The Fake Out: Chapter 52

Chris brought us help in the form of three of his fellow teammates, all of them giants with ready smiles. Between the four of them, they filled up our tiny library. They didn’t come empty-handed, either; they brought their checkbooks, and they weren’t afraid to use them.

“Why?” I asked Chris as I watched Sherrod Young, the insanely popular quarterback for the Oklahoma Stars, bid an ungodly amount of money for a floral arrangement.

“The flowers? Sherrod has to apologize to his wife a lot.” Chris grinned. “He says stupid stuff all the time. Once, in an interview, he said that his wife was just a stay-at-home mom. He had to sleep at a hotel for three weeks and buy her a very expensive necklace to go back home.”

I laughed. “Not the flowers. Why are these men here?”

He shrugged. “I asked them and they’re my friends. Plus, they owe me one.”

I leaned in and lowered my voice. “Were these the guys with you in Vegas?”

Chris nodded. “They feel bad for how that all went down. So, it only took a little guilt-tripping and one call to Sherrod’s wife.”

I gazed at him for a long moment, running Ali’s words through my mind. An emotion I didn’t want to name made me feel almost buoyant. Chris Sterns was a good man; likely the best man I knew. For the first time in a long time, the weight I carried seemed lighter, manageable. Maybe this wouldn’t all come crashing down in a fiery inferno.

“Thank you.”

He tapped the tip of my nose, his smile warm. “Anything for you, Sprinkles.”

“Don’t call me Sprinkles.” I turned back to the activity in front of me. But slowly, I slid my hand in his and held on tight.

It was soon after word got out that Chris Sterns and his friends were at the auction that people began to arrive. Although that may have also had something to do with the rats.

A rumor that rats were spotted in the kitchen of the pizzeria spread like wildfire. In fact, someone even had a photo. Sure, it was blurry, and it was a little hard to tell if it had been taken in the restaurant, but the good people of Two Harts weren’t willing to risk getting the plague for discounted pizza.

For the next hour, the people came. The library grew full of laughter and excitement and, most importantly, the sound of pens scratching on paper as they wrote out bids.

Did we raise $100,000? Of course not. But it was a start, and I was hopeful. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d really, truly felt hopeful.

After the auction ended at eight, people wandered over to the Sit-n-Eat for the dance. Mama pulled me aside and pressed a bag in my hand.

“What’s this?” I asked.

“I brought you a little something to change into,” she said. “For the dance.”

“You didn’t have to do that.” I waved a hand at my t-shirt and jeans. “I’m fine like this.”

Mama smiled. “You are that, Maebe, but I thought it would be fun for you to dress up a little. Sue took me shopping at the outlet mall and helped me pick it out.”

“Mama, you didn’t need to spend money on me.”

“Of course I did. You’re my child and I want to give you things. Sometimes it seems like it’s always the other way around.” She wrapped a hand around my wrist and adopted her “do not argue with me” voice. “Now, you’re going to go get that dress on, put a comb through your hair and maybe a little lip gloss and come dance with your fiancé. Understood?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She patted me on the cheek. “That’s better.”

In the bathroom, I put on the yellow wrap dress I found in the bag. It fell to just above my knees and flared when I twirled. Mama had also brought me a pair of sandals, earrings, and yes, lip gloss. I combed out my hair and left it down.

Standing back as far as I could in the little bathroom, I checked myself out in the mirror. I thought of what Chris might say when he saw me, and I smiled. Then I stopped smiling because I shouldn’t care what Chris thought of me. Then I sighed because I didn’t know what to think anymore.

The warm night air washed over me as I walked the two blocks over to the dance. Before I even saw it, I heard the music and the murmur of the crowd. When I turned the corner, I gasped.

The Sit-n-Eat had been transformed into a wonderland. The parking lot had been blocked off and the wide wooden porch had been strung with fairy lights. Tables were scattered around the edges, topped with stacks of old books and mason jar vases of flowers as centerpieces. Simple, yet special.

Maybe it was the soft lighting or that we’d all dressed up a little or that the auction had been such a success, but the atmosphere was jubilant. All my favorite people were there—the library committee members; Horace and Mrs. Katz were dancing together, and they seemed to almost enjoy it. Ali; who chatted it up with one of Chris’s teammates; Mama, Sue, and, across the way, dressed in jeans and a button-down shirt and laughing with the high school football coach, was Chris.

Like he could feel me, his head turned and his eyes met mine; he smiled slowly. I waved back and tried to ignore the strange mix of emotions inside me. Nervousness, excitement, and something else I wasn’t ready to say, even to myself.

Maybe I was a little drunk with all those emotions because when a slow song came on and Chris wandered over and held out his hand, I took it. Probably also why I let him hold me close. Probably why I closed my eyes and buried my nose in his shirt, to remember his smell, and the feel of his hands on my back.

A memory to keep forever.

“The dress suits you,” he said quietly.

I pulled back enough to see his face. “Can I ask you something?”

“Anything, Sprinkles.”

“Don’t call me Sprinkles,” I said, but my heart wasn’t in it. “That thing you say, ‘It suits you,’ I heard your dad say it to your mom.”

“There’s a story behind it.”

The song changed but we didn’t separate. A beat passed, then another.

“Are you going to tell me the story?” I finally asked.

He grinned. “It goes like this: Mom and Dad met in college when they both took a required art class their freshman year. Mom liked Dad right away, but Dad has always been a little shy, kind of quiet. And you’ve met Mom; she never stops talking.”

I smiled at the affection in his voice.

“One day, she asked if he wanted to get lunch and he said yes. And that’s how it went for the next three years. Mom invited him places; Dad accepted, and so on. But it was purely as friends. Drove Mom crazy. She didn’t mind he was quiet, but she did mind that he held his feelings so close. About the closest thing he said to pretty words was, ‘It suits you.’”

“For three years?”

“Three whole years.” Chris grinned. “In all that time, Dad had never asked her out or even made a move on her. So, Mom got fed up. One day, she laid into him, told him she was tired of never knowing where she stood with him, and she was done.”

“Uh-oh.”

“But, and this is the important part.” He pulled me even closer. “Dad looked right at her and said, ‘I tell you I love you all the time, I just don’t say those words. But you suit me just fine.’”

My heart dropped to my feet and then slowly climbed back up. Like a roller coaster, except I had no idea where the top or bottom were. I was going in blind.

Chris cupped my cheeks with his hands and tilted my face, so I had no choice but to meet his eyes. “You’re freaking out.”

“I-I-I am not freaking.”

I was totally, completely, undeniably freaking out. This might be the freak out of all freakouts in a few seconds. The roller coaster had reached the summit and I might puke on the way down.

“You’re freaking out, Sprinkles.”

I flushed. “I am not.”

“I expected that.” He smiled, his eyes warm. “You’re terrified.”

“Excuse me?”

“You’re scared. Like a skittish horse.”

“I am not a horse.” I stomped my foot like, well, a horse.

“It’s okay, I’m patient.”

“I don’t need you to be patient. Because I’m not scared and I’m not freaking out and everything is fine. You surprised me. Can I not be surprised when… when… you said the thing you said?”

I watched his smile turn into a grin and realized he’d done it again, taken me from certain meltdown to annoyance.

“I just have to prove it to you,” he said, more to himself.

“Prove what?”

He kissed me, slow and sweet like time was merely a suggestion, his thumbs idly tracing my cheekbones. It went on and on, warming me from the inside out. That kiss went a long way to making me forget what I’d been freaking out about to begin with.

When he pulled back, my eyes blinked open, and I uttered the only eloquent thing to express my feelings. “Whoa.”

“Yup. Whoa.” He took my hand and led me off the makeshift dance floor. “We’ll talk about it. I’m sure you’ll come around to my way of thinking. I have a PowerPoint presentation even.”

Maybe he was right. Maybe there could be more between us. Maybe we were suited for each other. Maybe…

But something caught my eye in the crowd and my stomach dropped.

Because that’s when I saw my father.