Katherine Moves to Kansas, page 18
“Office space would be awesome, but a music room...that would be cool. I could...well, in my family, the music room is the family room, so all the instruments are in one place,” she said, blushing again. “This is real, isn’t it?”
“This is very real. Mr. Young is, for all intents and purposes, your perfect match,” Coraline said.
“My perfect match...,” she said, smiling. She completed the paperwork required then went to the doctor’s office to give samples and take a physical. It was close to one in the afternoon when she finally made it to her office. The phone didn’t stop ringing, her assistant spilled coffee in the floor, and her boss brought her files for three new clients.
Symphony looked at the chaos of the day and understood that this life for her in New York was over. Initially when her sister decided to chunk it all and go live in the woods in Maine, she had truly believed Melody had lost her mind. Now she had found out that her sister had used this service and got herself Lakota.
“I’m getting a husband. Oh Lord, and I’m moving to Oklahoma if everything works out,” she said, swallowing hard. “This means I have to plan a wedding. I’m not getting married in my parents’ dining room. I want a church wedding and a white dress and brides’ maids.”
She was never one to overreact or freak out over matters, but this was kind of freaking her out.
“Make a list of songs to symbolize my day and my mood. No, a playlist of my day,” she told herself and pulled out her phone. “Make a list.”
Stupid Love- Lady Gaga
Good Riddance – Green Day
Body and Soul- Anita Baker
The other two songs were a blank. She thought about her parents. How would they react to both their daughters moving so far away?
“One step at a time, Symphony,” she said aloud and added the song by Jordin Sparks with the same title the list.
One Step at a Time- Jordin Spark
She sat for a minute looking at the files. A warm feeling hit her center at the thought of carrying each one of the piles into her boss’s office and telling the man she quit. Then she’d pack her grip, walking out of this office, out of New York, out of the business of negotiating single colored bowls of candies in the green rooms for clientele. Then song number five came to her. “What a Wonderful World,” she said, humming aloud and began going through the new client intake files.
What a Wonderful World – Louis Armstrong
Chapter Three- Terms
Symphony’s Playlist of the Day
1. Vision of Love - M. Carey
2. Don’t Stop Believing – Journey
3. I want to know what Love Is- Foreigner
4. One Day at a Time, Sweet Jesus- Merle Haggard
5. I Wanna Know – Joe
Symphony barely slept Thursday night. Although she’d met her mother for lunch earlier in the day, she hadn’t been ready to share the plans for the new adventure she was about to undertake—meeting her man. In her head, she imagined he’d pick her up from the airport in a giant Dodge truck with dual wheels and a couple of bales of hay in the truck bed. She also hoped that he didn’t expect to get some before they said, “I Do.”
“Well, maybe,” she smiled, boarding her flight at LaGuardia. She put on headphones and leaned back in her seat, declining snacks and fluids for the six-hour journey. There was a brief layover in Charlotte and then on to Oklahoma. The last thing she wanted was to go to the bathroom on a plane. People were nasty and a lot of the men missed the seat.
“Oh, maybe there is a second bathroom in his house I can claim until we have kids or company. I’m not used to sharing a bathroom with anyone,” she grimaced, focusing on the music and trying to figure out the next set of songs to go into her daily playlist. Thus far, she was having trouble coming up with five each day. “Just take your time Symphony; take your time.”
Jaimie took his time getting dressed. He didn’t want to appear as if he’d tried too hard to impress the lady, but he also didn’t want to come across as the proverbial Okie from Muskogee. The black slacks and blue chambray button down shirt worked well with a pair a black dress shoes. He shaved and trimmed his beard, ready to meet the woman who could potentially be his wife.
“This is surreal and weird, but I’m ready,” he said, double checking himself in the mirror before heading East for the one-hour drive to the airport. He’d made two traveling CD’s, one for the ride up and the other for the ride back. “I hope she has good taste in music.”
The drive, while pleasant enough, also was a distraction from the load of details he needed to share with her about his life. Coraline had forwarded all of the information on Symphony Willis, and she was an impressive young woman. So far, he was leaning towards hope. He’d received a few bites before on his ad with Perfect Match, but when he tried to explain his situation to a would-be mate, via the phone, or in letters, it always fell flat. Today, he would get the opportunity to show versus tell while praying it all made sense. Hell, some days it didn’t even make sense to him.
He arrived just as the text came through that she was exiting the building at the door nearest the coffee shop. Jaimie smiled, knowing full well that the Will Rogers Airport wasn’t very large, and far as he knew, it only had one coffee shop. He’d barely pulled into park when he spotted her coming out the door, looking more glamorous than a movie star trying to pretend she was slumming it. His breath caught as he turned off the engine and climbed out of the vehicle. He wanted to play it cool as he walked around the vehicle and opened the passenger door. She didn’t wave or smile when she saw him but walked right up as if she’d known him all her life.
“Miss Willis, I hope you had a pleasant flight,” he said, removing the dark shades from his eyes.
“I did, Mr. Young, and please call me Symphony,” she said, taking a look at the convertible Audi. The look of disappointment showed on her face as he took her overnight bag and placed it on the back seat. He also handed her a baseball cap with the Young Family Farms logo emblazoned across the front.
“Call me Jaimie,” he said, waiting for her to take a seat in the coupe. “You look disappointed. I hope that look is not for me.”
He closed the car door once she was inside and didn’t wait for a response as he walked around the front end of the vehicle to climb in the driver side. The dark shades went back on his face as he started the car and the engine purred under his hands. He waited for her answer, looking at her through the dark glasses.
“Oh, you’re waiting on my answer,” she said, placing a well-manicured hand to her chest. “No, not disappointed in you at all. I was just expecting you to arrive in a pair of snug Wranglers, driving a big truck rolling on dual wheels with hay bales in the rear. And a cowboy hat.”
Jaimie chuckled softly. “All of that stuff is at the farm. As a matter of fact, I didn’t drive the dually, that’s what it called, because it did have hay bales in the back. That monster also has terrible gas mileage, and it is an hour from the farm to the airport, one way.”
“The convertible is nice as well. It will feel like a drive through the country, but we won’t be able to talk to each other with the wind whipping by at 70 miles per hour,” she told him.
“Exactly. I wanted us to ride and enjoy filling the space between us for an hour. No pressure to make small talk while asking those weird uncomfortable questions,” he said. “Just me, my girl, the top down, hollah back, and some tunes.”
“Okay, I see you Jaimie, but that’s still not going to stop me from getting to the bottom of your unicorn status,” she confessed.
“In an hour, you’ll be able to see it all for yourself and then make your call, and you can play it the way you feel it,” he said, signaling to enter the traffic. He turned up the tunes, allowing Fleetwood Mac to come through the speakers.
Symphony glanced over at him. “Dreams...Fleetwood Mac...didn’t expect that at all. Not in a million years would I have imagined you and this song...,” she said.
“You ain’t seen nothing yet,” he told her as he started to sing the song in a deep country baritone. They entered the main throughfare, entering I-40, and he picked up speed, singing happily. His voice had a nice, rich tone, and the man could hold a note. By the time the song reached the chorus, he pointed at her, and Symphony joined in, singing with him as they rode down the interstate, the top down, baseball cap on her head, and doing carpool karaoke. It was such a refreshing start to a meet cute that she didn’t know how bad what he planned to show her was going to be, but so far, she was in.
An hour later, she wasn’t so sure she wanted to be in, but rather out, running in the opposite direction. However, when and how he explained it, it all made absolutely no sense, yet when she could physically see what he was saying, it became crystal clear.
“There are three houses,” he started saying as they pulled through the main gates. “The farm itself is about 800 acres. We grow sunflower seeds, pumpkins, corn, and some barley, not much barley, but mostly for our consumption.”
She kept quiet as he passed by the primary white farmhouse that Jaimie said belonged to his grandfather who still lived there. He drove past a second house and made no comment, and finally coming around the gravel road to a white, ranch style home with a wide front porch, modern windows, and fresh paint.
“This is my house. I am the farrier,” he said. “I may shoe a dozen or so horses a month, but I do other stuff like make drawer pulls. I’m an amateur beekeeper, and we have some of the best honey around. We also grow the best pumpkins in six counties.”
He pulled the car into a garage next to a black pick-up truck with a magnet sign on the side which read “Young Family Farms.” She listened as he continued to explain about egg-laying hens, two milk cows, a corn maze, and other things, but her eyes went to two young boys, playing freely. Her heart sank. Symphony knew it; her unicorn was somebody’s baby daddy.
“And the kids?” she asked, waiting for the bad news.
“Yeah, the kids,” he said softly. “This is the part that becomes tough, but bear with me as I explain.”
“Listening,” she told him, clutching her expensive designer purse for comfort.
“The older of the two, the one digging in his butt, is my uncle,” Jaimie said, yelling at the child, “Quit digging in your butt, boy, and go wash your hands!”
Symphony’s eyebrows arched, listening, hearing, and kind of understanding, but she reserved comment. He pointed to the second boy, who closely resembled the first one in coloring and build. The second child was younger and slightly smaller.
“The other one, that’s picking his nose and wiping it on his shirt is my little brother,” he said, yelling at that one as well. “Stop picking in your nose, boy! Go wash your hands, you nasty little scamp!”
Symphony blinked several times, before asking, “What is happening here?”
“Just inhale because there’s more,” he said, watching the kids. “They are also brothers.”
She turned slowly and looked at him. Out of the corner of her eye she saw a man, bald, older, standing next to the pick-up truck she’d imagined Jaimie would have driven to pick her up from the airport. Shirtless, the man climbed into the rear of the truck, lifting the small bales and chunking each one off the side of the truck.
“So, you’re telling me that the little butt scratcher is your grandfather’s child and the other is your father’s child, but by the same woman,” Symphony asked, lifting the brim of the baseball cap to see the bald man better on the back of the truck. “Is your father no longer in the picture and you’re raising these kids?”
“Not exactly,” he said. “The man on the back of the truck is my father or rather mine and Gee’s father. The one coming out the back door of the house is my grandfather.”
Symphony found that she had to blink several times once more to make sure she was seeing what her brain said she was seeing, which her eyes were relaying to her brain, which was trying to convince her she was seeing what she was seeing. “I can see it,” she said finally.
Inhaling deeply, she watched the grandfather speak to the son, who turned and waved at Jaimie. He waved back and pointed at the boys. The sound of small feet making their way to the men captivated her.
“So, if I’m to understand this correctly, the bald headed, dark chocolate man with the six pack and sweat beads rolling down his back and chest that is rippled with muscles is your Daddy?” she asked.
“Yep.”
“And the sexy, white bearded man who looks like he stepped out of Octogenarian Quarterly is your grandfather,” she inquired. When Jaimie nodded assent, Symphony merely added, “I ain’t mad at her at all.”
“Unfortunately, most of the town was mad at Lakiesha. Nice Christian folks condemned a twenty some year old and ridiculed the lady as being a gold-digger, but heaped praise on my 87-year-old grandfather and my 67-year-old father for still being able to pull ‘em young and get it in. Well, he was sixty at the time Gee Jr. was born,” he said. “He’s since retired and loves to cruise.”
“Dear Lord,” she said, watching the men instruct the boys. “What else do I need to know?”
“Most of the time the boys are with me, Symphony. My grandfather thinks he’s a pimp, but he’s every bit of 87 and has spent much of his life working on this farm, which in some part contributes to his longevity, but he more than likely is not going to see that young boy’s graduation,” he said. “The same can be said for my father, who loves rich sauces, heavy red wines, and women too young to be under him.”
“Therefore, the woman in your life must be willing to take on possibly aiding in the raising of her uncle and brothers-in-law by marriage?”
“Yes, because their mother left to go to Vegas to become a Blackjack Dealer,” he said. “From there, I heard she connected with a Hollywood producer who took her to LA to make movies. She works in the San Fernando Valley, making these movies.”
“Okay and eeew,” she said, scowling.
“I can’t afford to have someone in my life who will walk out of theirs. It’s not fair, and neither is this life, but my uncle and brother are important to me and life on this farm,” he said facing her and looking her squarely in the eyes. “If you only give me daughters, it will be up to my brother and uncle to carry on the Young family name and legacy.”
“Your Grandpa and father seem to be fully engaged with both kids.”
“Yes, that is also part of the problem. That nine-year-old, who is my uncle, talks like an 87-year-old man with arthritis, gout, and slipped disc in his back. The other one talks like a man on the prowl rolling through the hood in his ‘64, scoping every pretty young thing he sees. Careful, he knows how to lay it on thick,” Jaimie said.
“No. Nope. No,” she said, shaking her head.
“I understand. Do you want me to take you back to the airport now?”
“Oh, shucks no, this is going to be funny as heck,” she said. “I want to talk to those boys.”
“Be careful what you wish for, Miss Willis. I don’t need my wife to play Mom to the boys. I would love for my wife to be the world’s best big sister and the favorite niece that every uncle loves,” he said, winking at her and lifting her bag from the back seat of the car, guiding her to the house. “You’ll meet Daddy and Pap later. Come on inside.”
Fifteen minutes later, she could smell the boys before she saw them. She removed the cap and washed the dust from her face and touched up her makeup. Her stomach had begun to growl loudly, almost embarrassing her. The boys noticed as they came into the kitchen.
The seven-year-old, Gee Jr, which was short for Gerald Keith Young, Junior, entered first. He stopped in front of Symphony, his small head looking at her feet, allowing his eyes to travel up her body until he reached her face, his tiny eyebrows arched. “Hey, how you doing?”
Symphony, taken aback but such a mature tone in such a pint-sized body, swallowed hard. “I’m well; thank you for asking.”
“I’m Gee, and that outfit is cute on you. Nice big brother. Nice,” he said, walking very slowly, going past her as if he intended to walk around her to look at her butt.
“Whaaaat?” Symphony said as the nine-year-old pushed his brother out of the way.
“Don’t mind him none; he was born rude and arrogant,” DeMarcus said. “I’m Demarcus, just call me Demarcus, the whole Uncle thing makes me, well, I don’t like it much, and it’s weird to explain. Jaimie, fix this gal some’ta eat. Her belly growling like three bears in there about to fight for the survival of her soul.”
Jaimie looked at her with hooded eyes. He only shook his head. “Listen, both of you, I don’t care if you are my uncle and brother, I’m still the adult and neither of you are grown or senior citizens, so go wash up so you can eat.”
“You’re not going to introduce us to your lovely lady? I want to get to know the pretty young gal that may be my niece,” Demarcus said, looking at Symphony as if he were morally shocked. “Talk about rude!”
Symphony started to laugh as he walked away, as if he were three feet wide. “I agree with you, Demarcus, but this is a great deal to process for anyone. My name is Symphony Willis, and I’m from New York.”
“So, you planning to marry rock head over here?” Gee wanted to know.
Demarcus called from the bathroom, “I hope so because that man needs some chil’ren. He keeps talking to us like we’re his. Ms. Symphony, you know he even has a set bedtime for us, and we have to eat, like, vegetables and stuff.”
“How dare he!” she said, looking at Jaimie and seeing the love he had for the boys. She got it. She even told him so. “I get it.”
“You’re not running away?”
