“All right,” she said after a minute, “lead the way.”
We moved back out to my truck, and I passed her the bag of tacos after she hoisted herself up into the passenger seat. I didn’t always drive my truck either, but where we were going, it was always better to have four-wheel drive.
I sped us out of town, and Emery handed me my tacos. She suspiciously eyed me while we ate.
“Where the hell are you taking me?” she asked halfway through her second taco.
“You haven’t guessed?”
She seemed to consider it. “I mean…I know what’s out this way, but I have no idea why you would be taking me into the middle of nowhere on a first date.”
“Lubbock, by definition, is the middle of nowhere.”
“That is a fair point,” she agreed.
Her leg was bouncing in place, and I could see she was curious but trying not to be.
“You don’t like surprises?”
She shrugged and then grimaced. Then, she shook her head. “I mean…sometimes. Like, surprise, my sister is pregnant, that’s awesome. But I’m kind of horrible at this waiting thing. I was that kid who would sneak into my mom’s closet and peek at my Christmas presents. I called Oklahoma before they announced scholarship letters and convinced the person in administration to tell me whether or not I’d made it.”
I couldn’t help it; I laughed. She sounded just like me. If someone had planned something like this for me, I would be losing my mind, having to know what was going on.
“Don’t laugh at me,” she said, swatting at my sleeve. “I’m impatient.”
“I don’t fault you. I am the same way.”
“So…where are we going?”
“It’s a surprise.”
Then, she slumped back down. “Ugh! Okay. I’ll wait.”
Luckily, she didn’t have to wait for long. Before she knew it, we pulled into the small town of Ransom Canyon. It was only about twenty minutes outside of Lubbock and generally considered a sort of suburb of Lubbock. Not that Lubbock actually had suburbs. It was just one of the closest towns.
“Ransom Canyon?” Emery asked, staring at the flat lake that took up the center of the canyon.
Unknown to most people, west Texas had a series of canyons that studded the land, like holes in Swiss cheese. Palo Duro Canyon, an hour and a half north of town and just outside of Amarillo, was the second largest canyon, after the Grand Canyon, in the United States. It was one of the many things that made this side of Texas interesting if you knew where to look.
“Have you seen their Christmas lights before?”
“Nope. I’ve been here a million times before. We used to go to the lake as kids. I’ve spent many a summer weekends on boats here. But I didn’t know about the Christmas lights. When did they start to do that?”
“A couple of years ago. They even have a radio station tuned in so that you can listen to Christmas music as you circle the neighborhood and the lake.”
“Festive.” Her tone instantly changed. She had gone from skeptical to excited. She leaned forward in her seat, wondering where we were going to start first. “Are we going to see them all?”
“Of course,” I told her. Even though I’d had something else in mind, I was not going to miss a minute of that smile.
I switched the station over to AM radio and drove around town. It was a small area of only about a thousand people, but the people who had chosen to move out on the lake rather than live in town generally had considerable wealth. The mansions were decked out in Christmas lights, which had all likely been done by the same company. It was like the modern version of How the Grinch Stole Christmas when the two Whos were fighting over who had the best lights. That was the entire town.
Our drive was punctuated by Emery’s oohs and aahs and the occasional, “Slow down; you’re going too fast.”
I had to say, that was something I’d never heard before.
Emery lit up brighter than any of the houses that we’d passed. Halfway through, she must have begun to relax around me because she started singing along with the Christmas music. She was a little off-key, but I found that it didn’t even matter. And, eventually, we were both belting out the chorus to Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You.”
Emery was laughing so hard that a few tears rolled down her face. “Oh my God, if I had thought for one second in high school that I would be singing Mariah Carey with Jensen Wright on a real date, I think I would have dropped dead.”
“Hey, don’t dis Mariah,” I said. “She’s an icon.”
“She can’t even sing anymore!”
“I’m going to pretend like you didn’t say that.”
She snorted and then covered her face. “Oh my God, what is my life?”