Confederates Don't Wear Couture (3 page)

“I'll try not to wrinkle you, I promise.”

“A little bit of wrinkling never hurt anyone,” I said, as I leaned my head against his chest, still a head shorter than him even in my heels.

In a stroke of good fortune or careful planning on Garrett's part, the DJ switched to a slow song, so all he had to do was sway. I mean, really, he was lucky this wasn't a hundred years ago, because then he'd have had to waltz. I chuckled a little, imagining the panic that would seize Garrett if the DJ unexpectedly segued into “The Blue Danube.”

“What's so funny?” Garrett murmured into my ear.

“You waltzing,” I replied.

“Hey, now,” he said, mock offended. “I think I'm acquitting myself pretty well with this shuffling technique.”

“Absolutely,” I agreed. “And you look very handsome in your tux.” He really did, too. He looked like a tall, lanky, not particularly lethal spy. “Actually, you look a little bit like—”

“James Bond's IT guy?” he interrupted.

“More like the guy Flynn Rider plays in that TV show.”

“First of all, Libby, Flynn Rider is not a real person.”

“But—”

“Cartoon, Libby. He's a cartoon.” He held up his arm and motioned me under it. “Second, I believe you are referring to the actor Zachary Levi, who plays special agent Charles ‘Chuck' Bartowski in the eponymous television show.”

“Did you just
spin
me?” I asked with disbelief, as I completed my turn.

“Watch out, McCaffrey's gettin' fancy.” He next did something that could only be described as a jazz hand.

“You're actually enjoying this, aren't you?” Garrett. Enjoying dancing. Now that was something I never thought I'd see.

“Libby, I have fun with you no matter what we do. Because I'm with you.”

And even though I knew I was setting myself up for a stern lecture on appropriate prom behavior from Ms. Heitkamp, I grabbed his lapels and kissed him.

But before Heitkamp could barrel down on us, we were startled apart by Ke$ha blaring out of the speakers at the approximate decibel of a jet engine. A flicker of pure pain crossed Garrett's face.

“Wanna go outside?” I offered.

“You are the
best
girlfriend,” he exclaimed, crushing me to his chest in an enthusiastic hug. “Come on, Tiny, let's blow this Popsicle stand.”

“Tiny?” I laughed as he grabbed my hand and led me off the dance floor. “You're in a particularly heightist mood today.”

“Just testing it out. Thought you might need a nickname. Something to put on the back of your Amherst jersey.”

“I don't know what sport you think I'll be playing at Amherst—”

“Rounders? Croquet? Fencing?” He shrugged. “I didn't think I'd play a sport in college, but now I'm one of the finest keepers that Tufts Quidditch has to offer.”

“Garrett, your commitment to the nerdification of America is truly impressive.”

“Careful in that glass house, closet nerd.” His eyes twinkled as he pushed open the double doors to the patio space.

The patio was mostly empty, except for a few of the guys from my AP English class choreographing a lightsaber battle in a dark corner. I sent up a silent prayer that Garrett wouldn't be tempted to join them. Fortunately, we blew right past
Revenge of the Sith
and made for the stone wall demarcating the end of the patio. It was low enough that even I could hop up and sit on it without any problems.

“Are you sad?” he asked softly.

“About what? High school being over?”

He nodded.

“Not particularly.” I shrugged. “I'll miss seeing Dev every day, of course, and my parents, but mostly I just feel excited to start college. And to be in the same state as you.”

“A marked improvement,” he said with a grin. “How ever will you while away the tedious hours between now and autumn?”

“Life with Dev is never dull. And if they intend to cram four years of Civil War into one summer, things must be pretty fast-paced.”

“You sure there's no Yankee reenactment on Boston Common you can do instead?” he asked, holding my hand.

“Pretty sure,” I said reluctantly. “But the summer will fly by. You'll be super busy at the newspaper, and I'll be busy—”

“Staving off dysentery?” he supplied helpfully.

“And before we know it,” I continued, “we'll be together.”

“Summer in Dixie, fall in Boston.”

“Exactly.” I grinned. “Trust me. The time will fly.”

“Wait, listen! Listen. In Virginia in 1864, at a dance that the Union soldiers held, some of the soldiers dressed up as women because not enough local women would attend: ‘Some of the real women went, but the boy girls were so much better looking that they left. . . . Some of them looked almost good enough to lay with and I guess some of them did get laid with.'” Dev looked up from his copy of
The Story the Soldiers Wouldn't Tell: Sex in the Civil War
and grinned. “You hear that? They got laid with!”

“Of course I can hear you—you're two inches away from my face and shouting.”

We were on a teeny-tiny plane we'd boarded in Charlotte, North Carolina—or what our very friendly pilot had informed us was a “puddah jumpah.” After about fifteen seconds, I deciphered his accent and figured out he'd said “puddle jumper”—which was a pretty accurate description. I swore I could hear the wind whistling through cracks in the siding. We were snuggled in so tight, I was practically sitting on Dev's lap, and his Fred Perry track-jacketed elbow was perilously close to knocking into the little old lady across the aisle.

“Chapter Eleven is just full of interesting nuggets.” Dev flipped a page. “Even Walt Whitman had an easy time picking up dudes. And look!” Dev held up the book, open to a black-and-white photograph of an old guy with a bushy white beard. “Whitman was one ugly 'mo. I am way cuter. If he can meet guys in the 1860s, so can I.”

The old lady across from us, who had already been eyeing Dev's book cover suspiciously, reached up to pat her immobile steel-gray curls nervously.

“Dev,” I hissed over the roar of the engine, “while I am beyond pleased that you're taking an interest in history, maybe a little quieter—”

“Lincoln!” he shouted triumphantly. “Looks like that tall drink of water preferred to spend his nights with unmarried men, according to one Dr. Thomas P. Lowry!”

Alarmed, the woman across the aisle reached into the floral-patterned bag that matched her pantsuit to pull out a Bible. I flipped my
Martha Stewart Living
closed, in case this escalated to an attempted exorcism and I needed both hands free to prevent a certain eavesdropping old lady from trying to get the devil out of Dev.

“Oooh!” Dev squealed. “He had a little boy toy named Joshua Speed; they lived together and slept in the same bed, mind you, while they were young lawyers, like
Law and Order: Gay Intent
or
Illinois Legal
or
Ally McQueer,
and—”

“Dev.” I nudged him and subtly nodded toward our eavesdropper.

We turned slightly, peering across the aisle. Dev was wearing an “I'd Hit That” T-shirt with a picture of a piñata on it; the T-shirt was so tight you could see his nipples through it. The lady with the Bible was staring at the fuzzy-flocked letters on his chest like she was trying to crack the Da Vinci Code.

“Dorothy”—he raised his book to cover our faces so we could whisper behind it—“I have a feeling we're not in St. Paul anymore.”

“Flight attendants, please prepare for landing,” a voice drawled over the speakers with an accent so thick you could have swirled a spoon through it. “Ladies and gents, please return your seats and tray tables to their upright positions, and turn off all approved electronic devices.”

The engine roared louder and louder as we made our descent. I smooshed my face against the glass, and Dev leaned over me to look too, as we took in our first view of Montgomery.

“‘Sweet home Alabama,'” Dev sang into my ear as we drew closer and closer to the spread of green trees and sprawl of buildings.

We hit the ground and bumped along the runway.

“‘Where the skies are so blue'” Dev sang as the rest of the plane applauded the pilot's safe landing.

The woman across the aisle crossed herself.

Dev played a few licks on his air guitar as the captain turned off the
FASTEN SEAT BELT
sign. Dev continued to sing quietly as we collected our carry-ons and shuffled into the aisle. The old lady, still clutching her Bible, deliberately avoided eye contact.

When we finally exited the plane, we stepped into an oven.

“Holy crap, it's hot!” I shrieked as we walked down the portable stairs onto the runway.

“Oh, come on, it's not that bad.” Dev pulled on his sunglasses and smiled into the sunshine.

“Yes, it is!” I cried. It was like trying to walk through solid air. I didn't know heat like this existed. I could feel sunburn forming on every inch of my exposed midwestern pallor.

“Please,” he scoffed. “This isn't hot. You've never been to Aunt Lakshmi's birthday party in Mumbai in August.”

“Obviously not!” I retorted. “The Keltings are like sixth-generation Minnesotans. We are winter people. The frosty blood of the Norse flows in my veins! Give me four feet of snow over this inferno any day!”

“Oookay, drama Viking.” Dev rolled his eyes. “Move your little Nordic butt. We have a lot of luggage to get.”

“Seriously, Dev.” I followed him off the tarmac into Montgomery Regional Airport and the sweet relief of blessed air conditioning. “Why Alabama?”

“Oh, come now, Libby, you know why,” Dev replied breezily.

“Because the Confederate States of America were formed in Montgomery in February 1861? Because it served as the first capital of the CSA? Because it was the inauguration site of Jefferson Davis, the first and only Confederate president? Because the order to fire on Fort Sumter, the act that started the entire war, was sent from here?” I rattled off every historical reason I could think of.

“No.” Dev shook his head. “Because no other southern state boasts its very own Reese Witherspoon rom-com. Obvi.”

“Seriously.” I followed him toward the baggage claim, winding our way through airport halls that had white Corinthian columns in them, like a plantation porch. “We're spending the summer in Hades because of
Sweet Home Alabama
?”

“But of course,” he said, as we parked ourselves in front of the baggage claim. “All signs pointed to Alabama. Reese Witherspoon
played
a fashion designer—hello! It was like a cosmic sign! Plus that movie is bursting with cute guys. And there's even a gay one,” he finished triumphantly. “What other southern state has all that?”

“Sweet Jesus,” I muttered. My bag vibrated against my hip. “Service!” I shouted gleefully. “It's back!”

Dev gave me one of his looks as the baggage claim started up a slow
chug-chug
and began spitting out luggage, one piece at a time. I dug around for my phone and hastily flipped it open.

There was a text from Garrett waiting in my in box:

 

HOPE YOU MADE IT SAFELY SOUTH TO THE RED STATES—IS IT TOO LATE TO GO BLUE? OR ARE YOU ALREADY WHISTLING DIXIE?

 

I grinned. Despite my many lengthy treatises on the differences in Southern and Northern nineteenth-century fashion, Garrett could not understand why on earth we didn't want to be Yankees. Or why we wanted to spend the summer in a state that hadn't been carried by a Democratic presidential candidate since 1976.

“You know I'm a Yankee at heart. I'm just a pushover for a hoop skirt,” I texted back. Which was true. I mean, obviously I understood all of Garrett's many arguments on the ethical ramifications of participating in the glorification of a society that condoned the ownership of human beings, but Dev reminded me that a passion for fashion was a higher calling. One above silly things like politics or morality. “How's your first day at the Daily Planet, Clark Kent?” I added.

Garrett wasn't actually working for the
Daily Planet,
of course, that being the fictional newspaper that employed Superman. He was so excited about interning at the
Boston Globe
this summer, he'd created a countdown calendar to his first day of work. Which would have been lame if it wasn't so cute.

“Okay,” he texted back. “I have to go. I'll call you later.”

Okay? Just okay? Huh. That was certainly not the glowingly enthusiastic response I'd been expecting.

“A little help here, Textarella?” Dev grunted, heaving an enormous bag off the conveyor belt. We had just barely squeaked under the baggage weight restriction, as each of our suitcases was stuffed to the gills with “Confederate Couture.” Dev assured me that we had enough outfits to last the two of us all summer, but he wouldn't hesitate to sell the clothes off my back if a prospective customer was interested. As for the rest of the fashions, earlier in the week I'd helped him lug a few enormous boxes down to FedEx, where we shipped them off to a mysterious address in Pine Level, Alabama. I dropped my phone back in my bag, shrugging off Garrett's less-than-thrilled response, and ambled over to help Dev. He'd already muscled my pink behemoth of a suitcase off the conveyor belt, but luckily his zebra-striped monster wasn't too far behind. Together, struggling, we pulled it to the floor.

“Jesus,” I said, wiping some sweat off my forehead. “If all those Southern belles had carried their wardrobes everywhere, they would have been ripped.”

“I know, right?” Dev extended the handle on his suitcase, ready to wheel it away. “We should have started lifting last semester. Good thing we're in the land of chivalry, and hopefully you can just bat those baby blues and get some good ol' boy to heave 'em around from now on.”