LILY
Ivan was asleep in his nursery, and I was in my sister’s bedroom, where she was helping me put the finishing touches on her choice for my outfit for the evening. Normally, I wouldn’t let her weigh in on these things—I was all about boatneck tees and cute shorts and floral sundresses. But my sister had different ideas about what to wear; ever since Boris had left her high and dry, Daisy had gotten seriously into dressing for herself and herself alone. It meant mom jeans and passive-aggressive feminist T-shirts. It meant no makeup and topknots. It worked like man DEET. Lord knew that tonight, I was going to need it.
I hadn’t explained who I was going out with or why, except to say, “I am doing some audio work for a guy from out of town. Things between us are a little . . .” I’d swallowed hard and searched for the word. If I’d ever known it, it had been permanently erased when I watched him dive into an icy Alaskan pond to save a sled dog from drowning, followed by an all-night Inuit celebration that made him an honorary tribe member. So instead of filling in the blank, I fanned my face to say hotcha-hotcha and added, “But I don’t want him to get the wrong idea.”
She’d peered at me like she was trying to read the second-to-the-bottom line on an eye test. “So we like him, but we know we shouldn’t have him. The last third in a pint of Cherry Garcia.”
Birds of a feather are sisters together. “Already leveled with the spoon and everything.”
Daisy had nodded once and flung open her meticulously organized closet. As a pair of ancient stonewashed jeans flew from her closet onto the bed, she’d said, “Makeup remover is in the bathroom. Get to it!”
Now I looked at myself in the antique oblong mirror that sat in the corner of her bedroom. I wore the high-cut jeans that she’d picked out, rolled once at the ankle. I wore a T-shirt that said I MAY BE WRONG BUT IT’S VERY UNLIKELY, and I had my hair in a high ponytail, secured with a bright-pink scrunchie that I was almost positive she’d stolen from me in 1991. No makeup, no perfume. And on my feet were a pair of blindingly white Keds.
“I didn’t even know they made this style anymore.” I lifted my toes. The rubber and canvas groaned as I did.
“They don’t. I bought five pairs online from eBay. Mint condition. Very collectible. Now, let’s try these.” She stood between me and the mirror and situated a pair of leopard-print reading glasses on the bridge of my nose. They were so thick that they made the world wobble, and I felt slightly nauseous. When she stepped away from the mirror, I was just a series of hazy smudges through the thick lenses.
“Excellent,” Daisy said. “You look like a lady who is in a committed relationship with her collection of leather-bound Jane Austens. If he tries to get fresh, tell him your sister will come deflate his tires. Every day.”
The outfit was just what I’d been hoping for, but the glasses and the hair tie were combining to give me the mother of all headaches. I just wanted to be unalluring tonight, not dizzy and miserable. So I yanked off the glasses, pulled the scrunchie from my hair, and roughed up my roots.
My sister put her hands on her hips. “I’m questioning your commitment to this! And we haven’t even gotten to purses!” From her bed she grabbed a fanny pack and one of those very unfortunate chintzy drawstring backpacks—two nylon ropes attached to a shiny square pouch. “I vote for this one”—she jiggled the fanny pack—“but I’m willing to negotiate.”
But before we could take that trip down fashion horror lane, a honk outside made my heart leap into my chest. I hurried out of her bedroom and sidled up to the dining room window to peek out without letting him see me. There he was, sitting in his big black pickup. He held the steering wheel with one hand at the very top. The other was casually slung over the bench seats where I’d be sitting.
I stepped away from the window and centered myself. I could do this. I could do this! On the wall in front of me I saw the cross-stitch that I had made and framed for Daisy for her birthday. It was of a cartoonish smiling uterus with the caption Don’t cramp my style!
Yes! I was a strong, proud woman! I didn’t need some hunk of burning love derailing my life plan or cramping my style either! I could handle this thing! Armed with that uterine solidarity, I caught one final glimpse of myself in the mirror by her front door. I looked . . . awful. Pale, bland, and shiny. Instinctively I reached for my little makeup bag in my purse but realized that wouldn’t fly with Daisy. “Is there an approved lipstick?”
She placed a tub of Carmex in my palm. “Voilà.”
I stared at the white-and-yellow container. I was about to face Gabe looking like I was ready for my eighth-grade school portrait and wielding nothing but mentholated petroleum jelly. But I was willing to do whatever it took. “All right.” I gave her a kiss. “Wish me luck.”
“I wish you the combined simmering fury of two hundred years of women awaiting compensation for their infinite hours of free childcare!” she said and closed the door behind me.
Steadying myself, I took a deep breath in the front entryway and then marched outside with my plastic suitcase of audio equipment in hand. When Gabe saw me, he leaned across the seats and popped open my door.
Maybe he had gotten the message after all. Yesterday he’d come around to get my door and doffed an imaginary hat. Now I got a flick of a handle while the engine was running.
Yay? I guess?
Bracing myself for his electric energy and preparing to pull my eyes away from his thighs and bulge when I got in the truck, I was surprised to find something sitting on the seat between us. It was a big wicker basket that took up the entire center seat and even a little bit of my seat too.
A not-so-tiny part of my heart whispered that I might have overshot the mark on all this. I’d actually loved being pampered and fussed over. But I’d stood firm by the conduct clause, and now I had to share my seat with a wicker basket. Wonderful.
Gabe gave me that same sexy glance that he’d given me at Uncle Jimmy’s. He didn’t say anything about the fact that I was makeupless. He didn’t say anything about my shirt or my ridiculously unflattering pants. It was like he didn’t see any of it. Or didn’t care even if he did. “This is for you,” he said, and patted the basket as he put the truck in drive.
Very gingerly, I lifted the lid with one finger. The wicker and leather creaked as I peeked inside. On the top was a bouquet of at least a dozen of the paper-thin ceramic lilies that one of the galleries downtown sold for fifty dollars a stem. I often thought of buying just one for myself but could never justify the expense. Next to that was a box from my favorite chocolatier, with its gold-embossed foil seal on top. I pulled back the seal and the flap and saw half a dozen dark chocolate truffles inside, surrounded by chocolate-dipped gooseberries with their papery leaves. Beside that were two full-size clamshells of plump raspberries, dewy and ripe. Next to that, a huge bag of Sour Patch Kids. A box of rosemary and olive oil Triscuits. A loaf of fresh French bread and my favorite brie. Some of it I recognized as having come from my aunt’s store. But the rest of it . . . the candies, the chocolates, the lilies . . . he must have spent the entire afternoon going from store to store. He must have spent a fortune. All on me. “How did you know about all of this?” I shifted the box of truffles aside. Underneath that was a wooden box of ripe Bartlett pears, halfway wrapped in gold foil. Be still, my heart!
“Your aunt.” He hit the turn signal to head out of town. “She knows your weak spots. What she didn’t know, I asked about, like at the chocolatier.”
I opened the basket a bit more, as much to see farther inside as to steal a moment for myself behind the lid. It was all so . . . nice. And so kind. And thoughtful. I was utterly flabbergasted. There I’d been trying to put on man DEET, and he’d spent the afternoon tracking down all my favorite things.
But even in the face of delectable goodies and extreme thoughtfulness, I resolved to remain strong. Snacks, shmacks; lilies, schmillies, I thought as I rubbed together my Carmexy lips. No matter how yummy this whole situation was to me, I wasn’t going to be seduced by a picnic basket, thank you very much.
So I closed the lid with a creak and straightened up in my seat, glancing over at Gabe. “Are you going to tell me where we’re going?”
Again he smiled at the road and tightened his grip on the steering wheel. He glanced over without turning his face toward me and said, “Lovers’ Lane.”
Of course we were. And right on cue, a baseball game that was playing over the radio erupted into cheers as the announcer said, “Going, going, gone!”