The Match (It Happened in Charleston 1)

Mama just sits back in her chair and lifts her brows in a taunting expression. “You’re being childish again.” That line should sting. It doesn’t. She’s used it too many times to count, so it just rolls right off my back. Or maybe it rolls right off my long giraffe neck.

I gather my purse and push my chair in to the table, not even bothering to reply to her. I think I would have more luck convincing the brick wall outside to be proud of who I am than my own mother.

“Evelyn.” I pause and turn back around to the table. A false hope blooms in my chest that maybe she wants to make amends. How stupid. “And just what am I supposed to tell Tyler when he gets here to see you?” I stare at her, my mouth falling open a little. This woman is delusional.

“Tell him if he had been on time, he would have been able to watch my butt walk away himself.” I shouldn’t be the only one to be scolded for being late. But I know he’ll get off scot-free because he’s precious Tyler Murray. If we were to marry one day and he cheated on me, Mama would say it was because I wasn’t giving him enough of what he needed.

Daddy lowers his menu slightly to peek at me over the top. “That was a little too crude for my taste, Evie.”

Okay. Where is that nice waiter? I need to find him and ask him to hold me back before I jump over this table and fistfight my parents. I’ve never been one to resort to violence to solve a problem, but it’s never too late to start.

I turn around and raise a lackluster hand over my shoulder. “Have a lovely evening,” I say, in a bland tone that conveys that I mean absolutely none of it.

On my way out, I notice our trusty waiter headed toward my parents’ table with two drinks—the only two drinks my parents have ever ordered in the history of their lives: a glass of champagne and an old-fashioned.

I step into the waiter’s path, looking like I’m a gunslinger from the wild west. I wish I were wearing cowboy boots with spurs on the back so they could clink as I move. “Whoa, there. Are these going to the table I was just sitting at?”

I must have crazy eyes, because the waiter nods skeptically. He should be skeptical.

I give him my best John Wayne smile before I take my mama’s champagne off the tray and shotgun it like I’m a college frat boy with major insecurity issues and something to prove.

After the bubbles have sufficiently burned my throat and threatened to come out my nose, I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand and charge out of the restaurant just hoping to high heaven that I don’t bump into Tyler.

Here’s the problem with not having a car or a license. When you pull an epic move like storming out of a restaurant and downing your mama’s champagne on your way out the door, you’re then forced to sit on the sidewalk with your service dog and find a ride home before you have to encounter the man you’re avoiding. Not to mention the major buzz that’s setting in because I forgot I hadn’t eaten since the muffins at the Broadens’ house that morning.

I’m quickly scrolling through my phone, hoping to find that an Uber is only one street over and can pick me up, like, two minutes ago, but instead, I’m met with a disappointing twenty-minute wait. That won’t do.

I feel pathetic, small, and broken—basically, what I like to call the Melony Jones special—and I want more than anything to get in a car of my own and peel out of that restaurant parking lot, leaving glorious black tire streaks in my wake.

I dial the next best thing: Joanna. She’ll probably peel out just to make me smile.

She answers my call with, “It’s going that well, huh?” She knew that I was having dinner with my parents tonight.

“Can you come get me?” Suddenly, I’m twelve years old at summer camp, and I want to go home because the popular girls are picking on me.

I hear some shuffling on the other end of the line followed by the sound of keys jingling. “On my way; just drop me a pin with your location.”

I don’t mean to cry. I really don’t. But the fact that Jo knows nothing about the si

tuation and is likely in the middle of dinner with Gary, and she stops everything to come to my rescue, does me in. She acts like my best friend, my sister, my mama, and my grandmama all rolled up in one. Although, I would never liken her to my grandmama to her face because, hello, I don’t have a death wish.

I hear the sound of a garage door opening, followed by the closing of her car door, just before I notice a truck pull up in front of the restaurant and stop. The restaurant is on the main street, and the only cars that stop out front are either cars dropping someone off or picking someone up. Just then, the truck’s reverse lights come on, and I realize it’s backing up to stop right in front of me.

I might have been concerned that someone is clearly going out of their way to kidnap and murder me, but I think I’m a little too dizzy and buzzed to care. Instead, I openly inspect the lifted, dark-gray truck and blacked out wheels. The windows are so tinted that I can’t see inside. It’s not a bad truck to have to be abducted in.

Charlie’s ears perk up when the window starts to slowly roll down.

“Evie?” says Joanna. “Where should I head to?”

“Hang on,” I whisper, wishing that window would roll a little faster. “I think I’m being kidnapped.”

“What?!”

“Shhh.”

The window finishes its descent, and I peer inside the dark interior, not yet certain who my captor will be. A male voice calls out. “Evie?”

Imagine my surprise when the driver leans toward the passenger window, and I’m finally able to see the face of Jacob Broaden and his bright-blue eyes staring back at me. “Are you waiting for a ride?”