, for the first time.
“I appreciate that,” he said softly.
There it was between them. Understanding. And tenderness.
Was feeling like this and letting it happen smart? She wasn’t sure.
“Of course, you have terrible business sense,” she added, trying to reign in her feelings.
“How so?” he asked, looking mildly offended.
“You overpaid for this building,” she said, smiling at him.
She couldn’t help it.
With the way he looked in the glow of the twinkle lights, sitting on the couch now as though he was right at home with her in a place she’d unexpectedly come to love… well…
“It doesn’t feel like I overpaid at all,” he said, watching her. “I would have paid ten times as much for the privilege of this moment right now, being here with you.”
She felt her breath catch at the words. She could feel all that she wanted changing, adjusting in light of the look that he was giving her…
“Thank you,” he said. “For being here. For helping. For believing in what God is doing. And for believing in me.”
She’d never stopped, had she? Even hurt and upset, hating him, she’d still believed that he would do great things, had still held onto the hope that he was who he’d said he was.
“I really do,” she breathed.
They’d hurt one another, though. Careless words, hot tempers, and time, so much time, for it all to continue on and get worse …
But here they were now. Grown up. Able to look past all the wrong assumptions. Finally able to see who they really were and what that meant for a future together.
A future together. She was hoping for it again, marveling at how much he’d changed yet how little had changed in her heart.
It was him. It had always been him. And she could see the same feelings reflected in his eyes.
“Leslie,” he said softly, as she could literally see his confidence rise as his lips turned upward into a small smile. “I’m glad that we’re back here. Together.”
Simple. Just so simple and plain, those words, but they were full of deeper and richer meaning. Surely she knew it as he reached out his hands to take hers, softly and with certainty.
Maybe all the broken roads up until this moment hadn’t been for naught. Maybe this is exactly where God had been leading them all along. Together.
“Me, too, Blake,” she said softly, squeezing his hands gently, her eyes still on his and still so honest.
So she felt no hesitation or timidity as he leaned over and put his lips to hers softly, just as he’d done countless times before. She moved closer, returning his kiss, gentle and tender, passionate and full, all at the same time.
The same. So much the same as it had been back when they were teenagers. But different still, because she knew him in a way she hadn’t known him then. What would it be like from here on out, knowing one another like they did, caring so deeply… loving each other?
Leslie didn’t know, but she knew she didn’t have to have the answers. All that mattered now was this.
Blake. Her. Together here. Just like it was always meant to be.