Chapter 28
twenty-eight
Deacon had been waiting for ten minutes past the pickup time for his orange chicken and beef lo mein.
He glanced down the row of parking stalls, trying to remember if any of them had left and new people had parked while he’d been sitting there.
He hadn’t exactly been paying attention, as he’d escaped the seventy-five-degree heat of his parents’ house in favor of picking up dinner that night.
His daddy had definitely gotten old, and he liked the house hot. Uncle Wes and Aunt Bree had stayed through Valentine’s Day, and Deacon had finally followed them up here to Coral Canyon a few days ago.
No one should live in Wyoming in February, Deacon knew that, and he reached to start his truck again, as it had gone off while he’d been waiting.
He wondered if his parents should come back to Ivory Peaks too. They’d only just retired here a couple of years ago, but Tucker was married now, with Jane having her family in Ivory Peaks too.
“They don’t need to worry about you,” he said with a scoff, though he knew his momma fretted over him continually. If they moved back to Ivory Peaks, she’d be able to do it much closer.
As the heater started to blow, Deacon picked up his phone and navigated to the group chat that only had his siblings on it.
You guys should see Momma and Daddy. They’ve gotten old. Well, Daddy at least.
Have they? Tucker asked. But they’re all right, right?
Yeah, they’re fine, Deacon said.
I do need to get up there and see them, Hunt said.
We just saw them at Christmas, Jane said. They were wonderful.
I just think, Deacon said, letting his fingers fly. He was the youngest of the Hammonds, but he possessed a pretty level head. It was the lawyer part of his father he’d inherited.
We all live in Ivory Peaks, and a lot of us are still young, having families. It’s like Uncle Wes and Aunt Bree. Why are they living up here alone?
He sent the text, wondering what his brothers and sister would think. They wouldn’t hold back, Deacon knew that.
I’d love to have them here again, Jane said. Do you think they’d come?
Daddy’s brothers are up there, Hunter said. That’s why they went,.
Yeah, but now Uncle Wes is moving back here, Deacon said.
We should talk to them about it, Tuck said. I wonder what the real estate market is like in Coral Canyon.
Deacon blew out his breath, knowing the answer to that. Not good. It took a long time for houses to sell in Wyoming right now, and in February?
No one in their right mind would move here in the winter. No, they’d have to be wooed by the summer months, after someone had prayed for months for fifteen minutes without any wind.
His stomach growled, reminding him that he still didn’t have his food.
He left the siblings chat for now and tapped on his order confirmation for The Darling Dragon.
A number sat there, and Deacon tapped on that next.
The line simply rang and rang and rang, and irritation drove through him all over again.
What was the point of an online order and curbside pickup if none of it worked?
His stomach growled, and that propelled Deacon out of the truck and toward the Chinese restaurant.
The din of laughter and chatter and music all combined into one, creating a froth of noise that drove Deacon insane the moment he walked inside.
At the same time, it fed his soul—a kind of energy Deacon hadn’t experienced for a while, since he’d taken a break from dating.
He didn’t visit too many restaurants, and certainly not on a weekend night.
The Darling Dragon had a pickup counter, and Deacon joined the line for it. Someone else joined him almost immediately, and he listened to the woman behind him talk to someone on the phone.
“I just said I don’t know,” she said, her voice light and airy and yet also tinged with frustration.
“If you can’t talk right now, it’s fine.
I’ll get dinner and see you later. No, I don’t know why they don’t have it.
I’ve been waiting outside in the stall for fifteen minutes. I just came in to check on it.”
Another pause came on her side of the conversation, but Deacon felt a sense of validation move through him, because she’d clearly ordered for pickup and hadn’t gotten it as well.
“I clearly have a phone that works, Jonathan,” she said next, her voice turning snowy and crisp.
“And I know how to make a phone call, thank you very much. Yes, I called. No one answered. I’m inside, in the line right now to find out.
Okay, I’m just gonna hang up. No, I’m hanging up because you didn’t even listen to the first half of this conversation, and now you’re trying to mansplain to me what I should do to get the food. I know what to do. I’ll see you later.”
She sighed mightily and muttered something Deacon couldn’t catch.
He wanted to commiserate with her about The Darling Dragon’s inability to bring out a curbside order, but decided against it.
On the best of days, he didn’t want perfect strangers talking to him.
And with his order twenty minutes late now, he figured it best to wait to talk to female strangers until he wasn’t hangry.
The line inched forward, and Deacon peered over the shoulder of the man in front of him as a woman yelled, “If you’re new to the line, we’re having a problem with our curbside orders, and we really apologize.
We need all curbside people over on the left.
We probably have your order ready right now. ”
Deacon shuffled to the left along with only one other person in front of him.
“We didn’t get any names printed on the orders,” the woman called. “So please listen and know what you ordered.”
She started firing off an order as she lifted a brown paper bag up to her eye level. Deacon fumbled for his phone because he wasn’t exactly sure what his momma and daddy had put into the app. He caught the word shrimp, though, and knew immediately that would not be his.
No one should be eating seafood in Wyoming in February, he thought, adding it to his list of strikes against the state.
His momma had a mild shellfish allergy, while Daddy simply didn’t like the stuff, so thankfully, Deacon didn’t have to explain the rules to them. He found his order and pulled it up as another man went to get his food.
“Orange chicken,” the woman called. “Beef lo mein.”
Also Deacon’s.
“Vegetable tempura.”
His momma’s.
“Hot honey chicken with fried rice.”
Deacon stepped forward, because the woman had just named everything on his order. “That’s mine,” he said as he approached the counter.
“No,” a woman said, coming to his left side and planting herself against the counter as well. “It’s mine.”
Deacon looked at her, recognizing the voice as the woman who had been on the phone behind him in line. She had long blonde hair that cascaded in waves over her shoulders and romantic eyes that sat somewhere between blue and green.
Deacon turned his phone toward her, trying to ignore the pounding of his heart and the way his voice caught in his throat as he said, “I’m pretty sure it’s mine.”
She didn’t even look at his device. She turned hers toward the woman holding the brown bag. “It’s mine, Howdy. Sally.”
Sally looked at her phone and handed her the bag.
“Wait a second,” Deacon said, and he showed his phone to the woman at the counter. “I’ve got the same order.”
“What’s the timestamp?” Sally asked.
Deacon looked down at his phone again, struggling to find where that was.
“Mine is six-twelve,” the woman beside him said.
“I know we did our order before that,” Deacon said.
“Just a minute,” Sally said, and she moved to get another order from the counter behind her. The woman with Deacon’s food stood there, her grip tight on the paper bag.
“Can you believe we got the same order?” he asked, which was probably the worst pickup line in the history of mankind.
She blinked at him, a small smile finally touching her lips. “Are you going to eat all this by yourself, cowboy?”
“No,” he said. “Are you?”
She shook her head, her smile growing. “No, this is for me and my boyfriend and my older brother.”
Everything inside Deacon deflated on the word boyfriend.
“I’ve got another order right here for that,” Sally said. “Timestamp, six-nineteen.”
“That’s mine,” the woman said.
“If they’re the same, it doesn’t matter.” Deacon reached for the bag still in Sally’s hand and took it from her.
“Sorry about the curbside fiasco,” she said.
“You’re fine.” Deacon nodded at her and then turned away from the pickup counter. He made his way through the busy restaurant and back outside, where it hurt his lungs to breathe in for more than two seconds.
“You didn’t say who your food was for.”
He turned toward the woman, catching a whiff of her perfume now that it wasn’t covered by sesame oil. She smelled like peach blossoms and sunshine and something citrusy that Deacon really needed in his life.
“It’s just my momma and daddy,” he said.
“Oh, so you still live at home?” she asked, something guarded coming into her expression under the harsh streetlights outside.
“No,” he said. “I’m visiting them. I don’t even live here.”
She blinked, clearly not expecting that answer. “Oh.”
He gave her a dry look and turned away. “Enjoy dinner with your boyfriend and your brother.” As he walked off, he could practically feel the stunned energy coming off the woman.
Part of him cared, but a louder, grumpier part totally didn’t.
He’d told her the truth. He didn’t live in Coral Canyon, and why should he get this woman’s number?
He only came up here a couple of times a year, and she had a boyfriend already.
Deacon had never had a problem getting a date, but he certainly didn’t think he could woo a woman away from her current boyfriend to be with him.
“With your quick wit,” he muttered to himself as he got back in the truck and put the Chinese food on the passenger seat.
Deacon could barely carry on a conversation over a meal, so a long-distance relationship that would require texting and talking on the phone absolutely was not for him.
She seemed like a local, and like she’d been one for a while, especially if she knew the name of the manager at The Darling Dragon.
He reminded himself that he wasn’t really a local of Coral Canyon.
Sure, he’d spent summers here for a couple of decades, but he’d mostly palled around with his cousins and siblings and didn’t concern himself with making friends.
He had those back in Ivory Peaks, where he lived during the school year.
Deacon returned to his parents’ single-level house they’d moved into only a couple of years ago.
He’d been in Coral Canyon for about a week now, and he had needed a break from the farm.
He loved his parents, and they treated him like gold.
If Deacon ever needed anything, he could ask Momma or Daddy, and they’d patiently and lovingly teach him and lend him their advice.
He knew plenty of people didn’t enjoy the blessings he had in his life, from an amazing family, to acres and acres of land, to a couple of billion dollars in the bank.
And while Deacon got down on his knees every night and thanked the Lord for those things, he could also recognize the gaping hole in his life.
He rolled his neck, stretching out some of the tension there as he fought against the prompting running through his mind. “I don’t want to date again,” he muttered to God.
His parents had a security system and surely knew he sat in the driveway, in his truck, their food getting colder by the moment. At the same time, they’d all waited twenty extra minutes for it.
He figured he had time to reinstall a dating app where he’d set up his profile once and never come back to it. “This is what I’ve reduced myself to,” he muttered. “A dating app.”
It downloaded, and he tapped it open. Of course, the app wanted his login information, and of course, Deacon did not remember it.
Growling yet again, he flipped off the ignition in the truck, grabbed the food, and headed inside. He could look at the app later that night, after he had been fed and had more time when his parents wouldn’t be tracking him.
“It would be great if I didn’t have to use a dating app at all,” he said, and then he went inside to eat his Friday-night dinner with his parents, feeling more pathetic than ever.