Thirty-Eight
Trudy
Did kids still sneak flasks of liquor into school dances?
Because Trudy needed a shot. She eyed the paltry crowd then checked her watch: less than an hour to go of the lamest homecoming dance in history.
Lawson Loretto and The Crawfish Jarlids covered “Young Love” by Air Supply on the stage.
Trudy wished she was home in bed, the week having emptied her.
The smattering of students who’d bothered to show up did so with long faces and half-hearted dance moves.
Trudy had begged Emily to come with her, but Emily had an early flight out of Huntsville the next day.
Haskel also cited an early morning, campaigning at tomorrow’s farmer’s market.
And poor Pete, so exhausted, she’d only kissed his sleeping head on Dub’s shoulder as they’d parted.
Amid the opening riffs of “Jack and Diane,” Lawson Loretto announced it was the second-to-last song.
A few kids went to dance. But not Dee Dee; she now made her way across the dance floor, eyes fixed on Trudy. Trudy looked behind her, but only the empty pinewood bleachers were there. She turned back around, and Dee Dee was there.
“Just wanted to say thanks , Miss Abernathy.” Thick, cold sarcasm. “Might’ve known you’d find a way to wreck homecoming.”
“Congratulations, Dee Dee,” Trudy said, controlling her tone as much as she could. “And good evening, Vangie.” But Vangie, standing behind Dee Dee, just blew a bubble and let it pop across her lips before sucking it back into her mouth.
“Do you know how embarrassing it is,” Dee Dee continued, “to be the homecoming queen and be stood up by your date?”
Neither June Bug nor Carter was in sight; if Dee Dee only knew exactly how concerning this was. “When I was queen”—Trudy shrugged—“I didn’t even have a date, so—”
“Can you believe her nerve?” Dee Dee said to Vangie, then turned back to Trudy. “Mama’s getting you fired on Monday.”
Trudy clamped her teeth and took another slow breath.
She reminded herself that Dee Dee had no clue about so much, that they would likely be allies if Trudy could just tell her everything, from June Bug to the biscuits to their shared experience of their own mothers’ conspiracy.
“Dee Dee, you should probably go dance,” Trudy said.
“With who? Remember? You ruined my boyfriend’s life today.”
Trudy rubbed the back of her neck. “I’m sorry it turned out this way, Dee Dee.
” Her feet ached. Her whole body ached. “One thing I know for certain, though, is this: the joy of being homecoming queen fades very quickly. So why don’t you get out there and make it count?
Okay?” She turned to sit on the bleachers behind her, but there stood Shug.
“Y’all heard her,” he said to the girls. “Time to dance.”
The girls let out disgusted little scoffs before turning and joining the meager crowd.
Shug wore a tie, dark slacks, and a taupe sport coat with orange, navy, and gold plaid. His wavy hair shone with no ball cap. Dots from the mirror ball swept across his square jaw.
“You’re not mad at me?”
He shrugged. “Miss Duffy told me she made you chaperone, and ... given the way you let Ric Flair and Hulk Hogan go at it this morning ... I figured I’d come check on things.”
Trudy sighed. “There was nothing I could do.”
He offered his hand. She looked at it, then let him lead her up to the third row.
He unbuttoned his sport coat and only sat after she did, with his elbows on his knees.
She resisted the urge to run her fingers through those wispy waves of black hair.
His shiny wingtips tapped to the Jarlids’ last song, the dance floor cleared quickly, and the band started packing up.
Shug stood up. “Care to dance?”
Trudy laughed. “I need to lock up and get home.” She groaned as she rose to her feet. “I’ve had a week.”
“One song. Come on.” Shug hopped off the bleachers and headed over to Lawson, who looked over the coach’s shoulder at Trudy and grinned.
Despite the numbness in her legs, the weight of her eyelids, Trudy couldn’t resist taking Shug’s hand when he returned. He guided her to the floor, then clicked the heels of his shoes together, bowed, and held out his hand in an attempt at some Victorian gesture.
She giggled, pointed to her sternum, and mouthed, me? He mouthed, you!
Lawson, with only his guitar, started to play Michael Martin Murphey’s “What’s Forever For.”
With a smile as bright as a million lightning bugs, Shug entwined their fingers and placed his other hand in the small of her back.
He guided their connected hands to his lapel.
Had that orange rose boutonniere been there this whole time?
The world shrank into a cozy pillow on his chest that smelled like cinnamon and sage.
He’d loosened his tie and rested his chin on the crown of her head as he sang, “And if love never lasts forever, tell me what’s forever for. ”
She couldn’t say whether he was a good singer because it didn’t matter; it was simply the way this shrunken world sounded, a love song coming from all directions, the lyrics from his mouth, the hum of his throat, and the percussion in his heart where her ear listened the most.
Lawson strummed the final chord, and the sound of it hung in the air, trailing off into nothingness.
That was the problem with a love song. It wraps you in some sort of chrysalis, but the minute your heart feels like you might just transform into something new, the song is over, and you are left the same as when it began.
The real world flooded back, the one with peeved homecoming queens, poison biscuits, and hopeless boys loving too recklessly.
Shug held tighter, hugging her head between his collar and jaw.
Trudy pressed harder into his chest willing the world to shrink again, but it didn’t.
She thought of her mother and of Dub. She thought of Haskel, her fiancé .
She had to tell Shug the truth. Right now.
She had to be the Aberdeen woman to end it.
“Coach?” She stepped back to look at him. Immediately her eyes flooded. “I can’t do this. We can’t do this.”
Lawson ignored them, winding up cords and packing equipment.
Meechum lifted his eyebrows slightly but seemed unbothered judging by that grin of his.
“Listen.” She blew out a sigh. “My mother makes these biscuits that ... make men think they’re in love.”
His grin grew wider. “Sounds delicious.”
“And you ate some.”
“Did I?”
“That Saturday after the first game, when you came over.”
He thought for a moment. “Oh, yeah. Who could forget the best biscuits I’ve ever had?” He tried to pull her closer, but she stiffened.
“The thing is . . . you don’t love me.”
He wrinkled up his nose.
“I mean, maybe you do? You definitely think you do.” She rubbed her forehead. She sounded ridiculous. She dropped her hands to her side and held his gaze. “You’ll never really know. I’ll never know. And you could wake up one day and just—”
“Leave?”
Trudy was caught off guard by the way he spoke so nonchalantly. “Well . . . yeah. Exactly. Because the biscuits . . . make you think you’re in love . . . and could wear off, and you’d—”
“Question everything?”
Trudy nodded.
He took a step back, scratched his chin, pondered the floor. “So, what you’re saying is, neither of us would ever really be sure it’s going to work out.”
“Yeah.”
“And sometimes we might get scared, and we’ll listen to that little voice in our head that tells us to run away.”
“Yes. Except the biscuits make it so that—”
“And sometimes, we’ll feel scared, but it won’t matter because we’ll dive in anyway, heart first, you know? Just for the thrill of it, because hell, it’s not like there’s anyone else who’s kept our attention like this before.”
“Shug.” Trudy shook her head. “The point is, we can never—”
“And so, we keep doing that—getting scared, wanting to run, then diving in again—over and over until—”
“Shug. Don’t.”
“—we finally realize we’ve grown old and gotten so used to one another that leaving would feel like sawing off a leg.”
Trudy scrunched up her face.
“So we just look into one another’s eyes, the eyes that, even after all those years, never changed, and we decide to fall madly in love with one another all over again?”
“I guess?”
“Sounds awful.” He pulled her in; her ear found his chest and listened to his heartbeat again.
But it’s not real.
Had she said that aloud? Because he whispered in her ear, “But what if it is?”
“It’s not.” Trudy jerked away, kept her gaze at their feet, and remembered what Marjorie had said: he’s leaving, and he still wasn’t saying anything about it.
She turned and walked out of the gym without looking back.
She got to her car and realized she’d forgotten her purse.
And that’s when the car parked next to hers caught her attention: Carter sat in the driver’s seat, his face bloody, his eye black and swollen shut.