in.
“More,” he said.
She was standing by the steps, her arms folded against the chill.
“Why do you suppose he never drove it?” he asked.
“Who knows?” She crossed the few steps that separated her from the 853 and placed a hand on the ice-cold hood. “Maybe he was afraid that it wouldn’t live up to what was in his imagination.
Maybe he didn’t want to be disappointed.”
“Pretty dumb reason not to take it out there.”
“I couldn’t agree more,” Julie said, her tone quiet.
It took him only four steps to reach her, and then to lift her hand off the car. When he kissed her, a few long seconds passed before she pushed him away, before she pulled her hand from his.
“We can’t do this,” she said.
He took a deep breath. “Because of Ben.”
“Yes, because of Ben. And because it’s not right.” She looked down at her feet, and when she looked up she wore a sad smile.
“No matter how much I might want to.”
CJ stood there in silence. He could hear distant voices coming through the door that Julie had shut behind her. With a sigh he leaned against the 853’s fender.
“When did you become a Christian?” he asked. It was the first time the possibility had occurred to him, but it felt right as he asked it.
“Just out of high school,” she said. If she was surprised by the question, she didn’t show it. “We had a lot going on—thought it might be time to get in good with the big guy. And I guess it stuck.”
That pulled a chuckle from CJ. He shook his head. Here he was, a new Christian with more baggage than he knew what to do with, and he’d tried to kiss an old high school sweetheart who was married to his cousin, and who also happened to be a Christian. It made him want to revisit the grace thing again— pledge his allegiance, such as it was, anew in that camp. Because each and every day proved that he was no match for the pitfalls that awaited him.
“How about you?” she asked, which prompted another laugh from CJ.
“About a month. Can’t you tell I’m sort of new at this?”
Julie nodded, gave him a warm smile.
“I was stupid for leaving,” CJ said.
“Yes, you were.” Then she turned and walked back up the steps.
Chapter 21
Every weekday morning, Maryann went to the Starbucks’ drive-through and ordered a tall chai latte and a scone. It was a routine so ingrained that had she forgotten to turn off of Main Street and into the Starbucks’ parking lot, the car might have guided itself there. Equally routine was that Maryann was not a morning person, which meant there were times when she arrived at work with her recently purchased breakfast and could not remember having stopped to buy it.
A consequence of these two morning constants was that she never remembered the pothole until her right front tire dropped into it. This morning, like every weekday morning for the past six months, Maryann cursed as she finished the roll up to the speaker and jammed her finger on the button to lower her window.
She barked her order and then pulled forward, glaring at the teenager who took her money.
“When are you going to fix that pothole?” she snapped.
The Starbucks employee with the nose ring and hair an unnatural shade of red gave her a sympathetic smile that was long practiced with this particular customer. “I’m sorry, ma’am. I believe they’re sending someone out this week to fix it.”
Maryann glowered as the young lady handed over the tea and pastry. “You said that yesterday,” she said, although the charge was without conviction. Maryann found it difficult to maintain even a well-warranted umbrage before nine in the morning.
The girl behind the window only smiled at her, and Maryann drove off in a tired huff, convinced that the coffee shop employees kept the pothole there just to irritate her.
Maryann drove nine-point-three miles to work every morning, and she resented each tire revolution that ferried her to her job. Wegman’s grocery store where she worked was on Adelia’s south side, the money tenant in a strip mall that had steadily lost most other occupants over the last few years. The only other businesses still operating were a Mexican restaurant that was always advertising free tacos, although Maryann had never seen them make good on that promise, and a fabric store in which she had never observed a single customer.
Adelia’s south side was mostly industrial with a few