by Naomi Niles
“What’s the name of the store?” asked Nic.
Adam was silent.
“Anyway,” I said, “you might want to hold off on buying that part. After tomorrow night you’re not going to need it.”
“Oh? What makes you so sure of that?”
“Well, when a man has been humiliated by his opponent enough times, he usually has the good sense to retire and find something else to do with his time.”
“That’s assuming Adam has any sense,” said Nic, keeping one eye on Adam who had turned brick-red.
“You know, if this is how you’re going to treat all your customers, it’s a wonder you’ve managed to stay in business,” he snarled.
“Well, this isn’t how we treat all our customers,” I said. “Only you.”
He threw up his hands in the air. If there had been a wall nearby, I have a feeling he would have punched it. “That’s fine. If you want to tease and bully me, I guess that’s your right. But you’ve just lost a customer. I’m never coming back into this store. And I’ll be warning all my friends not to come here, either.”
“Shame,” said Nic, snapping her fingers. “I’d hate to lose two customers.”
By this point, I was having a hard time holding in my laughter. Adam didn’t seem to find it nearly as funny, for he turned around and stormed out without another word, letting the door swing shut behind him.
“Oh, it’s going to be so satisfying seeing Darren beat him again tomorrow night,” said Nic as she watched him pull out of the parking lot in a cloud of dust.
“Too bad he’ll probably never come back,” I said sadly. “I really enjoyed provoking him.”
“One thing I’ve learned about Adam is that he makes threats, but he never follows through. I’m sure he’ll be back again next week. And we’ll keep teasing him, and he’ll keep storming out.” Nic shrugged. “It’s a shame, really: I only tease people I like, and I really like Adam. If he wasn’t so easily offended, he would have figured that out long ago.”
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Darren
By now, I had begun to accept the fact that Penny and I were probably going to be married. One night, we had gone out with Nic and a couple other friends, and she lost her wallet. When she started to panic, I took her aside and stroked her shoulder reassuringly, talking to her in that voice we only used for each other. Then I helped her retrace our steps until she found the wallet.
Afterwards, Nic said to me, “How did you do that?”
“Do what?” I asked.
“Get her to calm down like that. I’ve never been able to calm her when she starts panicking. You’re like the Penny whisperer.”
“Yeah, I guess I am,” I said, smiling. “The Penny whisperer.”
I was still thinking about that conversation on Saturday morning when I woke up with Penny beside me. I loved how her hair looked in the morning before she combed it, and the perfect look of calm on her face in the chilly dawn light. I used to wonder how spouses could bear waking up to the same face every day of their lives. Now I knew.
As I lay there watching her breath rise and fall, she stirred and moaned softly. Before I could ask her how she had slept, she sat up and kissed my upper lip. “Hey, you. How long have you been awake?”
“About half an hour.”
“Why didn’t you wake me up?”
I shrugged. “Sometimes it’s nice just to lay there with you.”
“You’re too good to me, Savery.” Penny tossed her hair back. “I had a dream that you got to the race tonight, and they handed you a broom and told you it was a flying race. And then you and Adam had to fly through the air, but you had never ridden on a broom before, and your broom kept bucking you off. Adam was so glad to have finally won something that he kept flying around you in circles, laughing.”
“That’s a terrible dream,” I said. “You have so little faith in me.”
“I’m very confident in your skills as a driver,” Penny replied. “Not so much in your flying abilities.”
“Well, you don’t have to worry.” I pressed my face close to hers so that my beard tickled her skin and she giggled. “Unless they changed the rules at the last minute, there won’t be any flying tonight.”
“Thank goodness,” said Penny, with wide eyes.
As it turned out, though, we needn’t have worried. When we reached the strip that night, we found only a long row of cars, their headlights blazing in the hazy, mosquito-filled twilight. Adam stood against the door of his Firebird. He glared coolly at me and Penny as we walked past him.
“I can’t wait to wipe that smirk off your face, Savery,” he muttered. “You and your girlfriend both.”
Presumably, Adam had intended this as a threat, but I didn’t feel remotely intimidated. “Keep it up, Jenkins,” I said cheerfully. “Soon your transformation into a cartoon villain will be complete.”
As if to prove my point, Adam continued to fume and snarl as we walked away. “You know, I never thought about it,” said Penny, “but he really does remind me of a cartoon villain. I think he wants to scare us, but mostly I just feel bad for him.”
“That’s because you still have a heart in your breast,” I told her. “I need someone like you in my life to remind me every now and again that guys like him are still human. Otherwise, he’d be totally insufferable.”
“He probably just wishes he had someone to cuddle with,” said Penny. I leaned back against the Mustang and wrapped my arm around her. “I think sometimes loneliness can drive a person crazy. That’s the road I was heading down before I met you.”
“That’s why we need guys like him in our lives: to remind us where we came from and where we could have ended up if things had gone just a little bit different.”
“I’m glad things turned out the way they have.” Penny turned to face me, her eyes shining in the floodlights. “You could be out here tonight making a ton of money and not having anyone to come home to. And I could be sitting in my room crying because my hero and heroine just confessed their love to each other and I’m all alone.”
“So we’d both still be doing the things we love,” I said, “we just wouldn’t have each other. I’d like to think we could have still found happiness and fulfillment even without each other.”
“Maybe, but being with you has made it a lot easier,” said Penny.
By now the announcer’s booming voice was declaring the start of the race. I opened the door and climbed into the car. Penny leaned over and kissed me through the window. “Be safe,” she said, grabbing hold of my wrist. “I don’t want to have to spend the next week in the hospital.”
“This will be over in moments,” I told her as I put on my helmet.
And it was. I had been practicing for so long that the outcome of the race was never in much doubt. Within a few minutes, I had cruised to an easy victory, leaving my next closest competitor in a cloud of exhaust. By the time I emerged from my car at the end of the strip, a small crowd of spectators was racing toward me, Nic and Penny among them. Nic was pushing Dickie, who glowed with a look of triumph as if he had won the race himself.
“That was exceptional,” he said, “really brilliant. What are we doing to celebrate?”
I shrugged with a casual air. “Maybe go out for steak and seafood. Maybe take some champagne and go out to the lake, just the four of us. The weather’s cool, and I’m feeling glad to be alive tonight.”
Penny must have noticed the relative indifference with which I had greeted my win, for she asked, “Aren’t you glad to have won?”
“I guess.” I let out a long sigh. “Racing used to get me worked up like nothing else, but the happiest moment of my whole day was getting out of that car and seeing your shining faces. I don’t know if I want to race anymore. I think tonight might have been my last contest.”
“Do you really mean that?” asked Penny.
“I do. I’ve won so many races that the magic has started to wear off. I don’t feel the same rush I used to feel w
hen I stepped into a car. I’m ready to do something new with my life—devote myself to a career and, maybe one day, starting a family.”
No one knew quite how to respond. Dickie sat frozen with a look of surprise on his face, while Nic stood silent and pensive. Penny, however, ran forward and threw her arms around me, tears filling her eyes. “I didn’t want to say it,” she said low in my ear, “and if you had kept racing, I would’ve still supported you, but I’ve wanted this for you for so long.”
“I don’t know that I would ever have had the strength to do it without you, Pen,” I said. “I needed someone like you to remind me what was really important. If it weren’t for you, I’d probably still be racing, not realizing how dissatisfied I felt.”
Penny pulled back so that she could look me in the face. In spite of her tears, she glowed with a fierce pride. “I don’t think I’ve ever been more proud of you than I am right now,” she said. “Even if you had lost tonight, you still would’ve won.”
Chapter Forty
Epilogue
Penny
Two Years Later
“You know, when you first told me about your family,” I told Darren, “it sounded like all you guys did was eat breakfast all day. When you asked me if I wanted to meet your parents, I remember thinking, ‘I don’t know, I’m not feeling really hungry for breakfast.’”
“Hope you weren’t too disappointed, babe,” said Darren, softly stroking my back.
“Actually no. I was relieved to find that they sometimes serve lunch and dinner.”
We were seated around the dining table in the Savery kitchen eating dinner. Darren’s mom had made fried chicken with cream gravy, mashed potatoes, sweet corn, and warm buttered bread rolls. I was already so full after my second helping that I barely had room for the raspberry pie.
Darren and I had been dating for about two years now. After his last race, he had sold the Mustang and taken a job as a bank teller, from which position he had recently risen to branch manager. Nic and I were still running the store, and despite his promise, Adam was still coming in at least once a week to pester us. On Wednesday nights, we invited Dickie over for dinner, and during the weekends, Darren’s mom usually invited us over at least once.
“Mom reminded me the other day that the wedding’s coming up,” I said to Curtis, who was seated to my left. “How do you feel? Nervous?”
Curtis removed his cowboy hat and mopped his sweaty brow. “You know, I thought I would be. They say every man is terrified twice in his life: on the day he proposes and the day of his wedding. But with Allie, there was never any question that she would say no. We both knew we wanted to get married. We couldn’t imagine spending the rest of our lives with anyone else.”
After dinner, Darren and I took a walk around the pond in his back pasture. The sky was a smoky red in the light of the setting sun, and the crickets chirped invisibly in the tall grass. Jasper and Gandalf ran circles around us, grabbing at each other’s necks and occasionally getting in our way so that we were obliged to step over them.
“Did you ever feel that way about us?” I asked after we had been walking together for some time in silence.
“What way?”
“What Curtis said about Allie: how it just ‘felt right.’ I hate when people say that because I’m so good at second-guessing myself. I’ve never felt that confident about anything.”
Darren and I had never talked about getting married, although I could sense that it occupied his mind almost as much as it did mine. “I mean, I’ve never wanted to be with anyone but you,” he said after a thoughtful pause. “At least not since we started going out.”
I kicked at a stone and watched it ripple the dark water. “I feel the same way. There was never a moment when I thought, ‘I could totally see myself with someone else.’ I guess I just latched onto you. It’s what I do. But you were so kind and genuine and understanding, you made it the easiest thing in the world to do.”
Darren was quiet for a moment as though struggling to make up his mind about something. Finally, he said, “Babe, come with me,” and strode off in the direction of the barn.
I followed a few paces behind, Jasper nipping at my heels, feeling increasingly puzzled. It wasn’t like him to just trot off when we were in the middle of a serious discussion, and I began to worry that he wasn’t taking it seriously.
But when he opened the barn doors and motioned for me to come inside, I understood.
Lanterns had been lit in the upper loft, and the whole room was blazing with light. Down below, the hay had been cleared away, and someone had constructed a perfect recreation of our talking room. I recognized it the moment I saw it because it looked exactly like what I had been picturing all the years we had known each other. There stood the shabby couch at the back of the room with its green and blue cushions. There lay the ugly throw rug, and there, leaned against the nightstand, stood an old guitar.
“I don’t believe this,” I said, hands raised to my face. “You remembered everything!”
“Not quite everything,” said Darren. “As I recall, the walls of our talking room were made of pasta, and the barn is obviously not. Curtis had to talk me out of building a room made of ramen—but guess what I got instead!”
I squealed with delight as he reached down and picked up a stuffed green alligator. “LENNY!” I exclaimed, with a feeling like my heart was going to burst. “The world’s greatest guard-alligator.”
“And of course you’ve trained him so he won’t attack us,” said Darren. He began walking toward the sofa and motioned for me to follow.
“So,” he said as I sat down beside him, “now that we’re in our talking room, let’s talk.”
“About what?” I tried resting my hands on my knees and then, not liking how that felt, placed them in my lap.
“About how I think you’re the best person in the world for me,” said Darren, slowly and with sincerity. “And how I’ve never connected with anyone the way we connect with each other—we practically have our own language.”
“And our own room,” I said, running my fingers over the back of the couch.
“Yeah, and I want to stay in that room with you for the rest of our lives. There are mornings when I wake up next to you and think to myself, ‘The only thing I really want out of life is to wake up like this every day of my life.’”
“I still don’t get what you see in me,” I said with a slow shake of my head, “but I’ve come to accept it. If I’m lucky enough to be loved by someone like you, I’m not going to complain about it. All I can really do is return it.”
“And there is one other thing you can do,” said Darren.
“What’s that?”
I had a feeling I knew, but I didn’t want to get my hopes up lest I be disappointed. But when he dropped down off the couch and fell to his knees, I was sure. My vision went blurry for a moment, and my heart thumped in my chest as he said, “Penny—I don’t know how else to say this, but will you marry me and spend the rest of your life with me?”
I never did manage to say yes. By that point, I was so surprised and overwhelmed I just dropped down on the floor next to him and hugged him for a long time. He mussed my hair with his lips, and I heard him breathe a quick prayer of thanks.
“So are we really doing this?” he said at last. “Are we really about to get married?”
“I think so,” I said into his chest, so low he could barely me.
“Penny and Darren,” he said to himself, as though testing out how it sounded. “My parents never did think they would get me married off. But between you and me, I think I got the best spouse of the whole bunch. I don’t know if I lucked into it, or if God was just being really kind to me—”
“Definitely that one,” I said, and Darren laughed and laughed.
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BEST FRIEND’S
DADDY
By Naomi Niles
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are products of the writer's imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2017 Naomi Niles
Chapter One
Harrison
The steam rose from the cup of coffee as I placed it on the table in the kitchen next to a plate of toast and a bowl of oatmeal. My phone sat on the table as I grabbed the morning paper and flipped it open to the first page. I was sure that I was one of the only people to receive the periodical, but I was an old school kind of guy. Before I could digest the first story, my phone buzzed next to my cup of coffee. I smiled when I saw her name flash across the screen.
“Hey, sweetheart. You’re late.”
“Geez, Dad. Two whole minutes. It just turned 8:02.”
“Well, you know I am used to hearing from you at the same time every morning. Once you put an old man like me on a routine, you can’t break it and expect me to be alright with it.”
“Well, Dad, I am sorry. You big baby.”
I smiled. She was the reason I’d worked so hard to build a successful company. Her mother decided that she wasn’t cut out for motherhood, and one year after she was born, she disappeared out of our lives. I was only 18 at the time, so I barely knew what to do to take care of a young girl, but I wasn’t going to leave her. She was my responsibility, and I refused to walk out of her life like her mother did, so I did what I had to do to make sure she was taken care of.
I had only spoken to her mother a handful of times since she’d left. She would call here and there to check on her, but she didn’t want any part of her daughter. After the fourth year since she’d left, the calls stopped coming in. Sarah would always ask about her mother, and I would just tell her that she was at work. I couldn’t find it in my heart to tell her the truth at such a young age, but when she turned 8, I told her the truth. She was hurt when I told her, and I figured she would try to contact her in her own time, but to my surprise, she wasn’t interested.