The Party Line

Chapter Twenty

F ive outfits, from jeans and a T-shirt to the fancy dress I wore to the company Christmas party the year before, cluttered my bed. If I wore jeans for my date and Connor took me to a bougie restaurant in San Antonio, that would be a disaster. If I wore the little black dress with sequins scattered on the bodice and we went to the Dairy Queen in Poteet, that would almost be worse.

Gina Lou knocked on my open door and peeked inside. “All right if I borrow the car this evening? I’ve got a hot date with Jasper.”

“No problem. Thank you for taking him for a ride. Where are y’all going?” I turned my back on all the clothing.

“We are going to my folks’ house for ice cream. Daddy is hand-churning some, and if Jasper’s not too tired when we come home, we are going to watch an episode or two of the first prequel to Yellowstone on television. I haven’t ever seen it, and Jasper says the only way to appreciate the series is to start from the beginning.” She nodded toward the bed.

“I’ve never seen that series, either, but I know Jasper will love having a night out.” I glanced over at the clothes on the bed. “I wish Connor would have told me where we were going.” I sighed. “When in doubt, don’t.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Mama used to tell me that all the time when I was a teenager,” I said. “It means if you have doubts or if you’re fighting with yourself, then you better take a step back and figure things out before you jump headfirst into the water.”

“Or the frying pan. Mama told me that Derrick was nothing but a scalding-hot skillet. Sweet as strawberry wine one minute and mean as a snake the next. But I wouldn’t listen.” She pointed at an emerald green sundress. “Wear that one. No matter where you go, it’ll be fine. The night could turn out chilly, so take a cardigan or your cute little denim jacket with you.”

“Great idea. You and Jasper have a good time. I’ll be back by nine to give him his last dose of medicine.” I removed my robe and slipped the dress over my head. “It’s been so long since I’ve been out on a real date that I’m acting like a sixteen-year-old.”

“You must really like him. There’s a full moon out tonight. You know what that means?”

“That I can see better in the dark?” I asked.

She grinned. “No, it means you might get lucky.”

“I’m not superstitious.” I frowned. “All that old moon will do is light up my freckles even more.”

“I’d take those freckles any day of the week if I could have your height to go with them.”

I checked my reflection in the mirror and brushed out my hair one more time. “I’d give you both if it was possible.”

Gina Lou cocked her head to one side. “I hear a truck pulling up in the driveway.”

I grabbed my sweater and purse and started out of the room. Gina shook her head and pointed to my bare feet. “Might be best if you wear shoes.”

I slipped my feet into a pair of flats. “Yep, I’m more wound up than I was when I went on my first date.” Connor was taller than me, but heels would put me right at eye level with him, and I enjoyed the rare feeling of being short.

“Did you get lucky that night?” Gina Lou giggled.

I gasped. “I did not!”

“Well, you can make up for it tonight,” she teased as she hurried down the stairs and headed toward the kitchen.

The back door slammed seconds before Connor knocked. I opened the door and motioned for him to come inside. “You are right on time.”

“Grandpa and the army taught me that. You are stunning, Lila.” He scanned me from my toes to my eyebrows. “Are you ready?”

“I am, and you look pretty nice tonight, too.”

He held his arm out for me. “But I pale in comparison to you, darlin’.”

“That is a bit clichéd, but thank you,” I told him.

“I’m not much of a romantic,” he said on the way to his truck, “but I was speaking the truth.”

He looked sexy that evening in his T-shirt, which stretched over his chest and defined every ripped ab and muscle. From that and the fact that his boots weren’t polished and his jeans weren’t creased, I guessed that we would be eating dinner in Poteet. Annie’s Café had reopened sometime early in the week with a different name—the Ambrosia. That sounded pretty fancy for a café in Poteet, Texas. I wondered what the menu would offer. Somehow it didn’t seem like they would have sausage gravy and biscuits.

“Are you listening to me, Lila?” he asked.

“Yes,” I nodded. “I heard every word. I was just admiring your body.”

He shuffled his feet like a little boy flirting with a girl on the school playground. “I won’t ever have to worry about you not telling me the truth, will I?”

“No, you will not!” I declared. “I’ll be truthful with you every time. When I was a little girl, Aunt Gracie told me that I might hide things from people, but I could never hide anything from God—not even a little white lie. So do the same for me. If I ask you if a dress or my hair or any other thing about me looks all right, tell me the truth, not what you think I want to hear. That way, when I ask you something really important, I’ll have confidence that you aren’t lying to me.”

“Yes, ma’am, I can do that.” He slipped my free hand into his. “But what if it causes a big fight between us?”

“Then we’ll argue, settle it, and go to the bedroom to make up,” I said.

He chuckled. “What if I start a fight just so we can do that?”

“What if I start the fight?” I was flirting and it felt so good.

“Lady, you are going to be a handful,” he said as he opened the passenger door for me.

“You wouldn’t want me to be any other way, would you?”

“No, I would not.” He closed the door and whistled all the way around the front of the vehicle and slid in behind the wheel.

“Is that fried chicken I smell?” I asked.

“Busted,” he grinned. “I thought I could keep our destination a secret until we arrived. We’re having a picnic by the river. I wanted us to have an evening all alone.”

Mama’s words about where Connor and I would go on our first date came back to my mind: If he gets a six-pack of beer and a couple of bologna sandwiches and drives out to the river ...

Is fried chicken a step up from bologna sandwiches? I wondered as he drove toward the Atascosa River. Driving time was a little less than seven minutes. I knew because more than once, a bunch of us high school kids had driven down to the river to party. My weekend curfew was eleven o’clock, so I could leave ten minutes before the hour and make it home on time.

I’m not a high school senior, I reminded myself. And this is not an adult dinner date, no matter how good that chicken is.

He parked the truck near an enormous oak tree with roots as big as my waist running on top of the ground. I looked around for the picnic table, but apparently either a bunch of kids had stolen it or else the wood had rotted and it had been washed away by one of the floods in the last twelve years. Connor opened the door for me and gave me his hand to help me out of the truck.

“Grandpa and I have fished right here ever since I was a little boy,” he said as he opened the back door.

When I saw that he had a real picnic basket, a quilt, and a tote bag, I figured that maybe—just maybe—Mama wouldn’t think history was repeating itself.

“I’ll carry the tote bag.” I picked it up and followed him near the tree.

His memories were different from mine. I had had my first beer, my first kiss, and my very first dance with a boy right here under that big tree. Some of the kids I’d partied with shucked all their clothes and dove right in, not caring if the water often looked like thin chocolate milk. I wondered if my parents had ever skinny-dipped in the river.

He spread the quilt out on a grassy area just a few feet from the tree roots and put the basket in the middle. I set the tote bag off to the side, and he dropped down on his knees. “Turn around and don’t look until I get everything set up,” he said.

The sound of tinkling glass and what sounded like a match being struck added to the duets the tree frogs and locusts were performing. I’d never been fishing in my entire life, but when a couple of fish flopped out there in the water, creating little ripples all the way back to the shoreline, I wondered if Aunt Gracie, Davis, and Jasper had ever come down there. I made a mental note to ask Jasper about it when I took him his evening meds.

“Okay, you can turn around now,” Connor said.

It looked like something out of a movie set: Two places set with real plates, wineglasses, and cloth napkins. Twinkle lights all around the quilt and a bouquet of yellow roses in a crystal vase right in the middle.

I gasped. “How did you ...”

“I wanted you all to myself tonight, but you deserve a special first date.” Connor stood up and took me by the hand. “Welcome to Café River. Please come in and be seated.”

Mama, there’s cloth napkins and flowers. Does that count as a fancy place?

“Would it be all right if I take a picture of the café before we mess it up with food?” I asked.

Connor led me the half a dozen steps to the quilt. “Are you one of those people who post food pictures on Facebook?”

“Nope.” I shot half a dozen photos with my cell phone. “But this is so beautiful I want to send a picture of it to my mama. And, Connor, don’t kid yourself. You are definitely a romantic.”

“Thank you, ma’am. Lila, you are a breath of fresh air to this drowning man,” he said.

I wanted to lay my hand on my chest and sigh.

“No comment or smart remark about that being a lame pickup line?” he asked.

“No, I’m enjoying letting it sink into my heart. That is even more romantic than all this is. Whoever told you that you weren’t romantic should be exiled from the human race.”

“What I said was the truth. Every time I’m around you, it’s like the world lights up in Technicolor.” He motioned to a place setting.

I truly felt like I was in one of those old romantic movies when I sat down. “Thank you for this beautiful date.”

He sat down and leaned across the space and kissed me. “I’ve ordered a shooting star for you. I hope the company doesn’t run out of them before you get yours.”

“If they do, we’ll have to do this all over again,” I whispered.

“Anytime, darlin’. Anytime. Now, there’s not a big selection on the menu, but we don’t have to wait for it to be cooked and served.”

“It’s got my favorite food of all time on the menu: fried chicken,” I told him.

He passed the container of chicken over to me. “You mentioned that when Gina Lou said they had had it at her folks’ house last Sunday.”

Yep, a whole lot better than a bologna sandwich and then a romp in the back seat of an old car.

“You pick up on so much. What was it like to be a military kid? Is that part of it?”

“I usually lived on a base with other kids—some younger, some older, and lots in between. I made friends, and then some of them moved, new ones came in, and finally I was the one who moved. We were usually in one place a year, or maybe two. How about you? What was it like to live in Ditto your whole life?”

“Like you said, it was life.” I shrugged. “Same friends until I left.”

“Do you still keep up with them?”

“Not really.” I gave another shrug. I hesitated and bit into a chicken leg, chewed, swallowed, and then took a sip of wine. “I was kind of a loner. I had lots of acquaintances but not many close friends. And those girls all moved away. Facebook doesn’t keep people that close in touch.”

He took a long sip of his wine. “I liked it here when I came to visit Grandpa in the summers. Which reminds me, I wonder why we never met during those times.”

“You were a boy,” I whispered.

“So?” he asked.

“Neither Aunt Gracie nor Mama let me have playdates with boys. They were evil little critters,” I answered, a laugh escaping.

“Did they tell you that?” Connor’s tone was full of pure shock.

“No, but when I made a guy-type friend in kindergarten, they made all kinds of excuses why I couldn’t invite him to ride the bus home with me after school. I figured out a few years later why Mama didn’t want me to be friends with boys, but I never quite understood Aunt Gracie, since Jasper was her best friend.”

“Life is complicated,” Connor replied and then leaned over and kissed me on the cheek. “But tonight, I’m sure glad I’m a boy.”

“Me too.”

Gina Lou was sitting in the dark living room when I got home that evening. I’d already taken a couple of steps toward the kitchen when I heard her whisper, “Well, how did it go? Did he take you somewhere fancy? Is he cooking breakfast?”

“What . . . Why . . .” I stammered.

“Look—I didn’t want to cause a problem if Connor was going to stay the night. I had turned off the lights and was going up to my room when I heard y’all drive up. I wasn’t spying on you, I promise.”

“I’ve got to take meds out to Jasper. Come on into the kitchen, and we’ll talk when I get back.”

She followed me and sat down at the table when I flipped on the lights. “So, you’re not going to fire me?”

“What are you thinking? Of course not!” I declared and handed her my phone. “Here, look at these pictures while I get things ready to take out to Jasper.”

She gasped. “Oh. My. Sweet. Lord! That is the most romantic thing I’ve ever seen.”

“That’s just the beginning. Go on through them since you like sunsets and sunrises so well.” I had this medicine thing down to an art: pills in the glass, inhaler tucked into the pocket of my sundress.

Jasper frowned at me and pointed at the clock when I stepped inside his house. “You almost broke curfew, young lady.”

“It is nine fifteen, and you don’t go to bed until nine thirty,” I reminded him.

“That’s right, but I’m old, and it takes me a while to get into my pajamas and brush my teeth,” he smarted off. “I suppose I have to eat something now, too. That will take even more time.”

“Quit your fussin’ and get busy, then,” I told him, refusing to let him take the shine off my evening.

“Get me a couple of cookies and half a glass of milk,” he ordered.

“Yes, sir, Captain Jasper.”

He narrowed his eyes until they were little more than slits. “Don’t you get sassy with me, Lila Grace.” His expression changed from anger to a smile. “I miss Gracie so much. She would argue with me just like you do.”

I got three cookies from the jar and filled a glass with milk. “Here you go—and I miss her, too, Jasper.”

“I know you do, baby girl,” he said with an extra-long sigh.

He hadn’t called me by that nickname since I was a little girl. When I started to kindergarten, I fussed at him for calling me a baby. Was he getting dementia and thinking that I was still a child? Maybe I should have the doctor check him for that on the next visit. He ate the cookies and swallowed the pills with the last of his milk.

“How was the big date? Did he take you somewhere fancy up in San Antonio?” he asked.

I pointed at the clock. “It’s ten minutes past your bedtime. I’ll tell you all about it tomorrow at breakfast.”

“I’ll hold you to that,” he said.

I took a couple of steps toward the door. “I promise I will, and I even have pictures to show you.”

Had Aunt Gracie felt the same shot of pure passion when Davis kissed her that time like I did with Connor?

“Get on out of here, then, so I can go to sleep. I’ll look at them pictures tomorrow.” He shooed me out of the house.

I looked up at the star-dotted sky, and there was that falling star Connor had promised.