6. Jack #3
Beau grinned. “We’re a welcoming people.”
Caleb snorted. “Within reason.”
Waylon leaned back in his chair, studying me. “You can cheer for whoever you want, long as you understand one thing.”
“What’s that?” I asked.
“In this house, we don’t want to hear it out loud unless it’s for my Hawks. Our Volunteers. Or the Tennessee Titans.”
I looked at Ivy who was grinning widely, clearly enjoying herself, then back at him.
“I understand,” I said. “Do you need that in blood?”
“Great idea,” Beau said. “I’ll get a knife.”
“You boys are too much,” June said, rolling her eyes. “I’m sorry, Jack. I’ve no one to blame but myself, because I raised them.”
“How serious are we about this blood pact?” I asked. “It can’t be one of my picking fingers. Maybe my palm? But not too deep. I’ve got to play a stadium four days from now.”
“Wait, you’re playing the famous country singer card?” Beau asked. “We’ll have to take this under advisement.”
Even Waylon laughed, though he tried to hide it by taking a drink of beer.
Ivy leaned into my side, laughing too, and I looked around at them all, eyes glittering under the lights, and I waited to feel jealous again.
Instead, I felt something totally different.
Like I belonged here. Even if I had to become a closeted Seahawks fan from this day forward.
This was what Ivy meant when she talked about home. Not the house. Not the land. Not the old oaks whispering over the drive.
This.
The surety that everyone at this table belonged to everyone else, whether they liked it or not, but it sure seemed like they did.
For the next hour, June fed me like she was on a mission to fatten me up.
Roasted chicken with crisp brown skin. Green beans cooked with bacon.
Creamy, buttery mashed potatoes. Tomatoes from June’s garden with salt and pepper.
Yeast rolls so soft I understood why Ivy had warned me not to praise Creekside Diner’s biscuits too enthusiastically.
“It’s Mama’s love language,” Ivy said as her mother plopped another mound of mashed potatoes on my plate.
Waylon asked about touring. How often I was gone. Whether I had good security. How I handled being away from home so much. He did not say from Ivy, but it was implied.
“I’m away a lot too.” Ivy looked over at me. “They still think I’m just their baby sister instead of a full grown woman who can take care of herself.”
“Do you know where your keys are right now?” Waylon asked.
Ivy tossed a roll at him. “You’re just plain mean, you know that, Waylon James?”
Beau asked what the strangest thing a fan had ever thrown onstage was, then immediately answered his own question with, “Never mind. I’m afraid you’ll tell us.”
“There was a teddy bear once,” I said.
June froze with the tea pitcher in her hand. “A what?”
“A stuffed bear,” I said. “It just lay there on the stage looking at me. I didn’t know what to do.”
“Did they want it back?” Gus asked.
“That was the confusing part. I wasn’t sure.”
“What did you do?” Beau asked. “I mean, it’s kind of awkward to toss someone’s bear back to them, isn’t it?”
“As I said, it was unprecedented. But Knox, my guitarist, he picked it up, gave it a kiss, and threw it back to the woman it belonged to.”
“That is possibly the grossest thing I’ve ever heard,” Caleb said, but he was laughing. “Who knows where that bear had been.”
“Only you would think that,” Ivy said.
By the time June brought out peach cobbler, the sun had dropped behind the trees and the string lights had blinked on overhead.
Temperatures had cooled enough that Ivy pulled her sweater around her shoulders.
Without thinking, I reached behind her and tugged it a little higher at the back of her neck.
When I looked up, Gus was watching me. He gave me a little nod of approval.
After supper, June asked Ivy to help her with the dishes, ushering her away from the table, probably wanting to get her alone.
Beau and Caleb started carrying plates inside and were immediately ordered to stop dripping cobbler juice on the porch by their mother, who apparently had eyes in the back of her head.
Waylon took a call from one of his assistant coaches and walked toward the pasture, his voice low and serious.
“You have no idea the pressure they put on Waylon over his football team,” Gus said to me.
“He’s had his house covered in raw eggs,” Caleb said, rejoining us at the table. “Trees toilet-papered. One time someone tossed a rock through his window.”
“Because they lost?” I asked.
“Oh yeah,” Beau said as he reached for another beer. “They show no mercy. Unless he’s winning, and then it’s free pie at the diner. Ladies throwing themselves at him.”
“Sounds bad either way,” I said.
Gus stood, beer bottle loose in one hand. “Come on, Jack. Let me show you something.”
“Yes, sir.” I gave Ivy, who was headed inside with the pitcher of tea, what I hoped was a reassuring look, though I had no idea who I was trying to reassure. Her, maybe. Me, definitely.
Then I followed her father across the yard.