Chapter 17 #2
Lila Mae disagreed, because anything that pulled her away from rest and relaxation could be considered stressful, and Trap carried his stress physically in his shoulders and mentally all the time.
She finally found the silver sandals she wanted, and she sat on the edge of her bed to put them on. She hadn’t closed her door, so she simply left the bedroom nook and headed down the stairs, feeling very much like she was on display as Trap watched her every move.
“Whoa-ho-ho,” he said. “You’re stunning.”
Lila Mae reached up to tuck her hair in a flirty gesture and realized she hadn’t pulled it out of her ponytail. Mortification moved through her. “I haven’t even done my hair yet.”
He extended his hand toward her, a clear invitation for her to go to him instead of around the corner to the bathroom. “I think you look great.” He grinned at her, a soft smile that gave away more than he said. “Beautiful.”
“My hair’s in a gross ponytail from working all day,” she said.
“It’s gorgeous.” He wiggled his fingers at her. “Come here.”
She finally moved toward him and slid her fingers along the length of his. “We’ve got a few minutes,” he said. “I thought I might sit with Cleo, but you’re ten times better.” He tugged her gently, and it became obvious he wanted her to sit on his lap.
Lila Mae did, feeling warm and wonderful as he leaned in and pressed his face into the hollow of her throat. “You smell amazing.”
Lila Mae wasn’t sure how that was possible, as she hadn’t showered, and she’d been working with cats all day. “You got done early today?” She traced her fingernails along the curve of his earlobe, and then the side of his jaw, right where he kept his beard so neatly trimmed.
“Yeah, I sent Sawyer out to the Barnes’. He really wants to be an expert in all kinds of flooring, and they’re laying carpet today.”
“Mm.” Lila Mae put one arm around his broad shoulders and the other across his body, where she held on to his bicep. He closed his eyes and rested his head against her shoulder, and Lila Mae enjoyed this slow sense of being comfortable with him.
“How’s Laurel feeling?” she asked, because his younger sister had been fighting a cold for the past week.
“I think she’s doing better today,” Trap said.
“How many new projects did you sign this week?” she asked.
That got Trap to open his eyes and look up at her. “Just three.”
She nodded. “That’s a lot. You guys are working on what? Seven or eight now?”
“I think these three will bring us to nine,” he said. “And it is a lot, but they’re all in different stages of completion. It’s not like we’re starting at zero with all of them.”
Lila Mae smiled at him and ran her fingers down the side of his face, her heart firing concern for him. “You look tired, Trap.”
“I’m a little tired,” he said.
“We don’t have to go out,” she said. “We can order something, or I can make us something.”
He shook his head before she even finished speaking. “I don’t want you to have to do any work.”
“Then let’s order something, and we can take the UTV down to the south side of the ranch and sit by the river. It’ll be easy and peaceful.” She smiled at him and raised her eyebrows.
Trap played with the end of her ponytail, and the simple action sent shivers through Lila Mae’s bloodstream. “Is that what you want to do?”
Lila Mae nodded. “Yeah, that’s what I want to do. Plus, there’s no service down there, and it really is like a total break from everything.”
“That does sound nice,” he said.
“I haven’t been down there in a few weeks,” she said. “But I remember there being trees.” She snuggled into his chest. “Do you need to text your momma before we go?”
“I don’t need to,” he said. “But I should, then she won’t send the entire police force out to find me.
” He spoke in his grumpy tone, but Lila Mae knew he wasn’t really upset about his mother monitoring his outdoor activity.
The weather had returned to a more normal temperature for August, which meant it was still blazing hot but not as bad as it’d been for those few weeks in July.
“What can we order?” he asked. “I don’t want anything fried because it’ll be soggy by the time it gets here.”
“Yes, I know how you are about your fried food being crispy.” She smiled at him, and Trap rewarded her with a smile of his own.
“Fried food should be crispy and hot when you eat it,” he said. “I’m not going to back down on that.”
Lila Mae giggled. “You don’t have to. I’m sure we can find something you’ll approve of.”
“I was going to take you for Chinese,” he said. “It’s one of your favorites, and you haven’t had it since you moved here.”
“I’m sure they deliver,” she said, and she opened the Two Cents app, which had recently added food delivery.
She hadn’t realized that it was a recommendation app that’d been expanding to include all kinds of other things, including community boards, a dating center, and now food and grocery delivery.
Since she was new to town, she only knew the app as it existed now, not how it’d been before.
Trap had told her all about it, and he’d shown her pictures of Three Rivers before the two fifteen-story buildings had been built downtown.
Everyone in town acted like they were huge and a nuisance, and Lila Mae didn’t dare tell him anything about Atlanta or Baltimore, where a fifteen-story building wasn’t even big.
“If you’re tired, you can take a nap until the food comes,” she said.
He once again shook his head. “I don’t want to waste my time with you sleeping.” He gazed at her with affection running through his expression. “Will you tell me a story from your childhood tonight?”
Lila Mae looked down at the Two Cents app, a vein of apprehension running through her. “All right,” she said. “I’ve been thinking a lot about family traditions because my parents’ anniversary is coming up, and we always celebrate it in a certain way.”
“Great,” Trap said. “I’d love to hear about it.” He smiled at her and stretched a little bit toward her. Lila Mae ducked her head and kissed him sweetly.
“Oh, Colt called about a cancellation for brunch tomorrow,” he said. “Do you want to go?”
“Yes,” Lila Mae said, instantly.
Trap kissed her again. “Great,” he said, his lips still practically on hers. “I told him we’d be there. It’s at nine a.m.”
Lila Mae groaned and then put both hands on either side of his face. “You committed us to a nine a.m. brunch?”
“They’re booked out for eight weeks, sweetheart.” He smiled at her. “Come on, you can get up.”
“I can, yes,” she said. “But it’s the weekend, Trap.”
“I don’t know how you sleep late on the weekend anyway,” he said. “I’m used to getting up at a certain time every day, and it doesn’t matter if it’s a Monday or a Saturday.”
“Yes, well, we’re not all like you,” she said. “Sometimes when I’m really tired, I take a single sleeping pill, and that helps me go back to sleep in the morning.”
His eyes widened, and he searched her face. “You take sleeping pills?”
“Not all the time,” Lila Mae said.
“Is that safe?” he asked.
She frowned. “My mother takes them practically every day. Why wouldn’t it be safe?”
“I don’t know,” Trap said. “I don’t know anyone who takes sleeping pills all the time.”
Something bit through Lila Mae. “My mother’s taken pills every day of her life since I was old enough to know,” Lila Mae said. “Your momma doesn’t do that?”
“No,” Trap said.
Lila Mae frowned, because while they were still getting to know one another, they’d moved on from things like favorite colors and foods to deeper topics, which was why he’d asked her to tell him a story about her family.
Their backgrounds were so completely different, and Lila Mae was once again reminded that his version of normal reality and hers weren’t anything alike.
“Let me guess,” she said. “Your momma hasn’t had any plastic surgery either.”
Trap shook his head slowly. “No, she hasn’t.”
“I think my momma had something fixed every year,” she said. “And she was always going in for some treatment with her eyes or lips.”
“Interesting,” Trap said, and Lila Mae really knew that was his way of acknowledging that he’d heard what she’d said but that he didn’t understand it. “Do you think you’ll be like that?”
“I don’t know,” Lila Mae said. “To me, it was normal. If there’s something about your body you don’t like, you just go get it fixed.”
“There’s something about your body you don’t like?” he asked.
Lila Mae laughed. “Trap, honey, I’m a woman. Of course there’s something about my body I don’t like.”
He blinked at her. “All right, fair enough, but I think you’re perfect just how you are.”
She leaned her temple against his. “You have to say that because you’re my boyfriend.”
“No, I don’t,” he said. “I say it because it’s true.”
“Would you have a problem with me doing plastic surgery?”
He didn’t answer right away, but that sort of provided the answer that Lila Mae needed.
“I want you to be happy,” he said, slowly, diplomatically.
“But I guess ‘have a problem’ isn’t the right way to phrase it.
I really do think you’re beautiful, and I don’t ever want to make choices for you.
But I think my momma is beautiful too, and she’s almost sixty-five years old, and she looks like it.
She should look like it. She doesn’t need to look like she’s thirty.
She earned the lines on her face. They become part of her, you know? ”
Lila Mae nodded, though she didn’t really know. “I don’t know how I’m going to feel,” she said. “In thirty-five years.”
“Yeah, of course.” Trap chuckled. “Who would?”
“But I see your point.” She focused back on the app and swiped several times. “I don’t think there’s any Chinese on here.”
“We can go,” he said, but Lila Mae leaned further into him, almost refusing to get up.
“I don’t want to.” She met his eye. “I just want it to be us tonight. No waitresses and no other conversations with everyone in town.”
“We don’t have to converse with everyone in town.”
Lila Mae scoffed. “Trap, you know everyone, and they know you, and we have at least three or four conversations with people every time we go out.”
“That’s not true,” he said.
Lila Mae cocked her head and glared at him. “It so is, and you know it.”
Trap’s eyebrows drew down in the most adorable way possible. “I guess I’ve never thought about it. It’s just a normal trip to town.”
“Yeah, normal for you.” She handed him her phone. “Let me go do my hair. You pick something for us to eat, and then we’ll go out to the river.”
He took her phone and looked at her as she stood. “And you’ll tell me stories about your family?”
“Yes,” she said. “You don’t think we’re too different, do you?”
“No,” Trap said, and he seemed a little surprised by the question. “Do you?”
“I’m not sure yet,” Lila Mae said, and then, before she could do anything that would capsize their relationship completely, she added, “Let me go do my hair. I’ll be right back.”
She hurried into the bathroom and looked into her own eyes in the mirror. “It’s okay if you’re different,” she whispered, and then used her foot to close the door behind her. She didn’t want someone exactly like her anyway.
She thought of the question her family asked her every time she spoke to them, which wasn’t often, but still: How are things in Texas?
Lila Mae thought through that question and how she’d answer it right now, in this moment. “I’m happier than I’ve been in a long time,” she said to herself, and though she’d whispered the words, they rang with truth and finality.
She was happier than she’d been in a long time, and Trap was a big part of that.
They’d grown up living two very different lives, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t build a cohesive future together, and Lila Mae certainly didn’t need to sabotage it before the foundation finished curing.
Her momma had once told her that the reason she and Daddy got along so well was because they agreed on a few major important things: religion, how to spend their money, and how to raise their kids.
She and Trap hadn’t made it that far in their discussions yet, but having a different upbringing wasn’t a relationship killer, and as Lila Mae worked her hair out of her ponytail, she thought through which story she could tell Trap that night.