My Paper Heart (10 page)

"Come on, let's get inside."

We entered into a small foyer with a little fireplace directly in front of us and a large picture of the family, from when Blaine had to be about ten, stood directly facing me. Off to the side I could hear men screaming. They were around a TV that couldn't have been more than 30 inches, and the three men were crowded around it sitting on worn out floral print couches.

"Boys!" Vicki shouted with determination.

"Oh man is that the LSU game?" Blaine peered over my shoulder.

"Yeah, they're going into extra innings!" A younger looking man with a trucker cap and a five o’clock shadow glanced over at us, then went straight back to looking at the TV. I figured he must have been Braiden's dad the way that Braiden ran over to him.

I was starting to think this time I was the one that was overdressed. Besides Abby's tutu, everyone else was in shorts and t-shirts. I wanted to make a good impression, but this time I was starting to feel a little self-conscious.

"Arthur." Vicki bellowed.

"What is it, Vicki?" A man looking to be about in his mid-forties with thick brown curly hair, that held specks of gray, and a Colonel Mustard mustache looked over at us. He was about to turn back toward the TV, but then he got up when he realized I was standing there.

 "Oh, pardon me." He stood up and slowly walked over to us. He had a voice that sounded almost like John Wayne. "I'm Blaine's dad, Arthur." He extended his hand out to me and I shook it weakly.

The man with the trucker hat came darting behind Blaine's dad, and a shorter tanned guy with jet-black hair and a baby face came in flying behind him.

 "Damn Blaine, looks like you done alright," The Jet black haired guy exclaimed.

"Hush up Ronnie." A very pregnant woman with long, stringy blonde hair came down the small hallway, waddling toward us. She smacked the guy upside the head with her free hand since she was carrying a sniffling toddler in the other, and then turned back toward me. "Don't listen to him. He's just mad cuz he ain't getting none till after the baby's born."

"Really Alicia?" Blaine shook his head. "And in front of Marcus too?"

Alicia shrugged and the boys returned to huddle around the TV.

"Well, dinner will just be a little while longer. Why don't you show Libby around and I'll call y'all when we're ready?" Blaine's mom interrupted. I was just happy to be getting out of the foyer for a little bit. It was definitely a lot to take in.

We saw the red and white kitchen that carried fresh smells of Andouille gumbo, shrimp creole, and pralines. My mouth watered as we continued out to the little back porch, that housed two huge Bloodhounds who happily barked as we passed, and then through the dining room. Pictures of the kids and grandkids surrounded the house, that really could use a few coats of paint in most of the rooms, but you could tell that it was filled with love.

 My parents' house was pristinely decorated and had more than enough coats of paint, but I honestly couldn't even say if there was a single picture of my sister and I anywhere around the house.

We went down the hall to see two bedrooms and a bathroom. I guess there was another bathroom in his parents' bedroom over on the other side of the house, but I really couldn't imagine three kids sharing one bathroom. Hardwood floors creaked throughout the house, but I was starting to fall in love with its old charm. The next area Blaine was really excited to take me to was, of course, his bedroom.

Blaine and his dad had refinished the attic a couple years ago, he told me, and it was a pretty big space that was surrounded by wooden planks and a pretty low ceiling. Blaine and I really had to crouch in some areas. A very large bed sat underneath a small window and right next to it on the night stand was a picture. It was a really horrible picture of the two of us. It was us lying on what had been dubbed 'our grassy knoll'. I was laughing in the picture and Blaine was kissing my forehead. I recognized it as his Facebook picture as well.

"Really Blaine?" I picked up the picture, as he leaned against the dresser across from his bed. "Out of all the pictures we have from my phone and that I put on Facebook, and you picked this one?"

He shrugged. "I like that one."

I rolled my eyes. "Fine." Then something caught my eye, off in the corner by his closet I spotted an acoustic guitar. I walked over to it and picked it up, looking back up at Blaine.

"Do you actually play?"

He slowly walked over to me. "Of course I play. Did you think I just keep it around for decoration?"

"How about you play me something then?" He wasn't much taller than me, maybe about a couple of inches, but I always felt like I was looking up at him.

"Well." He took the guitar out of my hand and then slung it around himself. "Then I'd have to take it from you."

"I don’t mind." I plopped down on the bed.

"Well what do you want to hear?" He gradually walked over and sat down next to me.

"Surprise me." I leaned back so that I was propped up on my elbows.

He took a pick out of his pocket and started slowly strumming the guitar, and then he started playing something familiar. He strummed the first familiar chords to
Brown Eyed Girl
. He looked up from the guitar and smiled at me, leaning in closer.

He looked over at me as he sang the last brown eyed girl part. He sounded like a mixture of Billy Ray Cyrus and John Mayer, a kind of indie-country rock. I have to admit it was pretty hot. Then he leaned and whispered in a half sing-songy voice.

"You are my brown eyed girl."

I smiled and wrinkled my nose as he leaned in and kissed me.

As I opened my mouth slightly he stopped me.

"Hold on."

I pouted out my bottom lip, so was he getting it elsewhere?

"I have to put my guitar down." He smiled blowing the air out of his nose like he always did when he smiled, and set the guitar on the ground next to the bed.

I leaned back as we began kissing again. While our mouths were busy, my hands traced down to his belt. I pulled the straps out through the loops, tracing my fingers along his underwear line. He only let me do that for about five seconds before he moved my hands back up to his shoulders. I quickly moved them back down and began fiddling with his belt again.

He pulled away and sat up.

"What's wrong?" I sat up and rested my head on his shoulder while rubbing his thigh with one hand. He obviously wasn’t turned off the way his bulge pressed against his pants.

He turned his head to the side. "I just don't think we should be doing this, especially not with my parents right downstairs."

"Ugh!" I fell back on the bed. It was like I was being enveloped in a sea of flannel sheets.

 "I don't think we are ever going to do anything!" I put my hands over my eyes. "You know for being this big playboy that everyone talked about, you sure are acting like Hugh Hefner without any Viagra."

Blaine crawled up next to me, hovering over me, and then he uncovered my eyes. "Libby, I couldn't be more attracted to you."

"Then why haven't you even tried anything more than making out with me?" I pouted.

"Libby." He crouched in closer and kissed my neck and down my collar bone. "You're not like other girls I've dated. I want more than just to screw you." He slid down my body and onto the floor in front of me. "And believe me I do want to do that, BAD."

"Then why haven't you?" I cocked an eyebrow and looked down at him.

Blaine lifted up my skirt and traced his fingers up and down my thighs. "Well." He gently kissed my inner thighs, right near my knee caps. His feather-like kisses made my pulse rise and my whole body shivered underneath him. "It's not like we've had much alone time."

It was true. The more I thought about it the only time we had alone time was when we were at the grassy knoll, and I don't think I wanted to have sex on the grass. Otherwise we were in the living room at my Aunt Dee's or one of the many highly public areas in Elsbury.

"So." I pleaded, innocently batting my eyes. "You don't have another girl on the side?"

"Libby, baby, I don't think I ever could have another girl besides you."

I leaned down to the edge of the bed to kiss him, my legs completely spread and his neck strained up to me. But before I could even reach my lips to his I heard creaking on the stairs.

"Shit it's your mom!" I pushed him down on the floor, not realizing that he had a hold of me and we both went tumbling down onto the hard wooden floor.

That was the second time that night someone walked in on me, on the floor and in a dress, laughing my ass off.

Alicia stood in the door way, Marcus on one hip and a hand on the other. A confused look popped across her puffy face. "You know I thought when I'd come up here to get you for dinner, I may have found you in a different position. Not on the floor laughing."

That made us laugh even harder. I was holding my stomach as Blaine helped me up off the floor.

"Come on, dinner's ready and Blaine." She moved closer to us and messed up Blaine's hair. "You should probably fix your hair so Ma doesn't think you two were doing something else up here."

Blaine just gave a goofy grin as we followed his sister and Marcus down the stairs, with our messy hair and all.

∞

So a comparison of dinner in the Gentry house compared to dinner at the Crabtree house: When the Gentrys' have dinner, it usually involves Stouffers lasagna that's still half frozen. Complete with a bottle of scotch, courtesy of my dad. There are no prayers said before dinner and the whole family is just the three of us, sitting around a large oak dining room table with a pristine table cloth and freshly upholstered chairs. Dinner conversation usually is focused around what color to paint the kitchen for the thirtieth time or where to vacation.

Dinner at the Crabtree's' is a whole other story.

By the time we got downstairs Abby was already crying in her booster seat, which in turn made Ashley, Meg's youngest child, and Braiden cry. Then as soon as we walked in Marcus joined in on the crying.

 The dining room table had been through everything from Blaine trying to saw off its legs in grade school to Alicia thinking it would be great to paint it with blue nail polish. The chairs were all miss-matched and everyone gathered around the table, talking about every different conversation you can imagine. But when Blaine's dad stood up everyone was quiet and prayers were said.

"Dear Lord, we thank you for blessing us with this wonderful food and for the many gifts you have given us. From our wonderful family and the blessing of Meg and Billy and their new home."

I later found out that Meg and Billy's house was severely damaged during the last hurricane, and they had been living with Blaine's parents since it happened. Somehow they had three kids in that time, but had recently just bought a small house outside of town.

"We pray to you Lord that Alicia and Ronnie have a healthy baby to add to our beautiful family of grandchildren." All the grandkids looked up and smiled at that one. "And we thank you Lord to have Blaine finally find a girl that he cared about enough to share his joys with and to bless us with her presence. Amen."

"Amen." Everyone said in unison. Then it was back to the chaos of dinner; kids screaming, the guys yelling across the table at each other about the baseball game, and Alicia telling me every detail about her pregnancy, which I really didn't need to know.

After dinner and pecan pie, the boys retreated to the living room, the kids in the back yard, and I offered to help with the clean up.

"So you know my baby brother hasn't brought a girl home in a long time." Meg stated as we picked up the dirty plates from the table.

"Really?" I asked, trying to be polite, I really didn't want to hear about Blaine's exes just like he really didn't want to hear about Beau.

"We all know this past year he had been kind of a tomcat. We honestly didn't know when he was going to grow out of that."

 I nodded, stacking the plates on top of each other. I didn't want to hear about Blaine's sex life, especially not from his sister.

"The truth is." She sighed. "We honestly thought he'd never get over Julie."

That was the first time I had ever heard anything about a serious girlfriend Blaine had. I only knew about the many numerous girls he had been with this past year.

"Julie and him, man they were together since grade school. We all thought they'd get married someday. But then he and Julie graduated high school, and Julie got a scholarship to Ole Miss, about eight hours away."

 I nodded. I really wasn't too interested at that moment.

"That's when everything changed. Blaine didn't have plans to go to college…well you know at least not right away. But he promised to go up and see her every weekend. After her first week at college, she called Blaine up and told him not to come up for the weekend." She stacked some more plates never looking up.

 "Blaine was pretty upset, but thought maybe she just had some studying to do. Next weekend came and the same thing. Finally the following weekend he just drove up there. And Julie, well Julie wasn't the same little Louisiana girl we all knew. She went and joined one of them sororities you know?"

Uh oh, I didn't like where this was going. I bit my bottom lip and nodded, not looking up.

"And well, when Blaine came to visit, she had decided that she couldn't be with a boy that wasn't educated and that there was no future for them. She basically called him down home white trash and said Elsbury was her past." I could see the anger in Meg's hands, they were almost shaking as she knotted them into little fists.

"She never came back you know? Don't think she could show her face in this town again after everyone got word of what she had said. Her parents even moved out, her daddy got some kind of job transfer, or so they say."

She shook her head and clanked some silverware together, almost throwing it on top of the stacks of plates. "I never thought Blaine would get out of his slump. He would go to work and then come home almost every night for a whole month. Doing nothing but working, sleeping, and eating. Then Mama made him get out some, so he went with some of the crew to a few parties. Soon my brother was the talk of the town again. I guess he felt like if he couldn't have Julie he'd have every other girl in town."