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Caleb overheard us and leaned over to interject.
"All of your lots, what does that mean?" I asked.
Stacy was down at the other end, talking to Lila, and Charlie sat back on his stool and swiveled to face me. He was the definition of perfection. There wasn't a single thing that I would change about this man's face. He was a man now. He had grown into a man, complete with stubble on his jaw. His straight, square jawline framed his full lips. He was masculine but gorgeous, and I was not prepared for this interaction at all. To say my heart was racing was an understatement.
"I bought some land and we're developing it. I planned the neighborhood, and I sell the lots to individuals with an agreement that I'll be contracting the work on their house. It's going good so far."
"That's amazing," I replied, wishing I had more to say about it. As it stood, I was distracted by seeing them and I knew nothing about construction. I was barely able to keep up with the conversation. He seemed young to be doing something so… amazing. That was the only word I could come up with.
There was a brief pause in our conversation and then Caleb glanced at us like he was about to say something off-topic.
"Lila called them some other name, but it's a soap opera, right? A soap opera is what she's talking about, right? Are you named after a soap opera character?" Caleb stared at me, waiting for the answer.
"Yeah, soaps," I said.
"Why do they call them that?" Caleb asked. "What's that mean, soap opera? What does soap have to do with anything? I've always wondered that."
"I know the answer to this, hang on," Lila said. "I'll tell you guys in just a second but first let me… two more regular cheeseburgers and a basket of fries, and I think that's it. It should be eight burgers that I'm ordering. Ten including theirs."
Stacy looked down to count the number of burgers on her tab, and as we waited to hear the answer, I caught sight of Stacy's dad coming out of the kitchen with my food. I only saw him for a second, and I knew he was headed my way with that bag. He smiled brightly at me, and then his face fell as my eyes widened at him. God bless Stan. He understood my code and he stopped and stood still. I gave him a little shake of my head and shot my eyes toward Charlie who had turned and was listening to Lila. Stan pointed at the kitchen with a questioning look on his face, and I nodded just enough for him to understand that I didn't want my food right then.
I tuned back into the conversation as Lila was still talking about soap operas having to do with ads for actual soaps and detergents since the programs appealed to housewives. I thought it was an interesting piece of information, but it barely sunk into my brain because of the whole exchange I had with Stan and the bag of food. It was hilarious that he actually stopped in his tracks and went back the way he came.
I was smiling when Charlie turned to me again.
"I can't believe you're one of the first faces I see when I come back," he said. "Do you remember when we used to swing on that tire for a whole day at a time?"
"Yes," I answered, feeling thankful that he remembered. "We sang."
He laughed. "We sang so hard. We thought we were rockstars out there."
"We were rockstars," I said.
"I wonder if that tire's still there," he said. "I haven't been back in those woods yet."
"I went out there, but I didn't think to look for the swing," Caleb said.
"You better spray for bugs," Lila said. "That lady who used to come cook, Miss Gabby, remember her? She burned a tick off of me with a match one time."
"She used to plant a bunch of herbs and stuff for bugs," I said. "She had some citronella plants out behind the kitchen. There's a chance some plants are still back there. That stuff's really good for bugs."
"I know the garden you're talking about," Caleb said.
We talked about this for another twenty minutes—about everything—the house, the lake, memories we had from various summers and Christmases. It was good to sit there with them as they reminisced. It made me happy that Eric and I were a part of their childhood memories. They asked about my brother, and I told them the whole story about how he met a girl from Nashville and followed her over there. He had said he was just going to see her for a month or two, and that was nearly a year ago.
"Here's the food," Stacy said, out of nowhere, when she saw her dad come around the corner with all of it. "Oh, yours is here, too, Hope." She looked at me as she handed me my bag. "That took forever to come out," she said, having no idea that I had the exchange with her dad.
It only took a second for her to hand us our food. The tabs were taken care of, and suddenly, our twenty-minute conversation came to a screeching halt as they stood up to leave.
"Hey, you should come by the house sometime," Charlie said. "My wife is in town. I'd love for you to come over and meet her."
He was talking to me, and I smiled and said what I thought was appropriate even though my heart was on the floor.
"Yeah, that'd be great," I said in an unaffected tone.
I felt like a fool. For the last twenty minutes, I had been making plans in my head about how I was going to be the next Mrs. Charles Morgan, and that was the furthest thing from Charlie's mind. He was actually thinking about his own Mrs. Morgan. I felt blood rush to my cheeks, and I set myself in motion, searching for my keys to distract from the fact that I was now in the process of blushing.
In those seconds, I thought back to our conversation this last little while. We sat next to each other and we shared cordial conversation, but he never led me on. The attraction was one-sided and I felt like a total fool.
