Driven to Distraction & Winging It

by Tina Wainscott

  An hour later, the tables and chairs were set up near the lake. A handful of folks always helped her set up and break down. A light breeze fanned the palm trees and ruffled the surface of the water. The sun coated everything in a layer of bright warmth. A perfect day for a perfect kiss. A kiss that everyone was going to be watching, judging.

  A kiss that couldn’t possibly live up to everyone’s expectations.

  The tightening of her stomach as she imagined that kiss was because of the pressure, not anything close to anticipation. Probably it was dread.

  People starting filtering into the park carrying their assorted casserole dishes filled with canned goodies. Dogs scampered on the grass, chasing butterflies and each other. Some of those dogs had come from her shelter. A couple of the regulars weren’t there, though, including Killer the Chihuahua and Teeny the Saint Bernard. She pinned down the corners of the yellow tablecloth so they wouldn’t fly up in her face.

  “Hello, Stacy.” The Swensons greeted her in a long, drawn-out way. “Lovely day, isn’t it?”

  “Good afternoon, Stacy,” Nita said as she set her pickled lima beans on the table. She smiled, just stood there and smiled.

  “Ah, there’s our Stacy,” Ernie said. Frieda set their jelled cranberry can-shaped mold next to the Swensons’ mandarin oranges with maraschino cherries. “You’re looking quite cute, isn’t she, Frieda?”

  “She’s got a glow about her, doesn’t she?” Frieda said.

  “Yep, definitely a glow.”

  What they were all saying, in not so many words, was, We’re looking forward to seeing that kiss. They were making up the part about the glow.

  Stacy gave them a forced smile. “Thank you.” She focused on Arlene. “Where are Blue, Suede and Shoes?”

  “Shoes has a cold, and you know how they hate to be separated.”

  “Where’s your fellow?” Ernie asked.

  “He’ll be here any minute. He was in the shower when I knocked on the door. I left him a message to meet me here.”

  “Ah,” he said with a long nod.

  She felt a little guilty fooling them like this. Barrett would leave, and she would start a new life with her baby. How would they take it? She’d just tell them that she and Barrett weren’t compatible. He was afraid of babies. Telling them she had chosen to have a baby by herself was going to be the hardest part. But she couldn’t think about that. She didn’t want anything to deter her.

  Ricky sauntered into the park area and headed straight over. He winked at her, clucked his tongue and said, “Hi, there, little mama,” in a low voice just like he always did. “You’re looking particularly fine today.”

  She glanced around to make sure no one heard him. “Gee, thanks, Ricky. Nice of you to notice.”

  “I always notice.”

  She waved him away. “Yeah, yeah, set your dish down and scoot. And shush,” she added.

  Once she’d had a fever of one hundred and five, a red, runny nose and every other symptom of the flu, and he’d complimented her.

  She held out her hand, and he handed over his plastic dish. He always brought the same thing, sardines, and he was the only one who ate them. She wrinkled her nose as she set them at the very end of the line of dishes.

  She wasn’t sure what made her look up. Barrett was walking across the lawn toward her. Wow, what was that pow! feeling in her chest all about, anyway? The breeze ruffled his damp hair, and he brushed it from his face. He was wearing her Don’t Drink and Derive T-shirt across a broad expanse of chest and baggy blue shorts that showed off his legs. The sun lit the hairs on his legs and arms and made them look like spun gold. Oh, boy. Had she ever noticed the hair on a guy’s legs before?

  He nodded to a few people who greeted him, but his track never wavered. Weasel Boy’s tiny legs were a blur as he kept up with Barrett’s strides.

  She held out her T-shirt and nodded toward his when he neared her. “Very couplelike, don’t you think?”

  His gaze lingered a little too long on her shirt. “Very.”

  She was fast falling for those dimples—only the dimples, you understand. Not his smile, or the way a hank of his hair sometimes fell over his forehead, or the way he said exactly what was on his mind. Or the way he focused on her as though she were the only important thing in the whole wide world.

  “Can I help with anything?” he asked, taking in the long table of dishes.

  “I’ve got it under control, thanks. As soon as the king arrives, we’ll eat.”

  “Aren’t you two cute?” Arlene said, touching Barrett’s shoulder as she took in both their shirts. “Our Stacy is just the best at finding these cute expressions. Oh, wait a minute. She’s not our Stacy anymore. She’s your Stacy now.”

  Stacy laughed to cover how that made her feel. To be someone’s Stacy. “I’m my own Stacy, Arlene.”

  Jack, the king, was always the last resident of Sunset City to arrive at the canned-food party. “Good to see me,” he said to each person who inclined their head as he made his way to the table. “Glad I could make it.” He scanned the offerings, made his usual scowl at Ricky’s sardines and handed Stacy his usual dish of bread-and-butter pickles.

  Nita poured him a cup of iced tea, and he led everyone to lift their cups in a toast. “Here’s to Mae. May she be baking her lemon curd tarts and scones in Heaven.”

  “She’s the reason we have these wonderful gettogethers. We can’t ever forget that,” Frieda said.

  “I wonder if they have canned food in Heaven,” Ernie asked.

  Everyone formed lines on either side of the long table.

  “So your granny started this, and then you took over when she passed on?” Barrett asked, following Stacy down the line and repeating everything she did.

  “Someone had to do it.” She dumped a spoonful of canned chili on her plate with two taps of the spoon and then tossed a few corn chips on top.

  He did the same thing, though he wasn’t paying attention to what he was doing. “But why you?”

  “Because…” She dumped a spoonful of mashed pumpkin onto her plate. “You ask too many questions, you know that?”

  He shrugged. “It’s what I do. I’m just trying to understand who Stacy Jenkins is. How much of your personality is made up of doing things for others.” He glanced at the orange mushy stuff and passed.

  When their plates were full, they found an empty table. “Don’t try to study me. I’m not a tree snail, you know.”

  Of course, Ernie and Frieda walked by just as she said the last of that. They glanced at her and went to another table. “He thinks she’s a tree snail,” Ernie whispered.

  “You fascinate me,” Barrett said.

  “I do?” Before her heart could warm too much, she remembered how he became fascinated, then bored, with many things.

  “Didn’t I say you had nice attributes?” He tossed a green bean to Weasel Boy, who surprised her by eating it.

  “Yes, you did.” She dropped a cracker next to the dog’s nose. He sniffed at it, then looked at Barrett. She tossed a green bean the dog’s way. He still didn’t eat it.

  Now that was the ultimate low point—rejected by a dog.

  AFTER LUNCH, Stacy helped to clear the mess and stack everyone’s containers in some kind of order. Barrett looked as though he were trying to stumble through a conversation with Ernie and Frieda, Lord knew about what. She heard the words Black Gopher and rolled her eyes. But when Barrett glanced at her, she felt a strange thrill of excitement shiver through her. Not excitement, dread. Keep reminding yourself of that. You’re not looking forward to kissing Barrett. Lousy kisser, remember? And all that pressure!

  He rubbed his hand over his mouth, and instead of remembering the lousy kiss, she remembered the way that mouth felt on her palm. So vividly, in fact, that she found herself rubbing her palm against her thigh. It was just a fluke.

  Nita floated by with the words, “We’re still waiting. Better make it a good one.”

  “If it’s not, I tak
e total responsibility. I…I’m not sure I’m a good kisser. I’m probably lousy.”

  “Oh, pooh. If it’s meant to be, it’ll just come together…like magic.” Nita snapped her fingers. “And if it’s not meant to be, he’s fair game.”

  Great. Barrett didn’t believe in magic, didn’t believe in things coming together without a formula or scientific reason. “We’ll give it our best shot.”

  “And I want to see some tongue action,” Nita said as she sauntered away.

  “No tongues on the first kiss!”

  Let’s get this over with, Stacy thought, walking to Barrett. She looped her arm around his. “Shall we take a walk around the lake, sweetheart?”

  He looked at her as though she’d given him the formula for cold fusion. “You called me sweetheart.”

  She squeezed his arm tighter before realizing how that action pressed his arm against her breast. Under Ernie and Frieda’s watchful eye, she didn’t dare move away. “Yes, I did, dear.”

  His smile grew wider. “I like that.”

  “Me, too,” she said aloud when she’d only meant to think it. Except for the dogs, she’d never called anyone sweetheart.

  “What should I call you?” he asked as they strolled toward the lake like a real, honest-to-goodness couple. “Dearest?”

  “Er, no.”

  “Snookums?”

  She sputtered. “Definitely not.”

  “I heard Ernie call Frieda that, though I’m not sure what it means.”

  “I think it’s a…well, it might be a…Actually, I’m not sure what it means, either.”

  They shared a laugh, and she noticed how his eyes sparkled like the ocean on a sunny day.

  “Would it offend you if I called you babe?”

  She tightened her hold on his arm.

  “Uh-oh, that means it would offend you.”

  She pulled him in front of her. “I like babe.”

  “Okay…babe.” He didn’t quite have the hang of it, and yet it still shimmered through her and left a trail of what felt like champagne bubbles going through her veins.

  “Kiss me,” she said, sounding a little more urgent than she’d intended.

  He glanced at the dozens of people all watching. “Now?”

  “Now’s as good a time as any.”

  “Well, all right then.”

  He leaned down, and she lifted up on her tiptoes. She slid her arms around his neck. After a moment of deliberation, he put his arms around her waist. This was it, the big kiss. They needed to look passionate…in love. She tried not to think about the tongues part.

  “Should I move my head to the right or left?” he asked.

  “Don’t think about it. Just let it happen.” Magic.

  “Oh, right.”

  They both moved forward—and bumped noses. They adjusted, tilted their heads the other way—and bumped noses.

  “You stay that way, I’ll move,” she said.

  She tilted her head a fraction. With a narrowed eye, he measured the angle. He tilted a little more, a little less. Then he nodded a ready-to-go, which put him out of angle again. Finally, they were lined up and ready to have this all-out passionate kiss. They moved in, but at different rates of speed. Their mouths banged together, and they both instinctively backed up.

  “I forgot to calculate rate of acceleration. I’m usually good at that, like those riddles, if two trains are traveling at ninety miles per hour…”

  She raised her hand, and his words drifted off. “Forget trains. Forget the kiss. It’s not going to work.”

  “No kiss?” He actually looked disappointed.

  Some part of her felt the same way. As much as she’d been dreading it, she’d obviously been looking forward to it, too. “I guess we’re kind of committed at this point. But first, we have to forget all those people watching us.”

  “What people?” He was doing that focusing thing again, and she realized that he had already forgotten about their audience.

  “No more overanalyzing. I know. Tell me snail names.”

  “Snail names?”

  “Trust me on this.”

  And he did. “Delicatus, elegans, floridanus, fuscoflammellus, lucidovarius, nebulosus, osmenti, roseatus, septentrionalis, vonpaulseni—”

  She let that delicious rush overwhelm her as his voice caressed those exotic names. She leaned forward and kissed him. Direct contact, no hesitation, no aiming—connection! Magic. They lingered there for a moment before backing away. She wondered if she looked as shell-shocked as he did.

  “That was…nice,” he said.

  “Yeah, nice.”

  Then he leaned forward and kissed her again. Their mouths brushed against each other in a slow, back-and-forth motion. His movements were light and feathery, his mouth deliciously soft. Her breath hitched. She sneaked a peek at him, gratified to find his eyes closed. He was totally focused on his task. Her eyes drifted shut, and she sank into those deliberate, almost experimental caresses. Maybe this was what the snails did.

  They finished the kiss and stepped back again.

  “Really nice,” he said. His eyes were a darker blue than usual as he took her in.

  “Yeah…really nice.”

  This time they both stepped forward at the same time. His arms slid around her shoulders, her arms went around his waist, and their mouths connected perfectly again. Tingles skittered along her nerve endings as the heat from his body enveloped her. His fingers were slowly massaging the back of her neck. His mouth gently grasped her lower lip, tasting it, nibbling ever so slightly. She could taste the tang of the mandarin oranges he’d had for dessert and the sweetness of the cherry. She was almost dizzy from this more-than-nice kiss.

  This time when they parted, he blinked and said, “Wow.”

  “Yeah…wow.”

  Okay, so she wasn’t saying anything profound. That was because she was feeling profound. That one fairly innocent kiss had moved her more than any tongue kiss ever had.

  Stacy had that light-headed feeling she got when she’d just come out of a movie that had totally enraptured her. Especially when it was a matinee. She blinked in the light and wondered where the rest of the world had been lately.

  A sound at the level of her knees brought her attention to a toddler in a puffy pink outfit. Barrett took one look and stumbled back—right into the lake. Luckily he didn’t fall in. He splashed like an ungainly duck and gained his balance before taking the long way back to the bank.

  Stacy ignored him and knelt down to the toddler’s level. “Hi, there, Lynsey!”

  “Sorry about that,” Eric said as he headed toward them. He was Betty’s son and Lynsey’s father.

  “That’s okay. She knows her aunt Stacy, yes, she does.”

  Stacy sometimes baby-sat Lynsey, who gurgled in delight. “And that’s…that man way over there is Barrett.”

  He was shaking water from his pants, but he managed a nod.

  She picked up Lynsey and kissed her sticky cheek. “Hi, there, sweetie.” She felt the ache in her chest at wanting one of her own. Boy or girl, it didn’t matter. Having those arms wrapped around her neck, the pure love that only a baby can bestow, made her even more resolved to go through with her plan.

  Barrett was by the picnic tables, pouring water out of his shoes. She sat beside him and held out Lynsey. “You can’t really be afraid of this sweet little…Barrett, come back here.”

  “I know they’re sweet and little and harmless, but I just can’t relate to them. They make no sense to me. They…” His gaze took her in, Lynsey in her arms. For a moment that stiff expression softened. Just as quickly, he grabbed a couple of chairs. “I’ll start taking these inside the rec center.”

  Arlene watched him make a hasty retreat. “I’ll be darned. He really is afraid of babies. I figured he was making it up, you know, to throw me off.”

  Stacy was watching him, too. “He’s not that calculating.” She kissed Lynsey’s cheek and handed her to her uncle Joey, Eric’s twin brother
. “Just a little hopeless.”

  Stacy noticed Barrett looking at her, obviously checking to see whether she still had the baby in her arms before he made his way back to her.

  Nita said, “Now that you’re a couple, you must come dance tonight.”

  “I don’t ballroom dance, you guys know that.”

  “Dance?” Barrett looked horrified at the prospect, and he hadn’t even seen her dance yet.

  Nita answered Barrett’s question. “Ernie and Frieda teach ballroom dancing at the rec center on Monday evenings, and every Saturday night we have a dance. Stacy doesn’t take lessons because she doesn’t have anyone to dance with.”

  “Once in a while I fill in for someone,” Stacy said.

  Frieda gave her a sympathetic pat on the shoulder. “Yes, she does, bless her heart. Bless all of our hearts.”

  “But I don’t know how to dance,” Barrett said.

  “It’s like that kiss,” Frieda said. “Well, the second one. And the third one. It’ll come together just fine.”

  “All right, we’ll be there.” Stacy turned to Barrett. “Won’t we, sweetheart?”

  “We’ll give it our best shot, babe.”

  It didn’t sound quite natural, and yet it had that same effect on her. Part possession, part endearment.

  “It’s salsa night!” Nita called as they walked toward the table, giving a demonstration of a crazy hip swing type of movement.

  They were hanging onto their charade by their finger-nails. Tonight they’d bumble through the rumba and the tango, probably do permanent damage to each other’s toes.

  Barrett helped her load chairs and boxes of plastic silverware and napkins into the rec center. They tied Weasel Boy’s leash to the door handle so he wouldn’t get stepped on.

  She preceded Barrett into the large, dark closet, set down her boxes and turned right into him. He braced her arms automatically, and she glanced at those strong hands.

  “Sorry,” they both said, and it took him another several moments before he realized his hands were still on her. He released her, but remained there.

  “About that kiss,” he said.

  She said, “We shouldn’t talk about the kiss.”