4. Kylie
Kylie
I’ve rehearsed being normal the whole four miles to Jubilee Hill, and I still don’t have it right by the time I turn in at the Sterling gate.
Normal is the entire assignment. Walk in, hand over the box, say something forgettable, walk out.
I’ve carried casseroles to grieving widows and read eulogies without my voice cracking. I can move a pan of cinnamon rolls forty feet across a kitchen without coming apart in front of a man who’s never once learned my real name. I’ve decided I can, which is a different thing from knowing it.
The rolls were my mother’s idea, which is to say they were an order dressed up as a favor.
Ada Barnes and Vivian Sterling have run thick as thieves for years, and the minute word got around that the youngest Sterling boy came home in a brace, my mother had Novaleen’s biggest box ordered before supper.
“Take these out to Vivian,” she told me, pressing the box into my hands like a subpoena. “That family’s had a scare. And you tell that boy we’re glad he’s home in one piece.”
He is not in one piece. That’s the whole reason for the box. I didn’t say so. You don’t correct Ada Barnes.
I did pick the cinnamon rolls, though. Nobody made me do that. Novaleen asked what kind, and I heard myself say cinnamon, cream cheese frosting, like I knew which pastry makes Perry Sterling close his eyes when he thinks nobody’s watching.
Vivian meets me at the screen door before I’ve cut the engine. She wipes her hands on a dish towel, and the sight of her almost undoes my whole plan. Same warm, no-nonsense face she’s had since I was small, since the summers my mother parked me here while she cataloged.
“Kylie Barnes.” She takes the box and my free hand both. “Look at you. Prettier every year, and nobody in this town deserves to know it less than the men in it.”
“Hi, Miss Vivian. Mama sent rolls. She says y’all had a scare.”
“We had a fool get on a bull he had no business on.” She pitches it over her shoulder, back into the house. “Come in out of the heat. He’s being impossible. You can watch.”
I follow her into the kitchen, and there he is.
Perry Sterling, folded into a chair at his mother’s big table with his braced leg stuck straight out and a crutch leaned against the wall. Bigger in life than his poster. A bruise turning green along his jaw. Two days of stubble and a white T-shirt setting off his broad shoulders and brown skin.
Even busted up and half drugged and gray around the eyes, he is still the most beautiful thing this county ever turned out. It makes me want to throw the rolls at him.
The kitchen smells like coffee and warm cinnamon and the lemon oil Vivian’s rubbed into her kitchen table.
You’d never know they are one of the wealthiest families in the whole state on account of the stellar horses that Herc Sterling breeds and the derbies they win.
They don’t act like rich folks. They’re ordinary and steady. Everything I’m not as I watch Perry close his eyes.
He opens them and looks up when I come all the way in. He doesn’t seem to know who I am.
There’s not one flicker of recognition.
I told myself in the car there wouldn’t be. But the disappointment sinks deep.
“Well.” The grin comes up slow, automatic, the one that’s talked him out of speeding tickets in six states. “Mama, you didn’t say we had company. And she comes bearing pastry.”
“I come bearing your mother’s Tupperware and a box from Novaleen,” I say. “Try not to confuse the two.”
Vivian makes a sound into the dish towel that might be a laugh.
Perry’s eyebrows go up. He’s not used to that. I watch him recalibrate, reach for the next tool on the belt.
“You local?” he says. “You’ve got a local look. The good kind.”
“I’ve got a look, alright.” I set the box on the far counter, out of his reach, on purpose. “We’ve met, by the way. You don’t remember.”
“Now that I’d remember.”
“You wouldn’t. You didn’t.” I meet his eyes and hold them. “You were always too busy being noticed to notice anybody back.”
That lands somewhere. The grin doesn’t drop, but it loses a little of its shine and turns real for a second. He tilts his head and studies me like a page he skipped and had to turn back to.
“Okay.” He leans back like he’s got all day and no bum knee. “I’m gonna figure you out.”
“People have tried. There’s a waiting list.”
“I don’t wait in lines.”
“I’ve heard. That’s how a man winds up under a bull.”
He laughs, and it costs his ribs something. He presses a hand flat to his side and laughs anyway. “Oh, you’re mean. Nobody warned me you’d be mean.”
“Nobody warns you about anything. You don’t hold still long enough to hear it.”
“Kylie’s our librarian now,” Vivian says, setting out plates. “Ada’s girl. Runs the whole library down on the square.”
His eyes widen in shock. “Kiki?”
“It’s Kylie.”
“Yeah. Right. I’m sorry. You look different. I haven’t seen you in years.”
“I was at college. Been here every summer.”
“I’m away most of the year,” he says, like it’s news.
“So,” he chuckles. “Kendrick’s little sister.”
“Kylie,” I remind him. Then because I don’t want his mother to tell my mother I was rude, I say, “Sorry to hear about your…”
He raises an eyebrow.
“Your fall,” I finish.
Here’s the part I didn’t brace for. The flirt drains out of him and something stiff and dutiful moves in behind it. He’s not looking at a pretty stranger anymore. He straightens in the chair, careful of the leg, like a man who just remembered he’s on his best behavior.
I don’t know why yet. All I know is the warmth clicks off like a thrown switch, and the boy who winked at me years ago and made me keep his secret is nowhere in this kitchen at all.
“Open the box, Pericles,” Vivian says, “before I do.”
He pulls it across the table. Lifts the lid. He smiles at the cinnamon rolls with their thick frosting.
For one unguarded second he’s not the poster or the grin or the man who forgot me. He’s a tired, hurting boy looking at a box of sweet rolls like they’re the first easy thing that’s come his way all week.
“How’d you know?” he says, quiet, almost to himself.
And there it is, my opening. I could tell him the truth. That I’ve watched him my whole life. That he shuts his eyes on the first bite, every single time, like it’s the one thing that has ever asked nothing of him.
“Novaleen knew,” I say. “I just carried the box.”
He looks at me a beat too long. Like he doesn’t believe me.
“Well, Kiki…I mean Kylie…they’re better than Pringles. Thank you.”
I nod. The Pringles thing is a mystery but I’m not asking any questions.
Vivian’s watching us now, her head cocked to one side as if evaluating whether we’d hang well together like new drapes.
“I should get back,” I say. “The library doesn’t run itself.”
“Thank your mama for us.” Vivian squeezes my arm. “And Kylie. Come back around. He could stand some company that isn’t me.”
“I’ll think about it,” I say, which is a lie the size of the county. I’ve been thinking about it since I was twelve.
“Mama.” Perry’s ears are brownish red. “Don’t beg the librarian to entertain me.”
I make it to the door. I’ve almost made it clean.
“Hey.” His voice behind me, low, the grin gone out of it. “Thanks again for the rolls. And for…” He trails off, and I turn in time to catch him frowning at the table. As if his painkillers are making him lose his train of thought.
“I don’t know. Feels like I’m forgetting to say something.”
“Get some rest, Perry,” I say instead.
I drive back to town with the windows down and my radio turned all the way up.
I’m blasting rap music because I need something loud enough to block out his voice as he tried to figure out who I was.
He still doesn’t know me.
And I’m still not over him.