Page 27 of Dreams of Falling
She shook her head. “I’ll meet you at the Pavilion. At five.” She turned to follow Bitty, who was headed to the ladies’ room, where she said she’d left Margaret after she’d propped her on a bench with a wet towel pressed to her forehead. Ceecee looked behind her once and found Boyd watching her, a question in his eyes.
But she just smiled, then turned around and kept walking, unwilling to admit even to herself that she wasn’t ready to find out whether Boyd Madsen really liked daisies better than roses.
eleven
Larkin
2010
The smell of what could only be breaded and battered chicken frying in the kitchen assaulted me as I ran up the steps to the front porch, the rolled-up ribbons from the Tree of Dreams in my pocket thick against my hip bone. I untucked my blouse as I stepped inside, hoping to cover the small bump. I had so many questions and had decided to start with what Bennett had told me about Ceecee and the fire. All the things Ceecee had never thought to mention to me in the last twenty-seven years.
I rounded on her as soon as I’d closed the door behind me. I stopped midturn and with my mouth partly open when I spotted the figure standing behind her in the doorway to the dining room.
Ceecee smiled. “You remember Jackson Porter, don’t you, Larkin? His daddy has always been our insurance agent, and now that he’s in semiretirement, he’s letting Jackson handle some of his accounts. Jackson is here going over some paperwork, and I’ve invited him to stay for dinner. It’s your favorite—fried chicken.”
I had the sudden urge to burst out laughing, the situation so surreal that I couldn’t quite adjust my emotions to compensate. The new controlled and mature Larkin fought very hard to overpower the youngerversion of myself who’d once sat on the bleachers at Georgetown High School, cheering the star quarterback as he burst through the GHS Bulldogs banner surrounded by the cheerleaders’ waving pom-poms.
“I... ,” I started to say, but stopped as Jackson stepped forward and enveloped me in a hug before kissing my cheek. He wore the same cologne, soft with a hint of spice that still made me think of Jackson whenever I smelled it. When I was sixteen, I’d bought a bottle of it with my birthday money to keep hidden in the back of my drawer so I could smell it whenever I wanted to. I cringed at the thought, not just at how stupid I had once been, but at how pathetically stupid I still was. I should have been telling him that he was a jerk, that he had no business hugging me. That he should apologize for ruining my life, even if he probably had no idea that he had. Over the years, I’d told myself that ignorance was no excuse for compliance, yet looking at Jackson Porter now, I forgot everything except how I’d felt watching him burst through that banner on the football field, believing that over all those other girls, he’d picked me.
He stepped back, regarding me with hazel eyes that sometimes seemed more green than brown, depending on what he wore. My high school diary had contained a paragraph at the end of each day listing what Jackson wore to school, and what color his eyes were that particular day.
“You look... amazing,” he said, grinning that grin that belonged in men’s underwear commercials. That’s what Mabry had told her all the cheerleaders said in the locker room after games, and then I’d started to say it as if the words were my own.
“Thanks,” I said, grateful for the skinny jeans and the spaghetti-strap blouse. And in my stupid, sixteen-year-old heart, grateful that he’d noticed. “You do, too.”
He shrugged. “I try to keep fit—still throw a football around with Bennett and some of the guys. But you... wow! You’re completely different.” He must have realized that couched somewhere in between his words was an insult, so he added, “I mean, I always knew you were pretty. I guess I didn’t realize until right this moment just how pretty.”
I watched Ceecee beam from behind him, and I was grateful yetmortified at the same time. If she had any idea of what my past relationship—if you could call it that—with Jackson had been, she would have thrown him out the door on his ear. But I’m glad she didn’t know. Because then I didn’t need to excuse his behavior, or mine, and instead could pretend we’d been simply classmates who’d met up again after nine years.
“Come on in and sit down,” Ceecee said, motioning for us to follow her into the dining room, where the table was set with Ceecee’s best crystal and china, and where Bitty was pouring sweet tea into glasses and looking up at me with worried eyes.She doesn’t know,I told myself. She couldn’t. It’s just that Bitty had always been more perceptive than Ceecee, always seeing what was really there. Ceecee only ever saw what she wanted to.
“I had Bitty set a place for Jackson right next to you on this side of the table,” Ceecee said, touching the rim of a delicate piece of antique French bone china. She indicated the single place at the foot of the table. “I set a place for your daddy just in case, but he said he’d probably stay at the hospital and eat something there.”
“I’m real sorry to hear about your mama,” Jackson said, pulling back my chair for me to sit before heading to the front of the table to do the same for Ceecee while Bitty pulled out her own and sat down before Jackson could make it to her side of the table.
“Thank you,” I said, placing my napkin in my lap and looking everywhere but at his face. Because every time I did, I was reminded of the last time I’d seen him before I spotted him at the ice-cream shop. And what he’d said. “We’re all hoping she’ll wake up any minute now. It’s given us all a real scare.”
“But it’s brought you back to Georgetown,” Jackson said, accepting the bread basket from Ceecee. “I know your relatives aren’t the only ones happy to see you back.” He grinned that grin again as he passed the basket to me, and I almost dropped it.
“Bennett and Mabry were certainly excited to see her,” Bitty said, stabbing the stick of butter with her knife. “You should ask them over sometime, Larkin—meet Mabry’s husband and little boy. Go out on the river or something.”
I frowned. “I really don’t expect to be here long enough to do much socializing...”
As if I hadn’t said anything, Jackson said, “I’ve got a boat—we can all go skiing and have a little party while you’re here. It will be just like old times.”
I stared at the chicken breast I’d placed on my plate and felt almost physically ill. I nearly asked him whether he was joking. I finally raised my eyes to his, just to make sure. But there was no recognition or memory to dim his enthusiasm.
“Maybe,” I said. “Of course, it all depends on when Mama wakes up and how much recovery time she’ll need.”
“Of course,” he said, putting his hand briefly over mine.
Smiling, I found myself relaxing and even managed a few bites of my chicken and butter beans. We talked about old classmates and teachers, about his sister, who was four years younger than we were and who’d graduated from Carolina but was in California getting her graduate degree in physical therapy.
I’d imagined this scene so many times when I was in high school, of having Jackson Porter sitting next to me at dinner, of having him touch my hand and smile at me, that I almost pinched myself a few times to make sure I wasn’t dreaming. I tried to push the memory of the last time I’d seen him before I’d fled to New York into the forefront of my thoughts, but years of infatuation superseded my common sense.
When Ceecee brought out her lemon sponge cake for dessert and I helped clear the dishes, Bitty went to the old stereo console in the front parlor and put in an eight-track tape. It was one of those things Ceecee never saw the need to replace no matter how outdated or how warbly the music sometimes sounded because the tape had stretched in places. If it worked and her supply of eight-tracks lasted, she’d keep the circa 1970 stereo. As I placed the dessert plates on the table, I listened to the opening strains of a familiar song, and before the first lyric was sung, I said, “Linda Ronstadt. ‘You’re No Good.’”
“Excuse me?” Jackson asked at the same time Bitty coughed into her hand.
