The Magnolia Story(4)

ONE



FIRST DATES AND SECOND CHANCES

To this day, I am still not sure what it was about Chip Gaines that made me give him a second chance—because, basically, our first date was over before it even started.

I was working at my father’s Firestone automotive shop the day we first met. I’d worked as my dad’s office manager through my years at Baylor University and was perfectly happy working there afterward while I tried to figure out what I really wanted to do with my life. The smell of tires, metal, and grease—that place was like a second home to me, and the guys in the shop were all like my big brothers.

On this particular afternoon, they all started teasing me. “You should go out to the lobby, Jo. There’s a hot guy out there. Go talk to him!” they said.

“No,” I said. “Stop it! I’m not doing that.”

I was all of twenty-three, and I wasn’t exactly outgoing.

She was a bit awkward—no doubt about that.

I hadn’t dated all that much, and I’d never had a serious relationship—nothing that lasted longer than a month or two. I’d always been an introvert and still am (believe it or not). I was also very picky, and I just wasn’t the type of girl who struck up conversations with guys I didn’t know. I was honestly comfortable being single; I didn’t think that much of it.

“Who is this guy, anyway?” I asked, since they all seemed to know him for some reason.

“Oh, they call him Hot John,” someone said, laughing.

Hot John? There was no way I was going out in that lobby to strike up a conversation with some guy called Hot John. But the guys wouldn’t let up, so I finally said, “Fine.”

I gathered up a few things from my desk (in case I needed a backup plan) and rounded the corner into the lobby. I quickly realized that Hot John was pretty good-looking. He’d obviously just finished a workout—he was dressed head-to-toe in cycling gear and was just standing there, innocently waiting on someone from the back. I tried to think about what I might say to strike up a conversation when I got close enough and quickly settled on the obvious topic: cycling. But just as that thought raced through my head, he looked up from his magazine and smiled right at me.

Crap, I thought. I completely lost my nerve. I kept on walking right past him and out the lobby’s front door.

When I reached the safety of my dad’s outdoor waiting area, I realized just how bad I’d needed the fresh air. I sat on a chair a few down from another customer and immediately started laughing at myself. Did I really just do that?

“Hey, what’s so funny?” the customer sitting near me asked.

I looked up at him, and before I could even answer he asked, “Wait, aren’t you the girl from the commercials?”

“Yeah, that’s me,” I said, still embarrassed from my awkward encounter with Hot John. I was, in fact, the girl from the commercials. I had some interest in television news. I had even done an internship with CBS in New York City, working under Dan Rather in the news division, and because of that my dad had insisted I go on camera for the local TV ads he ran for his shop.

I was so caught up in my own thoughts that I didn’t even get a good look at this guy who had started talking to me. He was wearing a baseball cap and seemed like an average customer. He seemed around my age, maybe a bit older—that was all I really noticed. What did strike me was that he was real chatty, so we wound up sitting there for twenty minutes just shooting the breeze.

Over the course of our conversation, he told me he was a Baylor grad. That struck me as odd. The guys I’d known at Baylor were more the clean-cut type. This guy seemed a little rough-and-tumble, the kind who’d rather work with his hands than keep a corporate calendar. But right off the bat I could tell he was smart—and definitely hardworking. He was just at the shop getting the brakes fixed on his truck. I also found it interesting that he’d stuck around Waco after graduation. “I love this town,” he said. “I’m planning to stay in Waco until God makes it clear I’m supposed to move on.”

That surprised me too. I loved the way he mentioned God in a way that was so unguarded, and I liked that he wanted to stay in Waco. That was rare for Baylor grads. Normally people shipped themselves straight off to the big cities after graduation.

Speaking of, that whole week I had been debating whether or not to move back to New York City to pursue my dream of broadcast journalism. Most of my friends and family were encouraging me to go, and I was really wrestling with it. It occurred to me this could be my one big chance, but I also really liked it right where I was.

All of a sudden Hot John walked out and said, “Hey, Chip, let’s go.” I was confused. The man I’d been chatting with—who apparently was named Chip—explained that John was his roommate and that they were business partners. Oh, of course these two had come together. I was still completely embarrassed about my initial encounter with Hot John, but I said, “Hi.” And then, thankfully, this Chip went right back to our conversation as Hot John took a seat and joined in.

Chip asked me about New York and what I wanted to do, and how long my dad had owned the shop, and what it was I loved about Waco. He asked about my sisters and my family in general, and what I’d done at Baylor, and if I’d known a few communications majors he’d run around with at school. (I told y’all he was chatty!) Somehow none of these questions seemed intrusive or strange to me at the time, which is funny, because thinking back I find them particularly telling.