Dust Eva Everson (story reading txt) 📖

I waved a hand between us; the conversation had gone as deep as I dared it to go. “Julie has already talked to me.”

Mama’s chin rose. “Good. That’s one less thing I have to worry about then.” She turned for the door. “Are you ready?”

I blinked at her. “I don’t know, Mama. Am I?”

Her lips formed a wobbly smile. “I’d say you may as well be.”

“Then I am,” I said. But I wasn’t. Oh, no … I wasn’t.

We left the church around five o’clock that afternoon, the car graffitied and wrapped in toilet paper, the customary tin cans clamoring behind us until Westley pulled over just beyond the outskirts of town and snapped them off. I stayed inside, my knees pressed together and my hands clutching the handle of a suede handbag. Within a minute Westley slid back into the car, his smile broad. His manner easy. He looked at me as he put the car in drive and said, “Happy?”

Finding it difficult to speak, I nodded.

“Nervous?”

I shook my head, slowly at first, then with more certainty.

“Then why does the cat have your tongue?”

I turned my face to the windshield, ever mindful of my sister’s admonishment not to bring up my concerns. “I dunno,” I all but whispered. But I smiled to lessen the tension.

Westley reached over and took my hand in his, the warmth of it spreading through me, providing more heat than from what came through the air vents. The sky had darkened, changing to shades of deep purple struck through by magenta clouds. The sun winked as it dipped below the treetops, many of them bare, some still holding on to their autumn colors. A few refusing to release their summer green. “Look at me,” he said.

I brought my eyes to his.

“I love you. I want you to know that.”

“I do,” I said. “And I love you. So much.” So much it hurt. The very life of me had ached for him. And now, he was mine and I, his.

Westley’s hand gripped mine, then released and he rolled the car back onto the highway, heading toward Savannah … and a beachfront house owned by an old classmate of his from their days at UGA. Or, his classmate’s parents, really. Not that it mattered. We were going somewhere quiet. Someplace completely ours for a week. A secluded little stretch of paradise, we’d been told. We couldn’t lay out or swim, of course, what with it being December. But there was a fireplace and plenty of wood and Westley had promised evenings snuggled under a blanket. A roaring fire crackling in the fireplace. The whitecaps of the ocean rolling toward us from under a black sky dotted with stars that twinkled “nearly as much as your eyes,” he’d said. “Right now … while I’m telling you about it.”

“Will we drink hot cocoa?”

“With tiny marshmallows.”

“I like the thick ones.”

He had kissed the tip of my nose. “Whatever you want.”

“I don’t want Swiss Miss. I want real hot cocoa.”

Westley smiled, a new knowing showing in his face. “Do you know how to make it?”

My shoulders sank. “No.” I brought my chin up in defiance. “But Mama can teach me. We still have a couple of weeks …”

And so she had. Now all I had to do was buy the ingredients. First thing Monday morning. After a long walk on the beach with my new husband. Holding hands. Talking. Laughing. Allowing the ocean breeze to pull gooseflesh from under our skin until we could bear it no longer. Until we were forced to run back to the beach house where we’d dash into the bathroom and maybe even take a shower. Together. We could do that. We were married now.

Yes, that was how it would be. And then we’d return to his parents’ home on Saturday—Christmas Eve—enjoy an afternoon and evening with them. Hopefully, whatever tension existed since the night before our wedding would have floated away on the cloud of joy. Then, on Sunday—Christmas Day—we’d head over to Mama and Daddy’s where we’d return to the church where we’d just married. We’d eat Christmas dinner with Grand and my aunts and Julie and Dean. Then, on Monday morning, we’d load up the gifts that had come in since Westley’s last visit. And, finally … we’d head home.

And everything would be fine. It would.

It would.

Chapter Fifteen

A week later, I stretched between the linens and under the blanket and down-filled comforter in the bedroom Westley had left behind at his parents’ home the day we married. I blinked in protest at the morning’s light intruding from around and between old venetian blinds. A glance at the ticking alarm clock propped on top of a copy of Cosmo I’d purchased in Savannah left me wondering if I read the time correctly.

I pushed myself up from the warmth of the bed, the cover dropping to hips entrapped by a twisted nightgown. I straightened it. Blushed under the memory of Westley’s hands beneath it the night before. Of my strained protests. “We’re at your parents’,” I hissed between uncooperative giggles. “We can’t do this here.”

His breath warmed my ear as he whispered back. “I know where we are. And I know who you are and whatcha wanna bet my parents already figure this is what’s happening tonight in this very room?” Westley’s kisses smothered whatever protest was left in me, just as they had during our glorious days at the beach.

The door opened and my husband strolled in, already dressed in flare-legged jeans and a ribbed turtleneck shirt, his cheeks wind kissed. “What’s wrong?” I asked.

He closed the door, then crawled onto the bed with me. “Nothing, why?”

My hand cupped his cheek, the cold of it iced my fingertips. “Why is your face so red?”

Westley chuckled as he pushed me back, my head plopping onto the feather pillow that had gone flat during the night. He lay over me. Wrapped his