Out with the In Crowd (10 page)

“Why’d you go out for pancakes?” I asked.

“We do this every once in a while. I don’t know why. Mom likes ’em a lot, I guess.”

I fingered the stitching on my quilt. Abbie had said she didn’t mind if I told Connor about the baby, but I didn’t know how to broach it. “So, I have something to tell you, but you shouldn’t say anything to Chris yet.” Connor didn’t answer. “Are you there?”

“I’m waiting.”

“Abbie and I met with an adoption agency earlier. That’s why I wasn’t there tonight. She considered giving it up— giving
her
up—but decided not to.”

Silence.

“Are you there?”

“Sorry. That time I was thinking. What does this mean for Lance?”

“I don’t know. Abbie didn’t say, but of course he said he wants to be involved. I’m doubtful.” I rolled onto my back and gazed up at the dark ceiling. “At this point, I’m wondering if Hawaii maybe wouldn’t be such a bad idea.”

“Why do you say that?” Connor asked, his voice guarded.

“A fresh start might be good for Abbie, that’s all.” I could hear him breathing, but he didn’t respond. “Tell me what you’re thinking.”

“That I don’t want to lose you.”

“We’re not talking about
me
going. We’re talking about Abbie,” I said.

But my mind filled with palm trees, with golden beaches. With Jodi watching Connor the same way she used to watch Eli.

11

“We missed you on Tuesday,” Heather said as we ripped stitches out of old skirts.

“Yeah, Abbie had . . .”
Think, think!
“A baby thing.”

Heather didn’t seem to notice me bobbling words. “I met your friend Jodi. She’s a lot of fun.”

I bristled at this. Even Heather? “Yeah.”

Heather paused her work and studied my face. “Do you not like Jodi? I thought Connor introduced her as a friend of yours.”

So Connor had handled the introductions? I mean, it made sense. He drove her there, she didn’t really know anyone else, of course they’d spent time together. I guess I’d been avoiding the idea of how the night might have gone.

I forced out a wooden chuckle. “Yeah, Jodi and I are friends. I just stuck myself with the seam ripper.”

“I hate that.” She returned to her skirt and I returned to mine. “You think she’ll come back on Tuesday?” Heather asked.

Jodi’d had a good time at youth group. She’d jabbered about it a lot on Wednesday. A better person—a nicer person—would have been happy about this. Regardless of how far I’d come since last summer, I still wasn’t nice enough to encourage Jodi’s spiritual well-being when it meant her spending more time with my boyfriend.

“She really liked it,” I said.

Heather beamed, unleashing even more guilt inside me. “Wonderful. I love having seniors there. It’s really important for the underclassmen to see.”

Okay, enough of this. “Did you ever go out with that guy? The pharmacist or whoever?”

“Yeah.” She shook her head. “Nothin’.”

“Bummer.” Heather went on lots of first dates, but few seconds. “You don’t even want to try a second free dinner?”

Heather’s face soured and she shook her head, like Curtis did when Amy tried to make him take a bath. “I’m not into recreational dating. If he’s not the right one, I’m not interested.” She ripped away her final seam with a flourish. “I’d hate to be tied up with Mr. Wrong and miss Mr. Right.”

Reaching for strips of red fabric, I thought of how I’d met Connor the day I started dating Eli. Of how Abbie met Chris the same night she’d announced to me she was pregnant. Maybe Abbie and Chris could be together now if only I’d been a better example.

“There’s a new doctor working in the NICU who’s pretty cute,” Heather said with a shrug. “I’m trying to figure out if he’s a Christian.”

Heather worked as a nurse for moms who’d just had babies. It seemed to me a very noble profession, the encouragement of new life. If only it interested me.

I gave the red corduroy a cross look—I wished I wanted to do more than fuss with clothes. I’d never been passionate about anything else—other than having a good time.

Now it seemed so frivolous. It didn’t fit into this new life I hoped to create for myself.

I let the skirt, the fabric swatches, and my scissors fall into a heap on my lap. “I don’t think this looks right.”

Heather’s face pinched into a frown. “What are you talking about? It looks fine.”

“It looks . . . I dunno. It just looks wrong.”

“That’s because it’s not finished. You can’t look at it when it’s half done and expect it to be perfect.”

“I guess.”

She studied me as I continued to sulk. “You’ve seemed really frustrated recently. When you first started coming over, you worked circles around me. Now you flit from project to project.”

“Just a lot on my mind, I guess.”

“Just a lot on my “Like what?”

Where to begin? The baby who’d take over my house in about seven and a half weeks? My MIA mother, who may or may not be filing for divorce and moving to Hawaii? My recently haunting dreams about lush tropical gardens and surfing? Or my former best friend making herself comfortable with my church and my boyfriend, the two things she knew could hurt me most?

I could trust Heather with these things; she’d proven it to me. She was the first one I’d told about Abbie’s pregnancy, about Mom and Dad’s marital problems. She’d faithfully prayed for us while keeping her mouth shut.

“My classes are just really hard this semester,” I said with a hopefully convincing smile.

So if I knew I
could
trust her, why
didn’t
I?

At home, Connor’s SUV hogged the driveway.

“What are you doing here?” I asked when I found him seated on a barstool, talking to my father.

He gave me a cheeky grin. “I came for the warm and welcoming atmosphere.”

Amazing. I hadn’t cracked a genuine smile all day, but somehow this guy could always pull one out of me. “I’m just surprised, is all.” I claimed the barstool beside him. “Hi, Daddy.”

Dad smiled at me over the top of his glasses. “How was Heather’s?”

“Fine.”

“What wacky creation did you come home with today?”

I’d ironed the skirt at Heather’s, folded it, and nestled it inside my purse. But I said, “It’s not ready yet.”

Beneath the counter, hidden from my father’s eyes, Connor’s hand found my knee. “You ready to go?”

“What?”

He gave me a look. “You seriously forgot?”

And then I remembered yesterday, him pointing out that Sunday would be our three-month anniversary. “Unfortunately, I babysit on Sunday nights for Mom and Dad’s Bible study,” he’d said, “so could we go out Saturday night instead?”

And somehow I’d forgotten. Eli hadn’t exactly wined and dined me. He’d apparently exhausted all chivalry during his three-year, off-and-on pursuit.

“Of course I didn’t forget.” I squeezed his hand beneath the counter. “Just let me get changed.”

“You’ll want something warm,” Connor called after me.

Something warm? Where was he taking me? Ice fishing?

Dressing both cute and warm seemed impossible. I tried on four different sets of light layers. They all made me look ten pounds heavier than when I’d come upstairs. Of course, I’d be wearing my down coat, which turned me into a powder blue snowman. But why should I care? This was
Connor
. The guy appeared to own a thousand pairs of identical Adidas tear-aways.

I scowled at my puffy reflection and trotted downstairs.

My father had returned to work, and Connor stood in the living room, looking at baby pictures of Abbie and me. He tapped on the picture of my first Easter. “That’s a big, frilly dress.”

I made a face. “Someone should’ve called child services on them.”

Connor chuckled and turned to me. “Wow, you look beautiful.”

“I do?” I looked down at my wool sweater and cords. “I feel puffy.”

“No, you’re cute.” He pinched my side. “Wow. You took me seriously about dressing warm.”

“Well, you haven’t told me what we’ll be doing, so I didn’t know how seriously to take you. But Connor, this is supposed to be a date, an important date, and right now I just feel disgusting—”

He clamped his hand over my mouth, his eyes shining. He apparently found my frustration amusing. “No more crazy talk. Even with another ten layers, you’d still be head and shoulders above any other girl.”

My face heated with the compliment. All my life, guys had told me I was beautiful and it never did a thing for me. But with Connor, sometimes he just looked at me and I felt all warm and gooey inside. Like the molten lava cakes Amy Ross made, with the firm outside and runny chocolate centers.

After kissing me, Connor held up a necktie.

I looked from it to him. “I know I wear some outrageous stuff, but that really clashes with my sweater.”

Connor rolled his eyes. “It’s a blindfold so you don’t know where we’re going. I’m trying to be romantic. Now turn around so I can tie it.”

After triple-checking to make sure I couldn’t see, Connor finally led me out to the car. I took several guesses along the way—that park out south he kept saying he wanted to take me to, the lake, the Plaza for a carriage ride.

“Ooh, that would’ve been a good one. I’ll have to save that for another anniversary,” Connor said as the road got suddenly bumpy, like we were driving on gravel.

I gripped my seat. “How long since we left my house? Did you take me out to the country?”

“Nope.” The car slowed to a stop. “Go ahead and take it off.”

I pulled down the blindfold. “Why would you bring me here?”

“Why would I bring you here?” Connor laughed. “This is where we met.”

I made a face. “But I was so rude to you.”

“Well, I looked for a place in Kansas City where you weren’t, but I couldn’t find one.”

I backhanded him in the chest. “Low blow.”

“I’m kidding,” he said. “Come on.”

He retrieved several blankets and a brown Planet Sub sack from the backseat. We walked across the gravel parking lot to the dusty, vacant fields.

“It’s strange like this,” Connor said. “I didn’t think it’d be this eerie.”

I thought about the previous Sunday, when I’d frozen on the bleacher and hung up on Connor for mentioning Jodi.

He glanced at me. “If you want to go somewhere else, we can.”

I shook my head. “It’s perfect.”

Connor spread one of the blankets onto a bleacher before we sat. At the bite of the wind, he said, “At least there won’t be any bugs.”

I yanked at the zipper of my coat. “That’s one way to look at it.”

“Creamy club,” he said, handing over my foil-wrapped sandwich. He noticed me staring at him. “Isn’t that what you get?”

“Yeah, I . . .” It touched me that he knew that kind of stuff, what I ordered at specific restaurants. Would my friends know? Would my family? That Connor cared enough to pay attention made us feel real, like we could be this way— him and me—for a while. For forever. But this seemed like kind of a lot to throw at him.

“I just didn’t know you knew,” I said.

He smiled. “Of course I know.”

I took a bite of my sandwich and observed the frosty field. “This time of year, it’s always a little hard for me to remember what summer feels like. Free time, warmth, green. It’s always a little hard to believe that it’ll all come back.”

“Are you really that cold? ’Cause we can eat in the car.”

“No, I’m fine.” I wiggled my toes inside my shoes, making sure they hadn’t fallen off. “But you should probably ask me again in five minutes.”

Connor smiled and smoothed my wind-whipped hair from my face. “So, what’d you think of me that first night we met?” He held up a hand to keep me from answering. “Let me guess. You thought, Where have you been all my life?”

I laughed. “How’d you know?”

“I have a hunch about these things.”

I took several bites of my sandwich. “This is really good. Thank you.”

“You know, I was serious about the question.” His gloved fingers caressed my hair again, creating static cling. “About what you thought of me that first night.”

He really wanted an answer? But why? Surely he knew my initial thoughts of him hadn’t been flattering.

“Well, it was the first night after . . .” I didn’t say it. Aaron was someone we never, ever talked about. “You seemed overbearing, but I think I just wasn’t in a place to meet anybody new. Especially a guy.”

Connor didn’t seem offended. “I probably
was
overbearing. I knew I needed to say hi to you, that it’d be weird if Eli came back and I hadn’t, but you were so . . .” He tipped his head from side to side as if searching for the right word. With each tip, my stomach wound tighter. I assumed he was searching for a way to avoid insulting me.

“Just say it,” I said into my sandwich.

Connor sighed. “It’s embarrassing. You’ll think I’m shallow.”

“No more shallow than me.”

He sighed again. “You were intimidatingly beautiful.”

There he went, making me all gooey inside. “That’s what you thought?”

He nodded, his gaze never straying from my face. “But of course I didn’t want you knowing I was intimidated, so I probably seemed freakishly friendly.”

I chuckled at the memory of Connor thrusting out his hand for me to shake. He’d yammered on and on about why Eli was giving him a ride home, about how he’d lived in Kansas City once before. In my perfect hindsight, his nerves were obvious.

“Well, don’t worry,” I said. “I had no idea you felt that way.”

Connor pantomimed wiping sweat off his forehead. Then his expression became serious. “Now you’ve become intimidatingly beautiful in
here
as well.” He pressed his gloved fingertips into my sternum.

Even through my puffy jacket, wool sweater, thermal tees, and long underwear, my skin tingled where he’d touched me. I didn’t feel so beautiful inside these days, not with that prick of jealousy I’d felt when Eli and Jodi got back together. Or how I really, really didn’t want Jodi coming to my church.

My eyes misted as I leaned to kiss him. The buzzing of my phone interrupted our tender moment.

Connor rested his forehead against mine. “This is what I get for dating a popular girl, I guess.”