Coming Home to Texas--A Clean Romance Read online

  “Ah, well. Thanks for that.”

  What was he doing? The way he said it, the way he was smiling at her—this was what she’d meant. He flirted when he didn’t even mean to, when he was trying not to.

  Well, he wasn’t going to mess up now. He’d just won back some respect from her—at least that was how he was reading the situation—and he wasn’t about to throw that away. He’d show her he could be mature about this.

  “I’d better get back to work,” he said.

  His hand was on the door latch when she said, “So what’s it like, being blind in one eye?”

  He turned back around.

  “It’s not that bad. You adjust. You know that cars aren’t the size of playing cards, so if they look real small, they must be far away. You guess, and experiment, and figure it out. I’m mostly used to it now, but there are still times when the world just looks...wrong. Everything’s sort of dim and flat, and the colors aren’t right. Oh, and then there’s this weird thing where you feel like the center of your body has shifted, like your good eye is in the middle of your face. For a long time I used to lean a little to my left without knowing it, but I don’t do that anymore, I don’t think. I do still tend to run into things on my right. I’m clumsier than I used to be. And pouring drinks is a challenge, because you can’t tell how far back the glass is. I have to hold the glass I’m pouring into with my other hand, or rest the bottle on the edge of the glass, or stand up and look straight down to make sure everything’s lined up. Otherwise I miss the glass and pour onto the table. It’s hard to look cool after that, so I was motivated to figure it out pretty quick. And sometimes it takes me a little longer to recognize people. I don’t know why, but it does.”

  “How well can you see me right now?”

  Something in her voice made his heart leap into his throat. “Well, um, not real well. You’re kinda backlit by the window. I can see, like, your outline. I can see that there are, uh, contours there.”

  She took a step toward him. “How about now?”

  “Yeah, well, uh, better. I can see your face. I can tell it’s you.”

  That was a stupid thing to say. Of course he could tell it was her. Her voice, her face, her shape, her scent, everything about her had his senses filled to overflowing.

  “How far away am I?”

  “I don’t know. I’d have to touch you to be sure.”

  He started to reach for her but pulled his hand back. Don’t be dumb. Don’t mess this up.

  Then Dalia took his hand, pulled it to her and settled it in the lean curve of her waist, and ran her own hand slowly up his arm—her whole hand, fingers spread, feeling him. When she reached his triceps, he flexed like he used to whenever she’d touch his arms, and she smiled like she remembered.

  He had just enough time to think, What is happening?

  And then Dalia was kissing him and he wasn’t thinking at all anymore.

  * * *

  SHE HADN’T MEANT to kiss him.

  Had she?

  No, definitely not. Okay, maybe the whole thing did seem a little planned, getting him alone behind her closed bedroom door. But all she’d really wanted was to clear the air. Only a day earlier, she’d learned some things that radically altered her view of the past six years, exonerating Tony of serious fault, and casting her own behavior in a new and unflattering light. Whatever mistakes he’d made, he hadn’t been unfaithful to her. But she’d made assumptions, and pushed him into a corner, and added to his suffering, which had been bad enough already.

  She’d wronged him, and she had to say so. That was only justice.

  But once she had him there, the way he looked, the things he said and the memories that had a different meaning than what she’d thought came together in a powerful way.

  And underneath all that was something more powerful still.

  What it came down to was that she loved Tony, and she wanted him now as much as she ever had. She’d never stopped, really. And there was no reason to fight it anymore. All the things keeping them apart had vanished like August dew in a Texas sunrise.

  Just for a second or two, a voice inside her head said, It’s been too long. Too much has happened. We’re too different.

  And then she was kissing him, and the voice didn’t have anything more to say.

  She heard a soft thump from the closed door as Tony’s back pushed it against the jamb. He smelled of sawdust and silicone caulk. His faded T-shirt was soft under her hands, and the artistic sculpted beard that had drawn her attention so often over the past several weeks rubbed against her chin.

  A knock at the door made them both jump. “Dalia? Are you in there?”

  It was her mom.

  “Uh, no. I mean yes. I’ll be out in a minute.”

  Tony was trying not very successfully to muffle a laugh. His eyes were bright, his face shining with joy and mischief, and for a second he looked a lot like the Tony of fifteen years ago.

  “Shh!” Dalia whispered. “We’ve got to get you out of here. You can climb out the window.”

  “And have my guys see me sneaking out like some punk? That’s way worse than just walking out the door.”

  “Yeah. Yeah, you’re right. We’re not teenagers anymore.”

  “No, we’re not. We’re two responsible adults with nothing to hide. We’ll just saunter out all cool like there’s nothing to see here.”

  “Okay,” she said. “But don’t open the door yet. I need a second.”

  It would take more than a second to restore her calm. Her heart pounded, and she was shaking.

  She didn’t want to go. It felt so abrupt, ending the encounter this way. Nothing was resolved or talked through properly—it had been, but then the kiss had raised a whole fresh set of issues. And she didn’t want to address any of them yet. She just wanted to kiss Tony again and again.

  But there wasn’t time for that. She was in her childhood bedroom with her high school sweetheart, with whom she seemed to have just gotten back together, with an entire construction crew and her mother waiting outside the door.

  And the longer they waited, the weirder it was going to be.

  “I guess I’ll go out first,” she said. “Then you follow in a few minutes. I’ll try to distract everyone.”

  “Okay.”

  She reached for the door latch, but Tony put a hand on hers and said, “Wait a minute.”

  He turned her around to face him. “Dalia, will you go with me to the county fair?”

  It melted her heart, how eager and earnest and formal he looked, how he was rushing the words out like he had to hurry before he lost his nerve. So much for not being teenagers anymore.

  She laughed, then kissed him again.

  “Is that a yes?”

  “Yes. Now go. I mean stay. I’m going first. No, wait! I have a better idea.” She picked up a file folder from her desk and handed it to him. “Take this, and we’ll go out together. That way it’ll look like we were discussing some sort of legitimate business in here.”

  “Yeah. Yeah, that’s good.”

  He reached for the door latch—there’d been a lot of reaching for the door latch in the last few minutes—then turned and kissed her one more time.

  Then he squared his shoulders, opened the door and walked out, looking just the same as when they’d gone back to her brother’s pasture party after kissing at the stock pond.

  She’d missed him so much.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  DALIA WATCHED FOR Tony’s truck from her front-facing bedroom window like some infatuated sap, the same way she used to watch for the Dodge Charger he drove back in high school, before it got repossessed in the fallout from one of his dad’s losing streaks. And just like back then, she felt a thrill of pure sweetness when she saw the dust cloud on the driveway that meant he was almost there.

  She took
a last look in the mirror. She’d spent more time on hair and makeup than usual, and she knew she was looking good. Her eyeliner was especially on point.

  With so much advance warning, she could have gone out to meet him, but it was a pleasure to watch him drive up, park and get out with that spring in his step. Besides, she couldn’t deprive her mom of the opportunity to revel in delight. Her mom had been giddy since finding out Tony and Dalia had an actual date.

  Then she heard the front door open and her mom calling out a greeting, which meant she was hobbling around on her crutches.

  Dalia grabbed her purse and hurried out to the living room.

  “Sit back down, Mom. You didn’t need to let Tony in. After all these weeks and years of coming here, I’m sure he knows his way around.”

  “Oh, I’m tired of resting. And it’s only two weeks until I’ll be walking in my walking boot. Dalia made a spreadsheet to keep track of my recovery process,” she told Tony as he crossed the threshold. “She makes the most beautiful spreadsheets.”

  “I know,” Tony said. “I’ve seen them.”

  He smiled at Dalia, put a hand to his chest and looked her over. “I, uh—mmm. Wow.”

  “Thanks,” she said, with an appraising glance of her own. “You, too.”

  “You both look lovely!” her mom said. “You won’t mind if I take some pictures, will you?”

  “Okay,” Dalia said. She made it sound like she was giving in, granting her mom a favor, but she was glad. She wanted a picture of them on this day, wanted a tangible reminder to help her lock down every detail to keep in her memory forever.

  The pictures were taken, then they said their goodbyes and headed outside. Tony opened the passenger-side door for Dalia, then ran around to the driver’s-side door like there was no time to waste. He always did it that way.

  Once they were past the cattle guard and heading down the highway, he reached over, took her hand and brought it to his lips, all in one swift motion.

  “What are you smiling about?” he asked.

  She hadn’t even realized she was smiling. “I was thinking about our first date.”

  “Ah, but which first date?”

  He was still holding her hand. The feel of his fingers laced between hers was so perfect and right.

  She chuckled. “This again?”

  “Of course. We never really figured it out.”

  They’d spent a lot of time talking it over. Dalia always said Marcos’s pasture party didn’t count as a date because they didn’t go to it together or plan to meet there. Tony said if it ended with the two of them making out, it counted as a date. She said no, it didn’t, because that wasn’t what “date” meant. A date was something you arranged beforehand. That was the definition. Then he pointed out that once they were both at the party, she’d invited him out to the stock pond and he’d accepted, so that part right there was a date, even if the party as a whole wasn’t. She said this was splitting hairs.

  “You were always so adamant about it,” she said. “I never understood why it mattered to you so much.”

  “You want to know a secret?” he asked. “I didn’t really care. I just liked talking about it—partly because it was fun to wind you up, and partly because the idea of a first date meant there would be a second and a third. A history. And the fact that you argued so hard for your own way meant you thought so, too.”

  “Wow, that’s...really sweet, actually.”

  “Yeah, I’m a sweet guy. That’s also why I pushed so hard to drive you to school, that first Monday after we got together. Remember? You didn’t see the point. You said it was a waste of gas, with me living so close to the high school and you living out in the sticks. And I said—”

  “You said we had to make a grand statement. You didn’t want there to be any doubt in anyone’s mind that I was your girl. Oh, yeah. I remember.”

  She picked up his hand and kissed it. “You want to know another secret? That was just token resistance. I was actually thrilled. I’d been half-afraid that once the weekend was over you’d blow me off and pretend like nothing ever happened between us. But you wanted people to know. You wanted it official!”

  “Well, sure. I was proud of you.”

  “You were! You really were! And that was the most incredible thing. Because I was proud of you, too. Fiercely proud.”

  “Fiercely? Wow. Well, how ’bout now?”

  “Even more now.”

  He pulled over onto the shoulder, put on his hazard lights and kissed her.

  It was so good to be holding him again. His lips on hers, his hair in her hands—it was all so familiar, but so now.

  Later, when they were driving again, he said, “You want to know another secret? I’ve been wanting to take you to the county fair since seventh grade.”

  She looked at his amazing profile, dark and sharp against the afternoon sky. “You’re kidding me.”

  “I’m not! Every fall, from seventh grade to senior year, I thought it would be the year it happened. And every year I was wrong. And when we finally got together it was spring, which was too late, and then after that we were away at school. And then...we broke up. But I never forgot. I’ve thought about it every fall since, but, you know, in a sad way. And now here we are, actually going. So this is the fulfillment of a fourteen-year wish for me.”

  “Seriously? You really wanted to go with me? You sure didn’t act like it, with all those beauty queens and barrel racers hanging on your arm year after year.”

  “Heh, heh. You noticed that?”

  “Of course I noticed. I noticed everything you did.”

  “Well, I had to amuse myself somehow, and show you what you were missing.”

  “Show me what I was missing? You never asked me to go with you, genius.”

  “Because I knew you wouldn’t say yes.”

  She leaned closer to him, slipped her arm through his and gave him a quick sidewise glance and a smile. “Says you.”

  * * *

  THEY STROLLED AIMLESSLY around the fairgrounds, just taking in the sights and sounds. Tony couldn’t stop smiling—not that he tried very hard. He liked seeing all the wildly different-looking people, the jumble of full-sleeve tattoos, snakeskin-print leggings and hair dyed in nonnatural colors, plus all the traditional country-looking people. Western shirts with pearl snap buttons, Wranglers and plaid, cowboy hats and big belt buckles. Lots of glorious mustaches and beards, as well as big hair on women and men. Sometimes, entire groups walked by all wearing maroon A&M shirts.

  Lots of younger men wore the traditional jeans, boots, hat and belt, but with T-shirts instead of button-downs. That was the route Tony had gone. He had on his favorite Texas graphic T, the one with an outline of a United States map with an oversize Texas, so big that the panhandle reached all the way to where North Dakota ought to be.

  Tony liked all the noise and action. More than that, he liked walking around with Dalia on his arm. Sometimes they ran into people they knew, and it was always fun to see their faces register surprise at the sight of the two of them together. That’s right, Tony wanted to say. We’re a couple now. This is my girl.

  He stopped in front of a mechanical bull. “Mr. Mendoza got himself one of these,” he said. “I rode it at the FFF.”

  “I saw.”

  “You did?”

  “Of course. I couldn’t take my eyes off you—and I was really trying, too.”

  “I actually rode it more than once.”

  “I know. Four times. I saw. Looked real good doing it, too.”

  He tried to look modest but gave up. “You wanna see me do it again?”

  “That line is pretty long. Besides, I’ve already seen you ride a real one. That was even better.”

  “Oh, yeah? You liked seeing that?”

  “It was amazing. I didn’t even know you were going to ride, an
d suddenly there you were. You were always such a natural athlete. Everything physical that you ever tried, you succeeded at. You just had an instinct for it.”

  “You’re kind of a natural yourself. I bet you’d have been terrific at barrel racing.”

  “I thought about trying, but I was too busy with sheepdog trials. I didn’t want to be dealing with a horse and a border collie.”

  “Remember that one time when your dog busted loose, barged into the arena while another dog was doing the course and tried to take over?”

  She laughed. “Yes! I haven’t thought of that in years. That was the craziest thing.”

  “I know! Those dogs were so into it, so dead serious about their work. There was poor Merlin Brando, just straining to get loose, crying out with those anguished yelps ’cause there were sheep to be herded and he wasn’t there to do it. And then he slipped his hold and burst in and told that other dog, Outta the way, fool! Watch and learn.”

  “I was horrified. I thought Merle and I would be banned for life. But everyone thought it was hilarious. Just a border collie being a border collie. Passionate about work.”

  He pulled her to him and kissed the top of her head. “You’re kind of a border collie yourself at heart.”

  She smiled. “You silver-tongued devil, you.”

  They browsed vendor booths. So many things for sale—hummingbird feeders, earthenware mugs, wooden steins, etched-glass pint and pilsner glasses. Throw pillows covered with leather or hair-on animal skins, trimmed with studs and concha shells. Purses, spangly and fringed, studded, embossed, bejeweled, be-crossed. Lots of crosses in general. Boots, hats. Clothing for humans and dogs. Decorative rocks with designs or words carved or etched into them.

  And, oh, the Texas-shaped things. Tony kept saying, “We need that. We need that.” Like there was a we to consider, like the two of them were going to have a household together.

  And Dalia kept saying, “No, we don’t.”

  He never got tired of that we.

  As their Ferris wheel cart rose into the sky, Dalia said, “So I’ve been reading up on monocular vision.”