Things I Want My Daughters to Know_ A Novel - Elizabeth Noble [52]
When his hand touched the knob, he seemed to change his mind. He turned back toward me, and, coming no closer, so that he seemed like he might run away at any time, he asked, “Have you got a policy about going out with customers?”
I laughed. It was such a peculiar thing to say. “What? Like doctors and patients?”
“Sort of.”
My heart was racing. “I haven’t needed one in the past.”
“And if you needed one now?”
“Do I need one now?”
“I think you might.”
He was so cute, so young, and so cute.
“Then I think I’d have to think about it.”
And I did. I thought about it on and off all night. Changed my mind. Changed it back. Delighted at feeling girlish. Then castigated myself for being ridiculous. It had been so so long. Years. Decades. I was more than out of practice. By dawn I’d made up my mind. If he came back the next day, I’d say yes. When I looked at my face in the mirror, peering over the top of Amanda’s head as she brushed her teeth, I thought he’d change his mind the minute he saw me. You couldn’t get away with a sleepless night when you were my age. My whole face looked ravaged.
He came back. He asked again. He took me out for lunch. Turned out he was ten years younger than I was—although that day, and many since, I’ve thought it looked like more. He was an architect. He was called Mark Forbes. And there you go—I was alone, without love, for eight years. And it took me about twenty minutes—over a cappuccino and an egg salad sandwich—to fall in love with him.
Mark remembered it exactly that way. He’d felt it, too, that electrical, involuntary thing, when she’d put the scarf on for him and he’d looked at her, properly looked at her, for the first time. Maybe for him it was a bit more lusty than for her. She had a great figure—he remembered the edge of the scarf against the creamy skin of her cleavage—and the impulse he had to stare down her sweater when she was wrapping his purchases. But it was something. Something that made the walk from his office to her shop the next day, and the day after, magical and compelling.
And he remembered how nervous she was at that lunch. She’d blurted out, before they’d even ordered, that she was divorced, that she had three daughters, that she was too old for him, carrying too much baggage. Then she’d realized she was getting way ahead of herself and blushed that delicious blush. He’d wanted to kiss every bit of skin that turned pink.
It hadn’t frightened him, that first time. All that information. He wasn’t a fool. He knew she was older. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that there would be baggage. He’d been naïve; three daughters, two of them adults—it probably should have sent him screaming for the hills. There were times after that—certainly—when bolting seemed like a great option. He was no saint. But somehow he’d known, from early on, that she was worth it. He remembered the froth from the cappuccino on her lip. And the dangly silver earrings she wore that shook when she laughed. And the scent from her.
She’d told him, many times, that she’d known she was going to love him from the very start. She’d told him, lying in his arms. She’d told him and all the guests at their wedding eleven months later. He’d heard her tell Hannah, murmuring the story over her infant head during a night feed when he’d woken up and missed them both and crept downstairs to find them. He’d just never read it written down. And for just a moment, sitting framed by the setting sun, on the deck he’d built for them, he didn’t feel sad. He felt lucky.
Lisa
The January sales had reached the stage where you understood exactly why every garment was left on the rack. Because it was unflattering in shape, cut, or color. For every shape and skin tone known to woman. And even 75 percent off was not going to make it speak to someone.
It was depressing,