Page 84 of Where You're Planted

“I don’t appreciate my body being referred to asa load,” Amy said.

—

“Hold on,” Omar interrupted, laughingat Tansy’s slack-jawed impersonation of the guys at Ernie’s Emporium. “Please tell me that after all that, y’all found the water heater.”

“We did,” Tansy said, slipping her hand into Jack’s under the dinner table. “We got it installed last night, and the water in my pipes is now steaming hot.”

“I’ll say so,” Amy said suggestively, making them all laugh again.

Jack had invited Amy and Omar over in part because he wanted Tansy to have one of those dinner parties she’d imagined, but he hadn’t realized hownicethis would be. All night, Tansy had chatted comfortably with Amy and Omar, a casual touch here, a smile there that said she was enjoying this, too. He wasn’t the sad third wheel anymore. He belonged to her. And that thought didn’t even spook him. It feltgood.

Amy kept touching her belly, even pulled Omar’s hand over at one point to feel a particularly strong kick, and anything that Jack might have felt about that was soothed by the anchor of Tansy’s hand on his thigh.

“How’s your reno going?” Omar asked Tansy, pushing back his finished plate.

She shrugged, not losing her smile. “Slow but getting there. We hit up a garage sale this morning, and I found some furniture for my daughter’s room. I’m hoping I can get it all set up tomorrow and we can finally sleep in separate rooms again.”

“That’s good. And your neighbor who was with you? She recovering okay?”

“Dottie took a buyout. The county tore down her house to make an overflow depression. But she’s doing well. She lives a few miles away now.”

Jack shifted closer so he could put his arm across the back of her chair and give her shoulder a comforting squeeze, but the tension she usually showed when talking about the hurricane and her house didn’t appear. She turned to Amy and said brightly, “I can’t believe I haven’t asked yet, but how did you two meet?”

“Oh boy,” Amy said on a laugh. “Well, like y’all, we met during a hurricane.”

“Really?”

“Yep. This story stresses out Jack so much.”

Tansy turned to him, delighted and curious.

“You’ll see,” he grumbled, pulling her closer into his side. She was all the way at the edge of her chair now, their thighs pressed together.

“So Jack was on this super-nerd plant-finding trip—”

“We were harvesting critically endangered species in Costa Rica,” Jack clarified.

“Like I said, a super-nerd plant-finding trip,” Amy continued. “He was gone for weeks. It was the summer after my sophomore year at U of H, and I was, shall we say, more book-smart than street-smart…”

“Or weather-smart,” Omar chimed in.

“Yeah, like, I didn’t realize there was a hurricane coming until about six hours before it made landfall.”

“I’mthe one who told her, from Costa Rica,” Jack said.

“Yes, his mother-henning cannot be hindered by geography. So anyway, I was living in an apartment by myself. I had no hurricane supplies and no idea what to do. I went out to try to get some food and batteries and stuff, but the stores were totally ransacked.”

“Been there,” Tansy said.

“I never cooked, so I was thinking, if the roads were bad and I couldn’t get out, I literally had no food to get by. I’m driving around, freaking out, and theonlyplace still open is a Taco Bell, so I buy like twenty burritos, thinking I’ll just reheat them for days if I have to.”

“Oh my God,” Tansy laughed.

“I take them home, eat one, and put the rest in the freezer, and I’m feeling pretty proud of myself…until about two hours later when the first band of winds hit, and the power immediately goes out.”

“And she finally realizes she can’t keep nineteen burritos coldorreheat them without electricity,” Jack said.

“Okay, but it was only a category one,” Amy argued, “so it was totally possible that the power would come back on after the storm passed, and the food would keep if I didn’t open the freezer.”