November 24
Call me crazy, but if someone is going to champion my cause, I want them to be gaga in love with it. Pity, chivalry, do-gooderism are not enough. Opinions?
Aly at www.The-Art-Of-My-Life.blogspot.com
Starr peered through the kitchen window as Jesse and Kallie’s kids careened around the kitchen table. The scent of Thanksgiving turkey filled the kitchen.
Cal’s Jeep pulled in. She should have tried to make peace with Cal before today. She took a deep breath and opened the door for Aly who carried a Dutch oven of mashed potatoes. “Happy Thanksgiving, Aly. I’m glad you’re here.”
Aly smiled. “I like being part of your family.”
She had a pretty smile, gentle. Starr had never noticed before, never thought of Aly as anything more than Kallie’s morally-challenged sister who came over on holidays. That was going to change. Starr stepped outside the house and closed the door, sealing Aly and her grandchildren into the Thanksgiving smells of the kitchen.
Cal grimaced over Aly’s crock pot in his arms. “I know we argued, but isn’t barring the door to keep me out of Thanksgiving extreme?” He softened the words with a half-smile.
Starr met his eyes, cast around for the words she had to say to him. “I… I’m sorry I hurt your feelings. I seem to put my foot into it with you on a continual basis. I’m proud of you—your art, your affection for animals—even if you didn’t get that from me—your hard work to make your business succeed, that you keep coming back even when I say the wrong things. I love you—more than I can express.”
I’m just terrified that you’ll keep making stupid choices until you’re sucked completely away from me. Those were the words she promised herself she wouldn’t say. She gave him a tentative smile.
“I appreciate your making the effort, Ma. Just let me work this out on my own. You can’t figure out life for me.”
“Thanks.” Starr pressed her lips together, holding back foreign tears. “And you were right about Aly. I wasn’t thinking about life from her perspective. I’m sorry.”
She opened the door, and Cal started through.
He kissed her on the cheek. “I love you, too.”
The air emptied from her lungs. She’d never been a huggy kind of mother. In a heartbeat she wanted to change. But Cal was halfway to the counter with the crock pot.
Henna and Leaf came around the corner of the house as Fish and Evie pulled in behind Cal’s Jeep. Evie’s presence would make Cal uncomfortable, but Evie deserved family on a holiday, even if it wasn’t her own. When she looked at Evie, she saw herself as a young woman, starved for a sense of belonging. She hoped this small kindness to Evie didn’t backfire on her and make Cal mad.
Fish and Evie crowded into the kitchen. Cal barely acknowledged Evie, but Starr caught the strained glance Fish and Cal exchanged. Well, they hadn’t kept a lifelong friendship going without learning how to resolve their differences. They would work it out.
Henna handed her a Tupperware bowl containing her usual orange Jell-O with shredded carrots and marshmallows—a dish Starr could be certain contained no marijuana.
“Someone stole my panties,” Henna blurted.
Every eye in the kitchen landed on Henna.
“I left my laundry basket on the front seat of my car with eighteen pairs of panties on top when I ran into Winn Dixie. Do you think eighteen pairs are too many? How many do you have?”
Starr opened her mouth and shut it. She didn’t know how many panties she owned, and even if she did, she wasn’t telling her mother. And definitely not with Jackson, Missy, Cal, and Jesse snickering behind her. “Finish your story, Mama.”
“So, I came back out to the car, and somebody had stolen my panties and replaced them with their ratty old panties.”
Henna had obviously smoked one doobie too many. Starr furrowed her brow. “Were they your size?”
“Well, I don’t know—”
“Were they the silky kind you like?”
“Yeah. Can you imagine why someone would steal my panties?”
Starr glanced around the room at the people she loved most. “As long as you’ve got some on now, it’ll be a happy Thanksgiving.”
“Hey, that was funny, Mom,” Missy yelled over the laughter.
It was a day of firsts—an apology, a kiss from Cal, and she made a joke.
Fish exited the kitchen following the Koomer tradition of the males cleaning up and doing the dishes on holidays. Hopefully, Jackson, Leaf, and Jesse didn’t miss the rat-tailed war he and Cal usually instigated. He didn’t know if their holiday cease-fire would hold up under battle conditions.
He wiped his pruned hands on his jeans.
Evie waltzed up to him and bopped him with her hip. Earlier in the day, he’d thought Evie flirted with him to get him to replace the rigging on her boat. But she amped it up whenever Cal stepped into the vicinity. Ten to one she’d wasted her efforts on a misguided ploy to make Cal jealous.
Evie’s antics might have scored him some points with Missy. But if Missy was jealous, her usually open, expressive face didn’t show it.
Evie positioned her hood ornaments in his personal space. “Hey, Fish, wanna be my partner in Euchre?”
He crossed to the couch where Missy planted kisses all over her three-year-old nephew’s face. He wouldn’t mind getting in on that. “Maybe later,” he said to Evie. “Missy was going to show me something in the garage.”
Missy’s brows arched.
Pint-sized Chase took off after his big sister.
Fish grabbed hold of Missy’s hand and hauled her off the couch. “Come on.”
Cal’s eyes narrowed as he led Missy past the dining room table where Cal shuffled cards. Got it. Fish shoved away the ache that he never got to play protector for his sisters—and the one that Cal didn’t trust him with Missy.
He pulled Missy through the back door and shut it behind them.
“What’s this about?” Missy tugged her hand out of his and hung back as though he might spring a rubber snake on her like he had when they were kids.
He shrugged. “I don’t know. Thought it would be nice to have a conversation without a room full of people hanging around.” But now he had nothing to say. He could ask her about college or running, but he could have brought those topics up in the house. What he really wanted to know was if she was seeing someone. But if he asked, he’d be telling more than he was ready to reveal.
They wandered across the driveway and slowed to a stop at the corner of the garage. Awkwardness crackled in the cool air between them. A heavy, dishwater sky pressed down on them.
The memory Missy had awakened replayed in the silence like it had a dozen times since he’d sat in the truck and watched her walk through the library door. He cleared his throat. “Let’s see. You stood here.” He moved her a few inches closer to the garage. “My hand was here.” He placed his hand on the garage siding above Missy’s head. “I leaned in to about here.” He stopped a foot from Missy. “See, I remember.”
Comprehension dawned on Missy’s face.
He drifted closer. “Go ahead, ask me. I want a do-over.”
Missy glanced at his lips and backed up a step. “This is sweet of you, but totally unnecessary. I’m over you. Chill.” She folded her arms.
He bent closer, a whisper from her lips. “But I want to kiss you.”
“I raised the stakes. I want more than kisses. I want it all.”
He straightened. “You what?”
“I want sex, babies, and marriage, not in that order. I’ve had plenty of kisses.”
No wonder. Little Missy had grown up gorgeous.
“Enough to know I want the whole enchilada. I hope the next guy I kiss, I’m going to marry and—”
She batted away the finger he trailed south of her collarbone.
“Hey, I was just volunteering.”
“Very funny. I’m not laughing.”
He dug his hands into the pockets of his jeans. “Trying to be helpful. You know a lot of people forego the marriage—”
“I’m not a lot of people. And I’m following the rules if it kills me.”
Fish chuckled at her pained expression. “Death by virginity.”
“I’ve got a man-file. I print out their Facebook profiles, make notes after I go out with them.”
His mouth dropped open. “You’re kidding. You’re only twenty.”
“I told you, I want it all.”
He would have laughed if she didn’t look serious as a sixty-pound mackerel.
“If I’m attracted to them, if they have the essentials, they go into the funnel. Once I decide they’re not going to work out, I let them fall out the bottom of the funnel.”
“How many guys are we talking about here?”
“Fourteen so far.”
“You posted looking for a husband on your Facebook status and fourteen guys asked you out?”
“I didn’t advertise I wanted a husband. I’m not stupid. I asked them out. I haven’t had a no yet.
He smirked. “My Facebook page—”
Missy poked her finger into his chest. “And I’m one hundred percent sure you are not my husband.”
His hands came out of his pockets. He wanted to grab hold of her and kiss that pig-headed expression off her face. He wanted to make her change her mind about him.
But babies fish-hooked into his rational mind. He took a step back, lifted his hands. “Happy hunting.”
Sated from the Thanksgiving feast, Cal let out a contented sigh. Three-year-old, sleeping Chase’s cheek was plastered to his leg, the rest of him sprawled across the couch. Beside him, Six-year-old Jillian curled on Aly’s lap with her head propped on the sofa arm.
Mom and Dad had walked his grandparents out to Henna’s car, Fish and Evie propped against pillows on the floor, Jesse and Kallie tangled up on the loveseat while White Christmas played on the TV.
Missy had run out the front door to a kid in a shiny white station wagon before the movie started. Cal had caught Fish standing in the shadows peering out the window after her.
Cal pulled out his phone and punched in a message to Missy. Want me 2 pound Fish? Saw him leaning into you by the garage.
He wound Aly’s hair around his fingers and let the silk slip across his palm.
Cal’s phone pinged. Ha ha. Impressed that you pulled out a While You Were Sleeping reference. Thanks bro. I’ve got everything under control. He smiled.
He cupped Aly’s shoulder and inhaled the piney scent of her shampoo near her ear. “This is what I want. A family—” —with you.
Aly turned her face toward him.
“Don’t look so surprised. Everybody grows up eventually.”
Part of him hated the sausage casing of his mother’s expectations—church, 401K, health and liability auto insurance. But he’d swallow them if he had to—for Aly.
His gaze dropped to Chase’s mouth hanging open in sleep, a smudge of chocolate at one corner. Kids were art itself—laughter, kinetic energy, grit, softness. Completely selfish, they ran free till they collapsed unconscious in your lap.
His grandparents hadn’t needed marriage, but he craved permanence with Aly. He’d spent too many years loving her and not having her to forego the promises. He wanted to prove to her he had the staying power her father lacked. If there was anything in life he was sure of, he’d love Aly forever.
His fingers slipped under the fabric of her blouse, and he rubbed her neck.
She leaned into his touch, her eyes drifting shut, then back to the movie.
Even her small response heated him. He wanted her. Same old-same old. Herpes didn’t make any difference. He’d read up on it since Aly’s revelation at the farmer’s market. Nothing they couldn’t deal with. She’d have to handle a butt load of his issues.
Jesse came from a trip to the kitchen and sat down beside Chase’s small spread-eagled body. A piece of pumpkin pie balanced on his knee. “You haven’t been around much. The kids miss you. I miss you.”
“You want an ex-con hanging with your kids? Aren’t you afraid I’ll carve up your kids and serve them for supper?”
Jesse thwacked him in the arm. “Right. You who brought every wounded animal you ever found to Henna’s and nursed it back to health. Stop by the house.” He shot a glance at his wife.
Cal read between the lines. Kallie trusted Cal to spend time with the kids—under her supervision. Her doubt knifed him. He’d die for those kids. “My dumbass years are behind me.”
“I believe you. Come around, okay?”
Cal missed the kids, too. What else could he do but follow what he imagined to be Kallie’s edict? “Sure. I’ll stop over next week.”
His parents walked in as the credits rolled. Mom’s hair hung loose, her cheeks pink. Dad’s shirttail hadn’t completely made it into the waistband of his jeans. How long had his parents been MIA? Geez.
Jesse and Kallie collected their kids and traipsed through the back door.
Mom held a quiet conversation with Evie, squeezed her neck in a rare show of affection. He had to talk to Mom. He damn sure wasn’t going through another holiday with Evie stalking him and Aly pulling away.
Mom and Dad said their good-nights and headed upstairs.
Fish hugged Aly. “Happy Thanksgiving.” He nodded curtly at Cal, the last act in his holiday truce.
“Later,” Evie said as the front screen door banged behind them. Maybe she’d actually gotten the message this time and would stay away from him.
Cal reached for his jacket off the coat tree and saw Missy plant one on the kid with the station wagon and run up the front walk. There was just something wrong with seeing your kid sister making out. She must have finally gotten over Fish.
Fish always stuck up for Missy, protected her, kept him from teasing her, but whether the adult Fish had more than physical appreciation for a pretty girl was anybody’s guess. Well, Cal would do what he could to protect Missy.
Missy banged through the front door and gathered he and Aly into a group hug. “Happy Thanksgiving. I love you guys.”
Cal’s throat felt tight. “Love you, Sissy-Missy.”
“Me, too.” Aly said.
Missy grabbed her laptop off the desk and jogged up the stairs. “Night!”
Cal latched onto Aly’s hand and took her around the room turning off lamps. He stepped into the kitchen and flipped off the light switch. “I had a good day. The best holiday in years.” Even dodging Evie didn’t ruin a day when he felt closer to Aly than he ever had.
Light from the garage across the drive shone on her face. “It was my mashed potatoes.”
He pulled her into his arms. “It was you. I’ve missed you so much these past couple of years.”
Aly’s eyes widened, but she didn’t push him away. “I’ve missed you, too.”
Cal’s lips claimed hers, and he forgot for long minutes he’d promised not to kiss her less than a week ago; the business hadn’t actually broken even yet. He forgot the tick of the cuckoo clock on the wall—everything but the scent of mint growing deep in a forest that clung to her, Aly’s fresh baked bread taste, Aly melded to his heart.
His hands found their way to skin. His fingertips traced her backbone and the contours of her body he hadn’t seen since the last time she surfed with him years ago.
Aly moaned. Her arms closed around his ribs, cinching him closer.
He backed her up against the counter. “Aly.” His breathing quickened and shallowed. His heart sped. He bent his mouth to hers, starved for more.
Aly’s phone trilled, clattering across his consciousness. It sounded again, and he eased away from her, dragging in a ragged breath.
“Hello.” Aly’s breathy voice sounded huge in the quiet room.
He’d nearly kissed Aly to the point of no return—in his mother’s kitchen.
Aly’s end of the conversation echoed in the room. “Yes…. Uh huh…. Mmm. Tonight?”