Soon, we’re all in the dining room with more laughs and conversation flowing. Our conversation turns to the scrapbook, and I think we both delight at how Faye and Gram go back and forth like songbirds, lost in the past as they belt out stories about the old Dallas they remember.
The one about the pissed off Texans who took issue with us “copying” their big-city name makes me laugh so hard I have to put down my spoon. Apparently, in the seventies they even stormed a council meeting demanding a name change, only to be run out of town by a pitchfork mob supported by a herd of buffalo kept by a local farmer.
Turns out, we’ve got half the oil and all the heart of a sister city that’s five hundred times bigger.
By the end, it ranks up there with the best meal I’ve ever had.
So much like old times it makes my heart hurt.
I like having this closeness with Weston again, this friendship that’s actually, well...friendly again.
If only it didn’t come with some major baggage, along with a slow drifting crush that pulls me under the harder it hits.
No exaggeration. He’s still the hottest guy I’ve ever laid eyes on.
Tonight, he’s wearing a tight grey t-shirt with a fisherman on it and the words Hooked on Lake Superior. He must’ve picked it up on a trip to Minnesota with Marty I heard about earlier this year.
How fitting.
If we didn’t have to dance around our feelings—if I didn’t know I’d be leaving this little town—I’m sure I’d have a dumb joke for him.
Because West hooked me years ago.
He’s hooked me now, every time I see his smile, his slabs for biceps, his perfectly square shoulders, and that wall of a chest with abs you could iron on.
Sweet Jesus.
All of him makes me want to sigh with wonder.
He’s grown up tremendously since leaving Dallas, and I just wonder why he’s so tight-lipped about his time in the service that must’ve taught him so much.
Every time I bring it up, I feel a heady change in attitude.
I catch the haunting look that bleeds in his eyes.
Sure, he covers it quickly, acting like it’s nothing, but it’s a very big something.
He leaves shortly after we’re through eating to meet Faulk. With little else needing my attention, I sit down with the scrapbook while Gram and Faye play a game of cards.
A while later, one of the old photos catches my eye. It’s not like the others, a faded color photo of the aging musketeers holding up these weird rocks and smiling like they just struck gold.
But Dallas was never a big mining town—not like Heart’s Edge or Ursa or other (in)famous places a few hundred miles west of here.
I carry the book to the table and wait for them to stop fussing over who’s beating who before I fire off my question.
“This picture caught my eye and I had to ask...just what are the men holding? Do either of you remember?”
They both take a long, slow glance at the book.
“Oh, my. I’d forgotten all about that. Those are the meteorites they found,” Faye says, laughing.
“Meteorites?” I repeat.
“Not quite,” Gram says, wagging a finger. “Those things just looked like space rocks. The three of them were out at Big Fish Lake one day and Jonah came across a rock he thought was a meteorite. You remember how wild he could get with his ideas...heck, this place might not be called Amelia’s if his notions about Miss Earhart hadn’t rubbed off on Doug.”
She pauses while Faye laughs.
“Anywho, by the time they got home, they were all worked up, insisting they’d found themselves a nice haul of moonrocks or something to sell. I told your granddad they were just regular rocks, Shelly Bean, but he insisted they have them checked. They even got some NASA bigwig scientist to visit, Mark something-or-other.”