Chapter 34

Getting out of the vehicle Liam moved the thin strap of his purse over his shoulder and closed the door. Catching a glimpse of his reflection in the tinted window he turned his head from left to right, inspecting his makeup, eyeshadow, mascara were hardly ever an issue, but his lips often needed touching up. Pulling out lip gloss from the purse he added a new layer over his lips before turning to walk over to Miss Megan and head towards the church.

Liam had driven past this place plenty of times, so he knew it looked more like a school for how the buildings were set up and instead of a cross atop the chapel, it had a large cross about half the height of the building on its side that faced traffic. Yet he still kept picturing an old timey chapel on a hill for some reason whenever Miss Megan mentioned this place. Ahead of them were different groups of people dressed up for church in their own little groups outside the main building, but the person that caught his attention was Jeremy running up to him with a big smile on his face.

“Good morning Leah!” Jeremy said, taking two quick deep breaths from his sudden run across the parking lot. “Good morning Miss Best.” Jeremy inclined his head to her. Megan looked the boy over; he was dressed smartly in a pair of gray slacks and a dark blue button up shirt that had the sleeves rolled up. They were well fitting and looked new, she was pretty sure his mom must have taken him shopping to make sure he had appropriate clothes that fit him correctly. She was also positive the boy was at least half an inch taller than the first time she saw him when shopping with Bailey.

“Morning, you seem energetic this morning.”

“Yeah, I was talking with the others and wanted to come say hi.” Jeremy said, pointing his thumb over his shoulder at a group of familiar people already gathered.

“Ah, I see. Well Leah seemed to be in a particular rush to get here this morning too.” Liam looked at the older woman with his eyes wide and full of intent. Wishing she wouldn’t say things like that to give the boy ideas.

“You were?!” He said smiling at his new girlfriend. “If this is what you look like when you're in a rush, I can’t wait to see you take your time.” Megan watched both him and Leah look away from each other at the same time when he spoke the confident line. Like she was embarrassed, or had gotten butterflies in her stomach, while it took all the confidence the boy had to say it.

“Thank you, I… we just had to go to Miss Megan’s house this morning and…” Liam wanted to clear things up, he didn’t want Jeremy thinking he was rushing for him. The boy was nice, deserving of a girl who wanted to spend time with him. Someone sweet like he was, someone that wasn’t him, but he didn’t get to say much before he was cut off.

“She left the shoes she wanted for her outfit at my place, so we had to make a detour.”

“Those booties look umm you look great in them, I think it was worth the trip.” Jeremy had never had a girlfriend before and he really wasn’t sure how he was supposed to greet her. Ryan told him to just go for it, saying how most of the time if something work it was because it was done with confidence, not something he had a lot of. He spent Saturday night being super happy about being Leah’s boyfriend or second guessing himself about things he did that day. She didn’t step closer to him when he stopped in front so it made him second guess himself about giving her a hug, but he thought he should do something. So he reached out and took her hand, happy when she didn’t pull away.

“The two of you are adorable together, why don’t you walk ahead.” Liam could tell how nervous the boy was and he felt a little bad, if he was greeting someone that was his girlfriend he would have made sure she knew he missed her. Though he definitely didn’t want that attention, so he gave the boy’s hand a light squeeze to signal him that everything was okay and walked beside him up to the group of people while Miss Megan followed behind.

Liam was surprised to see all the faces gathered, Bailey, Bailey’s mom Miss Amanda. A tall man with swept back hair and beard talking excitedly about something with her and an elderly woman that was unmistakable for anything other than Candi’s grandmother. The woman was a little shorter, but one could look to her for how Candi would look in her golden years. She seemed to be engaged in talking to an older man, by his collar he was a priest of some kind.

Taking extra effort, Liam took the time to look over how everyone was dressed, not because he cared, but because Miss Megan said he not only needed to pay attention to how other girls dressed. That and she mentioned she may test him on it later and he was not going to fail another one of her tests. The elderly woman was in an ivory pants suit, a light blue blouse underneath, a pair of white rounded toe heels with maybe just over an inch block heel. They were much more sensible shoes than what he had on now. She wore her hair up and accessorized the outfit with a gold brooch, a few rings and a single thin gold bracelet.

Miss Megan’s sister, Miss Amanda stood out from much of the group wearing something he thought of as a fall outfit than a summer with what he had learned. It was a short sleeve dress, that was a reddish color, he really hoped he didn’t get points off for not knowing the shade. She had a brown leather belt around her waist, and matching stiletto four inch heels he would guess, with little jewelry. With her hair down he couldn’t see if she had any earrings in, but she did have a cross necklace similar to what he wore, though hers was gold. He could easily say she was fuckable, and it should have a capital F, but that wasn’t going to get him anywhere other than trouble if he said it out loud.

Then there was Bailey and Candi. They were very much playing up the sister thing today and looking them over after Amanda. He was glad he was tucked away. They both seemed to be wearing the same gray and white tweed wrap skirt with three pearl buttons, black sleeveless blouses though not the same ones. Bailey’s sat black blouse came up above her breasts and then it changed to lace up to her neck, while Candi’s came up to a pussy-bow. It seemed like such a stupid name for a type of look, but he didn’t make it up. They both had black pantyhose with a low denier count and white heels, though those were different from one another. Bailey’s were a four, maybe four and half inch heel with a rounded toe and hidden inch platform. While Candi wore a pair of pointed toe thin ankle strap white heels about three inches. Examining them he noticed they even had similar earrings, Bailey’s being large button pearls with little bit of gold or fake gold coming out to make it look like a sun or a flower, while Candi’s had a small pearl, and a larger one hanging down below it. The only thing that was really different about the two was that Bailey’s makeup was more dramatic, she had that whole cats eye thing some girls did with their eye makeup. He hoped when he mentioned that Miss Megan wouldn’t want to teach him how to do it.

“GOOOOOOOD MORRRRRNING! Candi said in a sing-song voice giving Leah and Jeremy a wide smile, she was in such a good mood that only became better seeing the two holding hands. Liam watched the bubbly girl bump Bailey, the two of them were really playing up the sister thing today. “You were supposed to say it with me.” She said looking at Bailey.

“Nooo, you said you wanted to sing good morning, good morning to you.” Bailey said, singing the words. “And like I didn’t want to sing so you like didn’t even do it how you said you would.”

Liam giggled a little at the two’s banter. “You both really do seem like siblings.” He said thinking about how he and his brother used to be when they were younger. “Also I love your skirts, it's so cute how you both dressed.”

Candi gave a bright smile to the compliment, then stepped forward giving the younger girl a hug. “Oh my god, thank you! I love your outfit, it is way cuter than what I’m wearing.” She then pinched the bottom hem of her skirt.

“We didn’t even totally do this on purpose if you can believe it.” Bailey put one long nailed finger atop the top pearl button on her skirt.

“You totally told me to wear this today.”

“But I didn’t tell you to wear that cute blouse or those shoes or like those earrings, but they were all totally the right call. Now if you want to talk about something we can talk about your makeup, because you could have totally given me the heads up.” Candi said, proud her little sis had come so far.

“I like, just put together what I thought would look good and like…” Bailey looked over at Amanda. “Mommy asked me to brush her hair out this morning and then she said she wanted to try something and she did my makeup.”

Candi looked from her friend over to her mom. “Jealous, I am totally jealous.” Bailey waved her hands in the air like she was trying to sway away a gnat.” He didn’t mean to create a matching outfit to Candi, she wanted him to wear the new skirt they both got and he just put together an outfit. Candi had been a big influence on how he dressed, so it made sense to him they would come up with something similar.

“We should like be talking more about Leah, with her cute outfit or… or this new thing.” Bailey said pointing to them holding hands, stepping forward to give each of them a quick hug. “I’m like so happy for you.” Bailey whispered to them both like it was a secret, while Candi bounced up and down on the balls of her feet, clapping a little. Making Jeremy feel a mixture of being happy and like the two girls had a spotlight on him, making him want to run away. Her outburst caught more people’s attention to Leah’s and his presence making him uncomfortable.

While they chatted Megan said hello to her sister and Derrick, getting a hug from both. “Megan, always a pleasure to see you.” Megan couldn’t help smile back at the man with his steady grin. She saw his eyes move over towards Leah for a second. “I don’t know how you do it.” He shook his head. “Your niece seems to love you like a second mother, you have enchanted my Candace and somehow you got your boyfriend’s daughter to attach herself to you. Mandy told me she has been at your house almost every day this week. When I first started to woo Mandy I was terrified how Candace would take it, or how Bailey would react to me.”

Amanda pat his arm, giving him a little peck on the cheek. “Wooing is what you call what you did?” He smirked, giving her a wink before holding up his hand to block his lips as he stage whispered to Megan.

“Swept her right off her feet, she didn’t have a chance.”

“As I recall it was you who did the falling at the wedding.” Amanda said, giving him a knowing look.

“I was doing the worm.” Amanda rolled her eyes.

“After you fell, to cover up that you fell.” Megan laughed at the exchange, incredibly happy her little sister was doing so well for herself.

“Well I will tell you that it took a lot of work, Bailey and I only recently became this close. Your daughter though has been a breath of fresh air to be around. I would gladly trade you one college age daughter for your highschool one.” Megan glanced over in Leah’s directly seeing her getting a hug from his daughter right at that moment. “Leah and I started off rocky the first few days when I started dating her father.”

Derrick followed the direction of her eyes. “Looks like the hard work has paid off, wait is she holding hands with that boy from the girl’s birthday party?”

“His name is Jeremy and that relationship is new from what I understand. Bailey couldn’t stop gushing about it last night when she came back from the water park.”

Derrick nodded, positive his baby girl had something to do with it if he knew her at all. “Megan, I have considered your offer and I have decided to keep Candace. Though I may revisit this the next time she is upset and I forgot to keep the house stocked with rocky road ice cream.”

Liam noticed how the chapel was open, people had been flowing in, but the group stayed out to chat and greet each other. The first to leave was the older looking man that was talking to Candi’s grandma, Nana or Nana Connors he was told to call her. When the sound of a bell came through the speakers in the overhang everyone started to make their way inside.

Following the group inside, Liam felt hesitant like he didn’t below here and he might have asked Miss Megan if he could wait in the car and accept the punishment, if it wasn’t for the steadiness of the person next time. Being inside the church with all the pews reminded him of his mother and as he frowned he heard Jeremy’s voice as he gave his hand a little squeeze. “Are you okay?”

Everyday going to work to work on cars, coworkers would ask how he was doing, how his day was, but no one really wanted to hear a real answer. When he was out on a date he had to keep the end goal in mind and not be a downer. Jeremy was asking him if he was okay just because he could tell something was wrong, when he was on a date and a girl looked apprehensive he would tell her everything was okay, and then he would order her a drink. Jeremy really wanted to know, and it felt good. “Yeah, soon everything will be perfect.” He said thinking about soon, but not soon enough, life would be better.

Getting to his seat he was able to free his hand from Jeremy and he tried to pay more attention to what was going on in the service. Singing along to the songs on the screen, standing and sitting or kneeling on the little bench, trying to ignore the boy and the idea that he was starting to like him. The more time he spent around Jeremy the more he felt like he needed to be adopted like those kittens at the pet store. He was house broken enough, but someone needed to show him how to step up and believe in himself. Jeremy was too young to take out to the bar and show him the ropes. Liam rolled his eyes even thinking about that, like it was even a possibility in his current predicament. He needed to find a way to push him towards Bailey, a girl like her being all over him was exactly what Jeremy needed.

Liam’s thoughts were interrupted when Jeremy took his hand in his own once again. The church was mostly silent except for the preacher, the same man Nana Connors was talking to.

“I have been asked where is God in these dark times? Now to be fair that may not be how they phrased it, but that is the question. People turn on their televisions and see the things happening out in the world and they think things are worse than they once were. Back in my day things were different.” He paused letting his voice flow through the room.

“We have all heard that and they are right. Things were different, better? I don’t know about that, but simpler, sure. I like going back to the same well, maybe that is lazy, or maybe it is just a good well. Mr. Rogers… and for those that don’t know I was lucky enough to meet Fred Rogers at a convention some years ago. I got to sit with him, eater dinner with him and his lovely wife. I bring this up one because I love telling that story and because when someone asks you where is God in these dark times you can say the same thing I’m going to tell you now. It also so happens to be the same thing Mr. Rogers has said. Look for the helpers.” He smiled at the congregation before continuing.

“Look to the helpers, for in them is the Lord. They don’t have to be Catholic or Christian to be doing the Lord's work.” Liam smiled a little bigger remembering watching Mr. Rogers when he was little. Then he leaned forward to take a look at the group. Nana Connors seemed to be raptured by the preacher's words, while her adult son Mr. Derrick looked to be losing the battle as his head drooped. Both the blue eyed blonde woman sat listening to the man, Miss Amanda looking up at him while Miss Megan was following along in a bible, much like Jeremy was doing. He smiled at the younger blonde girls, both seemingly paying little attention to anything the man said. Candi looked bored as she looked around the room, while Bailey had her phone out and was using it as a mirror to touch up her lips.

“A good girl always looks her best.” Liam said softly, opening up his purse to pull out a small compact mirror.

“What was that?” Jeremy whispered as he leaned closer. Liam looked at him and put his finger to his lips. “Shhh” Turning back to the mirror he snapped it closed realizing what he was doing. Then offered his hand back to Jeremy to hold, figuring the boy was going to do it anyways, why not do it on his terms and it would be a heck of a lot better if he suddenly had one of those seize the day moments and put it around his shoulder.

When service was over the group gathered back up, instead of the hand holding Liam found himself standing with his side pressed into Jeremy as he had his hand across his lower back holding his side. So he played up the girlfriend thing, holding his arm in both arms to his chest. When they talked about going to lunch, Liam glanced to him. “Are you coming too?” He was hopeful, mostly because it would be easier to talk to him than to the girls. With Jeremy he could talk about just about anything and he seemed happy enough, while the topics with Bailey and Candi were limited to topics he was not a fan of even though he knew more about them then he wanted to.

“Sorry Leah, I have to run off to work. Mom said I could have off for church every week, but I need to make up for her letting me go with you yesterday. It is a fun day of inventory for me, maybe you can call me later to keep me company?”

“I can’t believe you are even asking her, you are her boyfriend and she is gaga over you.” Bailey said walking around the two, draping her hands on both of their shoulders and whispering to Leah. “I got your back girl.”

“Aww, that is too bad, but I was super happy you were able to come yesterday.” Candi said happy to see Bailey still helping her shy protege. Thinking how every girl loved a good romance and every girl wanted to not only be in it but to direct it so it was perfect and the two of them were simply adorbs.

“Yesterday was amazing.” Jeremy said holding his girlfriend a little closer and kissing the top of her head. “Oh, before I forget. My eighteenth birthday is coming up and I wanted to invite you three along. It is just a small gathering at my house, my parents wanted to throw me a party.” He started to feel embarrassed that for his coming of age party they wanted to throw it at home. “Sorry if that sound lame.”

“Will you be there?” Candi asked like it wasn’t obvious.

“Well yeah, it is my birthday.”

“Then I don’t see how it could be lame. Leah, set your man straight.” Liam wasn’t sure what to do to fulfill that request, so he kissed Jeremy on his cheek leaving a mark in the shape of his lips.

“You could never be lame to me Jeremy.” To Jeremy the way Leah shifted holding his arms to her chest he could feel her move his arm across both of her breasts. Between that and the kiss he could feel himself starting to get an erection and he really hoped no one noticed. The interaction caused Bailey to cover his mouth with both his hands whispering to himself “Oh my god, oh my god, that just happened!”

Liam felt a bit embarrassed by what he just did, but the silly smirk on the boy's face over a simple cheek kiss made him smile at just how innocent he was.

Amanda walked up the group of teenagers clapping her hands together once. “Okay everyone who is up for waffles!?”

Bailey hip bumped Candi, pointing at her. “She is all about the waffles, right sis?” Candi stuck her tongue out at Bailey. As she was reminded of the single bet she had lost and how she had to admit the bold face lie that waffles were better than pancakes.

“Me, so me!” Liam said thinking about the delicious carbs he had been denied.

“Alright then, everyone to their vehicles.” Amanda clapped her hands together again, this time twice rapidly. “Jeremy are you sure you can’t join us?” She asked him thinking how the girl looked like she might miss her new boyfriend. She found it so wonderful that after the struggles Megan had with her daughter, some her fault and some not, that she was able to connect with Leah. The girl was pretty and she found it surprising when she found out Bailey’s old best friend had a daughter, but Bailey was never one to overly share or at least she wasn’t till recently. Looking at her there was no doubt she was related to the Summer’s brothers. It was no wonder she turned out so shy if she had to spend time around her uncle Liam.

“Thank you for the offer, but I really do have to go.” Jeremy said, giving her a nod and waiting for her to turn away before addressing the girl at his side. He let go and shifted to stand in front of her, putting one hand to the side of her cheek. His heart beat increasing in tempo as he leaned forward to give her a quick kiss. He long to keep doing it, to relive part of that moment when they were under the waterfall, but outside a church was no place for that. “I will call you later, till then I will miss you Leah.” He gave the girl a large smile then another quick kiss before walking away his nerves feeling like they were on fire.

His dad told him to fake it till he made it, he sure wasn’t confident like the guys yesterday, but with Leah he was starting to feel like he made it anyways.

Liam stood there for a second or two, blinking, watching Jeremy walk away. He was a really good kid he thought. He was going to have to try talking up Bailey on the phone call to try and push him in her direction. She would set him down the right path, so would Candi but she was leaving back to California soon enough so that seemed like a bad setup.

“Watching your man go?” Liam spun, almost falling on his heels as he turned to look at Miss Megan.

“That and thinking about waffles.” He gave her a big smile showing off his braces.

“After what you just did, I think you can have a waffle.”

“REALY!?” The word came out with much more enthusiasm then Liam intended, but it still felt right. Yesterday two chicken fingers and today a waffle all because he gave Jeremy a peck on the cheek.

“Keep being a good girl and we can see about some other rewards for good behavior.” He was a good girl and proud, but hearing her say it made him happy. She was often cruel to him, so little moments of praise like this felt good. The feeling stayed as he walked with Miss Megan to her car, even if he wished he didn’t think of himself as a good girl.