Total pages in book: 107
Estimated words: 100550 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 503(@200wpm)___ 402(@250wpm)___ 335(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 100550 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 503(@200wpm)___ 402(@250wpm)___ 335(@300wpm)
She was the sort of person who loved you if she loved you, and would flay the flesh from your body with her acid tongue if she didn’t. I used to be decidedly in the first camp, but judging by the way she looked me up and down, she wasn’t sure where I fit anymore.
Join the club.
“Nice to see you again, Brooks. In person, I mean. We missed you at the Thicket Christmas last year. And the year before. And at Dunn’s surprise party. And Gracie’s daughter’s preschool graduation.” Lurleen lifted one drawn-on black eyebrow.
Ah. Camp Flaying. Delightful.
I smiled harder. “It’s really hard to get time off when you’re working your way up the corporate ladder. I missed being here for those things, but I like to think I have my daddy’s work ethic.”
I nodded toward the smoky area on the far corner of the patio, where my dad’s salt-and-pepper head and pink cheeks were barely visible over the top of his grill. He’d literally set up a barstool in front of the cooker so he could turn the chicken and brats, while also keeping my mother more or less appeased that he was “resting.” When I’d suggested that I should maybe handle cooking duties as Head Licker, he’d been downright offended.
“A Johnson mans his own grill, Brooks. You can take these tongs when I’m dead, you hear?”
Message received.
Lurleen lifted her chin, neither agreeing nor disagreeing, and let her gaze wander around the yard. “Real nice turnout this year, Cindy, honey. I think this is the biggest crowd I can remember.”
My mom grinned and ducked her head modestly. “Just about everyone on the Beautification Corps said they’d stop by, and Monette and Brad are bringing Ava over any minute now.”
Jesus. That comment, delivered with a coy little smile and a head tilt in my direction, made it hard not to roll my eyes.
Figured that I’d come back to town after ten years away, bringing a boyfriend no less, and my mom was still utterly convinced that one look at Ava Ivey was gonna make me pick up stakes in New York and start building a picket fence here in the Thicket instead.
Not. Happening.
I opened my mouth to say something to that effect, when my mother spied someone new to speak to. She gave Lurleen a distracted goodbye, yanked my wrist like a leash, and yelled, “Come on, Brooks!”
I felt like a tall, blond sheepdog and wondered what she’d do if I started panting.
“Pastor Mitchell!” my mom said, rocking us to a halt a few seconds later. “This is my son Brooks. You remember me telling you about him? Brooks, this is Chester Mitchell. He’s been pastor of our community church for five or six years now.”
Pastor Mitchell was a middle-aged man with close-cropped curls, expressive, dark eyes behind wire-rimmed glasses, and a bright, white smile. “Oh, yes! Brooks from New York City. You know, I once thought of getting my degree at NYU, but I ended up staying in Tennessee. I’ve often wondered what I missed. It’s much different from here, I’m imagining?”
I laughed a little. Sum up the differences between the Thicket and New York? Impossible. Where would I even begin? I could say that my entire Williamsburg apartment would fit in my parents’ living room, and I had no outdoor space to my name, but on my block alone, I could get authentic cuisine from three countries I hadn’t even heard of growing up in the Thicket. I could tell him that the noise and traffic were terrible, but there were museums and performance art on every street corner—culture you could never find around here. I could try to describe the manic energy of the city, which was only tolerable because I also had the sense that I could do anything—be anything—there. But how could I make someone from around here understand that, amid all the bustle and congestion, New York was wide enough to handle the real Brooks Johnson… while in Licking Thicket, despite the endless open space, my entire life had had to fit in someone else’s teeny box?
“It’s, ah… great,” I said shortly. “Loads to see and do.” If a person had time and money. “I have a great job.” Even if it meant working with the likes of Kale Storms. “Lots of friends.” More like acquaintances for now, but there was plenty of time for friends when my career was further down the track.
“Well, you won’t be bored here in the Thicket, that’s for sure!” Pastor Mitchell said.
Won’t I? I once again willed back my eyeroll.
“That’s right! Plenty’s changed since you were last home!” My mother beamed. “You know, Pastor, my Brooks is seventh in a proud line of Johnson Head Lickers that dates back a century. Head Licking is a way of life in our family.”