Chapter Twelve
The night of the school play, I found myself in an awkward position.
During our lunch date, we had yet another tumble into his bed for a sizzling frottage session followed by an open-faced sandwich on bold white bread with salmon, lemon, dill, and little shrimp with a side of coleslaw.
I enjoyed the smoky, savory sandwich quite a bit.
While we’d been eating, I’d mentioned that the school play, Humbug High, a contemporary Christmas Carol set in a fictional high school, was debuting this evening.
Anders had grown so animated over the mention that I felt I had to invite him.
Which I did. And now I was driving to the middle school with Anders on my left.
We both had dressed up a bit, and it felt a lot like an actual date.
“I love how the town and the schools are so festive,” Anders said while I pulled into a narrow slot in a very packed school parking lot.
There were people everywhere, hustling around parked cars to get into the heated auditorium.
Gilda had remained after classes to help with any last-minute things that might have popped up.
She was starring as a lunch lady who leads the teenage protagonist to meet three ghosts that change his miserly outlook on things.
I’d made a fast stop at the corner mart for a bouquet of flowers, mostly red and white mums, to give to her after the show.
“Yeah, we do like our holiday decorations,” I commented as I turned the ignition off. The engine ticked as it began cooling. I looked over at him. “Uhm, so this is a small town with some pretty conservative attitudes…”
He gave me a knowing, sad smile. “I’ll not grab your ass in public, I promise. I might hold your hand when the lights go down if that’s okay?”
“It’s very okay.” Relief flooded through me.
We exited the car. I grabbed the bouquet, and we jogged to the double doors and pushed into a packed vestibule filled with parents.
There were lockers on both sides of us, and a trophy case ahead holding sports mementos from the mid-’50s—when the school had been built—to now.
The old gal was showing her age. Nothing had changed much since I’d raced through the halls about twenty years ago.
Other than the addition of a computer lab in the late-’90s, no major improvements had been made.
The funds simply were not there for our little rural schools, so the paint peeled and the cinder blocks cracked, and we ran fundraisers to fix things.
Several people stopped me to talk. I introduced Anders to them and then neatly pulled him away to find our seats.
The mass of proud parents had started to file into the auditorium as we made small talk with Pastor Pete, so we ended up in the next-to-last row.
Pete kept glancing at Anders as we settled in, removing our coats and scarves, and placing them on our laps.
I pretended not to notice the good pastor checking out my date.
Not date. Play friend. Sure, we’ll roll with that.
“Hey, Mitch,” a male voice called from behind us. I turned to find Ralph Jenkins and his wife, Irene, here to watch their grandson in the lead role, grinning at me. “Thanks for hooking me up with that refurbished snowblower. Sure has saved my back.”
“My pleasure.” I smiled at the bald old gent with the big nose. “Glad it’s working out for you. Shoveling is so hard on a man’s back.”
“Amen to that,” Ralph said. My sight darted over his shoulder to light on two huge men, dressed like Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones in MIB, squeezed into seats far too small for their bulk.
The same two brutes that I’d seen out at Anders’ camper.
They looked horribly out of place amongst the lower-to-middle-class dads, moms, siblings, and grandparents here to see a holiday musical.
They both glanced at me at the same time, light blue eyes sharp as Bowie knives, locked on Anders.
I spun in my seat and nudged Anders in the side.
“There are two men behind Ralph and his wife who are eyeballing you,” I whispered. His placid expression grew hard. He did not turn to look at the bruisers. He drew in a breath, let it out, and then peeked at me. “Are they a danger to Gilda?”
“No, no, they are no danger to you or Gilda. That I assure you,” he whispered with such intensity that I felt reasonably reassured.
I trusted him despite the unknowns in his past. I’d give him a chance, but I would keep a close eye on my child while in his presence.
My trust in him with my body was one thing.
Me trusting him with my baby was a whole other level of faith that we had not reached yet. “We’ll talk later,” he said softly.
An argument bubbled up inside me, but the lights dimmed at that moment.
I fell into a worried silence, my overactive imagination fueling a hundred or so scenarios centered on Anders and his illicit activities.
Okay, yes, I’d been involved in a few carnal activities with him, but surely the feds wouldn’t hold those against me.
The play started, and I had to sit on my hands beside a man who was phenomenal in bed but quite secretive out of the sheets.
The play wasn’t all that long, a little over an hour, and Gilda was amazing throughout.
I may be biased, but she did a great job as did all the kids.
Nigel had done wonders whipping them into shape.
When the final curtain fell, the cast, Mrs. Coleman, the music teacher—yes, we still had a music teacher, but for how long no one knew—and Nigel all took bows.
Anders and I rose to applaud the thespians.
After the lights came up, the cast disappeared behind the curtain, and I craned my neck to find the mafiosos, but they were nowhere to be seen.
Anders was tense, smiling as was required, something that he seemed quite at ease with when talking to and shaking the hands of people he didn’t know.
I, on the other hand, was a nervous wreck.
I was sure those two gorillas were going to do something terribly mob worthy.
What that might be, I didn’t know. I’d seen my share of mobster films and viewed plenty of second-rate hoods in detective shows.
They always shot first and asked questions later.
Or busted kneecaps after shaking some poor schmoe down.
Were they here to give Anders a roughing up?
Did he owe some big daddy gangster a wad of cash?
Was he going to get plugged by a couple of wise-guy hoodlums?
Why do you sound like James Cagney?
Not a clue. Right, drop the ’40s dick talk.
This was serious. The crush of parents leaving the auditorium carried us out with them.
The kids were waiting in the foyer. Gilda ran to me for a hug.
I embraced her tightly, eyes scanning the vestibule for the twin behemoths.
Thankfully, they were nowhere to be seen. I breathed a little lighter.
“You were amazing,” I told her, dropping a kiss to her hair and passing the bouquet to her. She beamed up at me and then at Anders.
“Yes, you did a wonderful job. You have a very pretty voice as well,” he added, bowing to kiss her hand, which made her face beet red.
Several of the young girls around us sighed dreamily.
“Congratulations on a stellar performance. Della wished to come, but I told her she had to stay back. Perhaps you could come out and visit her over the weekend?”
Gilda hit me with the begging look that never failed.
“Can we, Dad, please?” she asked, hugging her flowers to her chest. How could I say no?
Besides, Anders had said we would talk. And I planned to hold him to that.
Call me overprotective, but if I were going to be spending time with him, I needed to know what kind of dark trouble he was in.
My baby girl was my world. If something happened to her…
“Sure, after you get done helping Franny clean tomorrow morning,” I replied while looking over her head at Anders.
He nodded once, his dark eyes serious. We then had to stop and talk to a hundred people, or so it seemed, before we could get Gilda outside and into my car.
Anders insisted that the star sit in front, so she did, and her mouth ran the entire ride out to the campsite.
I gave Anders a weak little smile before he climbed out of the back seat.
He waved brightly at us before sliding into his van to greet a bouncing min pin.
Once the sliding door was closed, I backed out, crunchy snow under my tires, and began following the winding lane to the main road.
We’d no sooner hit the plowed road when Gilda looked up from her phone. She then placed it face down on her thigh.
“Are you and Anders dating?” she asked rather nonchalantly given the importance of such a question.
My brain kind of went sideways for a second as I stared down the road, tiny flakes dancing in my high beams. When I said nothing, she sighed long and hard.
“I know you like him, Dad. It’s kind of obvious. ”
“I’m not sure that I’m obvious,” I parried poorly.
“Dad, you like stare at him like he’s a beef burrito with extra beans.”
I did love a good beef burrito. “I’m sure that I don’t. He’s just a new friend.”
“Right, okay,” she huffed, obviously upset with my deflections. “I think he’s fun and I love his dog and he’s super polite. He looks at you just like you look at him.”
“He looks at me like I’m a beef burrito with extra beans?” I asked just to try to joke my way out of this conversation that I was not ready to even have with myself, let alone my daughter.
“Yeah, he does. And it’s fine, Dad.” I threw her a fast glance and returned my sight to the road. You had to be vigilant here in the hills. Deer leaped out in front of cars all the time. “I mean…if you like him. Dating a man. That’s so fine with me. All my friends would be fine with it too.”
Ah, but would their parents?
Who cares?
Okay, just be quiet me. Let me catch my breath here. And Gilda would care because the parents might not allow her friends to hang out with her if they were homophobic.
“Thanks, baby.” I didn’t know how to proceed, so I reverted back to Katie’s way of handling tough questions. Honesty. “Anders and I are…well, we’re not officially dating, but we are having lunches together.”
“I knew it. I knew you were skipping eating your sandwiches for a reason. Cool. I like this a lot, Dad, really. I know you’ve missed Mom forever, but you can’t live with a memory, right?
Because I’ll go away to college for drama or maybe marine biology, and I want you to have someone to be old with. ”
Marine biology? What the dickens? Where did that come from? And how sweet was she to worry over her decrepit dad being lonely when she was gone?
“I would like to have someone to be old with too, sugar plum. I’m not sure Anders is that person, but he might be?” I shrugged. “I think we have a lot to discuss before we get serious about anything, but I am very fond of him. I worry that it might be too quick.”
“I don’t think there’s anything wrong with seeing a person and knowing you’re going to marry that person. Like I call Hoon my husband and Kim P. Jai my wife. I fell for them both the first time I saw them in a video.”
Singers in boy and girl K-pop bands were easy to crush on. The possibility of marrying one of them was slim. Meeting a man and falling for them in a week? Ugh, I didn’t know. Nothing. I knew nothing.
“I’m not sure what will happen with Anders and me, but I’m very glad I can talk to you about our new friendship.” I gave her knee a pat. “And hey, you can talk to me about Timmy too, just saying.”
“Yeah, I know.” She lifted the bouquet to her nose. “Thanks,” she mumbled into the flowers.
“Want to talk about the play now?” I asked.
“Please, oh my God, yes!”
That made me laugh. Neither of us was comfortable discussing our feelings. Maybe she was more like me than I realized.