“Not at all. I’m glad it brought you here.”
My heart twisted. “Me too.” Don’t tell him now, Presley. Do not tell him right now. “Tell me about Africa. What’d you do there?”
His face lit up. “It was … it was crazy, Pres. Our objective was to head up sustainable rural development—water reclamation, sustainable agriculture, fish farming, land use management. Four villages in two years made a turnaround I wouldn’t believe if I hadn’t seen it myself.”
“So it was a success, then. Teach them to fish, feed them forever?”
He nodded, but his joy dimmed at the mention. “It wasn’t without its share of failures though. There was a fifth village we couldn’t get off the ground. Very few things compare to the pain on a farmer’s face when his crops are destroyed by insects or the fishing plots we’d dug by hand dried up. They’re starving and have so little. I spent a small fortune on shoes, bikes, mattresses … don’t tell my boss.”
“Your secret’s safe.”
“I just … I could help there in a way I’ve never experienced before. I could give, use the excess in my life to give somebody else a chance. It’s all I want to do for the rest of my life.”
My heart slid into my stomach, though I smiled with deep and earnest admiration. “You found your calling.”
A wistful smile brushed his lips. “Guess I did. How about you?”
“I mean, I don’t know if you could count candle making as a calling, but it’s what I want to do. If I had my way, I’d have my own brand, maybe my own shop. But for now, I just fill wholesale orders for stores, usually under their branding. That’s where I made the most money in Maravillo. I made milk soaps and lotions using the dairy from a local creamery that one of my best friends ran.”
“You should open your own store.”
I laughed. “Because it’s that easy.”
“Get a small business loan.”
I gave him a look. “I work at a diner.”
“I could help.”
My look deepened. “Sure—could you buy me a new truck too? Or maybe yacht, while you’re at it.”
“It’s within my means,” he teased. “Although I don’t know what you’d do with a yacht.”
“Eat caviar on the deck in a G-string and listen to yacht rock, obviously.”
“Who doesn’t love Steely Dan?” he asked on a laugh.
“People without yachts, but they’re just jealous.”
“God, I missed you,” he said with that look in his eyes that once got me pregnant.
Don’t fucking tell him, Presley!
I smiled and said, “I missed you too.”
Before he could do something stupid like kiss me, I looked around and realized my cousins and I were the only ones left. Poppy yawned so big and loud, answering yawns rippled through us.
“We should go,” Jo said, hauling herself up to stand, which sounded like it took a tremendous amount of energy to achieve, what with her dramatic creaking and groaning.
“I’ll call an Uber,” Daisy offered, already unlocking her phone.
“Y’all have Uber?” I asked, surprised by my casual use of the word y’all. This place had always rubbed off quick.
“Uber is really just old Stan,” Poppy clarified.
“Stan? With the suspenders?”
“And the newsboy cap,” she confirmed. “A couple years ago, he quit his job selling papers outside HEB in favor of driving people around town.”
“And nobody else had the same idea? I can’t imagine just having one option on the app.”
“Oh, he’s not on the app,” Jo said. “You just text Stan where you’re at, and he comes and gets you. He even figured out how to use Venmo after taking a tech class for seniors at the community center.”
I laughed as we stood, but as my cousins walked out, Sebastian took my hand.
“Hey,” he said with that smile, pulling me into him. He smelled like whiskey and trouble. “Any chance I can convince you to stay tonight?”
“I work at six in the morning, and Bettie will have my ass if I’m late.”
“Psh, you send her to me. I’ll deal with Bettie and her biscuits.”
“I’m positive there is nothing Bettie would like more than for you to deal with her biscuits.”
He chuckled, but he inched closer until our noses brushed.
I caught myself before I let him kiss me, closing my eyes, lowering my chin. He pressed his forehead to mine.
“You okay?” he asked.
We have a baby. Her name’s Priscilla. Do you want to love her? Do you want to love me?
I shook my head. “I just know if you kiss me now, I’m not going anywhere.”
“I missed the part where that’s a problem.”
With a sad sort of chuckle and my lungs a fist around my heart, I stepped back. “Call me tomorrow. I want to see you, just us. No surprises.” Mine is too big as it is.
“Even if the surprise is another box of kolaches?”
“I’ll allow it.”
He watched me for a minute with soft bliss on his face that killed me. “Tomorrow, then.”
“Tomorrow,” I echoed with a smile, a split open heart, and the hope that the anticipation didn’t actually kill me.
5
The Eyes of Texas
PRESLEY
The next morning, the breakfast rush finally slowed down enough to regain a sense of time, and I wove through the tables and past the booths singing Elvis just a little too loud, egged on by the smiling customers.
Nothing got me going like an audience.
“It’s Now or Never” played on the jukebox, and I did my best to ignore the irony of the lyrics as a reflection of my personal situation. Because if I didn’t tell Sebastian soon, I was going to implode.
I knew every word of the song and had since I was maybe eight when I convinced myself that Elvis was my grandfather.
It was, of course, mathematically impossible as my mother took every opportunity to point out. But as a little girl, standing in front of my grandmother’s curio cabinet devoted to The King, I decided that was the fact of the matter, and I wouldn’t be convinced otherwise—why else would I be named Presley? My little girl brain couldn’t imagine another answer. There were no men in my life, and Elvis seemed like the absolutely perfect fill-in.
My grandfather died before I was born, so I never knew him as anything more than a story. Elvis just made more sense—not only could my mother and I sing where my grandmother was tone deaf, but we had the look. Raven hair, blue eyes, pouty lips and all. So every Sunday afternoon, I’d stretch out on the floor of the living room to watch old Elvis movies. Grandma had them all on VHS and got me every album he ever made on cassette. She’d sit me in her lap and tell me stories about him, about the concerts she went to, the movies she saw with her friends. With that, I was obsessed. I’d found posters and t-shirts and all kinds of stuff that dubbed me the weirdest kid in the third grade.
And I let my freak flag fly, making sure to remind them that they didn’t have famous grandfathers. I’d even sing for them to prove my point.