Paige Torn (5 page)

“All right, so I want each team to take a box and get the cans sorted into fruits, vegetables, soups, and miscellaneous. There are plastic tubs to sort them into. Please check the expiration dates on the cans as well, and any expired cans we'll throw away.” She smiles at us. “And thank you, guys.”

“All right, team, move out!” Rick yells.

“You've always wanted to say that, huh?” I ask him.

He nods. “Always.”

I shrug at Tyler, and we walk over to one of the huge boxes. A stack of plastic tubs, each one with a different label on the front, is right outside the box.

“So, Paige, how long have you been working with the youth?” Tyler asks while we both lean over and start pulling out cans. He pushes the miscellaneous and soup tubs in front of him and hands me the fruit and vegetable tubs.

“Almost five years.” I drop three cans of pears into the fruit tub.

“Wow. So, you must have started right when you got out of high school then.”

I nod. I moved to Dallas to go to college, found Grace Church, and met Natalie that first Sunday. She was a beaming newlywed at the time, and she and Rick pretty much adopted me as their little sister. They invited me over to dinner that week and talked me into teaching the ninth-grade girls by the time I left that night.

“The first group I ever worked with graduated last year,” I tell Tyler. “That was a little weird.”

“I bet.”

“Did you grow up in Dallas?” I ask him.

He shakes his head. “No, I grew up in San Antonio, but then my dad got transferred to San Diego, and I lived there until I came out here for grad school. I ended up getting a job offer from a company just down the street from where I live, so I just decided to stay.”

That makes Tyler a few years older than me. “What's your degree in?”

“Computer sciences. I do a lot with software development.”

I hand him four cans of beef broth. He doesn't look like a nerd. He's wearing tan work boots, straight-cut jeans with worn patches in the knees, a blue shirt with a brown plaid flannel shirt over it, and a thick, warm-looking vest.

If anything, he looks more like a lumberjack. Tyler is built like an upside-down triangle. Wide, wide shoulders, thick arms, and a much smaller waist.

It's hard to picture him staring at a computer all day.

“Huh,” I say because I don't want to tell him I think he should maybe look into a career cutting down trees instead of developing software.

“What's your degree in?” he asks me.

“Child learning and development. I work at an adoption agency.”

“That's awesome. My mom worked as a paralegal for a family law attorney before I was born and after my sister and I went to school.”

“Older or younger sister?” I ask him.

“Younger. By three years. She's twenty-two.”

“Same age as me.”

He grins. “You have any siblings?”

“A sister.”

“Younger or older?”

“Younger.” Preslee is yet another testament to my grandmother's love of Elvis. She'd been voting for both of us to be boys so one of us could be named after the King. So when my sister was born and my parents told Nana they were done with kids, she convinced them what a wonderful name Preslee was.

Preslee, though, has not fallen in love with Elvis's music like I have. In fact, she's gone the opposite direction. She joined a punk rock band, got a tattoo, which broke my mom's heart, and moved in with her boyfriend, which broke my dad's heart. The last time I talked to my sister was several years ago. She didn't even come home for Christmas the last couple of years.

She is a sore subject.

“Does she live in Dallas too?” Tyler asks.

I purse my lips. “No.” Honestly, I'm not sure where Preslee is living now. Last time she talked to Mom, she was touring with her band somewhere in Ohio. A long, long way from home in Austin.

Tyler must have picked up on my I-don't-want-to-talk-about-her vibe, because he stops asking me about Preslee and starts talking about how much he loves Pork and Beans. “I mean, they even stick a cube of bacon in there. If that's not a quality food, then I don't know what is.”

I shake my head. “You are quite the gourmet.”

“I try. Sometimes, I'll even add freshly chopped scallions on top.”

“E
arth to Paige! Earth to Paige!”

I blink and look up. I am sitting in the back row of the singles' Sunday school class. Tim Miller led the class today and spent the entire time talking about the verse on how man was not supposed to be alone, which led into how much he missed his ex-girlfriend.

It's been rough since the pastor in charge of singles, Pastor Dan, left on his sabbatical three weeks ago. So far we've heard lessons on why we should all convert to being vegan from Dave Rightfield, who looked exceptionally slender that day, a look at the genealogy of Abraham from Cal Hanson, and then today's lesson from Tim.

Pastor Dan can't get home soon enough.

Layla elbows me. “Paige?”

I blink at her in the chair next to me. “Sorry. Guess I zoned out.”

“Dude, we all did.” Layla lowers her voice. “If Pastor Dan isn't back next week, I swear I'm going to strangle someone. And these guys wonder why they are all still single.”

Peter walks over carrying a donut that someone brought. “I got you one with sprinkles, Layla.” He sits on the other side of her.

“Thanks, baby.” She takes the donut and looks back at me. “So, are we going to look at invitations for Mom and Dad today?”

“I thought we still needed to nail down a venue.”

Layla waves a hand. “We're camping out at the park. I want to have it at the gazebo. Peter even said he'd sleep there so we don't have to.” She sends a brilliant smile toward him. “Right, sweetie?”

“Hmm? Oh. Sure.”

Somehow, I know that isn't going to stick come the night before the party. I might as well start looking into how much a warm sleeping bag will cost. And maybe take a few lessons in a self-defense class.

“Okay,” I say slowly. “So, invitations.”

“Right. You've got the best handwriting I've ever seen, so I want you to address them, if you don't mind. And I am even thinking handwritten invitations will be really pretty. What do you think?”

I think it sounds painful. And I still like the e-vite option the best. But I don't say that. Layla is doing a very sweet thing for her parents. I rub my right hand, wincing. “How many people are you inviting?”

“Oh, just a small, intimate crowd,” Layla says, offhand. “Only Mom and Dad's best friends. And then we'll have dinner and dancing and celebrate until dark. Mom and Dad are really into dancing. They won the county dance-off back when they were dating.” She sighs sweetly.

Layla is a romantic. Romantics don't often think with all of their brains.

“What time do you want to have the party again?” I ask, because a few nights ago on our fruitless search for a venue that ended with us having coffee at Starbucks and me listening to Layla's ideal party setup, it seemed that she wants the party to be at dusk.

If that is the case, the celebration will only last about twenty minutes. And knowing Layla, that's not going to be the case.

“Oh, around seven or so.” Layla waves her donut casually.

I pull my phone out. Last year, the wireless service salesman talked me into getting a smartphone, though goodness knows I don't use it to nearly its full capacity. I still like the feeling of a real Bic pen and a real piece of paper. I click over to Google and find the sunset time for February.

“So, your whole party is only going to be an hour?”

Layla shrugs. “I figure the toasting will be around forty minutes to an hour. I'm having an open mic. And some of Mom and Dad's friends are a little long-winded, but I figure they will like hearing nice things about themselves. Most people do.”

I open my mouth and then stop. That is another argument for another day. “Okay,” I say slowly. “I meant, the
whole
party — toasts and all.”

“Oh goodness no. We need to have time to dance.”

“Then you might want to move the time up. Sunset is about six thirty.”

Layla purses her lips. “What if we brought in lighting?”

“How much are you willing to pay for this?” I ask, which is probably where I should have started the conversation last week.

“Oh,” Layla says, waving her hand. “Daddy just gave me a huge check for Christmas that I'm going to use to pay for this. And I have some saved up already.”

Figures. Layla's father is not the wealthiest man I've ever met, but he is pretty darn close. And while he is stingy on things I thought mattered — like safe, noncreepy apartments for his daughter — he is nothing but extravagant on things I'm not sure matter that much. Like brand-new Jettas for graduation and a flat-screen TV always tuned to Fox News in her parents' guest bathroom.

It is a little weird. I like Shepard Smith okay, but I don't like him so much that I want to listen to him while I'm taking care of business.

I've only been to Layla's parents' house three times, and the second and third time, I just held it.

I pull my planner out of my purse and turn to the back where the notebook part of the planner is. It is January. I don't have a lot of notes in there yet, other than
Go to the grocery store today
written in bold letters across the top.

I do need to do that.

“Okay.” I write
Prestwicks' Anniversary
across the top of a page and draw a line under it. “What all do we need to do?”

Layla almost jumps up and down. “Oh thank you thank you, Paige! You know how awful I am at organizing stuff like this. You are the best friend I could ever ask for!”

I start making a list of everything I can think of from the two anniversary parties I've been to — my aunt and uncle's and my grandparents'. By the time I finish just the preliminary stuff, Layla looks sick and Peter has gone to stand in the corner with his other barely talking friends.

“Wow, Paige. That's a lot of stuff to think about.”

“Don't freak out. We'll take it one thing at a time. First things first, you need to come up with an exact starting time so we can send the e-vites. And quick. You probably should have already e-mailed those.”

“Invitations. I still think the handwritten way is classier. And Mom and Dad are classy people.”

Well. She doesn't lie.

Twenty minutes later, I walk out to my car with the start of a headache. More because I don't have any coffee in the apartment, I think, than planning the anniversary party with Layla.

I think.

“Hey, Paige!”

I look over and see Tyler walking through the parking lot as well. He waves and I wave back.

“Hi, Tyler.”

“Coming or going?” He catches up to me, Bible under his arm.

“Going. You?” Our church has three morning services. Every other week I teach the two-year-old Sunday school class during the first service and then go to the singles' class.

“Going as well,” he says, smiling easily.

“So do you go to second service?”

He nods.

“You should start coming to the singles' Sunday school class then.”

He shrugs it off. “Nah, I'm not really a single-y type of guy.”

I frown and sneak a quick look at his left hand. Surely I haven't missed something so huge in his life. His hand is bare, though. I look back up at him. “Oh, you're engaged then? Congratulations!” I am always happy to see people get married, especially when I know I'm not going to be called on to help pull off the wedding.

He laughs. “No, I'm not engaged. I'm single, I'm just not really a ‘Sunday school' type of guy,” he says, using his fingers to make air quotes.

I hate when people do that.

When I was a little kid, I had a teacher who used air quotes every time she said the word “friends.” For the longest time, I thought she was half deaf and couldn't really hear the word
friends
and decided to make up her own sign language for it.

Once I figured out that meant air quotes, I wasn't sure if my teacher was trying to say she had no true friends or she was just lonely.

“Why not?” I ask Tyler.

He grins at me, blue eyes sparkling. “I like you, Paige. You don't beat around the bush.” Then he shrugs. “Too regimented. I like studying God's Word when I don't have to sit in a folding chair for an hour.”

“You go to church, though,” I point out.

“I sit in a pew there. And we stand to sing.” Tyler shrugs again. “It's just not for me. And trust me. I've tried a lot of Sunday school classes.”

He isn't missing out on too much. Not while Pastor Dan is on sabbatical.

“What are you doing now?” he asks me, squinting in the sunlight.