by Julia London
“Wrong again. Because I don’t have any preconceived ideas about divorced people. I wasn’t even thinking about your divorce.”
“Then what were you thinking about? Baseball?”
He was thinking that her eyes, pale blue and crystalline, were the aquamarine color of their pool—he was not thinking about his major gaffe last night. “Not that,” he growled.
“Mm-hmm. We need some ground rules.”
“Some what?” he asked, confused by her non sequitur.
“Ground rules.” She walked on, to a frozen-food case. She opened it and a bag of something frozen went flying into his cart. Harry glanced down; it was edamame. He opened the case next to hers and pulled out two Hungry-Man dinners.
“What are you doing?” she cried. “You can’t keep buying that stuff.”
“Why not? Has there been a recall? Because if there hasn’t, I’m getting about ten of these puppies.”
“No! It’s not good for you, Harry. How did you ever graduate from Cornell? Those things are full of preservatives and dyes.”
“Too bad,” he said, settling the boxes into his cart. “I have to eat.”
“I’ll cook,” she said.
“I don’t want you to cook for me.” He didn’t want to be beholden to her for anything. Even if he did find her meals to be excellent.
“That’s good, because I am not cooking for you,” she said, as if he was being ridiculous. “I cook because I like it. I’m going to cook no matter what.” She leaned over and picked up the boxes from the cart. “And I can’t, in good conscience, let you continue to eat these things. They are so not healthy.”
“Really? Because as fantastic as your food is, I must point out that the mac and cheese wasn’t exactly healthy.”
She rolled her eyes. “I know that, Harry. I was just showing off. Mostly, I cook healthy food.” She opened the freezer and returned the frozen dinners to their place. She shut the door and dusted off her hands. “You’re not going to win this one. You made me come to this grocery store, so now you’re going to have to humor me.” She arched a brow at him, daring him to argue.
“Fine,” he said, and threw up his hands in surrender. He wasn’t sorry at all. He was relieved—he honestly didn’t know how many more frozen dinners of some sort of meat product and frozen peas he could take.
“This means I’m going to need more kale.” She walked past him, in the opposite direction. Harry whimpered helplessly and turned the cart around, following her back to the produce section.
Lola had already picked up more kale and some garlic by the time he reached her. She deposited them in his cart, looked up, and asked, “How long have we been together?”
Harry shrugged. “A month?”
“A month? And we’re already living together? No way.”
“Okay, three months, then,” he said.
“Wow. I hope you don’t really jump into relationships that quickly, pal. Six months at least.”
Yes, he did jump that quickly. It was a lot easier to have sex on a routine basis if the object of his desire was routinely in bed with him. “All right, six months.”
She smiled, clearly pleased with her powers of negotiation. “Where did we meet?”
“The city.”
“In a bar? In the park? In the produce section?”
“Tinder,” he said. Lola instantly shot him a look, and Harry laughed. “Kidding.”
“No, wait . . . I like it,” she said, nodding. “Tinder. That way, when we break up, no one will be surprised.”
“Good point. So it’s a go? I want to hear you say it.”
Lola puffed out her cheeks. “Fine. All right. We’re doing it.”
He smiled at her.
“We need meat,” she said, and strode away again.
After a prolonged battle over frozen taquitos, which Harry won, and a discussion about the best salsa, they took their cart to the register.
When Harry had loaded a cooler in the truck bed with the groceries, he pulled onto the main road that would take them back to East Beach.
“Wait!” Lola said, startling him.
“What?
“We have to go into Black Springs.”
“Why?”
“Because there is a dress shop there—”
“No,” Harry said instantly, before she could say what he knew she was going to say.
“Yes,” she said, and put her hand on his forearm, squeezing a little. “I have to go, Harry. I have nothing to wear tonight and I am not showing up at the Cantrells’ in a sundress.”
“What about the yellow one?” he argued. “You were pretty damn hot in that dress.”
Her eyes widened with surprise, and Harry realized that what he’d been thinking actually had come out of his mouth. “I’m just saying, if it was good enough for a sex party, it’s good enough for cocktails.”
She was smiling now, her eyes sparkling. “Why thank you, Temporary Boyfriend. But I can’t wear that dress again. What if some of the same people who were at the sex party are at the Cantrells’ tonight?”
“Oh yeah, that would be a disaster,” he mockingly agreed.
“Turn right. I won’t be long.”
He sighed. “Do you promise?”
“I promise,” she said sweetly.
Harry turned right.
On the main street of Black Springs, a village slightly larger than East Beach thanks to the presence of a train station, Harry followed Lola’s instructions and pulled up in front of MelAnn’s Boutique. There were three mannequins in the window displaying dresses like the sort he’d seen Lola wear.
Lola hopped out and walked around the front of the truck, stepping onto the curb. She paused there and looked back at Harry. He waved. She gestured for him to roll down the window.
He punched the window button. “What?”
“What are you doing?”
“Me?” He looked around him. “Waiting.”
She clucked her tongue. “Come on, you have to go in.”
Harry shook his head. “I’m not going in to the dress shop, Lola. I’ll wait out here.”
“You can’t wait!” she cried, flinging her arms open. “You have to help me!”
“Lola, no. If we were really a couple, I wouldn’t be doing this,” he said. “I spent a few afternoons following Lissa around from one Soho store to the next, and thought I was going to lose my mind.”
Her hands found her hips. “Are you my boyfriend or not?” she demanded. “Do you want to go to the party?”
Harry was beginning to realize that this one-day agreement between them could have unanticipated consequences. He dropped his head against the steering wheel, closed his eyes, and prayed for patience.
“Come on, we’re wasting time.”
Harry opened his eyes and started; she was standing at his window now, her hands shoved into her back pockets. And she was smiling, damn her, because she knew before he did that he was going to give in.
Harry turned off the ignition and pointed at her. “You’re trying my patience, woman.”
“Am I?” she asked with feigned surprise as she stepped back to give him room to open the door. “Because the way I see it, you owe me big time.” She quirked a brow above her smile.
Harry groaned and followed her inside.
Lola pushed open the door to the boutique and a little bell tingled over Harry’s head. He had to dip down to step inside. The shop was stuffed with clothing, shoes, and handbags. He was surrounded by lace and silk, could hardly take a step without brushing up against something frilly.
“Hello!” A stout woman appeared from the back wearing black pants and a colorful patchwork jacket, a scarf tied artfully around her neck. “May I help you?”
“Yes, please. I need a cocktail dress,” Lola said.
“We have some great new pieces on the back wall. If hubby would like, he can sit here,” the woman said, gesturing to a chair so small and so spindly that Harry doubted it could hold him.
“Hubby would like,” Lola said gaily, and with a smile of great amusement, she followed the woman to the back of the shop.
Harry arranged his suddenly enormous ass onto that little chair and began to count the minutes he would be forced to wait for his improbable, one-day-only girlfriend.
Fourteen
Over the course of the next half-hour, Lola tried on every dress the woman brought her. She hadn’t had much luck, and she was down to the last one: a pale-green silk dress with a vine of tiny embroidered pink roses meandering around the bodice and down to the hem. It dipped quite low in the back, just above the small of her back, and the bodice scarcely covered her breasts. Frankly, Lola was afraid if she turned suddenly or even laughed, one of them would pop out. But she stepped out of the dressing room all the same, her dismissal of the gown already forming on her lips.
She did not expect Harry’s reaction. So far he’d said, “It’s fine,” and “Hurry up,” and “That one looks good, but so did the last fifty.” But this time, his expression made her think twice about rejecting the green dress. His Adam’s apple moved with a deep swallow, and his gaze slowly slid down the length of her body, and back up. When his eyes met hers, he looked the tiniest bit hungry. Like he could down a nice, juicy cheeseburger at that very moment.
It was enough that Lola chose the dress. And it helped that she had some adorable pink sandals to wear with it. “This is it,” she said.
“Thank God,” Harry said with great relief.
She paid for the dress, then listened to Harry grouse about how long it had taken to choose it as they drove out of town. He continued to grouse about the detours she was making him take when she convinced him they should grab some lunch, and then he insisted on picking up the tab. When they finally arrived back at the lake house, he disappeared into his room with the excuse of having a lot of work to do.
That was just as well with Lola—she had to think what she was going to say to Birta Hoffman and get her game face on. So she hung her dress up, found a bathing suit on the floor of her room and put it on, and headed for the pool. She walked down the few steps and hopped on to an enormous float made to resemble the yellow duckies that populated toddler baths across the nation.
Once she was comfortably ensconced in her ducky, she paddled back to the edge of the pool and retrieved her phone, then pushed off again with a toe. The ducky twirled off in big, lazy circles to the deep end. Lola was just dosing off when her phone rang. She opened one eye and looked at the caller ID.
“What’s up?” Casey asked when Lola answered. “What are you doing?”
“Right now? I’m floating in a giant rubber ducky. What are you doing?”
“Deciding what to wear. You should come to the city tonight. We’re all going to hear Ty’s friend, Mark, play with his band in that little club on Flatbush. You know which one I’m talking about?”
“I can’t come. I’m going to a party here in East Beach. I think I’m finally going to get to meet Birta Hoffman.”
“No way!” Casey squealed. “For real? How? Are you going with the woman you met?”
“Mallory. The party is at her house. But I’m going with . . .” Lola hesitated and squinted toward the living room. The big sliders were open, and she could see through to the front door.
“Who?”
“No one you know,” Lola said.
“Who,” Casey said sternly.
“A guy—”
“A guy?—”
“Who happens to be my roommate. Don’t get too excited.”
Lola’s announcement was met with a long moment of stunned silence. “What roommate?” Casey shouted. “You have not mentioned a roommate all month! I thought it was just you in that house.”
“It was! I mean, at first it was. He was completely unexpected. But it’s turned into the weirdest thing,” she said, and filled her sister in on the events leading up to that very afternoon.
Casey took it all in, punctuating Lola’s tale with a lot of exclamations. But when Lola finished, she said, “Well? What’s he look like? Is he hot?”
“Casey!” Lola said laughingly.
“Oh. He’s ugly.”
“He’s not ugly! I’m just saying, looks have nothing to do with this situation.”
“Of course they do! On a scale of one to ten—”
“Stop it! Are you, a young woman who hates being objectified by men, really asking me to objectify a man I hardly know? Are you really asking me to tell you that on a scale of one to ten, he’s a nine?”
“Yes!” Casey shrieked. “A nine! Lola, you have to take advantage of that!”
Lola wasn’t about to confess that she’d tried to take advantage and had failed. So she took the path of least resistance. “I can’t. I’m sharing a house with him! It would be so awkward.”
“I’m not saying you have to date him, for God’s sake. Whatever you do, don’t do that.”
As usual, Casey was all over the map. “Why not date him? What are you saying, I should just have sex with him one day and then we go back to being reluctant roommates? That is not the way I raised you, Casey.”
“Remember Dustin?” Casey asked, dredging up a boy from high school she’d been in love with. “You told me not to get involved with him because he had so much baggage and you were right.”
“What’s that got to do with anything? You were fifteen and he was nineteen. Hardly the same thing.”
“So how old is this guy?” Casey asked.
“He said he was closing in on thirty-four,” Lola said, trailing her fingers over the water.
“Thirty-four!” Casey shouted. “Red flags are popping up all over the place.”
Lola laughed at her silly sister.
“I’m serious. You have to ask yourself why a nine is single at the age of thirty-four. He’s probably a tool.”
“No, he’s not. He just ended a relationship. It’s a pretty common thing.”
“Yeah, when you’re twenty-four. At thirty-four, you have to assume there is something wrong with him that he can’t commit. Trust me, at that age, men are generally desperate for someone to do their cooking or they are afraid to commit.”
Lola tried to ignore the little niggle of guilt—she’d already accused him of that. “Could you maybe tone down the sweeping generalizations? What do you know, anyway? You haven’t been in a relationship since Jonah,” Lola reminded her. That was another of Casey’s boyfriends who had turned out to be bad news. Casey was definitely attracted to the bad boys of Brooklyn.
“Yeah, but I date, Lola. A lot. And you don’t. And your one time up at bat was a foul tip or whatever.”
“Your metaphor doesn’t make sense.”
“I’m just saying, have fun, but be careful.”
Lola sighed skyward. “Okay, all right already. How’s Mom?”
“The same,” Casey said without emotion. “Kvetching about this and that. Why no one comes to see her. How everyone has forgotten her. Her kids don’t care if she lives or dies. You know, the usual.”
“I need to go see her—”
“No you don’t,” Casey said firmly. “I had a huge fight with Ben about it, but we agree—we’ve got it covered. You deserve this, Lola. Go get you some of that thirty-four-year-old man meat and forget about Mom for once.”
“You are horrible,” Lola said. But she was laughing.
“You can thank me later. Okay, I gotta jet. Have fun tonight!” she said, and clicked off.
Lola paddled lazily with her feet back to the edge of the pool and tossed her phone onto a beach towel.
She wished she could take Casey’s advice and forget about Mom for a change, but Lola did worry about her mother. She’d been worrying about her since she was five or six years old. Her mother lived in a state-run house for the infirm out on Long Island. She had a chronic and debilitating lung condition that kept her from working or caring for herself, the result of years of substance abuse. The same substance abuse that had kept them in that rundown, two-bedroom ap
artment. How her mother had managed to hang on to it at all without a job was something of a mystery to Lola now. She’d never worked that Lola could remember, and what money she did come by was split between feeding her kids and whatever drug she was abusing at that point.
Even at six years old, when her father was still stumbling home at the end of the day, exhausted from his work in the shipyards, Lola was taking care of Ben and Casey. Then Ty and Kennedy had come along, and their father had died, and Lola had become the de facto head of their tragic little family while her mother had coughed and moaned and slammed the door of the back bedroom. Lola had kept it together, had made sure her sisters and brothers were fed and that they got up for school. When social workers came around, which they would from time to time when a neighbor complained, Lola smiled and said, Mom just ran out to the store. Or, Mom’s at work. Or, Mom’s asleep. We’re just watching TV.
Was her mother grateful that Lola had stepped in to take care of her siblings, even before she knew what she was doing? Not for a moment. Lola’s mother was the sort of person who felt as if the world had turned on her. Her sorry life, her many children, her horrible disease of addiction—all of it someone else’s fault. And still, Lola went every week to visit her mother and listen to her litany of complaints—most of which seemed to center on her children, all of whom, in her mother’s estimation, had it “better” than her.
It was impossibly hard to go, and yet, Lola kept going. The woman had no one in the world but her children, and if Lola didn’t go, who else would look after that bitter old woman? In the back of her mind, Lola had the idea that if she actually managed to sell her book, she could perhaps move her mother to a better place. Maybe her mother would perk up a little if she was in a nicer place with a private room.
Well, never mind that—Lola had been given a reprieve by her siblings for a few months, and right now, she had a party to go to. A very important party that could get dicey very fast if they weren’t careful.
It was half past seven, and Lola was putting the finishing touches on her hair for the evening. She’d seen no sign of Handsome Harry all afternoon, but apparently, he’d roused himself, because he was knocking on her bedroom door. “What?” she shouted.
