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He mumbled a protest against my fingers, but I didn’t pull my hand away until I was sure he’d stopped talking.
When I turned back, I dusted off my hands and noticed Charlie had already dropped his sign. “Let’s go. If we leave now, there should still be plenty of time left in my ‘date’ to sand the barn floors.”
He crossed his arms in front of his chest, which made the rows of attached feathers fan in an arc across the front of his body. “You’re not actually going to make me sand floors after all this, are you?”
I blinked at him with the innocence of a lamb. “Obviously. You’re still on my time, and I paid for you fair and square.”
“You make it sound dirty.”
I thought of the acres of wood floors that still needed hand-sanding all along the edges. “Oh, it’ll be dirty, alright. No doubt about that.”
Charlie sighed. “Fine. Let me go tell Amos and my mom I’m heading out first. I promised I’d say hi to them.”
I let him lead the way into the square, where the Beautification Corps, who must’ve been working overtime, had transformed the open lawn into a festive community gathering practically overnight. Long folding tables covered in bright, autumn-printed cloths had been arranged in rows, almost like the booths at the Lickin’ artists’ fair or the stalls at the weekly farmer’s market. In this case, though, every table or group of tables was assigned to a family, and each family had prepared stacks upon stacks of their favorite secret-recipe Thanksgiving side dishes to be handed out for free to anyone else in the community.
Dining room tables around the Thicket were going to be groaning tomorrow under the weight of it all, and not a single person in town would be complaining, either, because the smell of the place was—
“Oh fuck, that’s good.” Charlie ran a hand over his stomach and groaned in a needy way that put thoughts in my head. “I want it all inside me right now.”
I tightened my hands into fists as mental images seared themselves into my brain. “Trot along, Butterball. We’re on the clock here.”
But of course, it wasn’t that easy. Charlie got stopped by every Thicketeer we passed so they could smile and compliment him on his costume. At the looooong-ass row of Jackson family tables—where none of my immediate family members were currently stationed, thank fuck—a couple of my great-uncles actually got teary-eyed while patting Charlie on the shoulder and praising how “authentically” he represented the “heart of the Stuffin’.”
My family took this festival way, way too seriously.
When we got to the Nutters’ table—impressively long, but not nearly long as the Jacksons’—they all teased Charlie good-naturedly until he gave a reprisal of his disco turkey dance routine. Emmaline told Charlie his “plumage is magnificent, sweetie, and puts me in mind of your uncle Amos when he was your age,” which made Amos beam so bright his mustache quivered, like Christmas had come early. It was harder than it should have been to rush Charlie along when I could feel him blossoming under the attention.
Charlie’s mom, who wore a luxurious cashmere sweater set my mother would have traded one of her children for (probably me once she heard what I’d been up to today), stood a little ways behind the table, like she was included but not really part of the action. She watched Charlie with a warm smile and a glint in her eye that would’ve immediately sent up red flags for scheming if she’d still lived in the Thicket but for all I knew was just the way all moms in Nashville looked at their giant turkey sons. Besides, I couldn’t imagine what Ms. Nutter had to scheme about.
From time to time, as we stood there, she turned her warm smile on me too, and that made me squirm just a little. Charlie’s mom had always been kind to me back in the day, and I wondered what she thought about the way I’d chosen to spend our date.
When we finally escaped the Nutters and I tried to turn us toward the parking lot, I spotted Alana standing at Caroline’s table on the other side of the square, waving her arms at me like she was carrying a flag in the Thicket High color guard. With a sigh, I detoured in that direction, and when we got close, Alana came around the table, twined her arm through Charlie’s, and dragged him the rest of the way over.
“It’s so good to see you again, Junior! And you’re looking just stunning in that costume. I wonder… could you do me a teeny, tiny favor and stay at our table for, like, five minutes?” she begged, giving him the big, sad eyes that had melted all her ex-boyfriends into goo. In a lower voice, she added, “If you’re here in your costume, everyone will come by and take Caroline’s gourmet cranberry sauce. It’s orange spice this year.”
