Chapter 2 #2
“One of my professors told us this story,” she continues, “of a trip he took to Russia. In Russia, it’s considered a grave insult to refuse a drink from a friendly party.
My professor was offered a vodka, because that’s one of the major food groups in that Russian town, and he refused it in the name of the Community Covenant.
Apparently it led to literal knives being drawn.
” Her honeyed voice changes to that whip she lashed at me back at the field.
“But my professor held to God’s will even in the face of persecution, and that’s the kind of dedication and sacrifice that God requires of his followers.
” She fumes with utter stillness for a moment, an indignant frown weighing her features.
“Alright, lovelies!” Our waitress’s cheerful arrival snaps us both out of the harsh moment. She drops the coffees and waffles in front of us, and we both thank her a little too enthusiastically.
I tuck my hair behind my ears and take the silent minute in which we’re buttering up our waffles to process.
If I thought I was intrigued by her before, it’s nothing to how intrigued I am now.
I need to carefully unravel every piece of what she’s told me.
I need to see this enigmatic list. At least I seem to have gotten back into interviewer mode so we can prep for the camera, and I also think it’s working to put a little distance between us.
I languidly prop my elbows on the table with an easy smile. “So when you were first given the Community Covenant—”
“You know, I once got smacked in the face with one of these waffles.”
Back to square one. “What?”
“They are my favorite waffles on earth, but I fear I will forever remember the squish on my face when I eat them.”
She’s innocently cutting into her waffle, but I catch that amusement in her voice again. She’s disrupting my footing on purpose. But why? Who would want the intense guy I really am over the easygoing one I’ve worked so hard to portray?
“That’s quite a tease, Christina.” I follow every bite down her throat. “Do I get to hear the story?”
She settles in after a long sip of coffee.
“My mother is really into Black Friday. Like, she goes out at midnight and has this master plan of how to hit the stores with the biggest discounts in a particular order.
One year, I was probably sixteen, my mother was so keyed up that she and this other lady got into a shoving match in line.
Security literally had to break up the brawl.
“Around 4:00 AM, after we’d already been shopping for hours, we decided to take a Waffle House break.
Apparently, every other Black Friday shopper had the exact same idea.
Including the lady my mother clocked with a shopping bag full of boots mere hours before.
She took one look at my mother, picked up her half-eaten waffle with her bare hand, and hurled it across the restaurant.
It didn’t quite hit its mark; instead, it smacked me in the face hard enough to topple me over. ”
I think my mouth is hanging open. She just cuts into her waffle and takes another bite with pride.
“What the hell happened after that?” I burst out.
She tilts her head in thought. “You know, I have no idea. It’s like I caught some kind of waffle-induced amnesia.”
I rub my temples and try to wrestle my smile down. It’s completely unfair for one person to be this pretty and this witty.
“I also have an embarrassing story involving these waffles,” I say, unthinking. Then I frown. Why would I have offered that personal information up? I’m way off my documentarian game—apparently, to her credit.
She’s practically glowing. “I like embarrassing waffle stories.”
“Aren’t I supposed to be interviewing you?”
“Ooh,” she croons. “Deflection. Your story must be really embarrassing.”
I fidget. “It’s definitely more embarrassing than yours. Though less … violent.”
A laugh shoots out of her so quickly that it becomes an ungainly snort, and she throws a hand over her mouth and nose to cover it. I don’t need to have filmed that to remember it forever.
“I’ve seen your hat hair,” she says airily, waving away the unflattering yet utterly adorable snort. “There’s nowhere to go but up.”
I sigh heavily. “Okay. My brother and I—at a very young and stupid time in our lives, I might add—were out one holiday season in this rich neighborhood, um, stacking reindeer.”
“Stacking reindeer?”
I tuck my hair behind my ears again. “You know how people will have lit-up reindeer out on their lawn as Christmas decorations?”
“Yes …”
“Stacking them is when you arrange them so they are, um, essentially, yeah.” I close my eyes in pure self-loathing. “Humping each other.”
There’s a quiet moment, and then the brightest laugh bursts across my senses. When I finally open my eyes, Christina’s head is fully in her arms on the table, her shoulders shaking with laughter.
She straightens back up completely flushed and breathless. She takes a long sip of coffee and motions with her fork again. “Continue, ye reindeer stacker.”
I have to jostle myself internally to remember what I was even talking about.
“Yeah, so, some cops picked us up after only a few houses, and we were scared out of our minds. Charlie—that’s my brother, he’s a year younger than me—was crying that he’d never be able to run for student government with a criminal record, and I tried to bargain with the police officers to take just me. ”
Her face goes all soft. “How old were you?”
“About fifteen.”
She nods. “So where do waffles come into this?”
“Well, the cops told us that we’d have to spend the night in jail for what we’d done, which had Charlie literally weeping into my shoulder. But they actually just drove us to Waffle House, bought us three waffles apiece, and waited with us there until our parents picked us up.”
She smiles but also slowly shakes her head. “You know what? I resent that. You’re out there breaking the law and getting free waffles. Meanwhile, I’m smacked in the face through no fault of my own.”
A chuckle I’ve been clamping down on all night finally sneaks out of me, and her eyes go wide. I bite the inside of my cheek.
“Well,” I say, “here’s our chance to replace our embarrassing waffle stories.”
“Oh?”
“You get to tell the story of being interviewed here by the evil cameraman who almost ruined your education in its final hour.”
She huffs a laugh. “More like the cuttingly insightful cameraman whose work gave me hope when I had none.”
Fuck. It’s nearly impossible to wrap my mind around this sharp woman watching every project I’ve toiled over for the past seven years.
And even more impossible that those videos could mean so much.
Every single minute I spent operating my camera, getting doors slammed in my face, editing through the night fueled only by mania and Red Bull …
this is the first time I’ve known, deep in my gut, that every one of those minutes was worth it.
I can only blink at her.
She swallows. “And what is your new story?”
“These waffles,” I start, still dazed and staring and intense but unable to be anything else in this moment, “will always remind me of when I interviewed the most interesting woman I’ve ever met.”
Her smile stretches slowly. “Interesting, huh?”
“Among other things,” I mutter.
She shifts her eyes away a moment, even as her smile grows wider. “I’ll take it.”
This smile is exactly like the one when she cut that cord back at the festival. All life, sweetness, and a touch of adventure.
I should transition back to interview prep so I can learn about this list and sate Danny Reeves of UNsweet Tea’s curiosity. I should also stop staring at her like she’s a rare artifact.
Instead, we pick up with other embarrassing stories we wish we could replace.
She cannot stop laughing at my story of Charlie dragging me onto a karaoke stage for a duet of “Endless Love”—me singing Diana Ross’s part.
Meanwhile, she somehow makes the borderline-horrific story of being double-bounced right off a trampoline entertaining.
It surprises me every time she’s able to jolt a laugh out of me, which is more than anyone but Charlie has ever achieved.
When our waitress finally clears our empty plates and tops off our coffees, we’re still smiling at one another. I think she also feels whatever this … thing … is between us. Some tug. Some mutual fascination.
Is it possible she finds me as intriguing as I find her?
After a long moment, she withdraws a folded-up piece of notebook paper from her coat pocket and wordlessly slides it across the table to me.
Confused, I carefully pick it up and unfold along the soft creases. It’s a list written in delicate, slanted handwriting, with little checkboxes drawn to the left of each item.
I reach a little deeper for air. She’s sharing her mysterious list with me, unprompted, even though I’ve all but laid the documentarian in me to the wayside.
But as my eyes scan the paper, that documentarian rears up like it hasn’t in years. Attend a pagan festival is indeed one of only a few checked-off items. The remaining fifteen or so items are unchecked.
I read, and read some more, and read again after that.
“Christina.”
“Yes?” she asks, a bit breathless.
“I don’t want to interview you.”
“What?” There’s that sharp voice again.
I’m my least charismatic self ever when I clarify, “I don’t only want to interview you. This is so much bigger than that. This is it, Christina.” I flash her checklist at her. “This is my next project. You’re my next project. I want to make a documentary of you completing this list.”
She gapes at me.
With a shaking finger, I point to the name she’s written in big lettering across the top of the paper: “The Jezebel List is the next story that needs to be told.”