Daisy's Back in Town (8 page)

"Not a chance." The three of them got into the old truck and Jack fired it up.

'Have you been asked yet?" Jack asked her as he drove from the parking lot with her sitting between them like always.

"Yes." They were so weird about who she dated she didn't want to say.

"Who?" Steven asked.

She looked straight ahead at the dashboard and the mad beyond.

Steven hit her with his elbow. "Come on, Daisy Lee. Who asked you?"

"Man Flegel."

"You're going with Bug?"

"He doesn't like to be called that anymore."

Jack looked at Steven over the top of her head.

"What's wrong with Bug... I mean Mali?" She held up a hand before either could answer. "Forget I asked. I don't care what y'all think. I like Man."

"He gets around a lot."

"He's the wrong kind of boy for you," Jack added.

She folded her arms and was silent the rest of the way home. The pair of them were serial daters, and that was putting it nicely. She wasn't about to listen to their opinion, and if there ever was a "wrong kind of boy" for her or any girl, it was Jack. Which made her doubly glad she wasn't really falling in love with him.

She spent the rest of her sophomore year dating boys that neither Steven nor Jack approved of, but she didn't care. Like most girls her age, she learned how to make out and drive boys crazy. And more important, she learned where to stop before things went too far. As a result, she developed a reputation for being a tease.

Which she didn't think was fair at all. Boys kissed her. She kissed them back. As far as she could tell, a girl was either a prude, which meant she didn't kiss at all. A tease, meaning she kissed and perhaps a bit more, or was a slut. And everyone knew what that meant.

That summer, she'd let Erik Marks touch her breast on the outside of her T-shirt. Jack and Steven heard about it and made a special trip over to her house to talk to her. She'd gotten mad and slammed the front door in theft faces.

The hypocrites.

She made varsity cheerleader her junior year. Her hair had grown out to her shoulders and she got a spiral perm.

Steven was still in football and basketball, and of course, student government. Jack was racing his Camaro on the flat Texas roads, and she was still telling herself that she wasn't attracted to him. She told herself that she loved him but she wasn't in love with him, and that her heart didn't pinch when he drove by with his arm around some girl. He was her friend, just as he'd always been. Nothing more. And she wouldn't allow herself to feel anything more either.

All that changed a few weeks before Christmas her senior year when she got asked to the Christmas prom by J.

T. Sanders. J. T. was gorgeous and drove a new Jeep Wrangler. Black. Daisy worked nights at the Wild Coyote Diner, and she'd managed to save enough money to buy the prefect dress. White satin. Sleeveless with tiny rhinestones on the tight fitting bodice and tulle skirt. It was the most beautiful thing she'd ever owned. The night before the dance, she picked up J.t's boutonniere on her dinner break. When she got home, he called and canceled. He said his grandmother died and that he had to go to her funeral in Amarillo. Everyone knew that he'd actually started dating another girl the week before. Daisy had been dumped. Flat.

And everyone knew it.

The Saturday of the prom, Daisy worked the lunch shift at the Wild Coyote. She kept it together and acted like she wasn't humiliated. She pretended she wasn't sad or hurt. She joked with her coworkers about J. t being a loser anyway.

No one bought it. Getting dumped the night before the prom with some lame-o excuse was the worst thing that could ever happen to any girl.

And everyone knew it.

After her shift, she went home and locked herself in her room. With her dress hanging on her closet door, she threw herself on her bed and had a nice long cry. At four, her mother stuck her head in the room and asked if she wanted some mint chocolate chip ice cream. She didn't. Lily made her a cowboy pie sandwich, but she couldn't eat it.

At five-thirty Jack knocked on her bedroom door, but she wouldn't let him in. Her face was splotchy and her eyes puffy, and the didn't want him to see her that way.

"Daisy Lee," he called through the door. "Come out of there."

She sat up on her bed and pulled a Kleenex from the box. "Go away, Jack."

"Open up."

"No." She blew her nose.

"I have something for you."

She stared at the door. "What?"

"I can't tell you. I have to show you."

"I look really bad?

"I don't care."

Well the did. She slipped from the bed and opened the door a crack. She stuck her hand out.

"What is it?" He didn't answer and she was forced to peer out the crack Jack stood in the hail, the light from her sister's bedroom shining on him like a dark angel or at the very least a choirboy. He wore his navy blue Sunday suit, and a cream-colored shirt. A red tie hung loose around his neck. "What's going on, Jack? Did you go to a funeral?"

He laughed and brought his hand out from behind his back He laid a wrist corsage of white and pink roses in her palm. "Will you go to the prom with me?"

"You hate school dances," she said through the crack

"I know."

She brought the corsage to her nose and breathed deep. Her nose was clogged so it wasn't that deep. She bit her bottom lip to keep it from trembling. And as she looked at him, standing in the hail of her house, wearing a suit he hated and asking her to a dance he loathed, she fell helplessly in love with Jack Parrish. It expanded her heart and flooded her chest and scared her to death. All those years of fighting it faded away to nothing.

She'd fallen in love with Jack and there hadn't been anything she could do about it.

That night Jack kissed her for the first time. Or rather, she'd kissed him. During the dance, while she'd been failing in love for the first time in her life, he treated her as he always had, as a friend. While he made her whole body feel hot and alive, he'd stayed cool. It had all been wonderful and awful, and after the prom, when he walked her to her front door, she wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him.

At first he stood with his hands to his side. Then he grasped her shoulders through her coat and pushed her away, angry.

"What are you doing?"

"Kiss me, Jack." if he rejected her, she was sure she'd just die right there. On the porch.

His grip tightened and he brought her forward and pressed his warm lips to her forehead.

"No, don't treat me like a friend." She swallowed hard past the ache in her chest. 'Please," she whispered as she looked up at him. "I want you to kiss me like you do other girls. I want you to touch me like you do other girls, too."

He pulled back and his green gaze slid to her mouth. "Don't tease me, Daisy. I don't like it."

"I'm not teasing you." She ran her hand across the shoulder of his jacket to the side of his neck. "Please, Jack."

Then as if he didn't want to kiss her, but he couldn't fight it any longer, he slowly lowered his mouth to her. This time the touch of his lips stole her breath. She tilted her head back and sank into his chest. Until that moment, she'd thought she knew what it was like to kiss a boy. Jack showed her she hadn't a clue. The kiss was hot and wet and filled with so much hunger that it changed her forever.

Even now, after all these years, Daisy remembered standing on her mother's porch as Jack turned her world inside out. She'd clung to him as he'd fed her those liquid kisses that had made her breasts ache and her body tremble. His hands had never moved from her shoulders, but he'd made her crave his touch. She'd wanted him to touch her all over. Instead he'd walked away, leaving her stunned and wanting more.

The next day, Daisy called Jack but he didn't pick up. The longer she put off telling him about Nathan, the harder it was going to get. She knew that, having already put if off for fifteen years. But what she hadn't realized before she'd arrived was that the longer she put it off, the more memories of her life in this town would drag her back into the past. Before she'd arrived, the plan had been to tell Jack, give him Steven's letter, and deal with the fallout: if not easy, at least straightforward. Now, it didn't seem real straightforward either. But it had to be done. She was leaving in seven days.

Before noon, she tried Jack's number two more times, but he didn't answer. She figured he was probably not answering on purpose. She went to church with her mother, and afterward, they had an early dinner with Lily and Pippen. Phillip "Pippen" Darlington was two and had a blond mullet because his mother couldn't bear to cut the curls at the nape of his neck. He had huge blue eyes like Lily, and he loved Thomas the Tank Engine. He also loved wearing his faux coonskin cap and shouting NO! loud enough to be heath into the next county He hated food with texture, spiders, and his Velcro Barney sneakers.

Daisy looked at him sitting in his high chair at her mother's dinner table and tried not to frown as he poured grape Kool-Aid from his Tommy Tippy cup into his baked potato. Daisy's mother and Lily sat across the table from her and didn't seem to mind that Pippen was making a disgusting mess.

"He's a rat bastard!" Lily was telling her, referring, of course, to her soon to be ex-husband, The Rat Bastard Ronald Darlington. "A few months before he ran off with his jailbait girlfriend, he took all the money out of our accounts and put it somewhere."

Louella nodded her head sadly. "Probably in Mexico." Growing up, if either had uttered the word "bastard" at the dinner table, they'd have been sent from the room.

"What is your attorney doing about that?" Daisy asked

"There isn't a lot he can do. We can prove the money was in the account, but not where it went. The judge can order him to give me half, but that doesn't mean he will. And for years, Ronnie was paid under the table in order to avoid paying the IRS, so it looks like he only makes twenty thousand a year instead of seventy-five." Lily sliced a piece of meat with a vengeance. Even though they were sisters and had grown up together, they weren't very close. Growing up, they'd mostly fought or ignored each other. Lily had been in middle school when Daisy had moved away, and they'd never really maintained a relationship after that. Losing Steven had made her realize how important her family was to her. She needed to work on her relationship with her sister.

"He said that if I tell the IRS about it," Lily continued, "he'll fight for custody of Pippen. What can I do?"

When both her mother and Lily stared at her, Daisy realized it wasn't a rhetorical question. There were dark circles under Lily's eyes as if she hadn't had a good night's sleep in a long time. Her blond hair was cut short and framed her pretty face with soft curls, but at the moment, she looked anything but soft. No, she looked scared as hell. "You're asking me? How should I know?"

"Darien Monroe is a lawyer," her mother provided.

"Steven's father is retired and living in Arizona. And besides, he was a criminal defense attorney; Steven designed computer software programs. I know nothing about the family courts." She recognized the fear in Lily's blue eyes. It was the fear of being suddenly alone with the responsibility of raising a child. But unlike Daisy, Lily wasn't financially secure, nor did she have a career to fall back on. Not that Daisy's career had ever provided a huge income, but she was a good photographer and had connections. If she had to support herself and Nathan on her income alone, she could. Lily had been a stay-home wife and a mom, which was admirable but weren't marketable skills. She was terrified. "HI by to think up something," Daisy said, although she had troubles of her own and was only here for a week now.

Lily smiled, 'Thanks, Daisy."

"I ran into Darma Joe Henderson, the other day," her mother said as she dug into her okra, Lily's worries apparently solved for the moment.. "You girls remember Darma Joe. She used to work at the Trusty Hardware across from the Wild Coyote. Her son Buck had that car accident a few years back, and they had to amputate his leg below the knee. Well, he has a daughter who sings with the church choir. You girls might have noticed her today." Louella paused to take a bite before launching into, "She kinda looks like Buck, bless her heart, but she has such a nice voice and a kind personality. She was dating the boy... oh, what was his name? I think it started with a G. George or Geoff or something like that. Anyway..."

Daisy slid her gaze from her mother to her sister. Lily's eyes were starting to glaze over and her head was drifting back. Things really hadn't changed very much since she'd been gone. She knew it would be useless to ask her mother to get to the point, because she already knew there wasn't a point and there never was going to be one.

Daisy started to laugh. Lily's eyes refocused and she looked at Daisy. She laughed too. Pippen threw his coonskin cap on the floor and broke in giggles as if he knew the joke. He was only two, but he'd been around his grandmother enough that perhaps he did.

Louella looked up from her plate. "What are you girls laughing about?"

"That Darma Joe's granddaughter looks like Buck," Lily lied through a grin. "Bless her heart."

"It's unfortunate." Louella frowned. They continued to laugh and she shook her head. "Well, y'all have come off your spools and taken poor Pippen with you."

After dinner, Daisy got up her nerve for the fourth time that day and called Jack; he didn't pick up, but she left him a message this time: "It's Daisy. I'm not going anywhere until you talk to me."

He didn't return the call, of course, so she phoned him the next day at work. She and Penny Kribs chatted about old times and she thanked her for sending flowers to Steven's funeral. Then she asked for Jack. "Don't tell him it's me on the line," she said. "I want to surprise him."

"He could use a good surprise," Penny said.

"He's in a nasty mood."

Great. Daisy was put on hold and after listening to about half of 'The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia,"

Jack came on the line.