The Magnolia Story(5)

At the time, it was just like talking with an old friend.

John finally stood up, and this baseball-cap-wearing customer that John had introduced as Chip followed. “Well, nice talking to you,” he said.

“Nice talking to you too,” I replied, and that was it. I went back inside. The guys in the shop wanted to know what I thought about Hot John, and I just laughed. “Sorry, guys, I don’t think it’s gonna work out.”

The next day I came back from my lunch break to find a note on my desk: “Chip Gaines called. Call him back.” I thought, Oh, that must be the guy I met yesterday. So I called him. I honestly thought he was going to ask me about getting a better price on his brakes or something, but instead he said, “Hey, I really enjoyed our conversation yesterday. I was wondering . . . you want to go out sometime?”

And for some reason I said okay—just like that, without any hesitation. It wasn’t like me at all. When I hung up the phone, I went, “What in the world just happened!”

So you said okay immediately? I don’t even remember that. That’s fun! No reservations? Man, I must’ve been good-lookin’.

What Chip didn’t know was I didn’t even give myself time to have reservations. Something told me to just go for it.

Cute, Joey. This story makes me love you all over again.

My parents were out of town that week, but I remember calling to tell them, “I’m going on a date with a customer that was in getting his brakes done. I met him yesterday.” I guess it’s unusual for a twenty-three-year-old to call her parents and tell them she’s going on a date, but it was normal for me. I was extremely close to my parents and I was just excited to tell them.

My parents and my little sister, Mary Kay, whom I call Mikey, asked me what this Chip guy looked like, and I said, “I honestly can’t tell you. He had a baseball cap on, and the way we were sitting, I didn’t really get a good look at him.”

When the night of our big date came, I was giddy and a bit anxious. I got ready at my sister’s apartment. She and her roommates, Sarah and Katiegh, were all there for moral support, and Chip was supposed to pick me up at six. Six rolls around. No Chip. Then six thirty—still no Chip. I thought, Well, maybe he thought the date was at seven, so I gave him the benefit of the doubt. But when seven came and went, I was officially done.

Finally, at seven thirty, a full ninety minutes late, he knocked at the door.

“Don’t even answer it,” I whispered to my friends. “I don’t want to go anywhere with this idiot.”

“But we want to see what he looks like!” they said, and so one of them finally opened the door while I hung back out of sight.

“Well, hello, ladies,” Chip said as he pushed his way into the apartment. I could tell that he charmed every one of them in about two seconds flat. I finally decided to step out and at least take a look at him. He was not like I remembered at all. This guy had no hair. I’d imagined he had hair under the baseball cap, but nope. Just stubble. And his face was weathered and flushed red, like he’d been working outside in the hot sun all day long. He was wearing a reddish-toned leather jacket, too, and I thought, Is this red guy even the same guy I was talking to at the shop?

It turned out that Chip had shaved his head to support a friend of his who was battling cancer.

A bunch of us shaved our heads for a good friend of mine. It was growing back, but it was just about a buzz cut at that point.

I still don’t remember what he said that convinced me to walk out the door with him. He didn’t even have a plan for our date. He said, “So, Joanna, where do you want to go eat?” He didn’t apologize for being late, either. He had so much confidence. I don’t know. I can’t explain it. Only Chip could be an hour and a half late and have no one mad about it.

I wasn’t an hour and a half late. She’s making that up. I was, like, twenty minutes late.

Chip was an hour and a half late to everything. If I’d known that then, maybe I wouldn’t have taken it personally.

Well, I think you’re wrong. You’re cute, though, and you do have me on the no-plans thing. That was bad. I don’t know why I’m like that. I just never have any plans. I like the way things just work themselves out. It’s more fun that way. I wasn’t nervous about the date or where to eat, and I wasn’t nervous about being late.

Out in his truck, Chip asked me again where I’d like to eat, so I suggested a place out in Valley Mills, a small town about thirty minutes from Waco—which, looking back, was a gutsy move for a first date. Thirty minutes was a long time to be in a car if you ran out of things to talk about. But there was a restaurant there in a historic mansion where my parents liked to go. It was really charming, and it was the first place that popped into my head.

The whole drive over there was kind of like a dream. Jo wasn’t anything like the girls I typically went out with. But she was so cute, you know? We wound up driving out of town through these back roads—I didn’t know where in the heck we were going—and we came up to this mansion with pillars on the front that looked like something you’d see in Gone with the Wind.

Everything was going about like I’d expected until we sat down at the table and the owner of the restaurant came over. Everywhere I went in Waco and Dallas, someone was always coming up and talking to me, so I thought maybe this guy was coming over to say hello. Turns out he wasn’t coming to talk to me at all. He was coming over to talk to Joanna.