Like Sweet Potato Pie (24 page)

Gas station. I jerked my car over into the gravel entrance, glad I’d caught it before it closed—which happened shockingly early out here in the country. A frosty crescent moon peeked from a brooding sky as I pulled up to the pump, and scattered stars twinkled. Reminding me of long walks down sparkling Tokyo streets, a million miles and memories away.

Instead my eyes fell across my rumpled Green Tree shirt and tie, hanging half out of my duffel bag. Dirty Mary Janes strewn across the floorboard, a smashed spaghetti noodle stuck to the bottom of one.

I grabbed my purse and scooted out, slamming the car door behind me. Just as a patron with a sleek, new Prius came around the corner of the pump and grabbed the windshield washer squeegee.

I reached for the gas cap, not realizing his speed, and whammed right into Carlos Torres Castro, Argentinean ex-fiancé and heartbreaker extraordinaire.

M
y knees buckled. The shock of seeing Carlos was one thing—but finding him at a run-down gas station on the side of a country road outside Staunton, Virginia—was another. Context slapped me in the face.

I felt myself sinking toward gravel, my breath squeezed out, when Carlos rushed around the pump and grabbed my shoulders, clumsily hauling me to my feet.

I wobbled there stupidly, not able to form a single word, as my senses came back in a muddled rush. Then I jerked myself away from his grip.

“What on earth are you doing here, Carlos?” I hollered, hands on my hips. My lips trembled as chilly wind whipped my hair from my once-smooth ponytail.

Am I dreaming? I must be dreaming. I just hope this isn’t the one where I’m being chased by a herd of black-eyed peas because that one always ends with …

I felt my knees sinking again and leaned against the side of my car with both hands, trying to force some sense or breath—whichever came sooner—back into my spinning head. Trying to make the two images of Carlos form into one.

“Oh, thank goodness it’s you,” he said breezily, leaning against the gas pump as if we’d planned this moment all along. His face achingly beautiful in the harsh shadows of the overhead fluorescent lights: proud cheekbones and strong chin, those black, almond-shaped eyes. His longish curly hair cut shorter, sleeker than I remembered it. “I’m lost. I’d just stopped to get directions.”

I had to remember, for a split second, that I was supposed to despise Carlos. So handsome he was in his fitted winter coat, preppy dark knit scarf around his neck.

“What do you mean thank goodness it’s me?” I spat, taking a step back. “You better not be looking for me, you …”

“
Amor.
I missed you. Come on.” He opened his arms and had the audacity to smile. “Please. Let’s talk.”

“Talk?” I shouted, so loud a woman with a blond ‘do the size of Texas gawked out the window of her broken-down car. I forced myself to lower my voice. “Are you here to see
me?
”

“I’d hoped so. Yes.” A hint of Spanish accent hung on Carlos’s perfect lips.

I stared, jaw wobbling open. “Doesn’t anybody from Japan bother to call me before showing up?” I shouted, forgetting my brief attempt at propriety. “You’re all nuts, you know that? Haven’t you ever heard of a phone?”

Carlos blinked in confusion. “Who else came from Japan,
mi amor?
I had no idea.”

Bunch of stalkers.
“How did you find my address?” I spoke through clenched teeth, fumbling for the gas cap. Angrily jerking the nozzle off the pump and turning my back on Carlos—in part so I wouldn’t have to look at his gorgeous face. “Kyoko wouldn’t give it to you, that’s for sure. And I’ll knock her lights out if she did.”

“Mrs. Inoue at that shop you like. She said you sent it in a letter.”

“You went to Mrs. Inoue’s shop?” Angry color rose to my cheeks, and my eyes burned as I jammed the nozzle into the Honda. “
My
favorite shop? Where I used to buy green onions and jasmine tea?”

“Shiloh,” Carlos whispered my name. In that tone of voice that used to thrill me. But I felt dead, motionless.

“I’m sorry.” He reached out to take my arm, but I shook it away. “Leaving you for Mia showed my … well, absolute stupidity. I didn’t deserve you, and I certainly don’t blame you for hating me.”

I whirled around, brushing my hair back again as the wind tossed it in my eyes. “Excuse me?”

“I broke up with Mia,
princesa.
And I miss you. I—I
love
you, Shiloh. I’ve always loved you.” He pushed himself off the pump, taking a step toward me. His perfectly fitting, trendy-classy jeans and nice sneakers contrasted with the gas-splattered, pockmarked asphalt littered with cigarette butts and blackened bubble gum.

“Don’t ‘princesa’ me!” I ordered, voice loud and tight. “Love? What are you talking about?”

“Shiloh, please. Just listen. I messed up. And I’m asking your forgiveness. You Christians know about forgiveness, right?”

“Oh, did Mrs. Inoue tell you about that, too?”

My voice came out harsh, but tears rose as Carlos’s sultry accent played in my ear, reminding me of old walks through the crowds at Shibuya, arm in arm. Spiky-haired Japanese teenagers milling past us, the girls giggling at Carlos and calling out “Haro!” in broken, butchered English. Cherry blossoms sprinkling pale pink all over the sidewalks.

In the middle of all this, as if seeing my ex-fiancé just a couple of miles from my house wasn’t enough, Carlos’s cell phone trilled in his pocket, and he pulled it out and turned away slightly, finger to his ear.

I felt dizzy again, gripping the back of my car to keep standing up straight.

“Yes,” I heard him say. “That’s right. Make sure you turn it in by Friday, or it’ll be … right. Good.” He lifted a finger at me, shrugging in apology. “But you have to … no. No. Let me explain again.”

I shook my head in disbelief as he rattled on in an ugly combination of Spanish and Japanese, the latter of which wasn’t Carlos’s strong point. I considered grabbing the phone to correct all his mangled verbs.

Without warning, he laughed a good-bye and flipped the cell phone closed. “Sorry about that. My work. They’re always bothering me, especially with this new intern. She’s hopeless. She has a thing for me though, for some reason, which … whatever. Forget it.”

I didn’t reply, mind still reeling over the fact that (1) Carlos was here, and (2) he’d interrupted an apology to answer some intern back in Tokyo.

“Listen. I had to talk to you, princesa,” he said, suddenly standing so close that I had to twist my neck to look up at him. A whiff of his sweet-smelling cologne slipped past my nostrils on the cold wind, over the stench of gasoline and an overfilled trash can. “I count the minutes without you. My heart is empty.” He dropped his voice to a whisper. “
Te necesito.
”

The same old Carlos, golden-tongued, that whisked my heart away two years ago. I don’t know if he practiced these lines in front of a mirror or something, but they worked.

I stood motionless, like one of those sparkling ice statues at the snow festival in northern Japan. People carved them with chain saws, crystalline shards flying against white drifts.

“Did you hear me, mi princesa? I love you. Will you think about us? Can we at least … talk? Please? Let me come home with you. I was just searching for the right road. See? It makes no sense to me. Look.” He pulled a printout map from his pocket, looking so pathetically helpless with his raised palms that for a fraction of a second my heart went out to him.

A flicker of dead hope twinkled against my will.

“Please, amor.” Carlos reached out and stroked his fingers through my hair, curling the strands behind my ear. Surveying my post-Green Tree knee boots, coat, tights, and wool winter dress with approval. “Do it for me. You look beautiful. Did I tell you that? Just look at you.” He kissed his fingertips and burst them open, like a blooming flower.

I stared at him, not saying a word, and then heard a sickening
thunk.
I squeezed the gas nozzle, and it thunked again.

“Oh no. I didn’t.” I spun around, dripping gas, to find the tank filled to the brim. At a total of more than sixty dollars. I let out a long groan. “I just … hold on a minute, Carlos. I’ve got to …”

Eleven bucks. That summed up all my cash. I left him there and dug in the car for my checkbook, paging desperately through the stubs to check my balance. Exactly ninety-two dollars in my checking account. Which meant I’d have to use money from somewhere else to keep my light bill from going off this week before they drafted it out of my account, slapping me with a nasty overdraft charge. Did this gas station even accept checks? I stood on tiptoe in my boots, muttering to myself as I searched for a N
O
C
HECKS
sign.

“You okay, princesa?” Carlos reached out and brushed my cheek. “Need something?”

“No thanks.”

“Can I follow you home? Please?”

“Forget it.”

I turned on my heel, halfway to the lighted gas station building, thinking of how I’d become a prude practically overnight after Adam’s old “what-would-the-neighbors-think” speech.

Eliza Harrison’s down-turned face popped into my mind. The fiend.

Or no. Maybe Adam was the fiend.

“You know what? Fine,” I said, shoving my hands in my pockets. “Whatever. But just to talk.” I glared at Carlos. “Don’t get any ideas.”

And I turned my back on him, pushing through the glass doors, which greeted my arrival with a tinkling bell, a rack of Slim Jim sausages, a mounted deer head, and a shelf full of NASCAR lottery tickets.

Shiloh P. Jacobs. What on earth are you doing?

The thought pulsed through me with almost palpable power, so strong I jerked my head up from my checkbook. The pen quivered in my fingers as I signed my name with a flourish. I deserved it; I’d argued a good five minutes with the frizzy-permed woman behind the counter before I thought to mention Earl Sprouse. She granted me approval on the spot. “He fixed my toilet once in the dead a winter an’ didn’t charge me nothin’,” she said. “We’ll take yer check.”

So this is how people did business in Staunton, Virginia. Or somewhere between Staunton, Churchville, and Nowhere, because a couple of rickety barns and dilapidated farmhouses served as the only sign of civilization along this desolate road. One silo sported a chunk of an old Holiday Inn hotel sign to patch a hole.

“Hey, yer that gal who went out with Shane the cop, ain’t ya?”

My fingers stopped on the checkbook. “Excuse me?”

“That Pendergrass boy. I know him.”

“It wasn’t a date,” I said through my teeth. “It was blackmail.”

I slapped the cap on my pen and waited for my receipt, staring angrily over cartons of glassed-in cigarettes and—with a shock of surprise—right at the woman’s faded “What Would Jesus Do?” sweatshirt.

I closed my checkbook then leaned forward to rest my elbows on the greasy counter to massage the bridge of my nose, where a headache started to pulse.

What
would
Jesus do, Shiloh? What would He want
you
to do?

I sighed and rubbed my eyes, probably smearing my mascara. The cheap stuff from Rite Aid, by the way. No more fancy cosmetics-counter Dior for me. Although to tell the truth, I really couldn’t tell much difference between the two. Which said a lot about the stuff I used to plunk my money down for so quickly back in Japan.

“You okay, hon?”

“Huh?” I stopped rubbing my forehead.

“Y’all right?” She paused her gum chewing and leaned toward me, earrings jingling.

I straightened up and stuffed my pen and checkbook back in my purse. “Sure.”

“Sorry. Ya jest looked a little upset.”

I took my receipt. “I’ll be fine. I just wish life were simpler.”

“Don’t we all.” She patted my hand with be-ringed fingers, her short, ridged nails painted an ugly puke-rose color. “Jest lean upon the Savior, doll. He’ll he’p ya make it through.”

I grasped her hand tightly as if reaching out for hope, for one sliver of solid sanity in my frazzled brain. And felt my throat choke up as she shook it firmly in hers, patting it with her other veiny one.

The bell on the door tinkled, and I abruptly grabbed my purse and keys and marched toward the brightly lit gas pumps, pulling on my gloves as I went. A rusty Chevy truck pulled in front of Carlos’s car, blasting something by the Dixie Chicks.

Pray. I need to pray.
I managed to think something along the lines of,
Please, Jesus, don’t let me mess up my life more than it already is,
and then took a deep breath and plunged through the double doors.

T
he dull parking lot lights glowed down on my car in coppery ribbons as I squeezed into a parking space. Carlos switched on a turn signal behind me and eased to a stop by a potted tree.

I turned off the ignition and looked out over the shadowy parking lot in the quiet, remembering when I’d first met Adam standing over by that concrete divider, baseball cap pulled low in the summer sun. Me in my black funeral dress and Adam covered with mulch.

I hadn’t known Jesus then. Hadn’t known Mom, or even cared to.