Poked

by Naomi Niles

“Anyway,” said Zach. “That’s the scary thing about life. What happens next is up to you. You can either hold onto your wounded pride and let the girl go, or you can go after her. Fight for her. Own up to your actions. I believe in you, man, and I think in time you’ll do the right thing, and it’ll work itself out.”

  I thought about what he had said the rest of the way home. Our family’s ethic of personal responsibility was too deeply ingrained in me to ignore the problem for very long. I’d have to talk to her either tomorrow or the next day.

  “She’s still not answering my texts,” I told him as we pulled into the driveway. “So if I see her car in front of the house tomorrow, I’m gonna go over there and see her.”

  “You’d better do it quick,” said Zach, a smile playing at the corner of his mouth. “Mama’s invited her to the going-away dinner tomorrow night, and if y’all haven’t settled this before then, she’s still invited, but we ain’t letting you come.”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Allie

  After the disaster that was dinner, it was a relief to get home, heat up a bowl of clam chowder (the lasagna having apparently already been eaten) and sit down with the final chapters of Goblet of Fire. River could sense I was agitated and pressed his nose up against me, trying to comfort me. That’s why I could never understood the people who said cats were cold and unfeeling; at times, I got the uncanny sense that mine truly loved me.

  I pulled him closer and started petting him as I read the chapter with the wand battle in the graveyard. Then Phoenix slunk over to the end of the bed, looking jealous, and I scratched her behind the ears. In the drama of the last couple of days, I had been neglecting my Twitter account, and I was already starting to shed followers, so I took a picture of River in the sink, tweeted it with a funny caption, and was getting ready to take another one when I heard a knock on the door.

  There were only two people it could have been. Mrs. Savery had texted me the night before to invite me to a party they were having on Saturday. Curtis had texted me a couple of times, and every time I had picked up my phone to respond, I realized I couldn’t think of anything to say, and set it down again. I promised myself I would come back to it later, but I never did.

  I should have known that would come back later to bite me in the ass. And now here he was at the door.

  He was standing on the lowest step with his hat in his hands, a sheepish expression on his face. “Hey,” he said when I opened the door.

  “Well, hey, stranger,” I said, taking a strange sort of pity on him. “You wanna come in?”

  I could tell from the smell of his breath that he had been drinking, but he walked up the stairs and into the house without any problems. In the kitchen area, I brewed him a cup of coffee and warmed up some red beans and rice that his mother had brought me.

  “Always did love red beans and rice,” he said in his throaty voice as he sat in the recliner. “Anyway, look: I just wanted to say I’m sorry for how I acted.”

  “And?” I was sure there was more to it, that once he had finished, he was going to expect me to apologize or explain how he hadn’t really done anything wrong.

  “That’s it,” he said. “I shouldn’t’ve got out of hand, shouldn’t’ve said those things, should’ve listened to you more. It kills me to think of what I nearly threw away with my damn-fool stubbornness. I couldn’t bear the thought of losing you.”

  Given the circumstances, it was probably the best apology I could have expected. There was a tone of humility in his voice that hadn’t been there before. He sounded grave and contrite, like a man who had just looked death in the face and realized what really mattered in life. I nodded in response, trying not to show on my face how moved I was.

  After he’d finished his rice, he came and lay down next to me on the couch. I took his head in my lap and stroked his back with my long nails, and he lay there for a time not saying anything.

  “Well, I have had a day, let me tell you,” I said after a while. “This morning we got a labradoodle in, couldn’t’ve been more than two years old, and she had a cancerous tumor. We ended up having to put her down, and it was one of the hardest things I’ve done since I got that job.”

  I decided it was best not to tell him about my failed date with my boss, which was only the second worst thing that had happened that day.

  He listened quietly while I told him what else I had been up to since the night of the storm: how I had spent the night at Lindsay’s a couple nights, how she and Zach seemed to be getting on and how she wasn’t taking the news of his re-deployment well. At some point, he started mumbling to himself, and I realized he was falling asleep. But instead of moving him into a more comfortable position, I let him lay there for a few minutes longer.

  Finally, after another ten or fifteen minutes had passed, I tried moving him out of my lap and laying his head on a proper pillow. His eyes opened, and he grinned at me in that mysterious way of his.

  “I reckon we’d both better get to bed,” he said. “Got a long day ahead of us tomorrow.”

  “Big day,” I said. “I guess it’s a good thing we made up tonight, or you’d be reading about Zach’s party on Facebook.”

  Curtis half-rose off the couch. “Yeah, what was the deal with that? If it came down to a choice between me and you, they were gonna go with you.”

  I shrugged. “I guess your family’s got good priorities.”

  Curtis laughed bitterly. “Girl, if we ever get married,” he said, “I’m gonna be in a world of trouble. They will side with you over me every time.”

  He lay back down, heedless of the effect his words had had on me. It was the first time either of us had even breathed a word of marriage since we started dating. And he had said it so casually, like it was the most natural thing in the world. Like of course we would get married. Why wouldn’t we?

  It was uncomfortably hot in the tiny house, and I felt chills crawling up and down my back as I thought about it. But as I watched him sleep, the possibility seemed real to me, too, in a way it hadn’t before. Even before the fight, he had always seemed like a man of impeccable character, and his apology had reaffirmed that.

  When we had first met, I sometimes felt like I would be marrying down if we ever got married. Only now was I beginning to realize just how lucky I would be.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Curtis

  I awoke at around 7:00am the next morning with my head still resting in Allie’s lap. For a short while, I dared not move, afraid to disturb the perfect tranquility of the morning. Allison was seated upright, her head tilted back, her chest rising and falling with her breath. She looked perfect.

  It was River who ultimately woke her. Seeing that I was awake, he came over and started nuzzling my hand, meowing loudly. I could tell he wanted to be fed.

  “Mmmm?” said Allie. Slowly, she opened her eyes and surveyed the scene before her: a man with his head in her lap, and a couple of cats pawing around their food bowls and giving us passive-aggressive stares.

  Before she could stir, I sat up and kissed her lightly on the mouth. She smiled that dreamy smile that she reserved only for me.

  “Hey, pumpkin,” she said softly. “How’d you sleep last night?”

  “Better’n I’ve slept in ages,” I said. “There wasn’t much sleep the last couple of nights, not with you gone.” A mischievous light came into her eyes, and I could see what she was thinking just as clearly as if it was written on her face. “And not because there was some other woman, neither!”

  Allie laughed. “Get up,” she said, pushing me off, “I need to feed the cats before they start bad-mouthing me on Twitter.”

  “Yeah, and we need to get dressed,” I said, rising and stretching. “Family’s gonna be here in a few minutes. Mama’s making a huge breakfast to welcome home Braxton and Marshall.”

  “I don’t know about you, but I’m dressed already,” said Allie with combative eyes. She was wearing a red and black checkered plaid shirt and a pair of
jeans that hung low at the hips.

  “You gonna wear that?” I asked.

  “You wanna fight me?”

  After the hell of the last couple of days, that was the last thing I wanted to do. “Anyway,” I said, pausing on my way to the door to scratch the cats behind the ears, “I need to head back to my house and get washed up before they get here. I’ll meet you over there.”

  “Don’t leave me waiting,” said Allie.

  ***

  When I went over to the house about half an hour later, Darren and our two younger brothers were seated at the breakfast table. Marshall presided over the head of the table with the air of a poker player at a casino. He was wearing one of his usual well-tailored suits that just barely covered the tattoos that ran the length of his arms. Braxton, the youngest, sported a crew cut and a five o’clock shadow. He was glaring suspiciously around at everyone, as if looking for a reason to start a fight.

  “About time you made it in,” said Marshall as I pulled up a chair between Darren and Braxton. “Out all night with your woman again?”

  “Where is she, anyway?” asked Darren with a hungry look.

  “Somewhere you can’t find her,” I said, cracking open a Fresca. “Anyway, where’s Zach?”

  “Probably bangin’ your girl,” said Marshall. “Nah, I’m just playin’, he’s in the shower.”

  “Better watch yourself, Marsh,” said Braxton in his low, rumbly voice. “You’re gonna get yourself cut.”

  I blanched. It never boded well when Braxton got combative this early in the morning; it usually meant he had been drinking and would pick at least one fight by noon. One time the police came out while we were eating brunch downtown because he thought one of the waiters was laughing at him and had pulled out a pair of brass knuckles. Braxton spent the rest of the weekend in jail, and the Savery family was not welcome back in that Applebee’s ever again.

  Zach came out of the bathroom just as Allie came in through the front door. I went around the table and introduced her to Marshall and Braxton, who both voiced their approval. She pulled up a chair next to me as Mama brought out the plates. She had made crepes, potato pancakes, hard-boiled eggs, muffins, and strawberry scones. Each of the boys got coffee while Allie opted for a mug of chestnut tea.

  We spent most of the rest of the day together, me and the four boys and Mom and Dad and Allie. Zach wanted to watch the first disc of the first Lord of the Rings movie, even though the rest of us, including Allie, tried to talk him out of it. “This is your last day in the States,” she said, “and we want to spend it hanging out with you.” But when he insisted on it, we put it into the DVD player. The first hour was slow going, and we talked through most of it, arguing about whether Mom and Dad should have spanked us as much as they did growing up. By the time Fredo made it to the elf-place, I had almost forgotten it was on, and when the disc ended, Zach didn’t bother putting another one in.

  “Anyway,” said Braxton, “I’d say our parents did a fine job of raising us. When only one of your kids turns out to be an idiot loser, I’d say you did something right.”

  “Don’t talk about Curtis that way,” said Darren.

  I smiled, but Braxton didn’t. “Wasn’t talkin’ about Curtis,” he said in a low but serious voice. “I was talkin’ about you.”

  Darren shot up out of the papasan chair, but Zach placed an arm on his arm. “Darren, no,” he said. “He’s just trying to get under your skin. He’s been tryin’ to do it all morning.”

  “Yeah, well, it’s workin’,” said Darren, his jaw rigid with anger. “I can’t hit you in front of Mom, but you better watch your back when you’re goin’ home, is all I’m sayin’.”

  “Darren, don’t be an idiot,” said Marshall, coolly shuffling a deck of cards. “No one in this room feels threatened by you. If you brought a knife to a fight, the other guy would steal it and probably kill you.”

  Darren sat down, glaring in irritation at all of us. Marshall was right, of course—Darren had lost a good chunk of his hair during the only fight he had ever been in, in seventh grade—but he still hated being reminded that he was an incompetent wimp.

  Darren and Braxton continued to scowl at each other for an hour or two more. Allie glanced over at me nervously; an awful silence had fallen over the room, and nobody seemed to want to be the first to break it. Eventually, Zach got up and put in the second disc, and because it was his going-away party, none of us bothered to stop him.

  We all watched it with varying degrees of attentiveness for the next hour or so, until Mama brought the cake out and set it on the dining room table. It was a gorgeous cake, too, a camo-colored three-tier cake with a figurine of a uniformed young man standing astride the top. Darren shoved past Braxton on his way to the table, and Braxton might have hit him if Mama and Zach hadn’t been standing right there.

  “I didn’t realize your brothers hated each other so much,” said Allie as I walked her home that night. “They remind me of the Gallagher brothers.”

  “The who?”

  “No, Oasis. Anyway, I’m sort of amazed one of ‘em hasn’t killed the other yet.”

  “I think they’re waiting until Mama dies out of respect for her,” I said. “They’ve been bickering pretty constantly since the eighth grade when Darren decided he was in love with Braxton’s girlfriend. He only wanted her because he couldn’t have her, because Braxton had her, and they spent about a year tearin’ each other up over it. The girl got so freaked out, she broke up with Braxton. Didn’t wanna go out with either one of ‘em.”

  “Ain’t the way it goes?” said Allie. “Anyway, what’ve we got goin’ on tomorrow?”

  “Whatever you wanna do,” I told her. “I’m gonna be spending the night over at Mama’s house, but if you want, me and a certain young lady can get up early tomorrow and go horseback riding.”

  Allie smiled and leaned in for a kiss. “I really hope that certain young lady is me. And if it is, we’d better put a move on. I ain’t gettin’ any younger!”

  “Well, I don’t see many other women linin’ up to go riding with me.”

  “They would if they knew what was good for ‘em,” said Allie. “I’m about the only girl with any sense in this dang town.”

  I smiled the whole way back to the house.

  Chapter Thirty

  Allie

  I was woken up early the next morning by a light knock on the door. Curtis was standing outside framed against a gray sky, clutching his cast-iron skillet in one hand and a silver spatula in the other. Behind him, in the east, the darkness was blushing with the first faint light of day.

  “What’re you doin’ over here so early?” I asked him, yawning. “Cats ain’t even up yet. I had to push ‘em off of me to get to the door.”

  “I didn’t know they ever went to sleep,” said Curtis. “Anyway, I figured, seeing as how it’s Sunday morning, instead of getting up and coming to breakfast, you might stay in bed and let breakfast come to you.”

  I laughed. “Is that what the skillet’s for? I’m just glad you’re not going to kill me.” I led him into the tiny house, where he set the skillet down on the countertop in the kitchen area. “You sure you got everything you need?”

  “Do you have eggs?” Curtis asked. “If not, I can probably slip into Mama’s house and get some.”

  “Isn’t that what you got hens for?” I asked with my hands on my hips. “Why do you need my eggs?”

  Curtis held up his hands in mock surrender. “Okay, okay, fine. But if you’re telling me you’d rather eat Mama’s farm-fresh eggs rather than whatever junk you’ve got sitting in your fridge, well, then don’t blame if this breakfast turns out to be the best you’ve ever had.”

  He turned and went out to the house, returning a few minutes later with about half a dozen eggs in his apron. “Shouldn’t need more than this,” he said tersely as he set them down on the counter.

  “What are you planning on making?” I asked him. “Or is it a secret?”

&n
bsp; “It is a secret,” said Curtis, “but there is one person I think I can trust with it, if she’ll give me a kiss.”

  I thought the bargain over for a second, then said, “Nah, I’ll just wait.” Curtis’ face fell; he looked both surprised and disappointed. “I’m kidding!” I ran over and gave him a quick peck on the mouth. “Now you have to tell me.”

  “I am making us,” said Curtis, drawing out each word, “a bacon, cheddar, and chives omelet. You’ve had bacon before, I know. And you’ve had omelets. The question I want to ask you is: have you ever had bacon and omelets in the same bite?”

  I shook my head. “No, although you’d think I would have tried that at some point.”

  “Well, today,” said Curtis grandly, then paused and lowered his voice. “You wouldn’t happen to have any bacon in your fridge?”

  I shook my head, smirking irresistibly. “I’m fresh out of bacon.”

  “Be right back.”

  Again, Curtis left. While I was waiting for him to return with the bacon, my phone buzzed. Thinking he might be trying to call me, I picked it up and immediately let out a loud sigh. It was Dave.

  I answered on the third buzz. “Hey, what’s up?”

  “Hey!” I could barely hear him over the roar of what sounded like a helicopter. “Sorry to bother you on Sunday morning, but you have to get dressed! We have work to do!”

  My stomach sank: the day I had planned with Curtis was about to be interrupted. At the same time, I had an odd feeling like he was the doctor, and I was one of his companions being dragged along on a dangerous adventure. “Can’t it wait until after breakfast?” I asked him.

  “Meet me at the clinic in exactly one hour!” he shouted. “We have a baby horse to deliver!”

  He hung up. I swore at the phone and slammed it down on the counter, raking my fingers through my hair in exasperation.

  Just then Curtis came back into the house, looking alarmed. “What was that all about?”

  “It’s my boss. A horse is pregnant, and he needs me to help him deliver it. Looks like we won’t able to go riding today. I’m so sorry.”