The museum was a lot smaller than Tami had expected it to be.

Eric kept apologizing for it. "I really thought it would be a bigger deal."

"No," she said, "This is great. It's great to see any art at all."

"We probably could have gone to the mall in South Rankin and gone to the frame store and seen this much art," he grumbled.

"No we couldn't have," she insisted. "And the gardens are real pretty." They'd walked through them to get to the museum.

"They're dead," he said. "And it's raining."

"Well, I'm having fun. Aren't you?"

He smiled. "Yeah." He gave her a quick peck on the lips. "You uh…want to go through the place one more time?"

"Sure," she answered, even though there wasn't much to see.

Tami made sure she spent a particularly long time before the painting she liked best and that she made a number of detailed observations to him about it, in order to draw out the museum visit and make him feel better about taking her all the way here. Tami also spent a long time browsing the gift shop, even though she didn't intend to buy any of the highly overpriced items.

He bought something, though, for her - a 25 cent postcard with a print of that painting she'd like on the front. "You'll get it in the mail," he told her, "someday."

[*]

They grabbed lunch at a Chi-Chi's after the museum. She noticed Eric ordered only water to drink and picked one of the cheapest things on the menu.

When she took the check to pay, he pulled it back from her. "No! No, I can get it."

She let him. Tami felt like it would be a slap to his ego if she didn't, but when he stopped for gas before hitting the highway, she insisted on filling his tank. He seemed more inclined to accept gas than a meal. Boys were funny.

The rain had stopped and the sun was peeking through the clouds when they left the gas station. On the drive back to Rankin, Tami was determined not to allow any more awkward silences. Anytime the conversation started to wane, she'd ask him a question. As a consequence, she learned ten things about Eric Taylor she had not known before:

One: Before playing football, in elementary school, he'd played little league baseball for three seasons. He was a terrible batter, but he was a "passable pitcher."

Two: His favorite board game was Risk, because when he looked at all those countries and armies, he saw a field where he could map out multiple plays and then alter them as circumstances dictated. It was game of both chance and skill, he said, like life.

Three: His favorite movie was Twelve Angry Men. This greatly surprised Tami. She would have expected a sports drama, or some John Wayne or Steve McQueen or Clint Eastwood movie, not a story about twelve guys debating guilt or innocence in a jury room. "It's awesome," he told her. "It's about how you can build consensus, you know, even when everyone on the team has a completely different personality." She pointed out that a jury wasn't a team, exactly, but that didn't seem to bother him.

Four: His favorite T.V. show was Magnum P.I. This was considerably less surprising.

Five: He hated the TV show Dallas. Tami said it was something her Grandma Hayes would have liked, if her grandma were still alive. "Grandma used to live with us," she told him. "She loved her stories." And then Tami thought how odd and very sad it was that Eric had never known his own grandparents, with his dad being practically orphaned and his mother having been disowned by her parents.

Six: His favorite college football team was not the Aggies, as she might have thought, but the Longhorns. "1970," he said, "Coach Darrell Royal. Thirty-game winning streak, Tami. Thirty games! They beat Arkansas 42-7 that year. That was a great year. I mean, I was just in preschool, but it was a great year." She smiled at how excited he was.

Seven: He'd had his first kiss when he was 12, at his first ever co-ed party. The guys on his junior high football team talked him into playing spin the bottle. It landed on Elizabeth Shoemaker. She had freckles, lots and lots of freckles. Eric's palms were sweaty when he kissed her, and her cheeks were bright red, and everyone was watching. He and Lizzie "went together" for three weeks after that, without ever actually going anywhere. She "dumped" him for #37, a linebacker on his team.

Eight: He snuck into his first R-rated movie when he was 13. The guys on the team talked him into it. Porky's. They'd heard there would be a shower scene.

Nine: He toilet papered his first house when he was 14. The guys on the team talked him into it. It belonged to a rival team's coach. He felt bad after he'd done it, thinking about how many hours that guy would have to spend cleaning it up. "That's going to be me one day," he said. "Cleaning toilet paper out of my trees. Karma."

Ten: He got drunk for the first time when he was fifteen. The guys on the team talked –

"Hold it right there!" Tami said. "At some point, you're no longer being talked into things. You're just doing them because you want to do them."

"That's exactly what your dad said."

"You told my dad all this?"

"I told him I sometimes did things with the team to fit in that I didn't think were smart or nice. Mostly, though, I talked to him about that friend I told you about, the one I made fun of. That's the only thing I feel really, really bad about. The rest were more stupid than evil. Your turn."

"My turn?" she asked.

"First kiss."

"I don't want to talk about that." It had been Boone, actually. She'd gone right from her first kiss to her first time. Virginity goodbye. Everything for no one. She'd been a child wanting to be a woman, then wishing she was a child again.

"Oh," he said. "Was it that asshole?"

She nodded.

"Fifteen?" he asked.

"It's part of why I snuck out. I didn't have a life until then. I wasn't allowed to date until sixteen. But I think my parents learned it was better to know where I was and who I was with, to give me more of a leash, so I wouldn't just go wild."

"Ah."

"More stupid or evil?" she asked.

"What?"

"What I did with Boone? Do you think it was more stupid or evil?"

"Evil for him. Stupid for you." He glanced at her. "I respect you, you know," he said, and she didn't know how badly she needed to hear those words until he said them, and the relief shot through her like an electric current unraveling every tense muscle. "Favorite movie," he asked her.

"Casablanca."

"Oh, good. So I only have to compete with Humphrey Bogart in the looks department?"

"But can you play the piano?" she asked.

"I couldn't even play Hot Cross Buns on the recorder in fourth grade."

She laughed. They continued to talk, until he pulled into an empty church parking lot.

"What are we doing here?" she asked, nervous and excited at once.

"I thought maybe…uh…you'd like to make out? I mean, if you want."

"For a little," she said. What she really wanted to say was – I want to take it slowly.

She wanted to take it slowly, but she was also once again startled by the intensity of her physical desire for him. She'd enjoyed making out with Mo, but she hadn't felt this level of sheer want. So when, a few minutes into the kissing and caressing, he put his hand cautiously below her breast, she leaned right into it.

He began to caresses her through her soft, purple sweater, fondling first one breast and then the other, sending shivers through her spine. "Beautiful," he murmured between kisses. Eventually, he slid his hand down to the edge of her sweater and began to push it up. The fabric tickled her flesh as it glided over her bare stomach, but before he could catch a glimpse of her bra, she took his hand and drew it away, and then she pushed the sweater back down.

He looked at her, breathing in and out. "Sorry," he said. "I thought…."

"It's our second date," she managed through her own heavy breathing.

"Yeah. I know. I wasn't trying – "

"- You were trying."

"I mean, I thought you wanted me to. I misunderstood. I'm sorry. I'm not good at this."

"Good at what?" she asked.

"Knowing what you want. Are you mad?"

"No, I'm not mad," she said. "Are you mad?" Mo had often seemed irritated whenever she threw up a red light.

"Why would I be mad?"

"I don't know. You shouldn't be!"

"I'm not." He put his hands on the keys.

"I just want to take it slowly," Tami told him. "I didn't say I wanted to stop kissing."

He looked back at her. "You don't?"

"No. I really…I like your..." She giggled. "I like your lips. You're a good kisser."

"Yeah?" He looked incredibly relieved. He let his hand slide from the keys. Soon those lips were pressed again to hers. They made out, kissing cheeks, lips, ears, and necks, until the single whooooop – whop! of a siren caused them both to pull back.

"Oh crap," Eric muttered, looking in his rearview mirror at the police car that had just pulled up behind them.

The officer knocked at the window. Eric cranked it down, rolling the window handle slowly. "Yes, sir," he said. "Officer, sir."

"Son," the officer said, looking around inside the truck, "does this look like make-out camp to you? Or does it look more like a receptacle to house vehicles while people are worshiping Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ?"

"Uh….a…receptacle? Sir?"

"Are you being a smart ass, son!"

"No, sir! Officer. You said is it a receptacle, or – "

"- Son, never mind what I said. I've got a seventeen-year-old daughter."

"Uh….okay."

The cop leaned into the open window and practically hissed in Eric's ear. "Consider this a warning and move along. And if I ever see you in this church parking lot again, or in any other parking lot, for any purpose other than parking, I'm calling your mama." He pulled himself out of the window. "And I'm calling that girl's father."

"Yes, sir." Eric started the engine. "You won't see us here again."

The cop walked off, and Eric cranked up the window. He let out breath as the cop car pulled away. As he threw the truck into reverse, he said, "Whew. That was a close one."

"Thank you, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ," Tami said, and then they both burst out laughing.