Just Down the Road by Jodi Thomas Page B

classes at the community college in Clifton Creek, they had little time and no money to date. But tonight Big and Border’s neighbor had invited them over to eat some new Italian dishes she was trying out. Beau knew there would be lots of food and laughs. With luck, he wouldn’t have to talk much and could still have a date.
    Willow climbed in his car. “I’m starving.” She laughed. “And for once I don’t have to eat the truck stop food.”
    Beau backed out of the drive. “T-that the reason you agreed to go out with me?”
    “Of course.” She laughed, and he hoped she was kidding.
    “Tell me about this lady who cooks for the likes of you and Border Biggs. She crazy or just like to feed the wild things?”
    “S-she’s a nice woman. Maybe ten years older than us, but not old. Her friend, a guy in a wheelchair, lived next door to the Biggs brothers for a while. When he moved out, she moved in. I-I think she’s waiting for him to come back, but Border’s brother doesn’t think he ever will.”
    Willow wiggled out of her uniform top and Beau tried to keep his eyes on the road. After a few deep breaths he remembered what he’d been talking about. “S-she w-works at the post office, h-has for years.”
Concentrate
, he screamed inside his mind and tried to forget about the woman changing clothes beside him. “N-now she’s learning to cook and w-we’re the judges.”
    “Or the guinea pigs,” Willow said as she leaned forward and pulled a blouse out of her huge purse. “I thought I’d dress up a little. It didn’t seem right to come to a dinner party in my uniform.”
    Beau risked a glance at her. The bra she wore wasn’t much of a cover. “I-I think you look just f-fine the way you are.”
    He didn’t know if she blushed, but he felt his face warm. Preachers’ kids don’t even get to look at Victoria’s Secret catalogs. He’d never seen a real girl wearing just a bra. Looking back at the road, he decided he must have some kind of fixation on breasts. If he wasn’t careful, he’d catch himself just thinking about them for no reason at all.
    Willow pulled on a knit blouse and began combing her hair back. “I’ve been looking forward to this all week, Beau. I don’t get out of the late shift very often, and all my friends work, so they don’t want to do anything in themornings when I’m free. It’ll be nice to talk to people near my own age.”
    “W-who do you usually talk to?” Now that he knew what was beneath her blouse, he felt like Superman. She was fully clothed, but he could still see what was underneath. It would take a hard hit to bounce that picture out of his mind, and he planned to hold on to it as long as possible.
    “I usually sit around and listen to my mom and her buddies from her work. I only had two good friends in high school, and they left for college a month ago. Now I mostly hear about the loser boyfriends my mom and her friends find. They say by the time a man’s forty, if he’s not married, a girl needs to look long and hard at him before she even dates him.”
    “Your p-parents are divorced?”
    “Yeah. Since I was two. I think my dad must have been her first loser boyfriend. She hardly ever talks about him. Maybe she doesn’t remember him. He was so far back in the line of men she’s bedded.”
    Beau pulled up in front of an old Mission-style duplex near downtown and turned off the car. Before she could move, he said, “Willow, I-I don’t date much.” He laughed. “T-that’s an understatement. I-I don’t date at all unless you count a few group dates in middle school, and one of my p-parents was usually driving us all.”
    She didn’t interrupt, but he thought she looked like she was smiling.
    “I-I don’t know how this is going to go tonight, s-so do you think I could kiss you now?” He stared straight ahead and said each word slowly. “That way, if I-I do something dumb and you’re sorry you came, at least I-I will have kissed you once before you