But there was no invitation to Pluto; instead, Reece said, “I know we just met and I know you don’t want to be in a truck with a man you don’t know ...”
With you I do! Bring on the spaceship!
“So I’ll follow you to the hospital. It makes me nervous having you drive alone, but I’ll be right behind you and it’s only a ten-minute drive. If you feel the slightest bit sick, pull over, okay?”
I’d nodded on automatic. I would have liked being in a tight spaceship with him.
And that’s what we’d done. When we left Marlene’s, I said, “You don’t have to follow me home, Reece. I’m sure you’re busy.”
“Not busy at all.”
“But I’m fine.”
“I know.” He smiled. “You’re more than fine.”
I smiled like a drunken, love-struck fool, though I’d had nothing to drink.
So, we drove down the highway, through the town and shops filled with kooky souvenirs, ceramic lighthouses, fake shells, and taffy, the ocean sparkling on our left. We entered the residential area where I live and drove past my neighbors’ houses, down around a curve, and up the hill to the end of the street. I turned into my driveway and watched his truck in my rearview mirror.
Reece turned into the driveway next door to mine. I assumed he was pulling around. I climbed out of my old, rumbly truck and waved at him as he got out of his new, black truck. “Thanks again for pulling me out of the ocean. I would not have wanted a shark to eat me for a snack. It would have been painful. For me,” I clarified ridiculously. “Not for the shark.”
He laughed; oh, the man was a laughing sort. Was I that amusing?
“I didn’t think it would be painful for the shark. I think he’d find you quite tasty.”
I turned to enter my little blue cottage, the cottage I so didn’t want to lose, and instead of backing up, he headed for the front door of the home next door.
The home was two stories and the quintessential beach house, with shutters and shingles, the view of the ocean from the floor-to-ceiling windows incredible. Inside, it was modern with wood floors, an open floor plan, and two fireplaces.
“What ...” I called. “What are you doing?”
“I’m going into my house.” He smiled. My heart flittered. “I’ve rented it for eight weeks.”
“You rented that house.” I pointed at it dumbly. “That one. Right there. You rented
that
house?”
“Yes, I did. For eight weeks.”
“For eight weeks?”
“Fifty-six days, give or take.”
Oh, no. This was going to be a problem. “So I’m going to see you, then?”
“Yes. If you want to. I suppose you could always close your eyes when you saw me. Drive blindly down the street, run from my presence screaming, wear a bag over your head to hide, but neighbors do usually cast eyes on each other occasionally.”
“Well, I’ll be damned.”
“Damned you won’t be. I’m positive of that. Thanks for going to lunch, June.”
He turned to open his front door. I didn’t move.
The Greek god was living next door to me.
Oh, man. This was not gonna be good.
Or, maybe ... it was going to be good.
Very good.
No, it wouldn’t be good. It couldn’t be good. When he knew the truth about my life, we’d be done.
And I had to tell him.
That I knew.
I’d met Grayson when I was working as an attorney.
I became an attorney because I wanted to fit in with The Establishment.
I wanted to be “normal.”
I didn’t want to be poor, I didn’t want to travel around in an old VW bus, I didn’t want handmade clothes, I didn’t want to live in communes or hippie colonies or on farms with no electricity or plumbing.
So, at eighteen, as a rebellious teenager who decided she wanted to live a “normal American life,” I attended a top-tier college on a full-ride scholarship. The college was apparently impressed with how much we had traveled, my fluency in Spanish, and my SAT scores, which were near perfect, comparable to my brother’s and sisters’ scores, a reflection of our parents’ skills as educators.
I missed my family. I loved them. I cried every night for weeks.
But I was going to be Someone. I wasn’t going to be on the fringe of society anymore, I was going to
be
society. I wasn’t going to have long, messy hair and wear rainbow colors, or the tartans of our Scottish clan, and dance at midnight. I was going to be fashionable and mainstream.
In my quest to be Someone, I gave up sewing, a hobby that had brought me a sense of delight and accomplishment, and a camaraderie with my family. I powered through college, powered through law school, graduating second in my class. The valedictorian was Mindy Shadowhorse, who lived on a reservation in between her stints at school. She is now a state supreme court judge, the youngest ever in her state. She is my best friend outside my family.
I was hired to work as an attorney under crushing student loans and soul-sucking stress. I worked seventy-plus hours a week for five years. I made a lot of money and paid off my student loans at the end of those years.
Grayson was a partner in a hard-charging law firm on the floor below me. We met in the elevator. I thought he was sleekly, cooly handsome and successful. He had plans, he had ambitions. We would not be traveling around in a VW bus. We dated for six fast months and got married.
I then had what I thought I wanted: Normalcy. I had all the outward stuff that said, “You fit in. You belong. You’ve arrived. You’re successful. You’re respectable. No VW bus for you.”
I wanted to be normal.
Normal made me bury all my unhappiness until I couldn’t bury one more inch of it.
Normal stripped me of me.
Normal made me die internally, inch by inch.
It was not pretty.
“We have another order,” Leoni said from a chair near the computer. She pushed back her white-blond hair. Today she was wearing a proper, lace-collared pink dress, fifties style, and black knee-high boots.
“Good.” I took pins out of my mouth and readjusted the sequined wedding dress on my lap. This bride was an oceanographer and had ordered a jade green mermaid-style wedding gown with sequins swirling down the front and a flowing train that resembled sea waves. I loved how it was turning out.
“Bite me hard,” Estelle muttered. “As if we’re not all going to suffocate in piles of flounce at this studio already.”
I love being in my studio. I love hearing the ocean waves outside my French doors. I love the three skylights that let the sun in and the pitter-patter sound of rain on the glass. I love the two old rocking chairs and the matching crystal chandeliers I’d added blue and pink glass beads to. I love sitting in my plushy red chair with a crazy quilt or working at the humongous table down the center of the room or at the numerous sewing machines. There are four half-naked, naked, or fully dressed mannequins, and we have shelves and piles of lace, satin, velvet, and other sleek, silky materials used to make wedding, bridesmaids, and flower girls dresses, veils, and beribboned hats.
“It’s an odd order, though,” Leoni said, her brow furrowed.
“Even better.” I love odd orders. I am delighted to be in business with my odd orders. A bad day with odd orders is still far superior to a “good day” fighting with other strung-out attorneys in open court.
“It’s rather witchly.”
Witchly?
“Is she a Bridezilla sort?”
“I don’t think so.”
“But you said the word ‘witchly.’ ”
“Witchly,” Leoni said. “But not witchy.”
“Did you tell her about the anti-Bridezilla contract?”
“I did. She signed it and will fax it back.”
I have each bride sign a contract before we start to reduce the chances of my having to deal with shrieking, hysterical women. It reads, in part:
1. I will not be a Bridezilla.
2. I will remember that this is one day of my life, one day. It should be a joyous and happy day about my husband and me and when I am tempted to throw a big hissy fit, I will remember that there are people starving in the world and scrambling for water or for protection from war and wrath and hideous extremists, and I will keep myself and my highly exaggerated importance of this one day in line.
3. If I am obnoxious, June has the right to ban me from her studio forever. I understand there will be no refunds under any circumstances.
I also do not start drawing a design, or sewing one single stitch, until I have all the money, up front and paid for.
I do not mess with brides. I insist they not mess with me. Frankly, they’re so happy with the dresses, and most of our clients are so edgy and free-spirited to begin with, that
most
of the time they’re a pretty friendly bunch of women.
“The order is for eight bridesmaids’ dresses,” Leoni said. “The bride said she saw the dresses you made for her friend, Dahlia. She didn’t even want to talk to you first, said her mind is made up. You’re the wedding dress designer for her, her words. Her credit card has been charged and it went through.”
Ah, Dahlia.
“Who can forget the bride Dahlia Parker and the dahlia bridesmaids’ dresses?” Estelle said. “The walking, talking flowers.” She fluffed out a gold skirt she was sewing. “Looking at Dahlia’s dresses was akin to looking at Alice in Wonderland versus the War of the Flowers. An epic battle for the meadow.”
“They adored them,” Leoni said. “Dahlia cried. Remember how she said to the other girls, ‘Now we’re all dahlias’ and how they cheered and danced around our studio in their Dahlia dresses?”
I put aside the mermaid wedding dress and flipped a page in a scrapbook on my desk. I have all my clients send me photos of themselves and their bridesmaids on their wedding days. Each bridesmaid in the Dahlia wedding had a different vibrantly colored dress in fuchsia, lavender, burgundy, lime, you get the point. There were eight of them. The dresses were form-fitting to the waist, then flared out under netting, the hem cut into the shapes of delicate, multicolored dahlia petals. We spent hours cutting out and sewing on delicate dahlias over one shoulder strap and down past the waistline.
Dahlia herself wore a white dahlia dress. I went to that wedding and I actually heard the guests gasp when they saw her walking down the aisle.
“They were gorgeous, earthly, garden-y,” Leoni said, her eyes soft, lost in flowerland. “Blooming flowers of eternal love. Admit it, Estelle. We outdid ourselves.”
“I dreamed of dahlias chasing me and smothering me with their petals,” Estelle humphed. “It went on all night. They were evil dahlias, cursed and cursing.”
I chuckled, then drew a finger down the dresses in the photo. As strange as the design sounds, the dahlia flower dresses were a hit. In fact, the state newspaper featured them on the front page of their Style and Fashion section.
“What does this bride want?” I asked Leoni.
Leoni pushed a stray lock back into her bun. “She wants her bridesmaids to be dressed in her favorite color.”
“What is her favorite color?”
“Bright orange, like an orange.”
I almost choked on a pin. “Orange?”
“That’s right. She wants a smidgeon of black squiggling through the dress, too.”
“I feel a headache coming on in my cranium,” Estelle droned. “We have a boopsy bride. A pumpkin bride. A melon.”
“Orange and black? Is it a Halloween wedding?” I asked.
“No. It’s in July.”
“And cramps. I think I have cramps,” Estelle droned again. “Me. Way past menopause. But cramps.”
“Is she an Oregon State Beaver football fan?”
“I asked that, too,” Leoni said. “No, she’s not. She has an affinity to orange because it reminds her of Popsicles and she embraces black because she has an aunt who’s a witch.”
“A witch?”
“Strike me down dead with a spell,” Estelle groaned. “Down dead. Why do we get all the bridal wackos?”
Estelle knew why. We specialized in nontraditional bridal wear.
“Yes. A witch,” Leoni said. “She wants to honor the witch aunt. I don’t know if she calls her Aunt Witch. I didn’t inquire further.”
“Orange and black,” I said. At first I balked, then I stood and opened the French doors and admired the ocean, the breeze cool, the sun golden candy in the sky. It would be a spectacular summer sunset.
The sunset would have orange in it. Flowing, bright, soft, creamy, dramatic, and romantic ... orange. My imagination took off. I thought of sherbet, roses, and Costa Rica. I grabbed a pad of paper and five different shades of orange-colored pencils. I worked for fifteen minutes, not realizing that Estelle and Leoni were peering over my shoulder.