Chapter 2
CHAPTER TWO
RUSTY
M rs. Beaty and Lola Nina are about to throw down.
The two women are blocking the intersection at Maple and Third, which means I'm less than a block from the diner. But with cars lining up behind my truck, I can't flip around.
Both women have opened their driver's side doors and are outside their cars, yelling at each other.
"You can't tell me you got all the red threes that many times, Rose!" Lola Nina says, her accent coming out stronger than normal. She usually says "th" sounds, but when she's upset, they revert to "t's" and "d's".
I had both Mrs. Beaty and Lola Nina as teachers growing up — Mrs. Beaty in elementary, Lola Nina in high school. No matter what I told Ash about being more afraid of Lola Nina, truth is, both of them can put the fear in me like my dad never could, no matter how hard he tried.
"Tell it to your wild cards, Nina," Mrs. Beaty says, her fire engine red hair bouncing. Her husband shakes his head from the passenger side of their gold Oldsmobile. "Either we both got lucky or none of us did."
"Are you trying to tell me that we both cheated? I didn't cheat."
"Then maybe neither of us did. Did you think of that?"
The car behind me honks, and that emboldens a few of the other cars to honk. I know both of these women can hold their own, but even in our small town, not everyone is sweet as sugar.
So when the honking continues, I reach into the backseat for two jars and then step down from my truck and walk over to the two older women. The engine on Lola Nina's Buick revs as her air conditioning tries to combat the heat coming through the open door.
The women were going opposite directions when they stopped in the middle of the intersection, so I get in between them.
"Pardon the interruption, ladies," I say. Both sets of eyes turn sharply on me. And then soften.
"There's my favorite student," Mrs. Beaty says.
"There's my favorite student," Lola Nina says. I've never had two women fight over me, but if any two are bent on it, I'll take these two.
"What are you doing lookin' so dolled up on a Tuesday morning?" Mrs. Beaty asks. She adjusts the collar of my button down flannel shirt.
"Oh, just a meeting."
"A meeting with a young lady?" Lola Nina asks, waggling her eyebrows.
I shake my head. "It isn't what you think."
"Just what we all hope, am I right?" she says.
I chuckle. "Could y'all help me with something?" I ask. "We whipped up a new peach salsa to sell at the Farmer's Market, but I think something ain't right with it. If I give you both a jar, could you tell me what you think?"
"Of course, dear," Mrs. Beaty says. "Knowin' Nina, she'll want you to add more chilis."
"And knowing Rose, she'll want you to mash it and turn it into jelly so she doesn't have to use her fake teeth," Lola Nina says.
"Knowin' both of you," I say before they can get back to their fighting. "You'll both tell me exactly what I need to make sure these sell big."
"I'll go home right quick and try it so I can get back to you. With my real teeth," Mrs. Beaty says, holding her lips a little too open. Her teeth look real enough to me.
"I'll go home even quicker," Lola Nina says. She pats my cheek.
"Y'all are too good to me."
"No better than you deserve," Mrs. Beaty says.
I'm not so sure about that.
"And then, I swam through the other cave," Ash is saying as she crams a crêpe in her mouth, "except it was supposed to be a new cave but also looked like one I went spelunking in once in Colorado?"
"I know exactly what you mean," I say, because dreams are random like that. Also, Ash has the best dreams. And by best, I mean intensely weird and weirdly riveting.
"So I'm collecting more shells, and then randomly, you and Greg swim into the cave and we're all wearing snorkels, but you and Greg are like Oompa Loompa versions of yourselves, and you're pointing out where to find the next seashell, so I go that direction, and I finally find it. The yellow seashell."
"The yellow one," I repeat, even though she hasn't mentioned a yellow one yet. Because, again, dreams are random like that. But I can’t help but wonder if it’s also significant that I’m in a dream with her stepdad, Greg, who’s about Ash’s favorite person alive.
"Exactly. It was so important all of a sudden! So I swim back out of the cave but then I'm wearing a fancy ball gown. And then I woke up."
“I need details on this ball gown,” I say.
She laughs and swats my hand. “You do not. Why do you always let me talk so long about my weird dreams?"
"Because your dreams are hilarious, pal," I say, choking on the word the way I always do. But I have to call her things like “pal” or “bro” or “dude.” It reminds me of the role I play in her life: friend. Nothing more. "This one was almost as good as the one where you have to park your bike in between the third and fourth spot on the bike rack in order to enter that roller coaster ride that took you under the earth and into monster land."
"Man, I love that dream."
"Me too. Finding out your parents were werewolves was my favorite part."
"Such a good twist, right? Like, well done, brain." She shakes her head. "You're indulging me again! We need to focus!"
"If I really thought we needed to focus, I'd remind you,” I say. “But we've been over everything, and the presentation is good to go. As long as you refer to the color as 'peach' instead of 'peach fuzz.'"
She leans forward. "Rusty, so help me, if you try to make me change the colors on this presentation one more time, I'm going to pour this sweet tea over your head."
"I'm not trying to make you change colors, Ash," I tell her. "I'm sayin' it's all in the presentation. It doesn't matter if 'peach fuzz' is the color of the year. We're in the South. Peach isn't going anywhere, and settling on a classic will get more of the stodgy old men on the chamber of commerce to even consider urban planning or a code with standard color conventions."
Ash flops across the diner table like the very mention of town regulations is so exhausting, she physically can't keep herself upright. She accidentally bumps her sky blue glasses on the table, though, and she gives her nose a wiggle. It's so endearing, my heart clenches.
"You know how people say things like, 'his voice is so sexy, I could listen to him read the phone book’? They're lying. You have a great voice, and listening to you talk about zoning ordinances is enough to ruin it."
I duck my head and catalog the compliment. I don't know if she's aware of how often she compliments me, but I am.
"If you think this is boring, wait until we get in there," I tell her. "You haven't heard anything 'til you've heard them drone on about waste disposal. Buckle up."
She snaps her head up, and her curls bounce at the movement. I love her hair. It's the color of cinnamon but it smells like grapefruit, and it's so tightly curled that if you pull a lock down, it stretches from just below her shoulders to halfway down her back. Every six weeks, she dyes a single lock a new color, and it always matches her glasses. She coordinates outfits around that stripe. I hope she's still doing it when she's ninety.
Her current color is sky blue, and it makes the cornflower blue of her eyes all the more intense.
"We'll just call it peach but use the peach fuzz color. You've got to be the only person I've ever met who can spot the difference between 'peach' and 'peach fuzz,' anyway," she says. She's not as tired as I am — she has a superhuman ability to focus and maintain energy on a project — but her eyes are a bit heavier than they were last night.
How this woman talked me — a guy who’s up before the rooster crows — into abandoning my post and staying up all night is no mystery .
I'm madly in love with her.
"But for realsies, when we get to the data, I'm giving that all to you,” Ash says.
"You mean to tell me Figures McDataPants doesn’t want to talk numbers?"
Her laugh punctuates the air, and my insides warm. "Data. Pfft. I don't like it and I won't pretend to." She looks at me askance. "It? Them? Is 'data' plural? Whatever. I don't like data. Datum. Datums." She snickers, which makes me follow suit.
"Whatever helps the presentation be more persuasive," I say.
She stabs a fork into her eggs and holds it in front of her face. "We're talking about stuff like unified commercial schemes, color coding, and signage—stuff tourists eat up. Who wouldn't want that?" She takes a big bite.
"The old-timers don't want change."
"They want money."
"It'll cost them money," I say.
"In the short term. But you have to spend money to make money."
"True, but we're asking them to spend money in the short term on something they need to be convinced of in the long term. Plus, we're asking them to forego comfort and tradition."
"Ugh,” she says. “What's traditional about a sign in Comic Sans font?"
I cringe. I majored in graphic design and worked for an agency in Atlanta for a few years before my parents guilted me into moving back home. But you don't have to have a graphic design background to know Comic Sans is a big no-no.
I secretly like it. It's so much easier to read for my dyslexia, but I'll take that confession to my grave.
"I don't mean for you ," Ash adds, patting my hand right over the scar on my knuckles I wish I could keep hidden. "I love that it works for you."
Only Ash and my closest friends know about my dyslexia. My parents don't even know. Arlo — my dad — was too busy getting drunk and calling me stupid to ever stop and wonder why I couldn't read till fourth grade, when Mrs. Beaty had the sense to get me tested. Mom was too busy trying to keep the peace and pretend Arlo wasn't a raging alcoholic.
Meanwhile, Ash figured it out the moment she noticed me using an accessibility feature on my phone.
All she said was, "Oh, do you have dyslexia? Cool. I have ADHD. Our brains are going to be best friends." Then she high-fived me, and that was the moment I started to fall.
Her hand is still on mine across the table. Her casual affection is like Harry Potter having to write "I will not tell lies" in that quill that cuts into his skin. Unlike Harry, though, I crave every scrawl, no matter how much it hurts. I'm a goner for this girl. If I started to fall the day she high-fived me all those months ago, I would've sunk all the way through the center of the earth and crossed the core to pop up in … where would that be? I imagine the globe I have on my desk at home. It would have to be somewhere in the middle of the Indian Ocean, well off the coast of Australia …
Wherever it is, my heart is floating there, twelve thousand miles from my body. That's how far gone I am.
"What were we talking about?" Ash says. I wonder if she knew I was in my head or if she was in hers. "Oh, right. Tradition!" She says it like she's playing Tevye from Fiddler on the Roof in a school play.
I sniff a laugh and take a bite of my shrimp and grits. A local kid who works for me sometimes comes over to our table. He's barely twenty, wearing a flannel, T-shirt and jeans (my usual wardrobe), and he's wringing his hat between his hands.
"You okay, Matt?" I ask. Matt isn't one for a lot of eye contact.
I know the feeling. I had to learn to look people in the eye, but it doesn't have anything to do with dyslexia .
"I'm fine, sir. I'm wondering if you could use any help with the fruit stands."
"I thought you were working construction out in Hampton?"
"My car died and I'm savin' up to fix it. But the foreman … " he shoots a look at Ash, and red creeps over his cheeks. Whether it's from embarrassment or because Ash is so dang pretty, I don't know. I reckon both.
"Had to drop you from the job because he needs reliable workers," I say, sick for him. Matt's family is dirt poor, and they haven’t had the benefit of being friends with the Carville family like I have. Without Tag Carville, my best friend's grandfather and the founder of Sugar Maple Farms, I'd have been lucky to be in Matt's position.
Matt's a good kid. He helped with the fruit stands all last summer and even ran one by himself a couple of times. He's not book smart, but he knows how to work, and he's respectful enough that any Southern Memaw would approve.
"I'll take any of the stands. Myrtle Beach, anything you got? — "
"I wouldn't do that to you," I say with a smile. No one likes the Myrtle Beach fruit stand because it's more like Atlantic City than Charleston. But I have one stand with a flaky kid on it that would do better with Matt's steadiness. "We're fully staffed for now, but I'll keep you on standby. You know how it is. Troy'll end up at Patty's too late, and that 5 a.m. wake up call won't sound too good. When that happens, I'll need someone who knows better."
I expect a chuckle, but instead Matt clutches his hat and nods soberly. "That's me."
"I'll find something, Matt. Just hold tight."
"Yes sir."
When Matt leaves, Ash tips her head to the side and studies me. "Do you run all the fruit stands?"
I shrug. "I coordinate them." And then some .
"Okay," Ash says, nodding like she doesn't believe me. "And Patty's … is this some kind of secret burlesque club?"
"It's the bar outside of town."
"You mean Donegal's?"
"That's the one. Some of the locals call it Patty's. The owner hates it."
"Okay,” Ash says. “So the owner is Patty?"
"Patty's brother bought in as co-owner, but yeah. It's Patty's place."
"Is she hot?"
I grin at the thought. "I'll introduce you sometime.”
Ash takes the last few bites of her food, and I settle our bill.
“You know you don’t have to pay for me every time, right?”
“You tryin’ to take my man card? This is the South, ma’am.”
“Ma’am?” She sticks out her tongue.
“Would you prefer missy? Or maybe dude? Brosef?”
She snorts, and I catalog that, too. I love making her laugh.
Now if I can only make her swoon.