Place Your Betts (The Marilyns) (19 page)

Tom rolled his neck and tried to relax. With one last attempt to impress, he wiped the tops of his boots on the back of his pant legs. Fingers shaking slightly, he knocked on the front door.

It swung open, and a lean, balding man with wireframe glasses stare up at Tom. “Howdy, son. I’m Chester Smith. Won’t you come in?”

Chester was joined by his chubby wife.

“Honey, you remember Tom. He works down at the feed store.” Mrs. Smith nodded stiffly at Tom. Now that Betts had mentioned it, Mrs. Smith did look like a blonde pit bull.

“Hello, Mr. and Mrs. Smith.” Tom stepped into the front hallway. “I’m not at the feed store anymore. I just got a job working for a…um, family friend.” It didn’t seem right to name-drop Betts. She was his friend, and she valued her privacy, plus most of the time, she was just Betts, not a famous country singer.

The Smiths smiled at him.

Tom smiled back.

Silence.

They continued smiling. Mr. Smith’s eyes darted down and back up several times.

Tom smiled.

Were they waiting for him to say something? Mrs. Smith glanced down at Tom’s hand. He looked down. The roses. Duh.

“Ma’am, this is for you.” He extended one flower to Mrs. Smith.

“Thank you.” Her smile brightened a notch.

Now what? They kept staring at him like he was missing something. Was he supposed to ask her father’s permission to take her out? Mr. and Mrs. Smith glanced down and then back up at his face several times.

Mr. Smith stepped forward and pointed to an open doorway. “Son, the bathroom’s through there. Your fly’s open.”

Time stood still as the two ounces of courage Tom had scrounged together to make it here crumbled. His face flamed. “Thanks.”

It took all he had not to turn on his heel and run back to the Mustang. Instead, he stepped into the small bathroom under the stairs and closed the door. The large, oval mirror hanging over the sink wasn’t big enough for a full view, but yes, his zipper hung open, and part of his red shirttail stuck out. Tom snapped up the zipper and rested his forehead against the mirror. This was a disaster. What had he been thinking?

A soft knock sounded at the door. He jerked bolt upright.

“Tom, are you ready?” It was Kaitlin’s voice.

Tom turned on the tap and washed his hands so he had a reason for being in here other than zipping his pants. “Yep. Be right out.”

The frilly pink towel with kittens and birds sewn on it looked too good to dry his hands. He scanned the room for something else. Toilet tissue. He snatched at the roll. One side of the holder came out of the wall, and the roll tilted to the left. Tom grabbed for it, but it was too late. The spring-loaded roller popped out and bounced behind the toilet. Smack. The fat roll of tissue landed in the bowl. He watched it take on water and sink to the bottom.

Did he fish it out? Leave it in? Tom looked around for something…anything to use instead of his hand. Not so much as a bottle of Listerine or a toothbrush jumped out to help him. Was he supposed to spend the evening with an arm coated in toilet water? Not exactly impressive.

Tom lifted his chin, picked up the rose, flicked off the light, and opened the door. As far as he was concerned, the bathroom was that way when he’d found it.

“Ready?” Kaitlin smiled up at him. Her sparkly blue top was the same color as her eyes. The top swooped up on one shoulder tied in a big knot, leaving the other shoulder bare.

Tom’s eyes lingered on her tanned skin.

“Yep.” His voice cracked. “Let’s go.”

As they walked toward the door, Tom offered his hand, and Kaitlin laced her fingers through his. Her skin was soft and warm.

Mr. Smith held the door open. “Have fun. Have her home by midnight.”

“Yessir.” Tom shook Mr. Smith’s hand. “I’ll take good care of her. Don’t you worry.” Tom pressed his lips together. What a dumb thing to say.

Kaitlin pulled him out the door and to the car. “Sorry about my parents. They’re not quite over my breakup with Lance. They loved him.”

She emphasized “loved” way too much.

Tom reached around her and yanked on the door handle. It didn’t budge. Locked. Wonderful. He shoved his hand in his pants pocket and whipped out the keys. With shaking fingers, he tried to get the key in the lock but kept missing. This wasn’t his night.

Kaitlin took the keys from him, opened the door, got in, and closed it.

If Tom had been eight, he’d have hidden under the bed and cried. But he was a man. And men didn’t cry even when it would have felt really good. Instead, he walked around to the driver’s side, took a deep breath, and slid in.

Kaitlin smiled and handed him the keys. “I’m nervous too.”

“But you’ve done this before.” He mashed his lips together before more stupid words fell out of his mouth.

How lame did that sound? Tom slammed his eyes shut and rested his head against the seat back.

Fabric rustled, and Kaitlin’s warm hand touched his thigh. “Look at me.”

His eyes flew open, and he turned to her. Kaitlin leaned in and pressed her lips to his. She sucked lightly on his upper lip and pulled back. In the waning dusk light, Tom saw one corner of her mouth turn up.

“First kiss is out of the way. Now we can both stop wondering.” She took the car keys from his hand and started the engine. “Let’s get out of my driveway before my mom starts watching from the kitchen window.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Tom saw a flicker of curtain, and part of Mrs. Smith’s face appeared. He threw the car in reverse and eased out of the driveway.

“Truth time. You make me nervous too. It took me two hours to decide what to wear and another hour getting ready. I wanted to look nice for you.” She sounded uncertain.

“You’re beautiful. The blue of your shirt matches your eyes. I noticed that right off.”

“Thanks. You look real nice too.” A slow smile worked its way across her face. “Let me give you the rundown on our date since this is your first time.”

Tom flinched. Was she making fun of him?

“We’ll go eat Chinese. I’ll order broccoli and beef, my favorite, and try to impress you with my mad chopstick skills. All the while trying not to look stupid, say the wrong thing, or spill food down my shirt. After dinner, I’ll go to the ladies’ room and make sure I don’t have food in my teeth.” Kaitlin rolled her eyes. “Beware, at some point this evening I’m going to start hiccupping. I…um…” She swallowed. “Hiccup when I’m super nervous.”

“Girls get super nervous? I didn’t know that. Y’all always look like you have everything under control.” Tom kept his eyes on the road and stayed five miles under the speed limit.

“Oh, yeah. We worry over everything. What if I trip and make a fool of myself? What if my hair falls or goes frizzy? Is there something hanging out of my nose? What if he doesn’t like me as much as I like him? It’s endless. It sucks.”

Thirty minutes later, Tom pulled into the parking lot of Hunan Chinese Restaurant. He grabbed the space closest to the door and took a deep, courage-bolstering breath. “Do you?”

Kaitlin stared at him. “Do I what?”

“Do you like me as much as I like you?” Tom brushed his fingertips against her cheek. “Let’s try this my way.”

He leaned down and touched his lips to hers. Slowly, he moved back and forth, sucking and tasting while his fingers traced her cheekbone. Kaitlin melted into him and opened her mouth. Her tongue ran across his lips. He followed her lead, circling her tongue with his and exploring her mouth.

Hhhup. Hup. Hup.
Kaitlin sat up, her eyes as round as hubcaps. Her hand clapped over her mouth. 
Hup. Hup. Hup.

Tom had never felt more powerful. The head cheerleader was nervous. Super nervous. Self-confidence erupted in him like Mt. Vesuvius. With complete certainty, he knew that Kaitlin Smith liked him as much as he liked her because he’d given her one mean case of the hiccups.

***

Betts was in love with Gabe.

She was an alcoholic, and he was her tequila. It was the past all over again, but this time, the stakes were higher. It wouldn’t just be her heart that got broken, but Tom could get caught in the crossfire. She’d just found her son; she couldn’t risk losing him again.

Surely there was some way out of this without hurting Tom or being hurt again by Gabe.

She’d been pacing from the living room to the bedroom and back again for the last hour, but nothing helped.

Grabbing a flashlight, she stepped out of her bus and into the thick, starless night. She needed a bigger area to pace. She’d go to the end of the driveway and back a few hundred times, or she could call Lucky and Charlie; they’d know what to do. They would help her reason this through.

She pulled her phone out of her back pocket, hit contacts, and shook her head. She needed to do this on her own. Her friends wouldn’t understand. They hated Gabe, with good reason. They had helped Betts pick up the pieces of her shattered life after Gabe had rejected her. No—she couldn’t call them. She’d work out her feelings for Gabe and then call her friends…tell them after the fact and fake bad cell reception so she could hang up quickly.

Shoving the phone back into her pocket, she stomped her way down the driveway. For her, it had always been more than just sex with Gabe. It hadn’t happened that way with the other nice men with whom she’d done the deed. Sex was physical, not emotional. How had she let things get this out of hand?

Betts blew out a long, slow breath.

Clearly, there was something wrong with her. She needed intense therapy and a lobotomy. There had to be a doctor who could help her. Modern medicine had eradicated polio and cholera and even wrinkles, so it was plausible that she could find someone to cut the Gabe-infected neurons out of her brain. Combine that with her reruns of Dr. Phil and she would be cured of “the Gabes.”

She plowed down to the end of the driveway and turned around. Okay, the lobotomy was a bad idea.

Betts kicked a rock out of her way. Finding a solution wouldn’t be easy, but she’d never let anything stop her when she wanted something, and she wanted a relationship with her son. Her feelings for Gabe were a complication.

He hadn’t loved her before. But if he had…

Just for a minute, she allowed herself the family fantasy. It was suppertime on an average weekday. She, Tom, and Gabe were seated at a huge dining table—not the formal kind set with linens and fine china but a sturdy farmhouse table whose surface was worn smooth by decades of family meals. In the center, a humble mason jar of wildflowers shared space with various bowls and plates heaping with food. Several of Tom’s friends sat opposite him, and snippets of their conversation drifted in and out of earshot as Gabe’s hand covered hers and squeezed lightly. He’d catch her eye, and in the way of long-married couples, they’d share a look spanning years of inside jokes, hardships, laughter, and love. The simple unadulterated pleasure of a boisterous family meal filled her with a longing that went straight to her soul.

Her heart ached for what might have been…what should have been. The perfect, loving family they would have made and all of the moments that a mother treasured. This was who she was and where she belonged, but it wasn’t where she’d ended up.

Betts’s heel caught on a rock, and she tripped, landing on one knee in genuflection to the life that hadn’t been. She righted herself and brushed off her pants. She wanted the dream, but she wouldn’t sacrifice her son to get it.

***

Gabe used the toe of his boot to push the front porch swing back and forth. For the last couple of hours, he’d been out here facing his demons—something he preferred to do alone—and doing his best to avoid thinking about Betts. And then she appeared out of the inky night. His heart rate kicked up a notch, and damn if his palms didn’t get sweaty. She turned him inside out…it wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. “What are you doing out here?”

“I didn’t know you were out here. I’m going. Didn’t mean to intrude.” Betts sounded unsure of herself. That vulnerability was all the encouragement he needed.

“Wait.” Gabe blew out a long breath. “We need to talk.”

That was the understatement of the century. They’d damn near caught the sofa on fire going at each other.

He knew she’d stopped walking because grass no longer crunched under her feet.

“Okay?” She packed a lot of apprehension in that one little word.

“Have a seat.” He shifted from the middle to one side of the swing.

The swing bumped lightly against something and then teetered as she sat down. The old wood didn’t groan under her weight. There was only a subtle adjustment to the rhythm.

“What happened on the sofa was nice and possibly a mistake.” Betts took a breath. “I’m sorry.”

Mistake, his ass. It had been wonderful up until the moment she’d stomped out.

“That sounded painful.” Slowly, he eased his arm up and rested it against the back of the swing. He didn’t exactly have it around her, but the potential was there.

“This is where you apologize,” Betts explained. “I say I’m sorry, and you say you’re sorry.”

“I’m not sorry.” A lock of her hair tickled the back of his hand. “I liked it. You get to me. Always have.”

His arm twitched with the need to commit to the embrace or drop it.

The hum of cicadas was the only sound for several minutes.

The swing shifted as she inched a bit closer to him. “You get to me too.”

That zing—the one he’d felt the first time he’d seen her—nailed him right in the heart. His arm rested comfortably along her shoulders.

“That was harder than the apology.” Betts relaxed into his arm. Stupid, happy giddiness about choking him alive. She wanted to be in his arms. Whether she’d done it consciously or not, she’d done it. “There never has been any middle ground between us. One minute, we’re arguing, and the next, we’re naked from the waist down.”

“The more things change, the more they stay the same.” They were either yelling or loving each other. “Volatile, that’s us.”

 “Oh, I don’t know. Volatile’s a little harsh. We fought a lot, but we laughed too.” Her weight shifted, and he could make out her profile. “Do you ever wonder what would have been if we’d stayed together?” Her voice was faint and breathy like it had traveled up from somewhere deep inside her.