“Looks like you took care of number ten tonight, drink beer.”
“Yeah, lucky for me Uncle Earl left it behind.” I giggled.
Joe continued reading. “Number fourteen, kiss a man.” He looked up. “Rose, are you tellin’ me you’ve never done anythin’ on this list?” He sounded like he’d just been told there was no Santa Claus after believing his whole life.
“Oh, no…”
“Good, I didn’t see how…”
“I hadn’t done any of those things before last week. I’ve done three of them now.” I held up three fingers to show him. “I bought a cell phone. I wore heels to Momma’s funeral and I didn’t fall over. And tonight I’m drinking beer.” I lowered a finger as I ticked off the items, leaving my middle finger for the last. A second later I realized what I did and broke out into a fit of laughter.
When I stopped, Joe stared at me, his face very serious. “Rose, why did you write this list?”
I took another drink of my beer. “Cause I was tired of not livin’, you know?”
“No, what do you mean?”
I sighed for all I was worth. “I wanted to live my life instead of havin’ my momma tellin’ me what I could and couldn’t do and tellin’ me how evil I was.”
Joe took a drink of his beer, quiet for a moment. “Rose, when did you write this list? Number four is Get my own place.”
“I wrote it Saturday, before I came home and found Momma.”
Joe reached over and took my hand in his. “Rose, did you kill your mother?” His voice was so quiet the cicadas almost drowned out his words.
I tried to snatch my hand away. “No! What do you care, anyway? You said it wasn’t for you to decide, remember?”
His grip held tight. “You’re right, I don’t care. I’m just curious.”
“What? Are you afraid I’ll beat your head in with a rollin’ pin?”
Joe laughed and let go of my hand. “No, I’m not afraid of you, not how you’re thinkin’ anyway. If you came at me with a blunt object, I could fend you off with one hand tied behind my back.”
I thought about arguing with him but decided maybe I’d prove him wrong later. I’d bide my time.
“Number twelve, dance. You’ve never danced?”
“Nope.”
“Not even in your livin’ room?”
“Nope.”
“Now that’s a damn shame. Everyone has danced in their livin’ room.”
“Not me.”
“Number fifteen.”
I turned to face him. “Which one is that?”
He glanced up. The teasing expression on his face looked forced. “Do more with a man.”
For the first time since he started reading, I felt embarrassed. “I didn’t say what I wanted. I just said do more.”
“Why do you want to commit all Seven Deadly Sins in one week? Why one week? Why commit them at all?”
I took a drink, suddenly tired of all his questions. “Look, there’s rules with that list. I can only mark them off when I do them. If I don’t do them, they can’t come off. I wrote that one without thinkin’. I thought about how Momma always said I was committin’ deadly sins and I thought I was gonna commit them all and enjoy it. But one day just didn’t seem right, you know?” I stopped to make sure he did.
He nodded with a smirk.
“So I decided one week would be more respectable. But what I hadn’t thought about was keepin’ track of them all. I think I’ll have to write them down or I’ll forget which ones I did and didn’t do.” I stood up. “I gotta pee.”
Joe laughed. “All right. Do you need help gettin’ to the bathroom?”
My snort told him what I thought of his ridiculous question. I turned to go inside the door, teetering because the porch began to wobble. I giggled again.
Joe got up and held onto my elbow. “Be careful.”
I tripped over my foot and started to fall. Joe wrapped his arm around my waist and steadied me, pulling my body to his in the process.
We stood chest to chest, his arm holding me to him. My heart sped up and my breathing became shallow. The warm feeling down below returned with a tingling I hadn’t expected but wasn’t ready to lose just yet.
“Can you list the Seven Deadly Sins?” Joe asked, his voice barely a whisper.
I stared up into his eyes, mesmerized. “Envy, slothfulness, gluttony.”