AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Shelly shook her head. “You know it’s for your own good, honey. It’s just going to take you a little while to figure out why, I guess.”
My lip had worked its way between my teeth, and I chewed on it anxiously, my head shaking slowly as my eyes went between my foster mother’s face and the closed door that hid Jake and Cal and muffled their words. Suddenly the soft, indistinct murmur of deep voices saying serious words gave way to boisterous masculine laughter, even more worrying from my point of view.
“I’m…” I said, feeling an instant need to get out of there, so I wouldn’t see the expressions on Jake’s and Cal’s faces as they emerged from the office. “I’ll put these in my room, ma’am.”
I turned and almost ran for the stairs, the water in the makeshift vase sloshing almost over the edge.
“Come right back on down,” Shelly called after me, as if sensing that my feelings about leaving my room once I had reached it were decidedly mixed. “Don’t keep Cal waiting.”
When Cal went to open the door of his truck for me, I didn’t understand.
“Wait,” I said. “You’re driving, right?”
Cal laughed. “Life in the city really is different, isn’t it?” he asked. For a moment I thought he might be making fun of me, but in the twilight I could see what looked like a gentle smile on his face. He opened the door and held it wide.
How many fucking times was I going to blush tonight? I hoped that maybe with the sun almost down, and providing a particularly rosy kind of sunset as well, Cal might not notice.
“Oh,” I said, feeling my mouth twist to the side. I still had that feeling of detached, floaty observation, but at this point I felt like I might almost be enjoying it, even though it made me wonder whether I would notice if I happened, say, to fall flat on my face before I could get to the door of Cal’s truck.
Euphoria. Was that the word? In any case, the revelation that the man who had brought me wildflowers had actually just opened the car door for me heightened the sense of unreality, and the magical glow of dusk over the broad, flat cornfields did nothing to dispel it.
“No one’s ever opened a door for you, on a date?” Cal asked, as I started to climb in. He didn’t sound like he meant to tease me, or express real disbelief. I felt a frown pass quickly across my face as I understood that he meant to start a conversation. It seemed bizarre, even to me, but I realized that I couldn’t remember a guy just starting a conversation with me, any more than I could remember them opening a door for me.
“Nope,” I told him, trying to make it sound completely casual, like it didn’t matter to me at all, or even like I’d rather have opened the door myself. Cal closed the door with a thunk and walked around to the driver’s side. When he opened the door and started to climb in, something in my mind decided that I couldn’t really be sure he understood just how casually I viewed this whole thing.
“I mean, like, I guess Jake opened the door of his truck for me yesterday, so it’s, you know, not a big deal at all.”
That didn’t sound right, either. Cal didn’t respond; he had his keys in his hand and I watched him insert one of them into the ignition.
“I mean,” I went on, suddenly unable to stop the nervous flow of my words, “I guess I never had a guy open a door on a date, but that’s because, you know, I’ve never really been on a…”
I felt like an idiot. How could I have revealed that to Cal, my court-appointed ‘suitor’? I wanted him to think I was a sophisticated urban girl, didn’t I? Much too, you know, urban for a small-town mechanic. I needed to change the subject right away.
“So what did Jake tell you?” I blurted out. No, no, no. My cheeks blazed up once again.
Cal turned the key and the truck roared to life. He didn’t answer me, but instead did something with one of the control lever things coming out of the steering wheel. It made the truck shudder—I had never driven, myself, so I had no actual idea what he’d done. The size of his hand, though, as it moved the lever thing, made me frown as a thrill of anxiety, mingled with unwelcome need, went through my system.
He reached his right arm over toward me. I opened my mouth, about to cry out in alarm, and I shrank back toward the door with my hands in front of me balled into fists. I felt absolutely sure Cal meant to grab me and teach me a lesson about asking such questions. Instead, he put his hand behind the bench seat so he could twist his shoulders in my direction and look back behind him, through the cab’s rear window.
I understood: he had put the truck in reverse. He needed to back up, to turn around and head down the driveway. As if my violent overreaction had startled him, Cal turned back from the rear window to look at me. His face wore a slight frown, as if he felt the need to study me more closely, in order to understand what he had just seen.
“Well,” he said, “one thing Jake told me is that you’re a handful.”
CHAPTER 18
Grace
I knew that here in the confined cab of Cal’s truck, even with the red light of sunset bathing us through the windshield, my latest massive blush must be totally visible.
“I…” I said, suddenly losing myself inside his blue eyes, seeing myself through them and finding I had nothing at all to say. “I…”
His frown deepened a little, but not in anything like a mean or even a judgmental way. I felt my own brow crease hard.
“I don’t…” I managed, and then, in a small, almost helpless-sounding voice, “I don’t know what that means.”
Cal’s face changed from an expression of puzzlement to one of happy, slightly mischievous appreciation in a moment. The way his mouth had quirked up at the side made it impossible for me not to answer the smile with one of my own.
He turned back toward the rear window and started to back up.
