Chapter 38
“We need to double with them,” Lila Mae said. “She is just so much fun.” She picked up her flute of apple cider and took a long drink while Trap sat beside her. He’d looked beyond handsome as he’d walked down the aisle with one of Winnie’s coworkers.
They’d just come off the dance floor, and she leaned into Trap, glad when he raised his arm and put it around her.
She’d honestly had no idea that a relationship could feel the way hers with Trap did. They’d been steadily building and rebuilding everything between them in the past six weeks, and while neither of them were perfect, Lila Mae now knew that she could have a discussion with him about anything.
He might agree with her and he might not, but they could talk about it, and at least gain some understanding.
Lila Mae had never seen understanding from her mother.
It was her way or no way, and in truth, everyone went along with her.
She’d never really been challenged, and Lila Mae found she liked being challenged.
She looked over at Trap when he turned toward her, “You ready to go?” he asked.
“Any time,” she said. “It’s your best friend’s wedding.”
“I think they’re wrapping up.” He looked over his shoulder. “Yeah, see? The band’s taking things down.”
Lila Mae nodded and got to her feet. “Then, yeah, we can go anytime, because I believe you promised me some ice cream.”
She’d just experienced her first Texas wedding, and she’d never seen so many cowboy hats in one place, that was for dang sure. Trap wore a dark brown one, though his suit was black, and Lila Mae had realized that cowboys preferred certain colors for their hats, no matter what they wore.
Trap disappeared for a few minutes to go say good-bye to Ty, and Lila Mae helped clean up one of the tables. When he returned, he slid his hand along her waist. “All right, let’s head out.” He took her hand and led her toward the exit.
Outside, Texas had settled into darkness, and Lila Mae took a deep breath. “When we get married, do you think you’ll wear a black cowboy hat like Ty?”
Trap pulled in a breath. “Mm, is that what we’re talking about tonight? Marriage?”
“I mean, we could.” Lila Mae grinned over at him.
“And here I was thinking we were just going to get ice cream and eat it on the tailgate of my truck.”
“We’re doing that too,” Lila Mae said.
Trap cut her a look out of the corner of his eye. “First Thanksgiving, and now marriage?”
“And kids,” Lila Mae said. “I want to talk about those too.”
Trap’s jaw strengthened, but then he nodded. “That’s an easy one.”
“Is it?” Lila Mae asked.
“Yeah.” He looked over at her. “I want kids and you want kids, right? There. Conversation had.”
Lila Mae laughed and shook her head. “Oh, come on, Trap. There’s more than that.”
“Is there?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said. “How many? When we’ll have them, if you want to be married for a while first, settled into the cat sanctuary, build a bigger house, or have a certain number of clients.”
Trap blinked at her. “Are you serious?”
“Yes.” Lila Mae gave him a little shove.
“I hadn’t thought about all that,” he said.
“Well, you need to. For example, Rock and Clover had a baby right away, but Gun and Camila aren’t even pregnant. They got married within a week of each other. So see, there’s more discussion there.”
“Yeah, but that could come later, right? You know, after we’re married.”
“Ah, so you do want to talk about marriage.”
Trap chuckled and opened the passenger door for her. “I suppose I do.”
“Oh, don’t you say I do right now, honey.” Lila Mae patted his chest and then climbed into his truck, being careful to tuck her long skirt under her leg so it wouldn’t get caught in the door.
Highland River Gardens sat on the east side and a little bit north up near a bend in the river.
The apple orchard sat just across the highway and south, and Lila Mae let the darkness surrounding them insulate her in a little bubble as Trap drove back into town.
He played the radio on low, and neither one of them said anything more about marriage.
This level of quiet comfortableness with another person was also new and somewhat foreign to Lila Mae.
She and Trap spent a lot of time together simply listening to the wind or talking about mundane things.
He wanted a dog and to eat most of his meals outside, and Lila Mae loved watching him sit on her back deck while whittling something she’d use in a future garden, or pot, or Cat House.
He’d finished the first initial four for her, and she could house sixty-five cats at Feline Friends now.
She currently only had about a third of that, and her population seemed to fluctuate around the twenty-count mark.
Most of the cats got treated for minor injuries or diseases and adopted out in only a couple of weeks.
The harsher cases might stay with them for a bit, and Lila Mae had taken on four permanent residents besides Cleopatra.
“Do you want to get married outside?” Trap asked.
“I don’t know,” Lila Mae said.
“Do you want to get married here in Texas?”
She swung her attention to him. “Yes, of course.”
He nodded, and her eyes had adjusted to the dark enough to be able to see the tension on his face.
“Did you think I would ask you or your whole family to go to Atlanta? Or Baltimore?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “Your family is there, and you have a great big plantation. I thought maybe you’d want to get married there.”
She shook her head. “No, I have a new life here in Texas, and this is where I want it to continue.”
“All right,” he drawled. “Do you think you’ll wear pants?”
Lila Mae laughed. “No, but Winnie looked incredible.”
“I guess there’s some poisoned history with dresses,” he said. “And just for the record, I don’t care what you wear at our wedding.”
“I’m going wear a ball gown,” Lila Mae said.
“So you have thought about it.”
“Of course,” she said. “Every little girl thinks about their wedding, and the only way to be a princess is to wear a ball gown.”
“What if you try on a ball gown and you hate it?” Trap asked. “I have sisters too. I’ve seen those wedding dress shows.” He looked over at her, and she loved the way he smiled at her.
“I’m thinking fall,” she said.
“Like next fall?” Trap asked.
“Yeah. Is that too soon?”
“Too soon? It’ll be November. That’s a whole year away.”
“No fall is like September.”
“Not in Texas,” he said. “It’s not fall until November.”
“Okay, then I’m thinking late summer,” Lila Mae said, half rolling her eyes. “September or October, with lots of pink and orange, and I really liked that wheaty color.”
She turned in her seat toward him. “And you know, I think it would be kind of nice if it took place at Feline Friends.” She watched him for his reaction, though she couldn’t see much with his face turned toward the windshield and the darkness beyond it.
“What do you think about that? I know your cousin got married at Seven Sons too. It’s not like we need a big, fancy venue, like what they had.”
“No,” Trap said thoughtfully. He pulled into the grocery store that sat across the street from the downtown park. “You want your cone dipped?”
“Heck, yes, I do.” Lila Mae followed him out of the truck and into the store, where they wound their way over to the deli. She ordered a chocolate dipped cone, while he ordered a strawberry dipped one. His came out bright pink, and he grinned at it with all the happiness in the world.
“You know we’re going to be done with these by the time we get to the river on the tailgate.”
“Yeah, I know.” He bit off the top swirl of his cone.
Sure enough, by the time he parked at the river where they’d seen the badger, and he’d lowered the tailgate and helped Lila Mae up onto it, both of them had finished their treat.
“Today was a pretty perfect day,” he said.
“Even though we didn’t get to lay in the hammock?” Lila Mae leaned against his side now, and they listened to the river babble its way through the darkness in front of them.
“Even though,” he whispered. “Lila Mae, tell me what I have to do to make sure your momma is happy with our engagement.”
She immediately bristled, and then gave herself a few seconds to calm down. “It’s sweet that you care,” she started.
“I do,” Trap said. “Just like you’ve been trying candied yam recipes for a week, so you can impress my mom at Thanksgiving.”
She exhaled, because he wasn’t wrong, and while she’d yet to find the right recipe, she still had a couple of weeks and would keep trying.
“My mother has my grandmother’s ring,” Lila Mae said. “And we’ve talked in the past about me wearing that.”
“Is it what you want, though?” he asked.
Lila Mae thought of the enormous diamond and how ridiculous it would look on her hand as she worked with cats on the plains of Texas. “No.”
“Tell me straight, Lila Mae,” he said. “Do we need to go to Atlanta for Christmas? It’s a good time to get away. Lots of people take vacation, and we’ve both got people in place now to help out.”
“I do want you to meet my parents, eventually,” she said.
“I don’t want to meet them the day we’re getting married,” Trap said. “Though I suppose there’s time, if you’re thinking you don’t want to get married for ten months.”
When he said it like that, it felt very far away. At the same time, she hadn’t even told Trap that she loved him yet, nor had he said those words to her.
She honestly wasn’t sure if she’d fallen all the way in love with him yet, though when she first went to bed in the softest moments of the day—when his cologne still lingered in her nose and the scent of his skin still sat on hers—Lila Mae knew she loved him.
She smiled at the thought, and simply sat with her feelings, letting them course through her and out into the night sky around them.
“What kind of cake would we have?” Trap asked.
“White, of course,” Lila said.
“No chocolate?” He sounded like a disappointed little boy, and Lila Mae lifted her head and looked at him.
“I’ll get you your own chocolate cake. Okay, honey?”
He grinned, but the smile slipped off his face as he sobered only a moment later.
“I don’t care what kind of cake we have,” he said.
“Or where we get married, or what your dress looks like. Because I see me and you there, Lila Mae, and we’re making promises to each other that will stick and stay, and that’s all that matters. ”
“So maybe here would work,” Lila Mae whispered. “I feel like I’ve made a lot of promises here, to myself, to the cats, to the people who work with me.”
“Hmm, I like that,” Trap said.
“And if we get married here, this is where our promises will stay,” she said.
He ducked his head and kissed her, and Lila Mae felt like they were sealing their promise to one another right then and there.
So while he hadn’t told her that he loved her, and she hadn’t uttered those words to him, and she didn’t wear a diamond ring, she knew she’d be marrying Trap Walker right here at Feline Friends one day in the very near future.
Because this parcel of land in the Texas Panhandle was where promises stayed, and Trap had always been exceptionally good at keeping his word and making her feel like a princess.