You might be Greek if at least five of your cousins live on your street and all five of those cousins are named after your grandfather.
Thank goodness I was accustomed to being surrounded on every side by family members. But my parents and siblings had nothing on the town of Splendora. Mrs. Rigas poured a deep glass of liquid from a large pitcher, and all of her guests gathered around me while I attempted my first-ever glass of sweet tea. I took a little sip and almost choked. She hadn’t done the “sweet” part justice.
“Wow,” I managed. Tasted like the time Mama accidentally put too much syrup in the soda machine.
“She likes it!” Twila patted me on the back so hard I nearly spewed tea all over Alex’s mother. “You’re one of us now, girlie! Once you go sweet, it gets in your veins.”
No doubt. I took another little sip, the flavor growing on me. Hopefully it wouldn’t throw me into a diabetic coma or anything.
“Would you like a little tea to go with your sugar?” Twila giggled, then jabbed me with her elbow. “That’s the way we drink it down here.”
“We call it glucose tea,” Mrs. Rigas explained. “I drink several glasses a day. That’s why I’m so sweet.”
That might also account for her girth, but I’d never say such a thing. I could only imagine the calories in a glass of tea this sweet.
“Cassia’s parents own a Greek restaurant,” Alex said. “And I’m pretty sure there’s no sweet tea on the menu.”
“Well, that’s a shame,” Twila said. “I just can’t imagine drinking it without the sugar. The sweetness is the fun part.” Her nose wrinkled as she took a sip of her own tea. “Guess it takes foreigners some time to get used to our ways.”
“She’s not exactly a foreigner, Twila,” Mrs. Rigas said. “She’s just from California, not another country.”
“I went to California once.” Twila rolled her eyes, which drew my attention to a smudge of mascara just below her left eye. “Seemed like a foreign country to me.”
I couldn’t really argue that point. I took another little sip, then looked at Alex’s mother. “This is growing on me. I’m sure I’ll end up falling in love with it. I’ve always been a fan of tea. In fact, I’ll have to give you my mother’s recipe for the Louisa. If you like lemon verbena, I mean.”
Mrs. Rigas shook her head. “Sorry, but you lost me at Louisa. What’s that?”
“I’m sorry. It’s a Greek herbal tea. I . . . well, I thought you were Greek.” Not that she looked it, but one could never judge by appearances.
“Heavens no,” she said with a wave of her hand. “My hubby’s got Greek blood, but not me. I grew up little Eula May Skinner.” She gestured at the largest of the Splendora trio. “Twila’s my big sister.”
“Big being the key word.” Twila gave a wink as she swallowed down a hefty bite of Willy’s cheesecake. “Ain’t sayin’ I enjoy being plus-size all the time—say, when I’m havin’ to weigh in at the doctor’s office—but I’m a big girl and proud of it.”
“Twila, I wasn’t referring to your size.” Mrs. Rigas rolled her eyes. “I just meant you were my older sister.”
“Heck, I’d rather be called big than old.” Twila shrugged. “But never mind all that. I still have to get to know this beauty queen.” She leaned forward and ran an index finger over my cheek. “I see you’ve discovered the benefits of a good moisturizer.”
“E-excuse me?” I pulled away.
“I just can’t get over your pores. They’re lovely. Must be the sea air.”
“All those years of living on the coast in California,” Mrs. Rigas added.
“Ah. Surprised your pores aren’t filled with fruits and nuts then.” Twila giggled.
I offered a polite chuckle and glanced over at Pastor Higley’s plate of catfish. Yum. How could I get these ladies to stop talking long enough to fill a plate with some of that luscious goodness?
Twila didn’t hear my stomach rumbling, apparently. She started telling a story about how her beauty secrets had garnered national acclaim after appearing in an article in the paper.
“National acclaim, my eye.” Bonnie Sue rolled her eyes. “Just because you got a little write-up in the Splendora Gazette doesn’t mean you’ve made the national news, Twila.”
“I was referring to the Houston Chronicle, but since you brought up the Gazette, you might as well know that I don’t read that rag anymore.”
“Rag?” Jolene put her hands on her ample hips. “I’ll have you know my cousin Rosalie works for the Gazette.”
“All the more reason not to read it,” Twila said. “That old gossip rag is just an exposé of who’s bickerin’ with who and what’s on sale at the Piggly Wiggly.”
“Speaking of the Gazette, y’all read about poor old Nancy Jane?” Bonnie Sue fanned herself. “She gave up the ghost on Tuesday. I read it in the obits.”
Man. I always hated to hear of someone passing away, but this news really seemed to shake them.
“Always loved Nancy.” Twila brushed a tear from her eye. “Visited her every time I went to the Cut ’n’ Strut. ’Course, the woman couldn’t cut hair in a straight line to save her life, but she always brought a smile to my face.”
“Cain’t believe she’s gone,” Jolene commented. “Who’s going to trim my hair next time?” A little sniffle followed her words.
Somehow this conversation morphed into one about Nancy Jane’s poor husband, which somehow reminded Twila of a funny story about the time he brought deer sausage to a church social, which then morphed into a conversation about deer hunting.
Really? Deer hunting? How did we get here?
“You look pale, honey.” Jolene rested her hand on my arm. “Are you all right?”
“Oh, it’s just that I . . . well, I never really went hunting before. The idea of shooting a sweet, innocent little deer just . . .” I couldn’t finish the sentence.
“Oh, hon, you don’t have to shoot ’em.” Twila doubled over in laughter. “Leave that to the fellas. They live to use their huntin’ rifles.” She nudged me with her elbow again—Really? What’s with all the touching?—then leaned my way. “And besides, you just ain’t lived till you’ve spent quality time with your fella in a deer stand. Round here, the first day of deer huntin’ season is like a national holiday.”
“What do you mean like a national holiday?” Jolene asked, her brow wrinkled. “It is a national holiday.”
That started a lengthy dispute between the two that was interrupted by Mrs. Rigas. “Twila, don’t throw a hissy fit. It’s not becoming of a woman your age.”
“True, true.” Twila’s scowl faded. “I think I’ll have another glass of sweet tea to brighten my disposition. Would you like some more, Cassia?”
“Oh, no thank you,” I said. “I’m fine with what I’ve got.” I somehow managed to take another swallow. The sugar didn’t choke me this time, thank goodness. In fact, I found myself rather enjoying it.
“All right, sweet pea. Well, I’m so hungry I could eat a horse.” She took a couple of steps toward the food table, then turned back and looked at me. “Jeet?”
“I’m sorry . . . what?”
“Jeet?” the three ladies repeated in unison. Okay, so they were posing some sort of question, but I couldn’t make sense of it.
Alex whispered in my ear, “Did. You. Eat?”
“Oh!” I shook my head. “No, I haven’t eaten yet. But it smells divine and I’m starving.”
“You have to try my hubby’s fried catfish.” Mrs. Rigas reached for a paper plate. “He uses a special recipe. Top secret.” She leaned toward me and whispered, “Between you and me, he double-fries them.”
“Can’t wait. I hardly ever get to eat anything fried,” I said.
This drew a wide-eyed stare from all three sisters.
“Well, that’s a new one to me too. And I thought the sweet tea comment was odd.” Bonnie Sue fanned herself with the folded Splendora Gazette. “If you can’t go chicken-fried, what’re you gonna do with your okra?”
“Kotopoulo me Bamies,” I responded. “Chicken with okra stew. Mama makes it all the time. But it’s not fried.”
“I just don’t know if I could eat it like that.” Twila continued to fan herself. “Guess I’ll have to try it sometime, though I doubt I could ever pronounce it.” She giggled.
“I heard about a gal who ate her catfish blackened.” Jolene’s nose wrinkled. “Seems like a waste of a good piece of fish to me.” She patted me on the arm as if I somehow needed her empathy. “Skinny as you are, you should eat two or three pieces of that luscious fried catfish, hon. Can’t be bad for you. It’s the other white meat, after all.”
This drew a confused look from Twila. “I thought pork was called the other white meat.”
This led to an argument between the two. They ended their bickering when Jasmine and Lily approached.
“Well, blessing on blessing!” Twila embraced one twin and then the other. “Always happy to see my darling duo.”
I could see Lily cringing at this proclamation, but Jasmine slipped her arm around her aunt’s hefty waist—well, sort of—and gave her a kiss on the cheek. “Love you, Auntie T.”
Twila looked my way, her shoulders now squared. “Cassia, did you know my girl here is an award winner? She was voted Queen Bee at our last Honey-Do Festival.”
“No, Aunt Twila.” Jasmine shook her head. “I was Empress at the annual Mosquito Festival, remember?”
“Oh, that’s right.” Twila clamped a hand over her mouth. “Silly me.” She grabbed Lily’s arm. “Our Lily here took the prize of Queen Bee.”
“And she never lets me forget it,” Jasmine whispered in my ear.
They’d lost me a couple of lines back in the conversation. “Mosquito Festival?” I asked, convinced I’d misunderstood.
“Well, sure.” Jolene swatted the air. “You’re in the South now, honey. Every event is named after a fruit, vegetable, or animal.”
“Or grain,” Alex said. “Remember the Sugar Cane Festival?”
“Oh, I miss that one,” Jolene said. “Just hasn’t been the same since the big drought a couple of years back.”
“Jasmine won a cooking contest at that one,” Alex said. “High honor.”
“Oh, you like to cook?” I turned to face the young woman, who blushed with abandon.
“Actually, I make candies,” she said. “Specialty candies, I mean. Uncle Donny’s selling them up at the truck stop, and a few other local shops have them too. I hope to branch out.”
“Oh yes,” Twila cooed. “Her homemade candies are incredible. You have to taste them, Cassia. They’re all the rage. Of course, they’re bad for my girlish figure.” She giggled as she placed her balled-up fists on her plump hips.
Twila turned to face Jasmine. “Oh, and speaking of your candies, I ran into Fred the other day up at Donny’s truck stop, and he told me that he’s gained six pounds since the two of you started dating. Poor fella!”
Everything grew deathly silent. I could hear Alex next to me, sucking in his breath. Jasmine too. Seconds later Lily turned on her heels and marched away.
Twila put a hand over her mouth, then slowly pulled it down. “Oh dear. I’ve gone and done it now. Put my size 10½ shoe straight into my big fat mouth.”
Jasmine looped her arm through her aunt’s and grinned. “Oh well, Auntie T. She has to get used to it sooner or later.”
“So, is Fred coming today?” Twila asked, looking around as if expecting him to materialize.
“No. He’s fishing with Jimmy-Dee and Skeeter. I told him it’d be for the best.”
Jimmy-Dee? Skeeter?
Alex looked at me and chuckled. “Now you’ve been properly introduced to the family. And the South. Better have another sip of that sweet tea. You’re gonna need it to recover from the chaos.”
No doubt about that. I took another drink, now savoring the sweetness. So this was how people got addicted to sugar. Before long I’d have to join a twelve-step group for recovering sweet tea–aholics. Of course, finding a mentor in the state of Texas might be difficult, if one could judge from the crowd I now found myself in. While pondering that fact, I took another little sip. Then another. Yum.
Alex slipped his arm through mine and we walked to the food table. I had to give it to them—one piece of Mr. Rigas’s catfish wasn’t enough. So I had two. Make that three. With coleslaw. And three glasses of sweet tea. By the time the meal ended, I was pretty sure I’d put on at least six pounds like Fred. When Alex asked me if I wanted to take a walk through the gardens and into the nursery, I wondered if I would make it.
“Do it, honey,” Twila said and then winked. “Tiptoe through the tulips with that sweet boy for a while. You never know what might bloom!”
“Ah, young love!” Jolene added. “Makes me wish I was in my twenties again.” She released a lingering sigh. “Those were the days.”
Bonnie Sue put her hand on my arm. “Don’t miss this opportunity. Take a walk down the primrose path with him, sweetie.”
And so I did.
Alex took hold of my hand to lead me over a rocky place in the pathway. We approached a small bridge over a little ravine, and I realized he hadn’t let go of my hand. Not that I was complaining. Not one bit. It felt perfectly natural.
I breathed in the fresh, pine-scented air and sighed with contentment. “It’s beautiful here, Alex.” Then again, every moment I spent with him felt beautiful. And the bellyful of sweet tea and fried fish offered an additional sense of contentment.
“Thank you. I’ve always loved it.” He gestured to the bridge that ran over the little creek. “You wouldn’t believe what my grandparents had to go through to clear the land for the rose garden. We’re pretty thick in the piney woods.”
“Clearly.” I glanced off in the distance at the towering pines. But he’d said something that piqued my interest. “Wait . . . grandparents?”
“Yes. This nursery was my grandmother’s baby.”
“Did she . . . I mean, is she . . .”
“She passed away when I was fourteen.” The sadness in his eyes let me know just how much he had loved her.
“I’m sorry, Alex.”
“Me too. This place was Yia Yia Melina’s dream. She always had a green thumb and loved roses, so my grandfather started clearing a spot for a small rose garden. By the time my dad was born, Yia Yia had grown it into half an acre. By the time he was five, it covered two full acres.”
“And now?” I asked.
“Well, that depends. Are you talking about the rose garden or the tulips? Or the orchids? We grow so many different types of flowers now.”
“But you kept the Rigas Roses name?”
He nodded. “We’ll always keep the name. My grandmother loved it.”
He grew silent and we continued to meander along, hand in hand, through the various gardens to the nursery area behind his parents’ home. I couldn’t help but gasp when I saw the roses—zillions and zillions of them in colors so vast they looked like a rainbow.
“I thought you might want to see the new strain of roses.” He gave my hand a little squeeze. “The Cassia.”
We started walking again, finally landing next to the most breathtaking red roses I’d ever seen. “Oh, Alex.” I could hardly catch my breath. Their beauty held me spellbound. I closed my eyes and drew in the scent of the flowers, feeling a little delirious.
“The only problem with planting gardens in Splendora is the pine trees. We’ve had to cut down so many of them. They’re as thick as thieves.”
I chuckled at his funny expression.
“I’d bet I’ve hauled a hundred loads in the wheelbarrow in the last six months alone. We’re always clearing trees to make room for more gardens.”
“Doesn’t look like you run the risk of having too few.” I pointed to a thick woodsy area to our right. “I’ve never seen so many.”
“Welcome to Texas.” He laughed and led me down a cobblestone path through the reds and into the pinks. He stopped when we got to the yellow roses and pointed at a small mosaic stepping-stone in the middle of the pathway. “See that stone right there?”
“Yes, it’s lovely.”
“Notice the handprints in the middle?”
I leaned forward and took a closer look. Sure enough, someone had pressed their palms into the concrete before it dried, then encircled the stone with bits of stained glass in varying shades of blue and yellow.
“That’s beautiful,” I said.
“Those are my grandmother’s handprints,” he explained. “The week before she passed away, my mother took us to the hospital to see her. She was barely able to speak and didn’t seem to have full control of her faculties. But when Mama pulled out the little kit to make the stone, you should have seen Yia Yia Melina’s eyes light up. She never minded getting her hands messy, especially in the garden.” His eyes misted over. “That was as close as we could get her to the garden that day, but it seemed to do the trick. And I’ve always enjoyed the fact that we’ve kept the stone right here, in the spot where my grandfather planted her first little rose garden.”
“Alex, that’s an amazing story. I hope you’ll always keep the stone there.”
“We will. One day I’ll tell my kids, and then they will tell theirs. It’s part of our legacy. Kind of like your family’s sandwich shop.”
Ugh. “Yeah, that superhero costume is some legacy, let me tell you.” I had to laugh. What else could I do?
Alex slipped his arm over my shoulder. “Well, I didn’t mean that, necessarily. I just mean that a family business is something to take pride in. It meant so much to my grandmother to leave this to us. And I know it means a lot to your father that you kids are growing his business.”
Would it be wrong to sigh aloud?
We continued our stroll through the gardens as the sun set overhead. With the vivid rays of orange and pink settling down over the flowers, they seemed illuminated. My heart felt so full I could hardly contain all the emotions.
We paused at the bridge over the little creek once more, and I turned to face Alex. “I can’t thank you enough for bringing me here.”
With the tip of his index finger, he brushed a loose hair from my face. “You’re welcome,” he whispered, his breath tingly against my cheek. “I see it all the time, so it’s very familiar to me.”
“I’ve never been to a nursery that compares, so it’s unfamiliar to me,” I said. “But I love it. Impressive.”
“Thank you. Yia Yia would be happy to hear you say that.” He placed his palms against mine, comparing the size of our hands. “I’m glad to find someone who loves flowers. Not everyone appreciates them like I do.” He laced our fingers together. “I’d have to say we’re a perfect fit.”
I would have to agree. But with my heart now beating out of control, I couldn’t manage to find the words.
Alex slipped his arm around my waist and drew me closer. I trembled in his arms as his eyes met mine, the “come hither” look more than evident.
Under the canopy of vines, the evening breeze gently drifted in through the pine trees. My eyes fluttered shut. Then, with the luscious scent of flowers providing the perfect backdrop for our first kiss, I waited for the inevitable.
Just as Alex’s lips brushed mine, just as the moment I’d dreamed of all day came to pass . . . my cell phone rang.
No. Way.
“Can you ignore it?” he whispered.
“Yes. Just let me . . .”
My words drifted off as I lifted my phone to see who had called. Babbas. Seconds later, a text message came through from my father: Need you. Work to do. Got to put those Rossis in their place.
A second message came through directly on the heels of that one, this time from my mother: Hate to interrupt your plans, but Babbas has arranged a meeting with a videographer tomorrow afternoon to film the commercial and needs you here ASAP to go over the harmonies to the jingles with the other kids. He’s in a mood this evening! Ack!
I shoved the phone back into my pocket, aggravation fully rooted in my heart. I wasn’t sure which bothered me more—the fact that my special moment with Alex had been interrupted, or the idea that my mother had referred to me as a kid.
Okay, the interruption definitely took the cake. Ruined the moment and ruined my mood. But maybe Alex and I could get it all back, recapture what had been lost on the evening breeze. If I closed my eyes, I could almost picture myself in his arms once again.
I looked over at him, but he’d turned his attention to a ragged-looking flower—one of the Cassias—in a pale shade of yellow. He knelt and plucked the pathetic-looking thing off the bush, then tossed it aside.
Just as he stood and looked at me, the three Splendora Sisters came marching our way with large slices of Willy’s turtle cheesecake in hand. “Yoo-hoo, you two!” Twila called out. “You’re missing out on all the fun!”
“And the cheesecake too!” Jolene shoved a plate into Alex’s hands and he dove right in.
Yeah, we were missing all the fun, all right. I took the piece of cheesecake that Bonnie Sue offered and swallowed down a huge bite. It did little to soothe the turmoil going on inside me. For in that moment my heart felt just like that poor, pathetic little rose Alex had tossed away . . . completely wilted.