Alabama Boy

“So, do you want to meet there?”

“No, no.  I’ll come pick you up.”

Great, she thought.  This can’t be a date.

Because it was just too weird.  They were totally just friends.  Really.  But there was a niggling sense that something was different about this night.  Other times, they’d just met at Los Amigos and ate undainty burritos or went to Quizno’s because he had a hankering for a sub. But this time he wanted to pick her up.  And take her to Cock of the Walk.  In his truck.

Admittedly, it was a nice truck.  Not the kind of truck an old money Southern gentleman like him would ever go mud riding in.  But her?  In a truck?  With a blue-eyed Alabama boy?  No.  Just . . . no.  His accent was corn bread and molasses.  Butter biscuits and sausage gravy.  Hot cheese grits at 6 a.m. since there was work to do, and it’s best to get an early start before the heat hits, because a man’s gotta work.

The truck and the accent weren’t all.  She was uncomfortably older than him.  She was also nearly taller than him, and she would not consider herself a Southern belle, the only type of girl she felt could appropriately match his good ol’ boy charm.   No, ma’am.  Southern belles are porcelain, pampered, rosy-cheeked, drawling darlings.  She was an anti-Southern belle.  She spoke with an accentless crispness.  She was caramel and never sunburned.  She took care of herself and didn’t expect anything from anyone.  She was a citizen of the world, dropped into the syrupy South by chance.

They were thrown together by chance.  Lone students in the same fledgling church.  His idealistic, youthful zeal drove them to start a Bible study with an outreach bent, but in the end, it was just the two of them drinking lattes at Panera Bread, her wondering where this was leading, him apologizing for showing up in a dirt smudged t-shirt smelling like sweat and cut grass because he didn’t have enough time to go home and shower after he’d finished up with his side job.  Daddy took care of things, but still insisted sonny have a work ethic sweat into him.

He called to talk because she was "easy to talk to."  She got him hooked on Don Miller.  He ate her poorly executed squash casserole.  They went to WalMart and laughed at the names of the different varieties of Axe hair gel until they cried.  His out-of-town girlfriend got wind of one of their burrito outings and posted a thinly veiled threat on her Facebook wall.  She told him.  He rolled his eyes and shook his head in disbelief.  She backed away.  Besides, they were just friends.  She wasn’t trying to cause any drama.

But after Christmas break, he called and suggested dinner.  She reminded him of the girlfriend drama.  “We broke up,” he countered.  “It should have happened a long time ago.”  Oh.

So, here she was, climbing into his gas guzzling landmass of a truck.  Afraid to even consider defining what this was.  To wave off the uncertainty that clutched them both, she started making fun of his accent.  Ah don’t sownd lahk thayt.  But you do, buddy.  You do.