His For Keeps: (50 Loving States, Tennessee) (24 page)

My grandma, who’s at the kitchen counter piling the last batch of chicken into one of the large graniteware stockpots we use to serve it, gives me a teasing sidelong glance.

“Better go out to meet him before your cousins do, Best Grandbaby.”

I take off my apron and come out the front door just in time to see Rhonda, her cleavage leading the way, already sauntering toward the old-school, black Chevy Silverado that’s come to a stop at the side of the road outside my grandma’s cabin. The body of the truck looks like it must have been made sometime back in the eighties, but the paint and detailing sparkles clean in the light of the setting sun, as if it just rolled off the assembly line.

“Excuse me,” I say to Rhonda, rushing pass her.

However, I stop jogging when Colin actually climbs out of his vintage truck.

He looks even better than his truck. A throwback to the country singers of yesteryear, in his black-on-black Johnny Cash western suit, his Roy Orbinson sunglasses, and his Kris Kristofferson hair, wavy underneath his black Stetson. And even though he now has a bouquet of flowers in one hand, he somehow seems more intimidating than the last time I saw him.

“C’mon, you made it this far,” he calls out to me, not budging from where he’s standing. “Come the rest of the way to me.”

I do, closing the space between us with a few more shaky steps.

He looks at me for a few beats behind his black sunglasses. “Guess, I’m going to have to start calling you Blue.”

I laugh, despite myself. Despite this situation. “I guess so.”

He takes off his sunglasses and his eyes travel over my shoulder, probably taking in all the picnic tables and my many family members who are most likely staring right back at him. It’s not like we’ve ever had a white man just drop in on the Sunday Dinner. And he’s a country star, to boot. Not that they listen to a lot of country, but they’ve had time to Google him on their phones since I made the announcement about him coming.

“You weren’t lying about having a big family,” he says.

Yeah, that was one of the few things I hadn’t lied to him about, I think to myself.

“This is just the tip of the iceberg,” I tell him. “We also got kin up in St. Louis, Mississippi. Even a couple of cousins out in Las Vegas.” I think of one of Bernice’s aunts, who’d died in a tragic car accident along with her husband a few years ago, leaving behind my cousin, Prudence, and her much younger brother, Jake. “Us Goodes are scattered all over the place. I think my mom might have chose Alabama to live because it was one of the few states where she didn’t have relatives.”

“It’s always just been me and my mom,” Colin says, his eyes continuing to scan behind me. “I can’t hardly imagine having a family this big.”

“Yeah, it’s cool in some ways, and it’s not in others,” I answer with a roll of my eyes. Now it’s my turn to be ominous. “You’ll see when you meet them.”

His blue gaze switches back to me. “Your grandma watching?” he asks me.

“No, she’s still in the kitchen, getting everything in serving dishes,” I answer, wondering why he wants to know.

He answers my unspoken question by pulling me into him tight and kissing the hell out of me.

My family proves everything I’ve said about their drawbacks by promptly erupting into a chorus of “ooooooohhhhs!” behind us.

“C’mon,” he says, chuckling against my lips. “Introduce me to your family.”

And somewhere in the distance, I hear one of the records Colin sent my grandma start playing “Go Tell it on the Mountain.”

COLIN IS NOTHING LESS than utterly charming with my family. Polite and quick with the “sirs” and “ma’ams” when it comes to addressing my older uncles, aunts, and cousins. Good-natured about any and all ribbing he receives. He happily answers my family’s general questions and handles the more personal ones with more cleverness than I would have managed under the same circumstances.

“So you like black women, huh?” my cousin, Rhonda, asks him point blank, batting her eyes at him across our picnic table. She just about pushed poor Bernice out of her usual spot in order to make room for herself right across from Colin and me.

“Sure do,” Colin answered. “Latina, Asian, and white women, too. I don’t really dislike any kind of woman that I know of.”

“But how many black woman have you dated?” Rhonda presses, leaning in so he can get a better view of her pushed up cleavage.

Colin shrugs as if he’s never considered that question before. “I don’t know. How many black women have you dated?”

Rhonda stares at him, obviously not knowing whether she should be insulted by the insinuation that she’s dated women or if Colin’s just confused.

“Ooh, that white boy of yours is a quick one!” Grandma, who’s sitting beside me, cackles and slaps me on the arm.

“Thank you, ma’am,” Colin says right on cue. “May I have another piece of chicken?”

“You sure can,” Grandma answers. “C’mon ya’ll, pass down that chicken,” she yells to some cousins at the far end of the long table.

“You were right, this is the best chicken I’ve ever had,” Colin admits after transforming three more drumsticks into naked bones. He’s technically whispering, but his voice is loud enough for everyone on our side of the table, including my grandma, to hear him. “Think she’d be open to becoming my Nashville chicken supplier?”

The answer to that question turns out to be yes, especially when Grandma finds out the current rep is another “grandma.” A television personality who owns a nationwide chain of southern food restaurants.

“Oh, my chicken stomps hers into the ground,” my Grandmas states bluntly, with the confidence of a woman who’s been throwing her whole foot into her signature dish since the age of ten.

I try to laugh right along with everybody else. But it doesn’t sound near as light-hearted. I can’t relax on account of Colin’s hand on my thigh. It’s been there since the start of the meal, stroking, just close enough to my core for it to feel more intentional than unconscious. A deliberate promise of things to come.

I keep waiting for something to go wrong, for Colin to stop acting like the perfect dinner date and show everybody his horns.

But he doesn’t, and when I try to clear the table, my grandma stops me.

“Don’t mind that, Best Grandbaby. While you were in the bathroom, Colin said you two needed to be getting on the road soon.” She lowers her voice to say, “I’m assuming he wants to get an early start on your nighttime activities, and I don’t want you falling asleep on the road.”

I can’t believe Colin talked to my grandmother behind my back. And I really can’t believe my Southern Baptist grandmother is okay with me spending the night somewhere else, with someone else.

“Oh, don’t look at me that way, Best Grandbaby. And don’t think I wasn’t young once myself,” she says with a suck of her teeth. “That boy’s been eyeing you harder than my chicken all through dinner! They get like that when they been on the road too long, you know. I could tell you some stories about when your Paw Paw returned from the Korean War. We wasn’t married yet, but believe me, we wasn’t good Southern Baptists for a whole week after he got home.”

My grandmother cackles. “If you want to stay here instead of going on home with that Conway Twitty of yours, I’ll tell you all about it.”

In no way do I want to hear anything about my grandma and Paw Paw’s sex life. I quickly walk away and over to where Colin’s playing a game of tag football with a few of my boy cousins while most of the adults watch in lawn chairs. I find him throwing an easy pass to his star receiver—my twelve-year-old cousin, Marius. And then trash talking Marius’s father, Malcolm, for not intercepting it. Except for his clothes and skin color, you’d never guess he wasn’t part of the family. He looks that at home among my relatives

And my heart stutters a little bit, because I’m so confused. Because he’s painted the perfect picture by showing up here for the last Sunday Dinner of the year. But I still have no idea what this is between us.

He must sense me waiting for him, because after the trash talking’s done, he tosses the ball to Marius and says, “Kyra and me need to get on the road, man. But I had a real good time playing with you.”

As I watch Colin go around to the whole family and say his good-byes, a newfound respect for his mother rolls over me. Colin was a lot of things—especially in private—but impolite wasn’t one of them.

And my grandma must seriously approve of him, too. Not only does she let me out of helping with the dishes, but after Colin comes over with me to say good-bye, she says, “Best Grandbaby, you make sure this little boy comes back when we start the Sunday Dinner up again next year.”

Only my grandmother would refer to a six-foot-plus internationally renowned country superstar as “little boy”—right before making me promise to bring him back six months from now, in April when the Sunday Dinner started up again. Talk about putting pressure on a real new relationship.

Colin just smiles. “I’ll see what I can do to make sure she does,” he tells my grandma.

I can practically feel her beam of approval on our backs as we walk away toward my car, which is parked in a disorganized clump with a bunch of others, right outside the house.

“You okay to drive back to Nashville?” he asks me when we reach my car. “Because if you want to leave your car here, you can borrow one of mine while you’re in town, and I’ll drive you back here before I leave again next Monday.”

Back to Nashville. I belatedly realize Colin must think I work in Nashville. “Thank you for the offer,” I say, feeling guilty as hell. “But I’d rather hold on to

my own car.”

Something ticks in Colin’s jaw, and his blue eyes narrow. But in the end he says, “Okay, follow me, and call if you lose me.”

“I still have the cabin address in my navigation system,” I let him know.

“We’re not going to the cabin.”

Not going to the cabin? Then where are we going? He’s already walking away toward his truck before I can ask either of those questions out loud.

29

And that’s how I find myself following Colin down Highway 40, making my second three-hour-plus trip on the same day. Leaving me with plenty of time to wonder just how tonight will go. Colin was pleasant enough with my family, but he’d barely said a paragraph to me after that kiss by his truck.

The worry tinged with a not so healthy helping of dread makes the hours fly by faster than I necessarily want them to, and the next thing I know, we’re stopping outside a little Italian deli. I frown when Colin gets out of the car and motions for me to do the same.

“What’s going on?” I ask him. We’re in the West End area of downtown Nashville now, and the city announces itself to me as soon as I get out of my car. Traffic noise on top of crickets. It’s a little cooler here, too, and I zip up my leather jacket to protect myself against the wind.

He points to what has to be at least a thirty-story high rise a few buildings down from the shop.

“That’s where I live. But I wanted to get a few things before we go in.”

I shake my head. “You can’t still be hungry.”

“No, I can’t,” Colin agrees with a grin. “But we might get hungry tomorrow, and I don’t have anything to eat in the condo. C’mon.”

He holds out his hand to me so easily it doesn’t even occur to me not to take it. Still, a certain unease begins to roll over me as we shop, and I watch him throw enough food and wine into a small basket to feed an army: a party tray or various cubed cheeses, several packages of meats sliced in circles, plus grapes and an entire netted bag of tangerines.

I can’t help but notice as we’re checking out that everything he’s put in the basket could easily be eaten by hand. Or served to somebody who’s tied up.

“Did you find everything okay?” The dark-haired clerk behind the counter looks from me to Colin. Obviously knowing who Colin is. Obviously surprised to see him in here with me.

Colin just smiles and says we found everything we need.

It’s a short but severely awkward walk to his apartment. Not only because I’m pretty sure I’m about to get tied up again, but also because Colin has my overnight bag in one hand and the paper bag of groceries in the other, which means he can no longer hold my hand.

“You ready for this?” he asks me.

I shake my head, not even beginning to know how to answer that.

But Colin’s not talking about what he’s going to do to me when we get to his place. He points to a pack of men standing on the sidewalk that leads up to the building.

“Usually, I drive in around the back, but a bunch of celebrities live in this building, so there’s always somebody hanging around out here. Figure it’s as good of a time as any.”

My eyes fly down to the pleather jogging pants and button-up plaid shirt I’m wearing. This outfit was fine for Sunday Dinner at my grandma’s, but if I’d known I was going to get my picture taken…

“You look fine,” he tells me. He starts walking us toward the pack of men. “Plus, everybody’s going to be focused on your hair anyway.”

However, I can sense a change come over him just before we reach the high rise’s double front doors. He hikes my overnight bag up over his shoulder and pulls me in close.

“Keep your head down and don’t say anything, no matter what they ask you,” he tells me. “Less than a minute and we’ll be on the other side of the door.”

That minute feels like an eternity, with cameras flashing and male voices yelling out aggressive questions. For the first time, I’m beginning to understand why Colin seems so ready to stop being a country music star. If the constant travel isn’t enough to turn him off performing for a living, then having to deal with this all the time would be.

But eventually we make our way through the shark pool to where an older man in a blue uniform is holding a glass door open for us.

“Evening, Mr. Fairgood. Ms. Goode,” he says as we rush into the building’s sleek lobby.

“Evening, Ernie,” Colin answers before I can ask how the doorman knows my name. “They’re thick out there tonight.”

“That they are,” Ernie agrees cheerily, like it’s just another day at the celebrity-packed high-rise office for him.