Falling Into Grace Page 16

  CHAPTER 21

  The only thing Camille had managed to acquire during her big praise team debut was a honking headache. Once she stepped off the stage, her head seemed ready to explode from the thirty-seven minutes and forty-nine seconds of bright lights followed by the relentless rush between her stomach and her brain. She was very near exhaustion. Partly hungry, too. She needed some chicken, two Advil, and a good nap. And after she came to her senses, she would probably need a brown paper sack to cover her face, seeing as the spectators were surely wondering why Ronald had brought this crying girl on stage during praise and worship rather than the drama ministry’s presentation.

  She made a pit stop in the restroom after the benediction to remove the recorder from its hiding place. She might as well erase the file. There was probably nothing to hear except the sound of her sniffing up snot as she cried.

  A quick text from Mercedes lightened her spirits. So nice 2 see God move N U today. TTYL -M

  Later, she joined the rest of the team in Ronald’s office for their mandatory closing group prayer. Only a few hours ago, she had envisioned herself walking back into Ronald’s office with a small crowd of groupies following her to say what a wonderful job she had done this morning. Maybe even Pastor Collins himself would appoint Camille to the praise team.

  Not.

  Ronald closed the door behind Camille, since she was the last to enter his office. “Wow. Thank God for a powerful praise service.”

  “Amen,” Faison agreed. “Evelina, you tore it up.”

  She pointed upward. “Bless God.”

  “Really, we could have stopped after you sang,” Ronald said, “’cause there wasn’t anything else left to do but praise Him.”

  What’s he trying to say? I didn’t need to sing my song?

  “Thank you all for letting the Lord use you this morning. And thank you, especially, Camille, for standing in for Felecia.”

  “Glad I could help.” She wondered if he meant “standing in” like she had been a replacement, or “standing in” as though she had literally just stood there. Which she had, mind you. He didn’t have to bring it up, though, if that’s what he was doing. Camille couldn’t be sure.

  “Let’s pray.” Again, Ronald led them, asking God to restore their strength and keep the Word on their hearts.

  Camille couldn’t remember the Word. She’d been too preoccupied with regaining her composure. Well, that and trying to turn off the microphone without causing alarm, since it had slipped out of place when she raised her hands. She hadn’t practiced recording while fully engaged in worship. Not part of the plan, either.

  “Camille, can I see you for a second?” Ronald asked as she sought to bow out of his office with her self-esteem still intact.

  She could only imagine what he wanted to say to her. The phrase “Why didn’t you sing?” came to mind. Without a word, she stopped shy of his door, turned back to face him.

  “Your presence on stage this morning was a blessing to the congregation,” he said.

  You ain’t gotta lie and make things worse. “I really didn’t do much.”

  “This is the praise team, not the singing team. I know what it’s like to have the Spirit come in and arrest your voice. Sometimes all you can do is weep before Him. He accepts all forms of sincere worship.”

  “That’s nice to know.” She grinned slightly at his attempt to give her some kind of credit before assigning her a permanent seat to the sopranos section of the choir. No way would he let her perform with the elite if she came unglued every time she got front and center.

  She stood there a moment longer, wondering if she was dismissed.

  “I also wanted to ask you,” he hesitated, “if you would go to lunch with me. Brittney’s spending time with her mother’s family this weekend, so I’d like the company. If you don’t already have plans with your family, and you’d like to.”

  Truth was, she could use the company, too. Camille was glad Brittney had the opportunity to be around those she loved, because the only thing worse than a motherless Mother’s Day was spending Mother’s Day alone.

  “That would be great,” Camille answered as a nervous flicker settled in. First bubbling, now fluttering. What next?

  “Cool. I’ll drive.”

  She wouldn’t dare turn down the offer. Gas was almost four dollars a gallon, and she still had two more payments to go on her ticket.

  Ronald drove a country man’s truck: a Ford F-150. Double cab. Camille was taken aback when he opened the passenger’s door for her. She couldn’t remember any man undertaking this gesture for her, and she wasn’t sure if she should be flattered or insulted. Her great-grandfather used to perform this task for his wife, but he was a mean, controlling old thing. Wouldn’t even let Great-grandmother learn to drive.

  Again, Camille checked out Ronald’s turf as they both buckled seat belts. Clean, dustless dashboard. Vacuumed floorboards. If she didn’t know any better, she’d think he’d been planning to take someone out to dinner after church today.

  He started the engine, and a gospel song brushed through the vehicle. Camille wondered if Ronald listened to only church music. She surveyed the CD cases stacked beneath the dashboard and read their titles as best as she could. Suspicion confirmed. All Christian music.

  “What do you like?” he asked.

  “Anything and everything. I’m starving,” she admitted.

  He laughed. “You need a buffet?”

  “That’ll work.”

  “Chinese?”

  “Okay.”

  So this is it. A date at a Chinese buffet. Is this a date? She wanted to ask, but she’d already made a fool of herself on stage. Besides, the more she got to know Ronald, the more she realized he really wasn’t her type. He was too ... churchified. He was like old-school saved, only he was her age. She’d hate to see him when he got sixty years old. He’d probably look like Moses.

  He busted out with, “Camille, I’ve been thinking about what you said. Our conversation really ministered to me.” He looked both ways, entered traffic.

  She racked her brain for a clue about their last words. “What did I say?”

  “When we talked about being musicians’ kids. Sometimes, Brittney does and says things that make me doubt whether or not she’ll grow up to be the woman God has called her to be. She’s entering this little rebellious time, but I’m going to stand on the Word. I want to see her come full circle, like you and me,” he explained.

  Suddenly, Ronald slammed on his brakes. They jerked forward. Brakes screeched. Tires skidded, a horn blew. Camille glimpsed the Dodge emblem within feet of her door.

  Ronald cried, “Jesus!”

  Camille cried a four-letter word.

  Instinctively, she grabbed the door’s handle and braced herself for the crash.

  Everything froze, including her heart.

  Finally, she breathed. No impact. Somehow, both cars had stopped within inches of what could have been disastrous. The other driver backed up and sped around them, continuing along her illegal, light-running path.

  “You all right?” Ronald asked, reaching for her trembling hand.

  Camille squeezed his strong hand in return. “Yes.”

  He looked up and exhaled. “Thank You, Lord, for protecting us from that fool.”

  Camille had some other words she would like to use instead of “fool,” but she figured she’d already done enough cussing in front of Ronald for the day.

  Taking turns going to get their food gave Camille a chance to regain her wits. Still shaking from the incident, she couldn’t remember anything Ronald had said on the way to the restaurant. She hoped a little sweet and sour chicken with rice would advise her body that the danger had passed and the adrenaline pumps could be switched to stop now.

  “You want to lead the prayer?” Ronald asked after they had both fixed their plates.

  “No. You go ahead.”

  He obliged, then dove into his food as though he hadn’t just almost lo
st his life to someone who was drunk and/or didn’t have a driver’s license in the first place. She wondered how he could be so calm. If she died, no one would suffer. Bobby Junior might cry a little, but he’d be the first to go through her drawers looking for a life-insurance policy.

  Ronald, on the other hand, had a child to raise. Alone. He should be more upset!

  In the middle of his chat about the record-breaking temperatures, Camille interrupted him. “Dude, we almost lost our lives a minute ago. Doesn’t that faze you in some way?”

  He stopped. Raised his eyebrows. “Yeah, that was close. But it didn’t happen. Besides, dying isn’t the worst thing that can happen to you, you know?” He added a chuckle, took another bite of beef with broccoli.

  Easy for him to say! He probably still had his mother. “I disagree. Totally. And I don’t see anything funny about dying.”

  Dropping his fork onto the plate, he apologized. “I didn’t mean to upset you. Are you okay?”

  Camille slammed her spoon and wrapped her fingers around her forehead. “No. I’m not. It’s Mother’s Day and my mother is dead, all right?” Great. I just ruined our nondate.

  “I’m so sorry, Camille. I had no idea.” He shook his head. “I thought you said she was a musician.”

  “She was. Past tense.”

  He repeated sincerely, “I’m so sorry.”

  “Why do people say that?” She looked at him now. “It’s not your fault.”

  He sat silently. Probably unsure of what to say next.

  She resumed eating. Ronald followed her lead.

  “Do you mind me asking what happened to your mother?”

  “She had cancer.”

  “How old were you when she passed?”

  “Seventeen.”

  “Mmm. You were not much older than Brittney was when my wife died. I don’t know what it’s like to lose a mother, but I’ve watched what it’s done to my daughter. I know, for her, it’s a tough time of year. I admire your strength, Camille. To get up there and sing this morning—”

  “I didn’t really sing, all right?” She had to correct him. “I choked, all right? Evelina started talking about people’s mommas praying, and that was the end of me.”

  “No, it wasn’t,” Ronald stopped her. “You continued to praise God through the—”

  “Stop with all this church talk, okay?” She was sick of him being so holy all the time. Church folk and all their pacifying clichés irked her. If they were going to do this buffet-date thing, he needed to at least be real with her.

  “What do you mean, ‘church talk’?”

  “You’re always praying, always putting God in everything. And who calls out ‘Jesus’ when you’re about to get pulverized by a car?”

  “You think what you called out helped?”

  “No,” she admitted. “I don’t cuss. I was just scared. I didn’t even think. It was just the first thing that came out of my mouth.”

  “Same here.” He nodded. “I didn’t have time to think, either. The name of Jesus is the first thing to automatically come out of my mouth when I’m in trouble.”

  Camille stopped chewing on the food in order to digest Ronald’s statement. The blank expression on his face spoke the truth. He wasn’t kidding. This was the real him.

  She rolled her eyes. “I see. Well, I’m sorry about using profanity. I see your truck is all holy. Probably never even heard a cussword in it before.”

  He smiled at Camille. Not fair. He had one of those contagious Magic Johnson smiles that warmed each recipient’s heart. Made Camille relax a bit now. The adrenaline pumps halted, swapped places with the flirty-nerves machinery factory.

  “Why are you smiling at me?”

  “Because you crack me up,” he said. “And for your information, my truck has heard a cussword before.”

  Camille smacked her lips. “I bet you know exactly who cussed in your truck and when, where, why, and how, don’t you?”

  Again, his grin crossed the line, opening Camille up in his presence.

  He nodded dramatically. “As a matter of fact, I do. It was Brittney. She got mad at me because I wouldn’t let her go to driver’s ed. I believe she said the word ‘hell’ and that was the end of our conversation about her getting behind the wheel anytime soon.”

  Camille always knew there was something she liked about Brittney. Somebody had to give Ronald a taste of reality.

  “So,” he asked, “who cusses in your car?”

  She entertained the question, tried to remember the last time someone was in the car with her. Bobby Junior wasn’t really into cussing. He made up his swear words, like Esther on Sanford and Son. Pig-eyed bunion-face was the closest he’d come to cussing in her car.

  Kyra was probably the last one to use profane language in Camille’s car. Matter of fact, Kyra had told Camille off in a very systematic fashion before slamming the door as she exited the vehicle. Camille wouldn’t even try to recall the twisted blend of choice words Kyra had concocted that day.

  “No one cusses in my car these days.”

  “No one except you?”

  “I don’t cuss, I told you.”

  “Just today.”

  She half rolled her eyes. “Only under extreme circumstances like almost getting killed.”

  He smirked.

  “Okay, look, I can’t be going out to eat with you if you’re going to give me the third degree about everything,” Camille warned.

  He laughed again. “I’m not giving you the third degree. Do you see a third degree in my hands?” He held them up for inspection.

  “No. But you really need to lay off me and Brittney. Leave some room for growth. Nobody’s perfect, you know?”

  Ronald wiped his chin with a napkin. “I like how you said that. Leave room for growth. Not necessarily mistakes or rebellion, but growth.”

  “Why you gotta be so deep all the time?”

  “I’m not!” he exclaimed. Then he added, “But I like the way you say things. You speak the truth, even when you’re not trying to sound philosophical. You make me think, and I appreciate that. I really do.”

  Ronald’s accolades fell on Camille’s guilty heart. How he heard truth from the very lips that had attempted at first to deceive him was beyond her. She wondered if he’d be sitting across from her if he knew why she’d joined Grace Chapel. Probably not. Definitely not.

  Like Mercedes, Ronald was good people. He didn’t deserve to be lied to. And he certainly didn’t deserved to share his buffet with someone whose natural instincts leaned toward profanity in the face of danger.

  He deserved better.

  CHAPTER 22

  Camille’s first meeting with the Mentors and Models went very well. She introduced herself, told the girls about her former life as a “star” at Brittney’s request. The sponsors thanked Camille for “keeping it real” with the young ladies.

  There was something about this whole “being real” concept that seemed almost foreign to these people. Yet, this was the very quality that caused the teen girls to direct most of their questions toward Camille during the question-and-answer session about boyfriends and dating.

  “I want to ask Miss Camille if she ever dated someone who didn’t believe in God,” a girl who barely looked old enough to shop in the juniors’ section asked. A boyfriend should have been the last thing on her mind.

  Always, Camille answered truthfully but responsibly. “When I was your age, I didn’t even care if they believed in God or not. All I cared about was how good they looked. Once their looks got old and I found somebody cuter, that was the end of the relationship.”

  Another one delved further, “Do you ask guys now about their relationship with God?”

  Ronald came to mind. Even if she didn’t know him from church, who he was and what he stood for probably wouldn’t have been hard to determine. “No. I don’t ask because people can lie and say whatever they think you want to hear. The way you really know what a guy believes is by how he acts.”r />
  Miss Abernathy, one of the older sponsors, quickly stood and initiated a round of applause after Camille’s answer. “Young lady, you ain’t tellin’ nothin’ but the truth!”

  Before they dismissed, Camille made yet another plea in front of a crowd, as she’d done at the end of almost every choir rehearsal for weeks now. “Does anybody want a free kitten?”

  A collective “awww” encouraged her to describe Cat in depth. “He’s gray with blue eyes, for now. He doesn’t tear up stuff. All he does is eat and sleep.”

  But after the initial cooing, no one stepped forward to relieve her of Cat. He was still on the market, which wasn’t a loss entirely because she’d hoped he would eat up all the food she had had to buy him before he left. Wasting money was not an option.

  Mercedes, Camille, and the rest of the Fly Girls held a spontaneous minireunion after the meeting. Mercedes invited them all to her cousin’s movie theater to watch some movie about escaped lab rats. It sounded corny, but Camille joined them anyway. Broke people don’t turn down free stuff.

  Afterward, she took Brittney home and switched partners, heading back out again with Ronald for an outing he wouldn’t explain ahead of time. Since their first unofficial official buffet date two weeks earlier, Camille and Ronald had seen each other only once more outside of church. They texted here and there. Talked casually. Whether he was trying to keep things quiet with the church folk or still hadn’t made up his mind about Camille, she wasn’t sure. Either way, she liked the pleasant distance between them. Close enough to suggest opportunity, far enough to preclude disappointment should one person suddenly decide to stop returning calls.

  Brittney, however, had given Camille plenty to ponder about the relationship on the way back from Mercedes’s place. “Miss Camille, I’m not tryin’ to get in grown folks’ business, as my daddy would say, but I think he likes you.”

  Awkward!

  “Hmm. That’s nice to know. I think your father is a likeable person, too.”

  “No, I mean likes you likes you. And I like you, too.”