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“You’d be on your feet all day, and the pay is probably awful.”
“Yeah, but think of the discount on makeup. Besides, I need to have a flexible schedule in case I get nominated for a spot on the Beautification Corps.” She shot me a beseeching look I wasn’t quite able to translate.
“Okay?”
The sound of Tucker’s laugh broke the soft background noise around us, making me both happy and so very annoyed. Where the hell was Kelsey to take our order?
“It’s just that I was wondering…” Jenn batted her thick eyelashes at me, and I realized maybe she’d be a shoo-in for the job at Jester’s since I swore her eyelashes looked a thousand times longer and thicker tonight than they had even a few hours earlier.
“Yeah?”
The low rumble of Carter’s voice was interspersed with Tucker’s laughter now like the man was doing his own damned comedy special. None of my business. Jenn was my business. “You were saying about the Beautification Corps?” I prompted.
“Maybe Cindy Ann could nominate me.”
I blinked at her in confusion.
“For the Beautification Corps opening,” she clarified nervously.
Well, hell. Maybe my sister had been right.
The Licking Thicket Beautification Corps was harder to get a seat on than Jesus’s own last supper table. You didn’t “get picked” for the Beautification Corps. You were either born into it or had it bestowed upon you by heavenly angels of deceased Beautification Corps corpses. Or so it seemed.
One didn’t simply “nominate” someone without a lengthy and confoundingly elaborate sponsorship ritual.
As I stared at her, wondering how to inform her that I could no more suggest that to my mother than declare my candidacy for president of the United States, I heard Tucker bold-face lie to Carter Rogers.
“I could take you to the Gatlinburg Sky Bridge if you want. It’s beautiful there.”
That was it. I was officially done with this bullshit. Tucker Wright was terrified of heights. I slammed my hand down on the table. “Let’s go. We’ll get better service at the Sip and Save for God’s sake.”
I reached for Jenn’s hand and yanked her up, waiting only long enough to drop a twenty on the table before marching us out of the restaurant.
“What in the world?” Jenn asked breathlessly as I hauled her up into the passenger seat of the truck. “I was hungry.”
“Yeah, well apparently Steak ’n Bait no longer sells actual food,” I said, moving around to the driver’s side. “We’ll pick up a pineapple pizza from Stan’s.”
Her lips curved up a little. “You hate pineapple pizza.”
I looked over at her and noticed her hair had blown partway out of a little clip it had been in. I reached over to tuck the loose strands behind her ear. “I do. But it’s your favorite,” I said, taking a breath to calm down. “And you deserve to have something you like tonight.”
Her smile widened. “Can we take it back to your place and watch a movie?”
I nodded and leaned over to press a kiss to her cheek. “Sorry about tonight.”
She shrugged. “That’s okay. I didn’t really want to stick around listening to all of Doc Wright’s bragging anyway, no offense.”
Her words took me aback. “Bragging? What do you mean?”
She flapped a hand in the air. “You know. He uses all these big words like he’s always trying to remind people how much smarter he is. Then he talks about medicine stuff the same way. Highbrow, my mom calls it.”
“He uses big words because he spends hours working on crossword puzzles,” I said. “It’s a habit he started when he used to take his aunt to her doctor’s appointments when he was in high school. He’d wait hours in waiting rooms with nothing to do but crosswords.”
“Well, whatever. It makes me feel stupid.”
“You remember Nina Wright? She used to teach math at the high school.”
“The one who died?”
I remembered the crowds at her funeral, the families from three counties all coming together to honor her memory as one of the community’s most beloved teachers. Most of all, I remembered noticing my friend Thom start to cry right there in front of everyone before his older brother Tucker pulled him into the tightest hug imaginable.
I cleared my throat. “Nina was Tucker’s aunt. His mom’s twin sister. They were really close. She died of lymphoma when Tuck was in college. She’s the reason he wanted to become a doctor.”
Jenn’s hand landed on my leg and squeezed. “I’m sorry, Dunn. That must have been hard for Tucker. I didn’t realize they were related. I should have.”
I let out a breath. “Yeah. Anyway, that’s why he uses big words. He has an enormous vocabulary. Don’t ever get into a game of Words with Friends with him or you’ll live to regret it.”
We pulled out of the lot and drove into the middle of town to pick up the pizza before heading to the farm. When we got inside, I shooed Bernie outside and into her holding pen.
