If the Shoe Fits

by Sandra D. Bricker

  Julianne inwardly acknowledged his statement and lifted the fishbowl to carefully inspect its occupant.

  “He called me a broad, Jonah. Are you going to let him talk to me like that?”

  When the fish did a quick circle around the inside of the glass bowl, she blew him a kiss and hurriedly gathered her things.

  Julianne couldn’t get the vision out of her head. He’d looked like something straight out of the movies, his long black coat flowing behind him as he walked purposefully toward her, the misty haze of rain clouding him into a dreamlike apparition, yet still allowing enough clarity to make out the shadow of stubble along the line of his jaw. And the way that dog looked up at him! Appreciation, admiration, and blessed relief.

  “Must love animals as much as I do.” That was the third point on her ten-point mental checklist for her very own Prince Charming!

  The only thing that had been missing from their first almost-meeting was slow-motion movie effects, and maybe a soft dissolve as his truck peeled out of the intersection.

  “He was like nothing you’ve ever seen before, in person.”

  “Well, congratulations,” her best friend and business partner said sourly. “Now can you give me a hand with this?”

  Julianne glanced down at the floor where Will peered up at her from beneath the desk, his dark hair rumpled and his brown eyes narrowed as he glared at her. But a spontaneous burst of laughter coughed out of Julianne in retort.

  “Go ahead. Laugh it up, Jules,” Will said with a frown. “But my computer’s already hooked up. I could easily leave you without one.”

  “No, no, don’t do that,” she replied, gazing first at the end of a computer cable dangling from Will’s extended hand, then at the look of sheer exasperation on his perfect, square-jawed face.

  “What do you want me to do with it?” Julianne asked him, taking the cable cautiously into her hand.

  “Don’t tempt me with questions like that, Jules,” he said, miming the wrapping of the cable around her neck.

  Julianne mouthed an unamused, “Ha ha ha,” and she gently smacked Will’s leg with the cable.

  “Run it around the length of the desk, and hand it to me through the opening in the back.”

  Julianne did as she was told and, several minutes later, Will emerged from underneath the desk with a victorious grin.

  “What are your plans tonight?” he asked her. “A dinner, silent auction, fund-raising effort for dogs, cats, starving armadillos?”

  “Very funny. I am completely free tonight. The plight of starving armadillos will have my full attention tomorrow.”

  “Of course they will,” Will answered with a chuckle.

  “And the dogs were last week when you graciously dusted off your tuxedo and accompanied me.”

  Will grimaced. “Whatever. You are now up and running, my friend. Once more connected to the planet via the Worldwide Web.” He took Julianne’s outstretched hand and groaned as she tugged him from the floor. “It looks like we’re official. The Law Offices of Hanes & Bartlett, open for business.”

  A surge of excitement shot through Julianne. She’d been waiting for this moment since the day she and Will had graduated from law school just five years prior. Today was a banner day, and it deserved some serious celebration.

  Will trailed behind as his father and Julianne headed for the kitchen. Being there in his family home again, so much familiarity between his dad and his best friend, Will half expected his mom to bound through the back door, a sack of groceries in her arms and a beaming neon smile on her pretty, suntanned face.

  “You get the ice cream, and I’ll get the root beer!” Julianne exclaimed.

  Will’s father nodded. “Anywhere else in the world, a celebration like this might involve popping champagne corks and glasses of wine raised overhead,” he declared. “But here … root beer floats are the stuff that toasts are made of.”

  “Don’t forget we’ve ordered Chinese,” Julianne reminded him with a grin. “The celebratory meal of champions.”

  “Where’s Amanda?” the elderly man asked as he dipped a scoop of vanilla ice cream into a tall glass.

  “Mom’s just back from her sculpting class. She’s changing into a clean blouse and said she’d be over in two shakes of a lamb’s tail.”

  Will grinned, knowing that was a direct quote. Julianne’s mom always said things like that.

  “Shall I make her a float, too?”

  “Please.”

  Quick flashes of past root-beer-float celebrations blinked through Will’s memory. He and Julianne had become quick best friends when her family moved in next door, both of them ten years old at the time, her with her pigtails and gangly long legs, and him with his scruffy hair and debilitating shyness.

  “Remember our first floats?” Julianne asked as if she could hear his thoughts.

  “In the backyard,” Will replied. “We barbecued chicken on the grill, and your mom brought that horrid potato salad she makes with the green olives in it.”

  “Shh,” Julianne said playfully. “She’ll be here any minute.”

  “That was the day the doctors told my mom she’d beaten her cancer.”

  “Round one, anyhow,” his dad chimed in, and the mist of emotion in his eyes inspired Will to touch his father, Davis, on the shoulder.

  “I miss her, too.”

  “Adele was awesome,” Julianne added as she took Davis’s hand into hers. “So beautiful, and so kindhearted.”

  “Yes, she was,” the older man agreed with a nod before glancing up at Will. “Your mother would be very proud of you, Son; proud of you both.”

  “She would have been the first one to the root beer!” Julianne exclaimed, and Will nodded.

  “Who might have ever seen this day coming?” his dad asked, returning his attention to crafting four perfect floats. “Those two kids racing their bikes around the cul-de-sac—lawyers now! And starting their own practice.”

  “Am I too late for the toast?”

  Will offered his hand to Julianne’s mother, helping her up the last step and through the back door. “Just in time,” he told her with a smile.

  “We ordered some beef with broccoli just for you, Mandy,” his father announced, pouring cold root beer into four tall glasses.

  “Oh, thank you. That’s my favorite.”

  Julianne poked straws into each glass as she distributed them. “Okay! Let’s toast!”

  “Here’s to our two kids,” Amanda piped up.

  “To Hanes & Bartlett,” Will added, and they all clinked their glasses together.

  Will and Julianne exchanged meaningful smiles. Their world would certainly take on a new life of its own now that they would be working together every day. They already spoke their own language, a dialect consisting of half-finished sentences and meaningful nods. Even a simple grunt-like murmur had meaning in this wonderland that was the friendship of Will and Julianne.

  But they were more than friends, a fact that Will knew more assuredly than he liked to admit. They were best friends. Even more than best friends, if one cared to count the fact that his half of the twosome had somehow managed to fall in love along the way.

  “Did anyone feed Isaiah?” Julianne asked as the very fat Hanes family cat sauntered into the kitchen. Isaiah had been around since the dawn of time; Will wondered how the old thing still managed to stay on his paws.

  Will’s dad nodded. “Turkey and giblets tonight.”

  “His fave,” she replied.

  Uplifting praise music wafting in from the living room drew Will’s attention as Julianne began to sing along. The sour clank of her tone tickled at the center of Will’s heart. She couldn’t hold a tune if it were packed up for her in a handy little box, but he sure did love to hear her try.

  “Hey!” he blurted, as much for his own sake as to stop her from singing. “Another toast! To Pop’s clean bill of health from the doctor today.”

  “Davis, that’s awesome!” Julianne declared.

>   “Yeah, the medication seems to be working well. You sure can’t cure Parkinson’s, but I’ll settle for holding it at bay for a little while.”

  “Well, here’s to dreams coming true all over the place!” she added, and she clinked her glass against his dad’s before grinning at Will with a mustache thick with foam. “Today is the start of something big. I can feel it.”

  He suddenly sensed the dawn of a case of root beer indigestion coming on.

  “Mom!” she exclaimed. “I saw the man of my dreams today, just walking down the center line of the road, headed straight for me.”

  “Ohhh,” Amanda growled as Will downed half of the root beer from his float and suppressed the belch that tried to follow.

  “On the very day that we open our offices,” she went on.

  “Julianne, really.”

  “I’m not joking, Mom. It was a sign … especially since I was just thinking about those things that horrible Lacey James said about me at the pediatric AIDS fund-raiser the other night. You heard her, Will!” Julianne looked at Will with narrowed eyes before darting her attention back to her mother. “She had half the table full of my peers making fun of me for never being able to keep a guy around for long. They said the only long-term relationship I’d ever had in my life was with Will, and that there’s something wrong with me. But then this … vision! … stepped onto the horizon. I’m telling you, Mom, he’s the kind of guy who would really show them. He’d show them all!”

  Amanda cocked her head and looked at Will for a long moment. Her hazel eyes, almond-shaped just like her daughter’s, told him she knew about his secret feelings. And she appeared to apologize for Julianne’s insensitivity.

  He wanted to release her from the regret, tell her that they’d never made any promises to each other; both of them had dated other people over the years, after all. They weren’t an actual couple or anything….

  Julianne’s creamy round face looked so expectant, her pale blue eyes brimming with such hope that he almost wanted to believe it for her—which struck him immediately as nothing short of absurd. Will expelled a chortle that surprised even him.

  “Will?” she asked softly, and the disappointment cutting through her eyes with catlike precision sliced him right to the quick. “Are you laughing at me?”

  Fortunately, the doorbell rescued him.

  “Dinner,” he announced, thumbing through his wallet for a tip as he headed for the door. She was sure to ask him again before the final crack of the almond cookies, but for the moment he was safe.

  Will’s dad’s diagnosis of Parkinson’s had been a pretty big motivator to do what he couldn’t have imagined doing just six months prior. But moving back into his family home to provide care hadn’t actually been so bad, after all. The move gave him a chance to spend time with his dad while his health was still relatively good, and the place was loaded with great childhood memories; not to mention three times the space of the cozy little house in Forest Park that he’d reluctantly sold. Lots of room to move around in … and he loved that massive stone fireplace on the largest wall of the living room.

  Early September was far too early for a fire, at least in Cincinnati, but Will and Julianne were never ones to stand on ceremony. And so the crackle from the hearth provided a soft rhythm against the whisper of the air conditioner.

  “You’re joking,” Amanda remarked as she carried a tray of coffee mugs and set them on the oval table in front of the sofa. “A fire? It’s seventy-four degrees outside. You two are loony tunes.”

  “Ah, let them be,” Davis said on a chuckle. “They’re dreamers.”

  “Winter will be here soon enough,” Amanda replied, shaking her head as she poured a dollop of creamer into one of the cups. “I wonder how attractive the cold weather will seem when there’s snow to be shoveled.”

  “I don’t have to shovel,” Julianne chimed in. “The super at my condo takes care of that.”

  Amanda handed Davis the mug and he thanked her. “And I’ve got a new roommate,” he cracked, nodding toward Will. “He’ll take care of the snow on my walk. Play your cards right, Mandy, and maybe I can hook you up.”

  “Do you hear this?” Will asked Julianne, and she giggled. “I move home to take care of the old man, and he’s got me out shoveling the sidewalks of every pretty woman in the neighborhood.”

  “Hush, boy.”

  Will grinned at Amanda. “I hope you realize my father is working you.”

  “Oh, yes. He’s a charmer all right.”

  The casual, familiar banter acted as a reminder of days long since gone. The lyrical music of Amanda’s laughter, in particular, warmed Will’s heart. Her husband left just weeks after Will and Julianne had graduated from law school, leaving Amanda alone in the house next door, looking very much like a deer caught in the headlights of an oncoming semitruck. A full year had passed before her mom even started to recover from the blow of unexpected divorce, and Will felt certain that his parents had been instrumental in nursing that healing along. They’d invited her over for dinners, dessert and coffee, evenings of board games and snacks; they’d even taken her along to church more than a few times. When Adele’s cancer returned with a vengeance, Amanda had assisted Davis with her care. After more than two decades with just a small plot of grass and a rose garden between them, the households seemed more like one family than two.

  “You need to head home,” Will told Julianne as he gathered the coffee mugs.

  His voice seemed to shatter her deep thought, and Julianne popped her head up in response, and dropped it again with a sigh.

  “What time is it?” she asked him.

  “Past eight. And you’re in court first thing.”

  She seemed surprised that he remembered, and she grinned at him. “Thank you, Uncle Will.”

  “Don’t forget, the new secretary starts tomorrow,” he commented as he passed her. “She arrives at noon, and I’m deposing in Springdale at eleven, so you’ve got to be there to show her the ropes.”

  “Oh, I forgot.”

  “How could you forget? I put it on a sticky note and pasted it to your computer screen.”

  Julianne chuckled as she headed for the door. “I do appreciate a good sticky note.”

  “I know!” he teased.

  Once Julianne and Amanda made their way out the door, Davis groaned and shoved upward and to his feet.

  “Long day,” he said with a yawn. “I’m headed to my room to watch CSI before bed.”

  “Don’t forget to take your pills.”

  “Yeah, yeah.” Davis tossed up his hand in a sloppy wave and shuffled down the hallway.

  Will plopped down to the sofa as the final embers of the fire struggled against their demise. Suddenly, that bed in his childhood room seemed as vast as Ohio itself to Will, and he settled back into the sofa cushions instead.

  Her PT Cruiser was probably headed down Winton Road by then, he speculated as he closed his eyes. The night’s full silvery moon shining through the window, giving life to the streaks of multiple hues highlighting Julianne’s beautiful hair … and her sweet crystal-blue eyes narrowed so that the fringe of golden lashes caressed the top of her perfect, porcelain cheek.

  Ah, Lord. When is she going to get it? But not my will …

  Will’s eyes popped open wide and he stared at the ceiling for a long moment while he wrestled his thoughts down to silence. Then with one punch to the sofa cushion beneath him, he flung himself over onto his side and pulled the cotton throw from the back of the sofa.

  Quickly filling his mind with thoughts of tomorrow’s deposition, he snapped shut his eyes and let go of the sigh that had been building in his chest.

  Davis snorted out a chuckle that roused Will from his sleep.

  One arm hung haphazardly over the side of the sofa and lolled limply toward the floor, and one of his legs, stiff from the slight bend at the knee, rested atop the coffee table.

  He stirred slightly in response to the scent of the Colombian coffee his
father had brewed. Leaning over him, he waved a mug close enough to Will’s nose to bring him around, like caffeinated smelling salts.

  Poking Will’s shoulder with his sock-covered foot, his father sang, “Rise and shine, oh son of mine. You fell asleep on the sofa again?”

  He opened his eyes reluctantly, squinting up at him as he groaned. “What time is it?”

  “Seven,” he replied, raising his foot again for one more poke. “Now move over so I can sit down.”

  “Coffee,” Will muttered, his eyes closed again.

  “Mm-hm. Strong and black, just the way you like it.”

  He peeled his eyes open only far enough to see the mug. He took hold of it with both hands and drew a sip from the cup. Isaiah, his father’s enormous cat, launched an assault on his foot when it moved beneath the blanket, and Will groaned as he nudged the feline to the floor.

  “Morning,” he finally greeted his father.

  “Morning,” he grunted back with a grin that Will returned.

  He loved mornings like these with his father. He thought of all the time he’d have missed if he hadn’t sold his house and moved back in with his dad.

  Such a good son, everyone said when they heard. What a selfless thing to do!

  Will never admitted out loud to anyone—not even Julianne—that he gained as much as he gave from the move. Especially after his breakup with Holly, Will’s dad had become a bit of a security blanket. Familiar and comforting, compassionate and ever-present, his father had provided an emotional safety net that Will really needed. The best he could hope for was that he returned the favor by making his dad’s life less lonely, and maybe even more interesting, while they figured out the health challenges together.

  “So what’s going on with you and Julianne, Son?”

  A needle screeched suddenly across the record album of his thoughts.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Why don’t you just tell her how you feel?”

  Will froze, the mug of coffee suspended in the air before him for several thumping seconds.

  “I’m gonna be late,” he finally replied. “I need to jump in the shower.”