I was so relieved I threw my arms around his neck and said something super cheesy and embarrassing like, “Chivalry is not dead! Knights in shining armor do exist.”
He smiled, showing off this adorable cleft in his chin and saying that his mother raised him right.
“She did,” I whispered, forgetting that I was in a restaurant, that I was supposed to be talking about a book. “Wait, how did you find me?” I asked. This was great but also probably some sort of major security breach I couldn’t let happen again.
“Your dad called, I answered, and he told me where you were.” He grinned again. “Nice guy.”
“Let me buy you a drink to thank you,” I said impulsively, suddenly feeling something I never felt: shy.
He shook his head. “How about I buy you dinner to thank you?”
“Thank me? For what?”
“For leaving your phone in that cab so I’d have to come find you.”
His name is Parker Thaysden. He is from North Carolina, which my mother will absolutely despise. He went to Princeton, and he’s brilliant, but he doesn’t know it. He’s in marketing, which my father will love. Now I’m looking at my watch every five minutes waiting for him to call. I can’t even think straight. And I’m dreading getting on that plane back to Palm Beach tomorrow because Parker isn’t in Palm Beach. I’m already figuring out how I can work in New York more and he can take long weekends in Florida. And, just like that, maybe I have time to date after all.
AmeliaRIPTIDE
AFTER THAT SOFTBALL GAME, Icouldn’t have eaten dinner if my life depended on it. And not because I ate too many lemon squares.
I made certain my sister-in-law, Trina, was sitting beside me at family dinner, where I had to break the news about Thad and Chase. I loved Trina. She was pretty and sweet and the most involved mother I knew. Bless her precious, manicured, highlighted heart, no matter what storm was brewing in our family, she was as steady as the tide.
I hoped she wouldn’t be worried for me, that she would just give me that sweet smile of hers and say something optimistic. Because this was going to be ugly. I felt so sick I hadn’t even touched the pimento cheese and crackers Mom put out before dinner, which was really saying something because her pimento cheese was the best in the world. I swallowed a sip ofchardonnay from a crystal goblet, which I also worried contained lead, for courage. If I didn’t get this over with, I was going to be too sick for dessert, too. And that would really be bad.
“Mom, Dad, Aunt Tilley, I have something to say.”
“Oh my Lord, you are finally pregnant!” Aunt Tilley exclaimed.
Trina gasped excitedly beside me, but a quick shake of my head told her that this wasn’t good news. She made a pouty face and took my hand. I instantly felt better. This was why I loved Trina.
“Tilley, you know she can’t get pregnant,” Daddy had scolded.
“I know you don’t want to imagine all that, but just because her daddy doesn’t think she can doesn’t mean a girl can’t get pregnant.”
“Oh, good Lord, Tilley,” Daddy replied.
I had taken a deep breath and said, “It’s okay, Daddy.”
Mom interjected, “Why didn’t Thad come with you, anyway? Darlin’, that article you wrote about him…” She clutched her napkin to her chest, and I noticed a small hole in it. Certainly a hole in a hundred-year-old napkin was to be expected, but it bothered me that Mom hadn’t noticed it. “It was just the most beautiful thing I’ve ever read.”
“And theNew York Times,” Tilley said proudly. “Girly, you have made it.”
“Well, that’s sort of what I need to talk to you about.”
Trina hit Robby with her napkin. “Why don’t you writethings like that about me? Does Amelia love Thad more than you love me?”
She stuck her lower lip out, and Tilley said, “She doesn’t love Robby more than I do.”
Mom rolled her eyes. Tilley’s boyfriend, who had died in a freak farming accident, had been named Robert. “Why in the world would you name your child Robby, Mother? It’s too confusing for her,” I’d scolded years ago.
“He’s my son, I named him after my father, and I can call him whatever the hell I want,” she’d retorted.
I had never heard my mother say “hell,” so, suffice it to say, I never brought it up again.
As I was readying myself to get this ship back on course, though, my nephews came tearing into the dining room, one of them hollering, “I did not take the last chicken leg!”
“Did too!”
