Trailer Park Heart

The rest of the ogling men had stopped though—checking out my ass and tipping well. I blamed Levi, but I was also too confused to know how to feel about it.

I saw him other times too, not just in the morning. He showed up Friday nights for the supper rush. I ran into him at the Piggly Wiggly twice and both times he bought Max a treat. He was at the big pep rally when the football team made it to state. He was at the post office dropping off a stack of things for his dad when I went to mail some bills. When I stopped for gas a few days ago, he jogged across the street from the hardware store to say hi. He was everywhere.

That was the problem with living in a small town. It was hard to avoid anyone, let alone a man I suspected was intentionally looking for me in the crowd.

It was strange to have had Levi absent from my life for seven years and then suddenly in it—and not just in the passive sense of the word. Levi was in my life. Everywhere in it. He’d developed a friendship with Max that I didn’t even want to think about. He was winning over Coco and Emilia. He had Rosie wrapped around his finger. And he was slowly, surely breaking down a lifetime of walls I’d built to keep him out.

By the Saturday before Thanksgiving, when he showed up at the trailer and knocked on the door, I wasn’t even surprised. He’d stopped by the diner for supper last night and my mom had happened to be there with Max. The two of them met in the middle of the restaurant like they were the best of friends and couldn’t wait to hang out.

Max had bugged him about Star Wars again. Apparently, his friend Daniel was a big fan and he was telling Max all about it during school. Max couldn’t wait to experience it himself and since it wasn’t one of those movies I could grab from the Redbox at the Pump and Pantry, I hadn’t found a way for him to watch it yet.

Plus, this felt like Levi’s thing. As weird as it was to give him a piece of Max, I couldn’t bring myself to take it from either of them.

They’d made tentative plans for Levi to bring the movies over tonight, but I hadn’t expected Levi to actually follow through. Max hadn’t said anything about it all day and I had hoped he forgot.

But just as I was staring at an open fridge, trying to decide what to make for supper, a knock on the trailer door interrupted our evening and my life and my poor, jaded heart.

“It’s Levi!” Max shouted, jumping up from his LEGOs and rushing to the door.

I closed the refrigerator and followed after him, in case it wasn’t Levi. Max pulled the door open and grinned.

The smell of hot pizza hit me first and by the time the door swung all the way open and I was given my first full view of Levi Cole tonight, I was already smiling.

He stood in the doorway in dark-wash jeans, leather work boots and a gray, long-sleeve t-shirt with his family’s farm logo on the front. He was casual and adorable and… he stole my breath with his soft smiles and intense green eyes and mussed hair. He’d let it grow longer on top over the last couple weeks. It was a good look on him.

But honestly, the man could wear granny panties and sackcloth and he’d somehow come out of it looking like a GQ model.

I mean, in essence, Levi Cole was a farmer. And there shouldn’t be anything hot about a farmer. And yet… he had me on fire.

Okay, he wasn’t technically the overall wearing, straw-chewing hillbilly I waited on at Rosie’s. He was being trained to take over an agricultural monopoly that made an ungodly amount of money. But still, he was, by definition, a farmer.

So why did I find him so irresistibly attractive?

“You said you were usually at home,” he said by way of a greeting. “Thought I’d drop by and see how you’re doing.”

Folding my arms over my comfy and ratty and embarrassing hoodie, I raised an eyebrow and asked, “And the pizza?”

He moved the pizzas through the air in a circle, filling the room with their enticing scent. “I didn’t want to show up empty-handed.”

“Show up for what?”

His gaze met mine across the small space, sending fire blazing through my belly, down to my toes. “For movie night.”

He’d totally befuddled me. “Movie night?”

From underneath the pizza boxes, his hand moved to show me a stack of DVDs. The original Star Wars movies. All three of them.

“I thought we could…” He waggled his eyebrows and didn’t confess what he thought.

It didn’t matter, Max’s whoop of “YESSSSS!” was all the answer Levi needed.

I attempted a feeble, “I don’t know if this is a good idea…”

But the simultaneous puppy dog eyes did me in.

I held the door open wider and breathed out a tortured, “Fine.”

Levi walked in, unable to contain his grin. I waited for his excitement to fade. He took in the small space of my home with a keenness that made me nervous. His gaze swept over everything, from the old oak entertainment center that housed our small, outdated flat screen TV to the matching coffee table covered in Max’s LEGOs to the worn couches and threadbare carpet. He walked the few steps into the tiny kitchen, setting the pizzas down on the chipped counters.

The double wide was basically one big room in the front. The kitchen was open to the eating area and living room. The two spaces divided by a thin transition strip, bare carpet on one side, curling linoleum on the other.

I’d picked up this afternoon and cleaned it last week, so it wasn’t like filthy or anything. Just dated. Worn out. A revealing peek into my past.

As a grown-up, I’d tried to update some of the furniture, like the kitchen table and some of my mom’s appliances. But I couldn’t invest in the mobile home and save money at the same time. Basically, if something wasn’t broken, I didn’t fix it.

And usually that was okay with me. I’d grown up here. Everything was familiar and sentimental. But Levi invading my space shined a bright spotlight on what everything looked like, without the frame of childhood nostalgia.

Levi turned around and grinned at me, the cat that ate the canary. He didn’t seem to notice the chipped countertops. He didn’t seem to notice anything but me.

“I hope you don’t mind. I just… thought it would be cool to hangout. And Max not knowing what Star Wars is feels like a grossly delinquent rite of passage for his childhood.”

“Grossly delinquent, huh?”

He turned back to the cabinets and started opening them at random. “Just trying to help you out, Dawson.”

I watched him find the plates and pull down three. “You’re just making yourself at home. Aren’t you?”

He started plating huge slices of pizza. “Get used to it already, yeah? Cheese or Supreme?”

Blinking at this pushy, overbearing, ridiculous man, I found myself heeding his command, getting used to him in my space. “Both,” I said, holding my chin defiantly high.

He flashed me a grin and a wink. “Atta girl.”

“Mommy, can we watch the movie while we eat supper?” Max settled in his seat at the table.

“I’ll tell you what, buddy, we can even eat our pizza on the couch while we watch the movie.”

“Nuh-uh!”

Nodding my head, I caught some of his excitement. “Would you turn the TV on, please? I’ll make you a plate.”

“That made his night,” Levi murmured quietly while Max messed with all the buttons and devices needed to play a movie that I didn’t understand.