Paige Torn (2 page)

Mine is Peter.

All that aside, I'm happy for Layla. She's been wanting to get married since she was a flower girl in her cousin's wedding when she was eight.

She's still talking. “We've already set a date.” She grins around her Starbucks paper cup. “It's going to be this fall. October 25. And it's going to be outside at that park with the gazebo at sunset. And then we're going to have the reception somewhere where we can dance. And you
have
to be my maid of honor.”

I nod, because of course I will be her maid of honor. We decided this years ago.

I take a sip of my macchiato and pull my planner out of my purse. The cover is denim that I've sewn and decorated with daisy embroidery.

“Better use a pen to write that one down.” Layla giggles. “Because you are not rescheduling my wedding!”

Layla knows my habits well. I roll my eyes and dig in my purse until I find a black Bic pen and start writing.

Layla's Wedding.

It looks weird writing it down. Weird and final.

Like when I finally paid attention to the expiration date on the milk in my fridge and realized I'd been drinking milk a week past due.

Layla is getting married.
Married
. Like a grown-up does. And instead of being overwhelmingly happy like I always thought I'd be, I suddenly just feel overwhelmed. And maybe a little sad. I am going to be twenty-three in three months. And while my mom likes to remind me that she had been married a year by the time she was my age, I am not ready.

I don't really know what I'm not ready for, but I'm not ready. For any of it. A wedding sounds fun, but a marriage sounds terrifying.

Layla suddenly seems about twenty years older than me.
God, don't let this be one of those typical friendships where one girl gets married and they stop being friends.

Layla is still talking. “I'm going to have the colors be cream and blue with pops of pink, I think. I want it to be all vintage and shabby chic.”

Layla is my stylish friend. Even now she looks like she's just walked out of a campaign for Forever 21. Her shoulder-length brown hair curls around a headband decorated with a flower right by her ear. I've always envied Layla's ability to wear accessories like that without looking completely ridiculous, like I do.

I nod at the right parts in her wedding detail monologue. I've known this girl for thirteen years. She went through puberty with me. Any friend who sticks by you through acne, braces, PMSing for the first time, and growth spurts that send you flying above every other head in the ninth-grade class — including every male — deserves to be your friend for life.

Thankfully, I haven't grown another inch since the ninth grade. At five foot eight, I usually feel uncomfortably tall at least once a day. Mostly because the man I work for, Mr. Lawman, is only about half an inch taller than me.

Add any shoe at all, and I am immediately taller.

It is frustrating. And a good reason to wear ballet flats every day.

“What do you think?” Layla asks, and I realize I never heard the question.

I blink at her. “I'm so sorry, Layla, I am — ”

“I knew you weren't listening.” She smiles though, so apparently it's okay. “I was telling you why we're putting it off for ten months.”

That is a good question. “Why are you putting it off?” I ask. Layla doesn't wait ten months for anything.

“My parents' twenty-fifth anniversary is February 22. Remember? We're planning a surprise party for them.” Layla waves a hand. “There's no way I'll be able to plan that and a wedding. Will you help me with it?”

“With the party or the wedding?”

“Both. You're super crafty, Paige. And have you seen my apartment?”

She has a point. Her apartment is white. White walls. Tan carpet. Nothing decorative anywhere. Any style sense Layla has goes right to her outfits.

At six thirty, Layla looks at her white watch and declares that she has to go because she is supposed to meet Peter and his equally boring parents for dinner. She doesn't say the equally boring part; I add that in.

The apple does not fall far from the tree.

Or trees, in this case.

If nothing else, at least Layla will add some color to their black-and-white family.

We walk out to the parking lot together and she gives me another hug. “I can't believe it!” she squeals, getting all giddy again. “I'm so excited!”

Whether she means the wedding or the marriage or the anniversary party we haven't even begun to plan, I'm not sure. But I hug her back. She climbs in her brand-new Jetta that her dad bought her last year when she graduated college and drives away with a wave that sends sparkling rainbows from the new diamond bouncing off the window.

I look at my planner again. Today is Wednesday. Which means I have thirty minutes to run home and change out of my office clothes, eat dinner, and get to church for youth group. I teach the ninth-grade girls.

There is a special place in my heart for acne-stricken faces, thanks to one too many taunts back in the day from the awful kids at my school. Though the girls I am currently working with seem to be drinking some kind of wonder water, because rarely is a zit present in the room. I remember feeling a lot uglier and way more awkward than any of these girls look or act.

I drive to my tiny one-bedroom apartment. I live alone. I don't even have a plant, and while sometimes the silence gets to me, most of the time, I'm not there to listen to it. Before I graduated, it was close to school. Now, it is close to work. And it is well within my price range.

And the management has overlooked a glue-gun-accidentally-burning-the-carpet incident with barely a slap on my wrist. So it is all good.

I change into jeans and a T-shirt, yank on a pair of sneakers, run for the door, and grab a cheese stick on my way out. For tonight, it will have to be dinner. I glance at my hair and makeup but decide there is nothing I can do about my hair. It is way too long. It's time for a drastic haircut, but I haven't had a chance to schedule an appointment yet. I attempt to use a comb on it, which just makes things worse. I always wanted hair that fits into a mold. Brown and curly. Blonde and straight. Black and wavy. Whatever.

Mine is brownish-reddish-blondish and some weird disaster of curly, wavy, and straight.

Maybe a dye job is in the works too.

I give up on styling my hair and head out the door.

I drive straight to church and park in the already-crowded parking lot. The youth pastor, Rick, is standing by the door, joking around with the kids and greeting people who are coming in. He sees me and shakes his head.

“You missed the leaders' meeting, Paige.”

“What leaders' meeting?”

“The one I told you about last week. I want all the small-group leaders to start meeting before the kids show up so we can pray.”

Oops.

Now I remember. I rub my forehead. “Sorry, Rick.”

He sighs soberly. “I'll have to dock your pay.”

“You're finally going to start paying me?” I wave at one of my girls, Tasha, who just walked in.

Rick grins. Rick is a great youth pastor. He is a big man with a bald head and probably the cutest little wife ever. She is about three weeks away from having their first baby, so Rick bounces between being so excited he can't sit still to being so panicked about Natalie being in labor and him being a father that he just sits in a chair after teaching Sunday school and stares at the empty stage.

I alternate between being excited with him and being scared for him. And I am more than a little worried about tiny Natalie giving birth to huge Rick's most likely large child.

“Since you missed the leaders' meeting, you missed meeting the new guy in charge of the ninth-grade boys.” Rick waves over a tall, curly-blond-haired guy who is leaning against one of the walls by the door to the youth room, talking to a few pimply faced boys who tend to squeak like a vacuum cleaner needing a new belt when they laugh.

If I am honest, it is one of my favorite reasons to talk to those particular boys. I love the squeak. On the boys. Not necessarily on vacuum cleaners.

“Paige, this is Tyler Jennings. Tyler, Paige Alder.” Rick makes the introductions and Tyler shakes my hand. “Paige is in charge of the ninth-grade girls.”

“Oh, you're the one who missed the meeting,” Tyler says, but then he grins and I sigh. I have to tip my head up to meet his eyes, which are crinkled up in a smile.

It's nice. I don't get to feel short often. And Tyler's smile is friendly, if not a little mischievous, like a little kid planning a way to break into his mother's cookie jar.

“I forgot, I forgot,” I say. “So, how long have you been coming to Grace Church?” Our church is huge, so there is a good chance he's been here since the first grade and I just never met him. Those are always awkward conversations. “Oh, you mean I should have known you my whole life?” Very awkward.

“Almost a year,” Tyler says. He has pretty blue eyes. “I moved here from Austin about two years ago, and it took me a few months to find a church I liked.” He shrugs, and I notice his shoulders look like they are made to haul logs around. “Time to start getting involved in something other than passing the offering plate to the person beside me.”

I smile. I'm sure Rick is relieved. He's been looking for someone to teach the ninth-grade boys for a few months now. The guy who used to teach them, Jason Waters, up and moved to some fancy new job three states away. Rick grumbled for weeks about how money was too big of a factor for some people.

Really, I think Jason did the right thing. And really, Rick isn't mad about Jason taking a higher-paying job. He's just sad that he had to find a new leader for the boys. Tyler has big shoes to fill.

I watch Tyler as he grins at the kids filling the hallway, and I get a good feeling about him deep inside. I usually can trust that feeling. It has only screwed up on two occasions.

Granted, those results were disastrous, but I have finally moved on.

I am pretty sure, anyway.

Rick lets out a loud whistle and the hallway quiets. “Everyone get to your groups!”

The hallway turns into a frenzied movement of people finding the right room. I wave at a still-smiling Tyler, follow red-haired Megan to the preschool Sunday school classroom our small group meets in, and close the door after all ten of my girls are inside.

“Hi, guys.” I turn to face them as they all settle onto the carpet, Bibles in their laps. This is our eighth weekly meeting. The routine has been set.

I take prayer requests and pray, and then we start our lesson. We are slowly going through 1 John, and I've been enjoying the study on God's love. I have Olivia pray for us in closing, and then we join the other small groups for snacks and music.

I make a beeline to the snacks but get waylaid by Rick. “So, Natalie is two centimeters dilated,” he tells me, standing right between me and the quickly disappearing Oreos. High school boys equal snacks that don't last very long. Except for the time when Natalie brought organic peanut butter on celery sticks. She had plenty of leftovers that night.

“Fine,” Natalie grumbled, packing up more than half of what she brought. “Rot your teeth out. I don't even care anymore.”

I think some early pregnancy hormones had been causing a little of that rage.

“Where is Natalie?” I ask.

“Dilated. Didn't you hear me?”

“I heard you.” Two more Oreos make their way from the package into someone's digestive tract. My stomach is grumbling in protest.

“So she can't be out around teenagers when she's dilated.”

I frown and look at Rick. “Why?” Obviously, I don't have a lot of firsthand knowledge about babies and dilation and things that go along with that, but I am fairly certain that teens will not scare the baby out into the loud, scary world. If anything, they'd convince the kid to stay in there longer.

There are still a few ninth-grade boys who haven't quite gotten the hang of putting on deodorant every day. Some weeks, it is enough to scare me away.

A wave of pity for Tyler and his sinus areas washes over me.

Rick grabs a couple of Oreos and waves his other hand. “Germs,” he declares. “They're swimming in them.”

Justin, one of my favorite boys who I've seen grow up at this church and is now, in my opinion, one of the funniest guys in the youth group, rolls his eyes. “Speak for yourself, dude.”

I have to give Justin the upper hand in this debate. I have been around Rick on retreats when he hasn't showered the entire time we were there.

Youth pastors are a strange breed of human.

If Rick can grab Oreos while talking to me, I can too. I reach around him and yank four from the package, hungrily devouring them.

“Sheesh, Paige. Eat much?”

“I had a cheese stick for dinner.” I try my best not to spew Oreo crumbs as I speak. “Give me a break.”

“All the more reason to get married. Marriage equals home-cooked meals and clean laundry.”

“Yes, but Rick, who makes these home-cooked meals and does your laundry?”

“My smoking-hot wife.”

Justin gags and walks away. I nod. “See? I don't have the time to do my own laundry, much less someone else's.”

Rick makes a face, then leans over and sniffs my shoulder.

“Uh, what are you doing?” I scoot away from him.

“Is that a clean T-shirt?”

I sigh. “My last one.” There is a middle-of-the-night trip to the apartment complex Laundromat in my near future, and I am not looking forward to it.

Rick shrugs. “I'd offer the services of Natalie, but like I said she's two centimeters dilated. I've been doing all the cooking and cleaning lately, and I'm about 98 percent certain you don't want me doing your laundry.”

I am more certain than that.