The One Place (4 page)

Tuck’s face broke out into a full-blown, award-winning, county-wide, panty dropping smile and murmured, “Well, you got me there, Babe.”

What the hell? It was like this guy lived to get me all riled up!

“What’s your deal? It’s like you live your life thinking of ways to rile me up.”

Still sporting his smile he said, “Babe.”

Expecting more of an answer than that I snapped, “Babe? Babe
what
?”

“Nothin’. It’s just that you’re awful cute when you get on a tear. And from what I can tell, doesn’t take all that much to make your hackles rise. Actually, seems it takes very little effort on my part. Leaves a lot of time and head space for thinkin’ of better ways to rile you up, honey.”

Argh! What a jerk! I was not normally an emotionally volatile person. It should be taking a lot more than a few juvenile remarks from some guy to get a reaction out of me! Unable to rein it back in enough to be satisfied, I jumped up, clipped, “Breaks over!”, and took off like someone was chasing me from the table.

Shaking his head and smiling, Tucker shouted, “Good! You can come take my order. Starvin’, Babe.”

There was no way I was going to go back over to Tuck’s table and waiting on him with my emotions still so raw, so I begged Toni to do it. She didn’t get it. “Honey, if that boy wanted me to wait on him, I’d wait on him all day and all night. I’d keep goin’ ‘til he got
all
that he needed. You get me?”

Oh, I got her alright. I still wasn’t going there.

Chapter 9

Two days later, Tuck came in for breakfast and sat in my section. I approached his table with a game plan. I figured if I went at him first, maybe I wouldn’t be so thrown off when he poked at me.

“Not working again, I see, Mr. Cody. I guess you really don’t do anything.”

Expecting to see some sort of annoyance or irritation on his face, he surprised me again by smiling. The jerk.

“Always make time to come see you, Babe.”

Argh!

“What is with the ‘Babe’? I’m not your babe.”

“What would you rather I called you?” Pausing to rove his eyes over my body and stopping at my ass, he added, “Because I could do Sweetcheeks. That works too.”

He was really starting to get on my nerves!

Giving him every ounce of sass it seemed he was fishing for, I snapped, “How about you use my name! That’s a novel idea!”

He smiled again. The bastard.

“Ok, Babe. I’ll call you, Talie.”

“How about you call me Natalie? I’m not sure I like you enough to let me use my nickname.”

He shook his head and said, “Nope. Talie’s the best I can do, Babe.”

I was noticing this wasn’t going anywhere. I might as well drop it. He was at least calling me Talie now, though, I will note still using ‘Babe’. Whatever.

“Whatever. Just tell me what you want to eat.”

“Alright, Talie. I tell you what. Why don’t you just surprise me?”

I huffed, turned, and stomped away. Fine. He wanted me to surprise him, then a surprise is what he would get.

********

On a high from giving Tuck one of the oddest, nastiest combinations I could come up with (It was only dampened a little by the fact that he seemed completely unfazed by it and ate every bite), I decided to ask Annabelle some questions about him.

“So what does Tuck do? He seems pretty lazy to me.”

Annabelle actually looked a little offended by my statement and quietly informed me, “Tuck works all the time. Seems like all he does is work, actually. If he isn’t takin’ care of the farm his parents left him, he’s takin’ care of everybody else. Ain’t nobody around here who Tuck hasn’t done somethin’ for, and usually, more than once.”

Well, that shut me up. Shit. The last thing I needed to do was go around alienating myself by spouting bullshit about what seemed to be the town’s golden boy. Luckily, all my jabs to Tuck himself bounced right off. He didn’t act offended at all.

Thinking about what she said, one thing stuck out. “What do you mean, the farm his parents left him? His parents aren’t alive?”

Annabelle looked around and got even quieter. “No, his parents ain’t alive. He doesn’t have any family left. His parents died in a muggin’ gone wrong up in Nashville about four years back. His sister had already left, so that left him with nobody. Look, ain’t my place to talk about it and ain’t yours. So don’t go talkin’ about it, alright?”

Properly chastised, I whispered back, “No problem, Anabelle. I won’t talk about it.”

********

When I got home that night and sat down on my couch, I couldn’t help but think how you never really knew someone’s story. To look at Tuck and be around him, you would never guess he’d been through what he had. I felt bad for judging him based on his appearance and reminded myself how I must look. No one knew about my past either, and it had definitely shaped who I was.

Thinking about Tuck’s lost family, led to thinking about mine. They were still alive, but they were practically dead to me thanks to the bitch slap life had seen fit to give me. I knew all about being alone since I lost Jenny. Not only did I lose Jenny, but I was forced to cut off my family and friends. It had been easy enough to do seeing as I was making moves for my best friend Jenny’s husband. Turns out people think you’re not the kind of person they want to spend time with at all when you’re doing such bitchy things. What a joke. I was honestly surprised that not one person had thought it was a little strange that I would do something like that. I guess for the most part, people just take things at face value. After all, what would be the reason for it all to be a ruse? And I guess, with as complicated as the reasons were behind our story, it would take a lot of magical powers and shit to surmise the real motives.

Complicated was probably even an understatement. This thing was so many layers deep that it would take a chainsaw to penetrate all of them. Since Jenny died, I spent almost all my free time trying to put the pieces of the puzzle together. From what I could gather, Andrew and Jenny started out with a real relationship. Or one where Jenny thought she loved him anyway. Maybe they had moved to New York and then Andrew had changed. Ha. Pretty drastically.

No, he wouldn’t have changed all at once, Jenny would have gotten out of there. She wasn’t as strong-willed as I was, but she had self-confidence. She had to know that a man beating her wasn’t love. So he would have had to change slowly. Say a year. Yeah, that made sense. After a year or so of the transformation, Jenny had to have gotten the clue and gone to leave him. But she went back to him. Why?

Every time I got to this place in my thoughts, I came up empty. I mean I suppose he could have threatened her family, like he did mine, but would she really take that at face value and not go to someone? At that point, there wasn’t proof, at least not as substantial as I had seen, as to what he was capable of. And as far as I knew, he wasn’t in the power position that he was now.

Oh well, I was starting to get a headache thinking about all of this and trying to make sense of it, so I decided to have one more Coke, take some ibuprofen, and take a bath. Because of my Coke habit- just the soda, not the hard stuff- I had developed a tolerance to the caffeine and could practically drink it while laying in my bed and still go to sleep. It was awesome.

I got up, moved into the kitchen and got a Coke and my medicine and headed for my bedroom. I got to the doorway, when I realized I hadn’t even locked the door. No reason to have all that security and not utilize it. Especially when I
did
actually have people out there who had threatened to kill me a time or two. I turned, headed back to the door, threw the two locks and was turning to the alarm panel when there was a loud knock on the door. What the hell?

I looked through the peephole to see Ruthie, all gussied up, standing on my doorstep. Turning both the locks back to the unlocked position, I grabbed the knob and opened the door.

Ruthie smiled brightly and squealed, “Thank God you’re home! Awesome!”

Cracking a small smile back, I pondered her wonder at the idea of me being home. “Where else would I be Ruthie? I know you and about two other people in this town so far. I’m always home if I’m not at work.”

“Oh. I just thought maybe you had gotten close with somebody and that maybe you would be with...them.”

Was she high? “Well, I’m not with ‘them’. I’m home. Like Always. What brings you here?”

Getting back on track, she squealed again, “Oh yeah!”

Cringing from the pitch of her excited voice mixing with my headache, I cut her off. “Ruthie. A little less shrieking please. I have a little headache.”

Softening her voice she got to the point. “Okay. No probs. I just wanted us to go out! Bobby’s bein’ a jerk, so I told him I was gonna do girls’ night! Let’s go to the Dizzy Lizard!”

Crap. I was afraid she was going to say something like that with the way she was dressed. I considered my headache and then considered the desperate for girl time girl on my doorstep. Shit. I was such a sucker. It looked like I was headed out for the night instead of spending time relaxing in a bath.

Opening the door wider, I motioned for Ruthie to step inside. She squeaked another chirp of excitement but quickly subdued it. “Just hang out. I should probably put on something other than this.” I did a sweeping motion of my body with my hand to emphasize my point. “Although, all I really have in my closet are more clothes like these, so I don’t know that it’s actually going to get better.”

Ruthie jumped up and down again and lifted her arm to show me a bag that I had not noticed before. “Don’t worry, Nattie! I’ve noticed your wardrobe doesn’t have much spice, so I brought some of my clothes for you to wear!”

I looked at Ruthie and then back at myself and noted, “Um. Have you not noticed that my ass and boobs are just a smidge bigger than yours?” My ass and boobs weren’t a smidge bigger, they were
bigger.
Ruthie was the definition of petite, and while I was short, I definitely had curves.

Ruthie rolled her eyes. “Just turn around and head for your room. I will take care of everything.”

Following orders, but doing it under protest, I turned and headed for my room. Ruthie shouted from behind me, “Oh. And take a shower, girl. You smell like diner.”

I flicked a wave over my shoulder and muttered, “Thanks. That’s so sweet.”

********

Showered and dressed in a tight eggplant-colored, cap-sleeved top with a deep “v” in front, and a pair of white tailored short-shorts, I pulled on my Mary Janes and strapped them on. As many bad memories as these shoes came with, I just couldn’t hate them. Not to mention, since Ruthie was a different size and my only other pair of shoes were my work converse, these were pretty much the only choice.

After two days working in my Mary Janes my feet had begged me to go out and buy a more comfortable shoe. I had once again chosen not to use any style guides to pick something and took the first comfy pair of shoes I found- converse.

As I stood up, Ruthie walked into my bedroom and started clapping her hands. I rolled my eyes and turned and asked, “Are you sure about these shorts? I’m not sure if I’m comfortable or not.”

“Yes, Nattie! Are you crazy? They look fab on you! Your ass looks amazing!”

“Yes, I’m sure my ass looks amazing. Jesus, I’m not even wearing underwear! I can’t do this.”

She jumped forward and grabbed my arms to stop my retreat. “Relax. You couldn’t wear underwear because it would show through those shorts and that’s just tacky.”

“You know what’s tacky? Not wearing underwear on a night out! With short-shorts!”

“No one is gonna know! Just grab your stuff and let’s go, you whiner!”

“Ugh! Fine!” The good news about the shorts was that they had taken my mind off of my overabundant cleavage in this top. Shit.

I turned and grabbed my bag, followed Ruthie down the hallway, set my alarm and went out the door.

In addition to the clothes, Ruthie had brought her hair straightener and makeup. I hadn’t done much with my hair since I’d been there other than brush it or pull it back in a ponytail for work. And I hadn’t worn make-up since I washed it off in the bus terminal bathroom. I looked pretty good, but was nervous about looking like I had put effort in. It was so much easier for me to keep my shields up when it looked like I didn’t care.

********

Walking into the Dizzy Lizard for the first time was an experience.

First of all, when we walked in the door it felt like everyone stopped what they were doing and stared. I was hoping that was just my paranoid thoughts manifesting in front of my eyes as well as in my mind and wasn’t actually happening. My hope was shot to hell when Ruthie shouted, “Oh get a life! Nothing to see here people!”

Talk about mortification. Pink instantly hit my cheeks and I ducked my head. I hadn’t blushed in years.

Second, from what I could tell, the music was strictly 80’s music. I personally had a fondness for 80’s music and liked nothing more than a good song like “Footloose”, so I thought it was awesome.

Thankfully, Ruthie’s shout seemed to do the trick, at least temporarily, and everyone went back to their previous activities. She grabbed my hand and dragged me toward the bar. “Two shots, Jaimie. Whatever you feel like. Surprise us.”

Realizing what was going on I rushed to tell her not to order me a shot. “I don’t really drink a lot. No shot for me.”

She gave me a look with her eyes, but I kept at it, pleading, “Please, Ruthie. You got me out and in the shorts. Drop the shot. I’ll just take a glass of wine or something.”

“A glass of wine? Geez.”

I gave her a look that said I wasn’t arguing about this and she sighed in defeat. “Fine.” She turned back to the bar and yelled, “Make that just one shot, Jaimie. And a glass of wine for the redhead over here.”

I snapped, “Hey! My hair isn’t really red. It’s auburn.”

Ruthie shrugged and mouthed, “Whatever.” She did this while making the Whatever symbol with both her hands by forming a ‘W’.

God, she was hilarious. So, I showed her by wrapping my arm around her neck and bursting out laughing. It only took her a second to join in my laughter until we had both dissolved into a fit of cackles.

Ruthie’s chuckles stopped abruptly when she looked over my shoulder. Easing out of my own laughter, I slowly turned to see what had affected her.

Leaning against the bar five or so feet behind me with his ankles crossed and an elbow on the bar, was Tuck. He had on jeans, a button up shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows and several buttons undone at the collar, and brown motorcycle boots instead of workboots. And his eyes were glued to my ass.

“Hey!”

At the sound of my voice his eyes flicked from my ass to my eyes and a smirk settled on his beautiful face. “Hey yourself, Natalie Jenkins.”

Ruthie was still silent, but I filled it with enough attitude for both of us. “What the hell do you think you’re doing, staring at my ass like that?”

Tuck just shook his head and smiled. “You come in here wearin’ a pair of shorts like that with an ass like yours, Babe, you gotta know everybody’s gonna be starin’ at your ass. I’m just the only one who let you catch me doin’ it.”

At the mention of the shorts that I
knew
had been a bad idea, I threw a glare over my shoulder at Ruthie. She gave me an innocent smile back. Tuck must have clued in to what was going on because he immediately let Ruthie off the hook.

“Though, I’ll say, whether you’re wearin’ those shorts or not, guys are starin’ at your ass. I know I am.”

Jesus. This guy was unbelievable. It was like he thought this was sweet talk. Not willing to take any shit, I fired back, “Yeah, well look all you want because that’s as close as you’ll be getting.”