“And what did Prince Charming give you?” Lydia settled in with obvious anticipation.
Elizabeth took a long gulp of wine. “Headphones.”
The silence that followed was deafening. Then—
“I’m sorry.” Kitty tugged cocked her head. “Did you sayheadphones?”
“Noise-cancelling headphones,” Elizabeth confirmed.
“Like for your ears?” Lydia inquired, as though perhaps Elizabeth had misspoken and meant something different.
“For my ears.”
“To block out sound,” Mary added, her academic instincts overriding her promise to remain non-analytical.
“To block out sound.”
Jane set down her wine glass. “Oh, Lizzy.”
“Top of the range,” Elizabeth continued. “Extensively researched. Perfect for solving my concentration problems.”
“Yourconcentrationproblems,” Lydia repeated.
“Which are caused by my noisy flat.”
Kitty blinked. “Your noisy flat that we’ve all been to and which is basically library-quiet except for the occasional ambulance?”
Elizabeth paused. “Well, I may have mentioned the upstairs neighbours once or twice, and there are buses, and also there’s been road construction, so I had to go the library to work. And Waffles, of course.”
Mary pursed her lips. “Once or twice like ‘occasionally in passing’ or once or twice like ‘obsessively complaining about’?”
“Once or twice like . . . once or twice.” Elizabeth took a drink and watched everyone from over the rim of her glass.
Her sisters exchanged meaningful looks.
“So let me get this straight.” Lydia leaned forward with the intensity of a detective closing in on a suspect. “You gave him a handmade declaration of love that took you three weeks to even learn how to make, and he gave you a technological solution to a problem that may not even exist?”
“That’s a rather harsh way to put it—”
“But accurate?” Kitty asked.
“He listens,”Elizabeth said, stubborn. “He always listens.” She put her head down. “It’s not fair to him. It’s just how I feel. But if I tell him, I’m afraid—”
“This is textbook—” Mary reached for her pen.
“No,” Elizabeth warned.
“But the psychological implications—”
“Are none of your business,” Lydia finished.
“Thisisn’tabout your thesis,” Kitty reiterated.
“Right,” Lydia added. “It’s about Lizzy and her emotionally constipated boyfriend.”
“He’s not emotionally constipated,” Elizabeth protested. “He’s just practically minded.”
“I think . . .” Mary stared at the ceiling as if the right word might be written there, “that perhaps you saw the headphones as an ambiguous signal. You attempted to extract meaning about your relationship from a data point that was not designed for that use case.”
