Southern Charmed

by Melanie Jacobson

  He said a short blessing, and within minutes, Mom was drowning in a flood of compliments for the chicken. It was especially nice to see Brother Lewis digging in, obviously really happy with the food. I wondered how long it had been since he’d been able to take joy from a simple pleasure like this. Probably a long time, but it didn’t surprise me that Mom’s chicken would do the trick.

  After dinner, the men jumped up to handle the dishes and shooed us out to the living room. “I don’t like this,” Mom protested. “I’m going to have to come in and rearrange whatever it is you do.”

  “You won’t, Sister Guidry,” Max said. “I’ve been paying attention. I know where everything goes.”

  “All right,” she said as I pulled her toward the living room. I sat her down in her arm chair and plucked her embroidery from her basket to set on her lap.

  “Do that, Mom. Try to take it easy.”

  She winced a couple of times when she heard the dishes clink, but she stayed put. I mostly sat and stared into space.

  “Mom? Tell Max I’m upstairs for a minute if he comes out.” She nodded, keeping her eyes on her magnolia. In my room, I switched to shoes better suited for walking by the lake and made a stop by the side of my bed to send up a short but utterly sincere prayer. Please, give me the strength to walk away.

  I went back downstairs, and uneasiness roiled in my stomach, making me wish I’d eaten less. I never liked these conversations, no matter which side of them I was on.

  Max was bent over Mom’s needlepoint as she explained what she was doing.

  “Beautiful,” he said, looking up and smiling at me.

  “Thanks,” I said, offering him a weak return smile.

  His gaze sharpened, but instead of looking worried, his half smile appeared. “Would you be up for a walk down to the dock?” he asked.

  “Sure.”

  As we crossed the backyard, he complimented the freshly groomed stone path. “Your mom said you guys worked on this yesterday. It looks great.”

  “Thanks.”

  “So you’re a great teacher and a great daughter,” he said, sliding his hand around mine like he’d been doing it forever. The fact that it felt so easy and right only made my stomachache worse. “Is there anything you can’t do well?”

  “I can’t sing, I guess. Other than that, I’ve pretty much got it all.”

  “I believe you.” He dropped a kiss on top of my head.

  I should have slid my hand right back out of his, put distance between us, but we only had about a ten-minute walk to the pier, and then we’d sit and talk, and that would unravel everything, and we would never hold hands again, so I gave myself that last ten minutes.

  He didn’t say much, commenting on a scent or a sound every now and then, squeezing my hand when we heard a bird call he liked and I’d tell him what it was. That was about it.

  It was so unfair that the very first boy who had ever made me imagine the possibility of romance, on the edges of this very lake, was the one I was going to have to break up with as soon as we reached the dock.

  Too soon, we were there, and we slid our shoes off to dangle our feet in the water. I leaned back and listened to the frogs, out in full force in the warm spring night.

  “You’ve been pretty quiet,” he said, his voice so mellow it barely created a ripple in the mood. “Are you sorry you agreed to this talk?”

  “Yes and no. I don’t want to have it, but I know it needs to happen.”

  “You don’t want to have it,” he repeated, his tone thoughtful. “Maybe you should go first.”

  I settled my hands in my lap and stared down at them, white frog bellies twitching against my leg. Where was I supposed to start? I didn’t know. I jumped to the end. “I don’t think we should see each other anymore.”

  He nodded. “Okay.”

  “You’re fine with that?”

  “Oh, no, I disagree with you. That was an, ‘Okay, I hear you.’ And then I was going to think.”

  “About what? I just broke up with you.”

  A bummed-out expression clouded his face. The acting was about as good as when athletes did TV commercials. “Wait, you broke up with me? You mean you were my girlfriend for a while and I missed it? Man, I miss all the good stuff.”

  “Oh my gosh, stop. I didn’t mean it like that.”

  “Then how did you mean it?”

  “I mean that I’ll keep working with you on the conference, but you should stop coming over for Sunday dinner and showing up at my classroom, stuff like that.”

  He nodded again. It was rhythmic, like it helped him think or something. When he stopped, he said, “Why?”

  “For the millionth time, dating doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Dating has never made sense to anyone. That’s not a reason.”

  “Of course dating makes sense. You find someone you like, and you spend time doing things together, seeing each other in different situations so you know if you’re compatible or not. Dating doesn’t make sense for us. Like, none.”

  “Sure, if that’s what dating is. But that’s not what dating is. Dating is when I like you and you like me and we go do stuff together that we like, or even might like. And why shouldn’t we do that?”

  “You’re being difficult.”

  “Yeah.”

  I shot him an annoyed look.

  “What? Like I’m going to make it easy for you to dump me? No, ma’am.”

  “The longer we keep pretending we can work out, the worse it’s going to hurt when we have to admit we can’t. Why do this?”

  “Hold still,” he said. “You have an eyelash on your cheek.” He leaned closer to look at it, and just like that he was kissing me again, sliding his fingers through my hair. I returned the kiss, murmuring a protest when he lifted his mouth from mine, but it was only so he could brush a kiss against my jawline, my neck, and below my ear in a spot I decided was now my favorite. He brought his lips back to mine, deepening the kiss the tiniest bit before leaning back. “That’s why.”

  I stared out at the water. I had no answer to that.

  “I know we haven’t had deep spiritual conversations, and this isn’t something I would normally ever think is any of my business, but is us not dating an answer to a prayer?”

  “Are you asking me if I prayed about dating you? Yes.” I was glad the falling dusk hid the heat in my cheeks. This conversation felt even more personal than the kissing had. “I’m not supposed to do it. I’m sorry. I wish I’d gotten a different answer.”

  He scrubbed a hand through his hair, a short staccato movement and the first evidence that he was growing frustrated. “I’m not mad at you. I’m confused, I guess. I asked too, and my answer was different. It means one of us heard what we wanted to hear, and I’m worried it’s me.”

  “You prayed about whether we should be dating, and He said yes?” I asked, pointing up.

  “Yeah. It was pretty clear, actually.” Now he really did look confused. “What did you ask Him?”

  It was a surreal conversation. I’d never prayed about any of my previous relationships, much less discussed any kind of personal revelation with them. But it didn’t make sense to me either that we’d gotten different answers, so I told him. “I asked for the strength to walk away even though I don’t want to.”

  “Oh.” He was quiet for a minute. “And you got a spiritual confirmation?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Like a thought in your head or a feeling? I’m not trying to be a nosy, I swear. I’m just trying to understand since I’m the one getting dumped.”

  “It was more like a feeling. Like as soon as I stood up, I felt kind of sick to my stomach.”

  He looked at me, confused. “How did you know that meant we were supposed to break up?”

  “Because I really don’t want to. And the fact that I felt so bad about it right away meant that . . .” I trailed off. It had been really clear in my head before I’d come downstairs. “If I wasn’t supposed to break up with you
, I would have felt happy because it would have meant I didn’t have to. So the fact that I felt bad meant that’s what needs to happen.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “It makes sense to me,” I said, not sure if it really did anymore.

  “Maybe we got different answers because we asked different questions. And I hate to even say this the way I’m about to say it because I don’t want to say I’m getting the answers to questions for you or anything ridiculous like that, or that I do a better job of asking God questions, but—”

  “Just say it,” I said. “I promise not to take offense.”

  He rubbed his bottom lip a few times. “Here goes. It sounds like you told God what you wanted to do, then asked Him to help you do it. Did you ask Him what He wants you to do?”

  I clenched my fists. “I don’t have to ask everything. Sometimes it’s obvious. This was a situation where I only needed to ask for the perseverance to stick with the clear choice.”

  “You promised not to take offense,” he said. If his voice hadn’t been so full of stress, I might have stormed off the pier.

  I took a calming breath. “Sorry. To answer your question, there didn’t seem to be a point to asking when I knew the answer. How did you ask Him?”

  “I asked if this was the relationship He wants me in right now. He said yes.”

  “Like with words?”

  “No. A feeling. But a clear one. Easy to understand.”

  “How is that even possible? We have no idea when you’re going to get transferred out of here, and once you’re gone, that’s it. I’m staying here. You’re not. The longer we’re together before that, the more tangled up in each other we’ll be. I think that’s the actual definition of being too attached: all caught up in one another’s strings.”

  “What if we did this as a no-strings-attached? Why don’t you ask Him if he wants you to date me? And if He says yes, why not have a little faith that it’ll all work out?”

  “What if it doesn’t?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I decided not to worry about that when I got my answer.”

  I drew my feet up out of the water and wrapped my arms around my legs to make a comfortable perch to rest my chin on. “It’s like you said though. I didn’t ask the same question, so I do have a ton of worry.” My voice was low, but he heard me and answered anyway.

  “Would you ask? I don’t know how this is supposed to work out, or even if it will work out, but I’m pretty sure either way we’re going to learn something valuable from it. Maybe this isn’t about getting married. Maybe this is about spending time together right now. Maybe it’s about a lot more, but I figure if it is, we’re not going to have to figure it out on our own.”

  He’d said marriage. He’d thought about it, then. Maybe that was normal for guys the way it was for girls. Mormon ones, anyway. It made me feel better to know it wasn’t a factor only for me.

  I closed my eyes and shut out the sound of the lake lapping against the dock, closed out the bright moonlight, and said a prayer even quicker and more heartfelt than the one in my room had been. Should I be in a relationship with Max? Is this the right thing?

  I opened my eyes and peered down the lakeshore to the point where it curved around and disappeared into the darkness. There were no pangs in my stomach, no ugly pits. Instead, I felt an easy kind of quiet. Was this because I was giving myself what I wanted now?

  “Lila? You mad?”

  I lifted my head and turned back to him, leaning over to press a soft kiss against his lips. “You win.”

  “You’ll ask?”

  I shook my head. “I already did.”

  Max whooped and jumped to his feet, splashing slightly as his legs came flying out of the water. “Woo-hoo! Yes!” He did some kind of touchdown victory dance. “When can I take you out again?”

  “Like my pawpaw used to say, in for a penny, in for a pound. Whenever you want. Other than nights where I have to grade until my brains fall out, my schedule is pretty open.”

  “Tuesday. We’ll do something Tuesday.”

  He pulled me to my feet, and I wrapped my arms around his waist and peered up at him, tilting my chin so it would be easy for him to steal a kiss. “I kind of think you’d do your best convincing if you stayed out here with me for a little while.”

  “Lila Mae, I like the way you think.”

  Chapter 18

  Within a week, the Guidry house looked nothing like it had for the last two years. Where Mom and I had rattled around it alone, unable to fill up the silence on our own, now it was full of voices. It started with the Lewises showing up Monday night because Mom had invited them over for family home evening. She rushed around making pecan fudge for the treat afterward, her cheeks flushed and eyes bright.

  I invited Max over, and we ended up with a sweet lesson from Brother Lewis about granting grace to others, followed by a boisterous game of Bananagrams, mainly because Brother Lewis played it like it was Balderdash, clearly making up words and then defending them straight-faced. It only got worse when Max copied his strategy. Mom hadn’t laughed like that since Daddy died.

  Max and I went out to dinner Tuesday night, and we ended up spending Thursday evening at my house watching back-to-back episodes of Sherlock and Friday night at his apartment, where he made me breakfast for dinner and then we watched a Sixers game on TV. It galled me to cheer for them, but they weren’t playing the Pelicans, so I didn’t feel like too much of a traitor.

  Saturday was Jaimie Graceley’s bridal shower. It was the first time in a long time I hadn’t dreaded one of these things, mainly because I’d been too busy with Max all week to think about how much I didn’t want to go. Plus, I’d get to hang out with Kate. I showed up early to help, and Jaimie squealed when I walked in. “Lila! I heard a secret about you. A good one!”

  I did a quick sort through my brain to see what she might have heard but came up with nothing. “Tell me. I need some good secrets about myself.”

  “Don’t act like you don’t know. You and Max Archer are a thing now.”

  Uh-oh. “We’re a thing now? What does that mean? What kind of thing? Can I guess? Is it plant, animal, or mineral?”

  “Stop,” she said, grabbing my arm and pulling me into the kitchen, where she stuck a paring knife in my hand and parked me in front of a pile of apples. “You know what I mean. Are you dating or not?”

  “Did Kate tell you about this?” I clenched the knife in my hand. If Kate did tell, I wondered if it was wrong to stab a pregnant woman somewhere nonfatal, like her bicep.

  “So it’s true? Y’all are dating?”

  “We go on dates, yes.”

  That made her squeal again. “Yay! Finally! We’ll all be showing up to your mama’s house for your bridal shower soon.”

  I was shaking my head before she even finished. “It’s not like that.”

  But she ignored me. “I hope your wedding is in the next six months because Caleb and I want to start a family right away, and if I’m like Kate, I may have morning sickness and not be able to help you like you’ve helped me, and I would just feel terrible. Don’t be mad if that happens.”

  My mouth was hanging open by the time she finished. There didn’t seem to be any way to stop the tide of nonsense, so I didn’t try. “Where’s Kate?”

  Sister Gracely swept in right then. “Upstairs having a little moment. She’ll come down in a bit.”

  “Morning sickness?” I asked.

  “Yes, but I think she’s already feeling better. Do you mind slicing up those apples? I made a dip for them, and I didn’t want to cut them too early and let them get brown.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said, starting on my first apple. Just in time too because the doorbell rang again, and the rest of the wedding belles showed up to string puffy paper flowers and color-coordinated balloons everywhere. Staying in the kitchen kept me out of their path.

  Twenty minutes and a dozen sliced apples later, Kate walked in. She’d freshened her makeup,
but she wasn’t a hundred percent yet. I’d have to keep an eye on her to make sure her color came all the way back. I hugged her, smiling at the way her drum of a belly pushed between us. “How’s Jellybean?”

  “Difficult.” She rubbed her stomach, her smile belying any true annoyance. “Good thing I love him already.”

  “Did you tell Jaimie about Max and I?”

  She shook her head. “But I can’t promise my mom didn’t.”

  I sighed. It had been only a matter of time before word got out anyway. “Guess this means I can sit with him in church tomorrow.”

  “People would talk more if you didn’t.”

  She couldn’t stomach the smell of food, so I spritzed the apples with lemon juice to keep them white and followed her out to help with the decorations while we caught up. Within an hour, the first official guests began arriving, and within another half hour, a sea of ladies in pretty spring dresses spilled out of the house and into the Gracely’s beautiful yard. Bishop Gracely had obviously decided to make himself scarce, so there was no stopping the flow of the estrogen-fest. I loved it though. It felt kind of tribal, like the elders and the neophytes of an ancient clan all trading stories and secrets.

  I helped serve up the food and entertained Kate’s great-aunt Blanche, who always made a big deal about having driven in from Zachary, even though it was only a half hour away. Maybe that felt like an eternity when you were almost ninety.

  After everyone was fed and chatting, Kate struggled to her feet and announced the games. Since I wasn’t needed and didn’t love party games, I melted to the back of the crowd near some distant Gracely cousins and watched. I wouldn’t do games at my shower. I’d much rather do something ridiculously sentimental, like have all the ladies take turns giving me advice. And I would be all about the food. I’d want a brunch, maybe a crepe bar, with sweet and savory options. I thought maybe I’d do deeper colors though. I loved all the muted hues the current belles were using, but I wanted something richer because it was hard to imagine Max surrounded by pastels or—I froze with a stuffed mushroom halfway to my mouth. Whoa.

  Whoa.