Dreaming of His Pen Pal's Kiss - Jessie Gussman Page 0,44
false advertising or deceit if you were to change.”
“False advertising. I kinda like that.”
She chuckled. “Sometimes, I think of makeup as false advertising. That’s how Blakely always described it anyway.” There was obvious affection in her voice when she talked about her sister.
“I take it you don’t share her sentiments?” She was most definitely wearing makeup.
“I see what she’s saying. I guess I got teased so much when I was younger though, I always felt like I need all the help I can get.”
“I think you’d be just fine with no ‘help.’ And I think I might agree with Blakely. Sometimes, it’s kind of shocking to see the way a woman really looks versus the way she looks when you’re out on a date.” He’d certainly been shocked more than once.
“Oh, that’s right, I forgot you mentioned something about that yesterday. You’re like the date expert.”
“You gonna hold it against me for the rest of my life? So yeah, I’ve been on a lot of dates. Had a lot of girlfriends...”
“No. I promise. I won’t hold it against you for the rest of your life. I’ll respect your experience, and if I ever have any questions about dating, I know who I can ask.”
“You sure can. Ask away.” He glued a bit of brown tatting to the slender ornament she had as the stem.
“Think this’ll do it.”
“Is it going to need to stand by itself? Do we need to make a stand for it?”
“Oh. I didn’t think about that.” She scrunched her brows together while he looked in the box, digging a little with his hand before he found a decoration that was shaped similar to a spider. It would make a perfect stand for the tree.
“I’m not even sure what this is, but I think it’ll work.”
“I think you’re right. We can take some glitter from this.” She pulled a sparkling wall hanging out. “And decorate that to make it look a little prettier, not so plain.”
She proceeded to do exactly what she’d said, and he had to admit the effect was striking.
He unplugged the glue gun from the extension cord lying on the ground, and they both stepped back away from the table.
“There. For a minute, I really didn’t think it was possible, but you made that tree look gorgeous. If we lose, it’s not going to be because of the tree.”
She glowed, looking up at him. “Thank you.”
“I’m glad my choice of topics didn’t distract you and didn’t affect your ability to decorate.”
“You know what, I think it’s okay for us to disagree. I really do. There’s no law that says that friends have to agree on everything. And sometimes, I think even though I’m pretty sure my way is right, intelligent people disagree all the time, so what makes me so sure that I can’t be wrong?”
“That’s refreshing. So many times, we’re sure we’re right, and we can’t stand people who disagree with us.”
“It just makes sense. It’s okay for everyone to be different. I guess the only exception is people who want to disagree with God. You know, that’s kinda dumb. In that case, we really don’t have to understand, because there’s a lot of things that we’ll probably never comprehend, but if God says something, that’s the final word. It doesn’t matter what we think.”
“What about when science proves God wrong?” He didn’t know why he was picking on her today. He should have just agreed with her and kept his mouth shut.
They took one last look at the Christmas tree and started walking on down to the gift-wrapping area before she answered.
“What about the times when science proves itself wrong? Things we think we know, and then they change.”
“Like what?”
“Well, just a silly example,” she said. “When I was growing up, my mom claimed that margarine was healthier than butter. That’s what ‘science’ told us. And now, we know that’s not the case. It changed. You know? There’s lots of things like that. I mean come on, we used to think that leeches helped people heal. Thank goodness we figured that one out. But there’s so many things we don’t know and so many things we’re discovering, if something seems to prove the Bible wrong, I would question it. Because there have been so many times where scientists claimed the Bible was wrong, and it turns out that science was wrong.”
He walked along beside her, quietly. Maybe he didn’t say anything, because he could think of plenty of things in the exercise and