Three Words: A Novella Collection

by Dale, Lindy

  “But the ball’s a red theme this year,” Rebecca cajoled.

  Lily looked at her friend. They both knew red was Lily’s thing. Deep, blood red suited her dark colouring well. More than one man had told her that it made her look exotic. Which may well have been true but remained pointless thinking about when she wasn’t going to the Ball.

  “You can’t change my mind.”

  “I can get you a date.”

  Lily’s head dropped into her hands on the table. She exhaled so loudly the people around them stopped their conversations to see if she was okay. “NOOOO. I will not be going on any blind dates. God, don’t you remember the last time?”

  “Me setting you up and your mother finding you a ‘suitable match’ are not the same thing,” Rebecca stated. “I happen to have very good taste in men.”

  “What about Walter?”

  “Walter doesn’t count.”

  “You went out with him.”

  “Yes, but I was emotionally traumatised at the time. After the disaster that was Dennis, I was so blinkered, I didn’t see Walter’s faults.”

  Like they’d have been hard to spot.

  Walter had worn a t-shirt that read ‘orgasm donor’ to meet Rebecca’s parents, who were known to be the straightest couple this side of Adelaide. Needless to say, they were not amused. Walter had a lamp stand in the shape of an erect penis in his bedroom and on the one and only time he’d invited Rebecca for a ‘slap up dinner’ he’d taken her to Hog’s Breath Café. He drove a seventies panel van emblazoned with car art that read ‘Shaggin’ Wagon’. Rebecca often said it’d been like dating a twelve year old who’d recently discovered sex. On the internet. The list went on. Luckily, the relationship had been short.

  Lily gathered her handbag and, pulling out her wallet, handed a twenty-dollar note to the other girl. “Look, we’ve got to get back to work.”

  Rebecca checked her makeup in her compact and tossed it back into her bag, which she then slung over her shoulder. Together, the two girls walked to the counter.

  “Are you sure I can’t talk you into it?” she asked.

  “As sure as I am that Walter was a complete wanker.”

  “Please?”

  Lily turned to her friend. Rebecca’s face was more earnest than if she’d just got down on one knee and declared her own undying love for Lily.

  “Please?”

  Lily felt her resolve beginning to melt. God, she hated it when Rebecca did that.

  “I promise I won’t leave you alone,” Rebecca begged.

  Lily tried not to smile.

  “I’ll watch that stupid movie with you again.”

  “Message in a Bottle is not stupid. It’s romantic.”

  “Yeah, but the ending’s lame. Nicholas Sparks really sucked with that one.” Rebecca gave her a cheeky smile. “Come on. It won’t be that bad.”

  Pocketing her change, Lily gave in. If it would make Rebecca happy, she supposed she could frock up.

  “Yippee!” Rebecca danced to the door. “I’ll meet you back at the office, then. I have to duck into the chemist on the way and get some more of that magic eye stuff they keep under the counter.”

  “You don’t need it.”

  “That’s because I use it.”

  Lily opened the door of the café, waving her hand as she left. “Whatever. See you in ten or so.”

  Chapter 2

  Lily left lunch content that she had made her friend happy and averted a disaster all in one lunch hour. And that’s what a blind date would have been ~ a disaster. Seriously, she had no idea what Rebecca was thinking to even suggest such a thing. It was bad enough that she was going to spend Valentine’s Day alone, without a boyfriend. There was no way she was going to spend it with a stranger. Well, not unless Ryan Gosling rang to ask her out but technically he wasn’t a stranger. She’d seen The Notebook so many times she could practically parrot it word for word. Sad, but true.

  The walk back to the office was only a few blocks and having a spare ten minutes ~ Lily liked to make full use of her one-hour lunchbreak ~ she stopped at The Cobbler Shop to pick up her shoes. Under normal circumstances, having a pair of shoes re-soled would have been out of her realm of comprehension, Lily was more of a ditch-them-and-buy-new-ones type of girl but the shoes in question had sentimental value. Lily had been wearing those pretty red pumps with the impossible heels on the day she’d been offered her current job, the one she thought she’d never get. She’d been wearing them at the bar the night she and Travis met. He’d complimented her on them. She’d also had them on when she’d discovered she’d won two VIP tickets, complete with backstage passes, to see Coldplay. Yep, those red pumps were her lucky shoes and there was no way she was letting them die.

  Letting the front door swing closed behind her, Lily approached the counter, rustling in her handbag for the docket as she went. She stopped, taking in the pigeon holes filled with newly mended shoes, all fixed and ready to be loved again. A smell of leather and shoe polish filled her nose and she breathed it in thinking how odd it was that people never polished their shoes anymore. She still did. She loved the look her biker boots took on after a good spruce up.

  Placing her manicured finger on the bell, she gave it a quick ‘ting’ to summon the cobbler.

  “Hi, can I help you?”

  A large hand swung back the plastic curtain, revealing an unidentified man, who sported the nicest shoulders Lily had ever seen ~ well, through clothing. This certainly wasn’t the cobbler, who would’ve been pushing eighty on a good day, but it certainly was a nice surprise. A very nice surprise.

  The man was wearing a baby pink checked shirt, sleeves rolled up to the elbow and a pair of stone coloured pants with a thick brown belt. His forearm bore a tastefully small tattoo of what looked to be a girl, like one of those 1940’s pin-ups. Lily would have loved to get a little closer to see the detail but she was vaguely aware that she was staring and as her mother had always told her staring was very rude. Even if the object of the stare was hotter than a bushfire in summer.

  “Can I help you?” the man repeated, running a hand through his sooty hair and making it stand deliciously on end.

  “Oh, um, yes. I’ve come to pick up my shoes. Leroy said they’d be ready today.” She handed him the ticket with her order number on it. His fingers brushed faintly against hers and Lily’s heart did a little skip inside her chest. Okay, well actually it was a more of a high jump.

  The man pivoted to look along the rows of mended shoes, which was fortunate as it gave Lily a view of his bum that she otherwise would not have seen. And gosh, what a lovely muscular bottom it was, the perfect ending to a pair of perfectly muscled legs.

  Realising she was staring again, Lily raised her eyes to the ceiling and tried to look casual, cool.

  Oh. My. God.

  Was that a spider coming across the roof towards them? One hairy step closer and she’d be leaving without her shoes. Confident and capable under normal circumstances Lily turned to jelly when it came to spiders especially the big, grey hairy type. She was petrified of Huntsmen and no matter how many hypnosis sessions she went to, she was unable to conquer the overwhelming fear. Biting her lip, she watched the spider advance. She wished hot-butt guy would hurry with her shoes. Because she was either going to faint with fright or puke all over his floor.

  The man’s hands scanned the collection of shoes and stopped; sliding out a particularly hideous, clunky, tan-coloured pair with the most sensible sole Lily had ever seen. He placed them on the counter.

  “This them?”

  With one eye on her eight-legged companion, Lily looked at the proffered footwear.

  Oh puh-lease! Was he taking the piss or something?

  “Uh, no.”

  “Thought not.” A devilish twinkle sparked in the man’s as he put the shoes away.

  “What about these?” He plonked another, equally atrocious, pair in front of her.

  At least they were from the last decade.
<
br />   “No.”

  Lily began to tap her foot. Geez, did he have to be so hot while he was annoying her like this?

  “What colour are they?”

  Lily swallowed, the words choking in her throat which was at that moment beginning to constrict so that she couldn’t breathe. Her tapping foot froze. The spider was making its way down the wall, past the rows of shoes. Lily could practically see its big nippy pincers, its black eyeballs. She could feel tiny beads of sweat forming on the hairline of her neck. She was inhaling hard and it wasn’t from the sight of the guy in front of her. Though that would have been the preferable option.

  “Red. Patent.”

  Turning back, the man produced what seemed to be a pair of extremely large ruby slippers and clomped them down on the counter, looking at Lily in expectation. Their sequin-covered toes blinded Lily and she blinked. No Dorothy, unless she was six feet five and a cross-dresser would be seen dead in them.

  “You’re kidding, right?” she gasped, almost hyperventilating.

  “They’re red.”

  “They’re also hideous.”

  The spider was by now crawling down the side of the shelf and heading towards the counter, and her! Lily’s skin began to go clammy. Perspiration trickled from her armpit and down her side.

  “You okay?” the man asked.

  Unable to open her mouth for fear she might vomit, Lily pointed.

  The man looked around. The spider ambled closer, taunting her with its invisibility to everyone but her. Then it started to run. And it makes sense, that if you have eight legs, you can run a lot faster than when you have two.

  Lily screamed. Her knees buckled and she stepped away from the counter grabbing the bench next to it and trying to shrink into the corner of the seat. She pointed again, a feeble gesture that by the time she’d raised her arm was utterly useless because the spider had moved.

  But this time, the culprit was caught. With a move swifter than Usain Bolt could run the hundred metres, the man took a dustpan from under the counter and smacked it over the spider, squashing it into mud-coloured slushy particles and bits of leg. Then he took a tissue, scraped up the remains and tossed them carelessly in the bin.

  The man brushed his hands together in finality. “All gone.”

  “Thanks.”

  “You look a bit pale. Can I get you a glass of water?”

  Lily didn’t want to ask if that would involve being left alone in this possibly spider infested room. “Yes, please.”

  Thirty seconds later, the man was back, a large glass of iced water in his hand. Squatting in front of Lily, he gave it to her. A tender palm came to rest on her knee while she drank. His deep brown eyes examined her face.

  “Better?” he asked.

  If only he knew he was making things twenty times worse by looking at her like that. It was like someone had taken to her with a Taser gun. Pulses of energy were shooting up from her knee to her groin.

  “Much,” she mumbled.

  Lily sat for a minute longer, enjoying the warm pressure of his hand and the concern in his eyes. Then an odd thought came to her. Travis had never looked at her like that, not even when she’d slipped on the ice in the gutter and torn the ligaments in her ankle. He’d just said it was her own fault for wearing those ridiculous shoes. Come to think of it, she couldn’t remember him ever being this sweet. Had she imagined he cared?

  “Sorry to cause a scene like that. Huntsman spiders scare the crap out of me.”

  “I kinda figured that. What’s the deal?”

  “It’s embarrassing. Well, for me anyway.”

  “I’m into embarrassing. I’ve got tonnes of embarrassing stories. We could swap embarrassing stories if that’d make you more comfortable?”

  Oooohhh. How cute, he was willing to share his drunken exploits with her in the name of compassion.

  “Well, I’d love to,” Lily said, glancing at her watch and seeing that she only had two minutes left to hike it back to the office before Jordy Brown-nose dobbed on her for being late. “But if I don’t get back to work in the next five nano-seconds I’m going to get fired.”

  She stood up.

  The man stood up. “You sure you’re okay?”

  “Positive.” She attempted to convince him with a rather pathetic, weak smile. She did feel quite woozy. “I think I just need to stand for a second.”

  The man stepped a little closer. His hand reached out to steady her and before she could say ‘shoe polish’ they were closer than two people ought to be in a retail-type situation without being accused of invading the other’s personal space. Lily could smell the breath mint he’d recently eaten; see the smattering of manly hairs poking from the top of his shirt. She could feel that electric vibration again, this time like a bolt up her arm shooting straight for her chest. This was chemistry at its most powerful. Or maybe, she was having a heart attack?

  “I can call someone, if you like. Boyfriend? Husband?”

  She swallowed, looking straight into his eyes. “No. Need. I’m. Good. Besides, I have neither of the above.”

  Was that the hint of a smile on his lips?

  “I really do need to go,” Lily muttered, wishing it wasn’t true. She could easily have stood there all afternoon just staring into those twinkling dark eyes, imagining what was under that pink shirt and how she could get to it but the man was blocking her way. He looked like he wanted to say something.

  “Oh. Okay.” His step aside was slow, to say the least and not at all enthusiastic.

  “So I guess that’s what I’ll do then,” Lily nodded, shouldering her handbag.

  “Sure. See ya ‘round.”

  “You too.”

  As Lily ran for her life back to the office, it occurred to her that she’d forgotten to collect her shoes.

  Chapter 3

  Lily made it to her desk by the skin of her teeth. She’d barely pushed her bag underneath with her foot, applied fresh lipgloss and checked her Facebook before Jordy Brown-nose came strolling past, looking as smug and sucky-uppish as ever in his blue striped business shirt and grey slacks. Jordy’s real name was actually Jordan Browning but the girls had dubbed him Jordy Brown-nose because he was forever sucking up to their boss, trying to score Brownie points for a promotion. He started early and worked late, which was fine, but he also had the most annoying habit of being everywhere. You could never have a private moment in the work place without Jordy butting in, giving his opinion ~ he had an opinion about everything ~ and if Lily so much as used one extra sheet of photocopy paper he was straight to the boss, telling on her for wasting resources. It was as if he was hoping that by making her look bad he would in turn look good.

  “You’re late,” he remarked, making her jump in her chair. Her fingers accidentally pressed send on her comment.

  Like a five year old that stretched out the putting away of toys because she’d been told to hurry and didn’t want to, Lily slipped her phone into the top drawer of her desk and did a double check of the clock on her computer screen. A knowing smile crossed her face as she swivelled to Jordy, looking up into his watery green eyes and pink blotched face covered in razor rash. She had him this time.

  “Uh no, actually. I’m not. It’s one-thirty-one. I’ve been sitting here for a good three minutes. Enough time, in fact for me to check up on you on Facebook and see those photos you were tagged in at Mint Bar last Saturday. Why were you wearing an entire outfit made of those Glo necklaces? Were you off your nut again?”

  “It wasn’t an entire outfit. It was a joke.”

  Lily smirked. “Didn’t look like one. Looked like your ‘how-hot-am-I’ pose to me.” She stood up and mimicked his stance from the photo.

  Jordy went a funny shade of pinkish-grey, sort of like bubblegum that had been stuck under a table for a month or so. “You shouldn’t be Facebooking on company time.”

  “It was my lunch break. And now my break is over so it’s back to work, if you’ll excuse me.”

  “Be
careful, Lily,” Jordy said, sliding his hand along the top of her office partition as he left. “It’d be easy for Magnus to slip the coordination of the Wedding Expo to Marisa.”

  “Yes. Thanks so much for reminding me.”

  Lily plastered a smile on her face and opened the notebook she kept to remind her of tasks she needed to complete. God, if only she could say what she really thought at that moment, but she’d been Wedding Expo Coordinator since its inception. It was her baby. And for the amount of stress it had caused her over the years sometimes, she felt like she’d given birth to it. She didn’t even know why Jordy got her so riled up. Maybe it was his superior attitude? It made her want to stir him, bring him down a notch or two. It wasn’t as if he was her boss. He just acted like it.

  After Jordy had disappeared, Lily did a quick scan of her email. There were two new messages but she wasn’t interested in those at the moment. She wanted to talk to Rebecca about the incident in The Cobbler Shop.

  Lily’s fingers flew fast across the keys.

  To: Rebecca.Watson@SpectacularEvents.com

  From: Lily.Appleby@SpectacularEvents.com

  Subject: Top Secret!!!!!

  Just met gorg-a-licious guy in Cobbler’s Shop. So cute forgot to collect shoes. 

  Rebecca’s reply was quicker. Clearly, she’d not been as engrossed in organising the life-sized models of Captain Kirk for the main marquee at the Sci-Fi Festival as she ought to be.

  To: Lily.Appleby@SpectacularEvents.com

  From: Rebecca.Watson@SpectacularEvents.com

  Subject: RE: Top Secret!!!!!

  Details please!!!!!

  To: Rebecca.Watson@SpectacularEvents.com

  From: Lily.Appleby@SpectacularEvents.com

  Subject: RE: Top Secret!!!!!

  Good looking, tall, dark brown hair, great fashion sense, cheeky smile. Seems intelligent.