I laughed and moved toward him to help. “I agree that it’s probably a sight you should spare your loved ones.”
The teeth of the cheap zipper snagged several times on its way down his back, forcing me to use my other hand to pinch the plastic beneath it to act as a guide. I worked it lower, uncovering the full length of his damp white undershirt. The fabric seemed to breathe with him, exposing every ripple and muscle beneath it. And suddenly my own oxygen intake seemed at risk. I swallowed, tugging the zipper lower still, until the tines jammed at the top of his waistband.
“Okay.” My voice felt sluggish, my mouth not quite in sync with my thoughts. “You’re in the clear now.”
I took several steps back, allowing space for him to take over. Making quick work with my hands, I gathered the rest of the decorative apples from a wicker basket on the floor.
“Thanks. Gosh, the fresh air feels good. It was hot in there.”
Out here, too. “I bet it was.”
From the corner of my eye, I watched as he peeled away the silicone cap suctioned around his neck and head and allowed the fleshy layers of plastic to fall in a heap at his feet. He stepped out of the costume and raked a hand through his sweat-slicked hair. Soft curls curved above the tips of his ears and at the nape of his neck while the rest of his hair stood at attention. An apple dropped from my hand and bounced on the linoleum.
He bent to pick it up, tossed it into my collection basket, then reached for the stack of crates beside me. “How about I carry these babies to the storage room for you?”
“Oh . . . uh . . .” Words, Lauren. Speak words now. “You don’t have to do that. I can totally handle it on my own.”
He gripped the bottom crates and hefted them up. “I’m sure you could,” he said. “But why not split the load with a guy who needs to earn back a hefty dose of masculinity after identifying as naked poultry for the last two hours?”
He didn’t need to earn anything back in my book, but arguing with him would be as pointless as the hollow fruit in my arms. “Okay, thanks.” I lifted the basket filled with pumpkins and all things fake and draped the Thanksgiving banner and the emerald, orange, and gold tablecloth used as a backdrop around my neck like a scarf.
“That’s a good look for you,” he said, appraisingly. “Not many people can pull off holiday plaid.”
“Says the man who just took off a turkey suit.”
“Touché.”
We made the trek down the fifth-grade hall and took a hard right at the backstage door, which led to an even narrower passageway crammed with miscellaneous fundraiser signs, art supplies, and auction materials. I stopped in front of a black door and reached for the keys in my back pocket. Once unlocked, I propped the door open for Joshua to set his load down inside first before I did the same.
“So what’s on the docket for you tomorrow?” He dusted off his hands with a hard clap and swipe. “Do you do the whole extended family thing? Or are you more of the immediate family gathering type?”
The mention of my family brought the mental jolt I needed to keep my thoughts focused. I relocked the closet, then twisted the knob to double check it. “Let’s see, it will just be my parents, my sister, Lisa, and her husband, her stepsons, and my niece, Iris.”
“Sounds like a manageable size.”
I shot him a loaded grin. “You might not say that if you met them.”
“Why not?” He laughed. “They a tough crowd?”
“They’re just . . .” What were they exactly? “Really different from me.” I stopped, shook my head. “That sounds stuck up. I didn’t mean it to come out like that.”
His gaze rested on mine, his hands finding the pockets of his shorts as if he had all the time in the world for a pre-holiday therapy session. “How do you mean it, then?”
I released a nervous laugh, wishing I’d just kept my mouth shut. “You really don’t want to hear about the Bailey drama.”
He glanced behind him and pulled up the half bookshelf someone once painted into a fake fireplace for a play. “Actually, I do.”
He gestured for me to have a seat while he moved a rickety stepladder over for himself in a passageway half the width of a mining tunnel.
“Really?” I looked around at the tight quarters. “You just want me to sit here and talk about all the dysfunction in my family?”
“Do you have somewhere else to be?” he asked, as if this were a totally normal thing to do in a musty storage space, in an empty school building, on the day before a major holiday.
“Well, no, but—”
“Perfect.”
I laughed and shook my head, giving in and arranging myself on the faux-fireplace-bookshelf combo across from him. And maybe the strangeness of it all—the isolated quiet in the middle of a school day, the upcoming four-day holiday weekend, the fact that tomorrow I’d be spending the day with people who likely wouldn’t support my future life decisions—was the exact reason I found myself providing an answer I hadn’t fully shared with anyone outside of Gail.
“For various reasons, my family has always struggled to be close, but about five years ago, things between us all got even more distant after I . . . after I made some changes in my life.”
He remained quiet, but his eyes shone with interest, compelling me to go on.
Why was this so hard for me? Gail never seemed hesitant when it came to sharing about her faith. “My parents didn’t raise my sister and me to believe in organized religion of any kind. I never went to Sunday school or attended church camps or any of that. And honestly, that was all totally okay with me. I wasn’t against church or God exactly, I just couldn’t imagine any of that being a part of my life.”
“So what changed?” A simple, straightforward question that revealed little of his own convictions or feelings.
“I was given an invitation to go to a Christmas play at a student’s church, with a family I’d come to love during that school year.” I smiled at the memory of Benny handing me a beautifully embroidered card with red and green holly on the corners. A ticket to the play was tucked inside. “I went with them that night, and afterward they invited me back to their house for hot cider and cookies. We talked until late in the evening, mostly just get-to-know-you type conversation, but at one point, I remember telling them that I wanted to know more about what they believed and what they shared together as a family. Over the next few weeks they answered dozens of my questions, and shortly after the new year, I accepted Christ as my Savior.” I blinked away the moisture building behind my eyes. “I felt like I had purpose for the first time in my adult life.”
He sat quietly for several seconds. “I couldn’t agree more. Faith in God is what gives our lives purpose.” A response that matched what I’d believed to be true about him for some time. “So . . .” He hedged, clasping his hands together with a slight frown on his face. “I’m gonna go out on a limb here and guess that when you told your family all that, it didn’t go so well?”
“Understatement,” I said, plucking invisible lint off my turkey sweatshirt. “After I told them that my previous misconceptions about God and the church weren’t how I believed anymore, the wheels on our family wagon fell off . . . and we’d only been operating with three to begin with. In the beginning they asked some questions, but mostly to debate their own views and opinions. Now it just feels like my ‘weird convictions’ are the elephant in every room we’re in together, which makes conversing about anything that matters . . . challenging.” To say the least. Especially when those conversations would soon revolve around a life change that would affect them all.