to tip the scales a little bit in Bernadette’s favor. And to divide the group up according to their interests and abilities. Really.
You see, Jan and Chloe were on the side of closing the place down. Gloria had all those complaints to share, and Gallina Roja? I have my own mother-in-law, thank you very much. I did not need to deal with somebody else’s while trying to conduct my first-ever action council.
So Maxine, the Reverend Cordell, Bernadette and I took charge of the side of making the flea market more community-friendly. It’s not my fault that that also fit in with my goal of making the Reverend more Bernadette-friendly.
We all agreed that our first step should be to go over and eyeball the premises on a non flea market day. Which led me to be standing by Bernadette the next day, asking, “So? What did you think of him?”
“Jake?” Bernadette fidgeted for a few seconds with thehumongous ring of keys she’d picked up from the man who owned the drive-in property. Then she gave me a sly look—half teasing, half warning that I should tread lightly. “What is there to think about him?”
Tread lightly? Had the girl not spent any time in my company? Besides, I’d seen the look in her eyes when Jake spoke to her over the mess she dumped at his feet Wednesday. Not love at first sight, but something even more powerful. She liked the guy. They clicked.
Something in her gaze said, “I know neither one of us is perfect, but I don’t mind if you don’t.” Hope, and the acceptance of someone, flaws and all—if there was ever anything more powerful than lightning-bolt love, that was it.
But Bernadette had a bad first impression to overcome, and one did not do that by treading lightly.
“The Reverend Cordell.” I waved, big and bold, at the man unfolding his long legs from a nondescript compact car under a big old pecan tree. I went so far as to reach up on tiptoe to extend myself and make sure he saw me— us. I don’t know how he could have missed us, of course, Bernadette’s cumbersome white service van and my big old truck being the only vehicles parked in the flat expanse along the side of the drive-in. “So what do you think?”
“About…?” she said, and I just knew she was playing coy.
I pointed, shielding the gesture from the man’s view with my body.
“Oh, about Jake. ” Bernadette said the man’s name as if she’d said it before. A lot. Over and over. The way someone does when they practice for a chance meeting—a much-anticipated and intricately planned for chance meeting, that is. “I like him fine.”
She turned toward him and raised her hand to wave, too. Then, seeing that he was preoccupied with trying to clean up those sad old shoes, she dropped her hand to her side. She let out a low breath and chewed her lower lip.
If I’d let her, she would have stood right there and talked herself out of any kind of a chance with the fellow. Oh, no, not on my watch. I gave her shoulder a nudge. “Go welcome him out here.”
“Me?”
“Well, you are the tour guide du jour, aren’t you?”
She looked at me, then at the old concrete Satellite Vista Drive-In sign, then at the keys in her hand, and a slow smile worked its way across her pretty face.
“Go.”
It was a hot day, even for the first week of July, and I welcomed the shade of the trees around us, both for their cooling effect and for the way they hid any telltale show of nerves on my part.
She hurried off without a speck of further encouragement.
I shook my head and joined Maxine, who had been sitting in my truck pouting, because she really hadn’t wanted to devote this kind of time to my made-up-on-the-spot concerned-citizens’ action council. She’d argued that she just wasn’t all that concerned, and didn’t see why she should have to get her shoes muddy tromping around a place she was going to come to and spend the day at twenty-four hours from now anyway. So I had a hard time this morning getting her to budge
You see, Jan and Chloe were on the side of closing the place down. Gloria had all those complaints to share, and Gallina Roja? I have my own mother-in-law, thank you very much. I did not need to deal with somebody else’s while trying to conduct my first-ever action council.
So Maxine, the Reverend Cordell, Bernadette and I took charge of the side of making the flea market more community-friendly. It’s not my fault that that also fit in with my goal of making the Reverend more Bernadette-friendly.
We all agreed that our first step should be to go over and eyeball the premises on a non flea market day. Which led me to be standing by Bernadette the next day, asking, “So? What did you think of him?”
“Jake?” Bernadette fidgeted for a few seconds with thehumongous ring of keys she’d picked up from the man who owned the drive-in property. Then she gave me a sly look—half teasing, half warning that I should tread lightly. “What is there to think about him?”
Tread lightly? Had the girl not spent any time in my company? Besides, I’d seen the look in her eyes when Jake spoke to her over the mess she dumped at his feet Wednesday. Not love at first sight, but something even more powerful. She liked the guy. They clicked.
Something in her gaze said, “I know neither one of us is perfect, but I don’t mind if you don’t.” Hope, and the acceptance of someone, flaws and all—if there was ever anything more powerful than lightning-bolt love, that was it.
But Bernadette had a bad first impression to overcome, and one did not do that by treading lightly.
“The Reverend Cordell.” I waved, big and bold, at the man unfolding his long legs from a nondescript compact car under a big old pecan tree. I went so far as to reach up on tiptoe to extend myself and make sure he saw me— us. I don’t know how he could have missed us, of course, Bernadette’s cumbersome white service van and my big old truck being the only vehicles parked in the flat expanse along the side of the drive-in. “So what do you think?”
“About…?” she said, and I just knew she was playing coy.
I pointed, shielding the gesture from the man’s view with my body.
“Oh, about Jake. ” Bernadette said the man’s name as if she’d said it before. A lot. Over and over. The way someone does when they practice for a chance meeting—a much-anticipated and intricately planned for chance meeting, that is. “I like him fine.”
She turned toward him and raised her hand to wave, too. Then, seeing that he was preoccupied with trying to clean up those sad old shoes, she dropped her hand to her side. She let out a low breath and chewed her lower lip.
If I’d let her, she would have stood right there and talked herself out of any kind of a chance with the fellow. Oh, no, not on my watch. I gave her shoulder a nudge. “Go welcome him out here.”
“Me?”
“Well, you are the tour guide du jour, aren’t you?”
She looked at me, then at the old concrete Satellite Vista Drive-In sign, then at the keys in her hand, and a slow smile worked its way across her pretty face.
“Go.”
It was a hot day, even for the first week of July, and I welcomed the shade of the trees around us, both for their cooling effect and for the way they hid any telltale show of nerves on my part.
She hurried off without a speck of further encouragement.
I shook my head and joined Maxine, who had been sitting in my truck pouting, because she really hadn’t wanted to devote this kind of time to my made-up-on-the-spot concerned-citizens’ action council. She’d argued that she just wasn’t all that concerned, and didn’t see why she should have to get her shoes muddy tromping around a place she was going to come to and spend the day at twenty-four hours from now anyway. So I had a hard time this morning getting her to budge
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