I flag down a cab. The city moves past me in streaks of light, and I think about a beach on Long Island and a girl who saidshe loved me without hesitation and the ten years I've spent pretending I don't still hear her say it.
6
Jasmine
The boutique smells like lavender and fresh fabric. Mom has a diffuser behind the register that she refills every morning, and the scent hits me the second I walk through the door.
It's Saturday, and the shop is quiet. A woman in a green coat is browsing the dresses near the window, and Mom is behind the counter, sorting through a box of new arrivals with her reading glasses on the tip of her nose.
“There she is,” Mom says without looking up. “I was about to send a search party.”
“I'm ten minutes late.”
“Fifteen. But who's counting?” She pushes the box toward me. “Spring line. Help me tag these.”
I drop my bag behind the counter and pull up a stool. The box is full of wrap dresses in jewel tones. Emerald, sapphire, and a deep burgundy that I already know will be gone by Tuesday. Mom has an eye for what sells. She orders carefully, and she's right more often than she's wrong.
I grab the pricing gun and start tagging. Mom works beside me, smoothing fabric, checking seams, holding each dress up to the light before she approves it for the floor. She rejects asapphire one with a crooked hem and sets it aside for alterations. Nothing goes on the rack unless it meets her standard.
“How's work?” she asks.
“Busy. I've got a new account. It’s a big one,” I say.
“That's my girl. What is it?” she says happily.
“The New York Renegades.”
Her hands stop moving. She's holding a burgundy wrap dress, and her fingers tighten on the fabric. “Isn’t that the team that Logan Shaw plays for?”
I keep my eyes on the pricing gun. “Yes, Mom. Logan plays for the Renegades.”
She sets the dress down on the counter,, takes off her reading glasses, and folds them slowly. When my mother folds her glasses slowly, a lecture is coming.
“Have you seen him?”
“There was a sponsor event last week. He was there and we talked,” I say with a shrug, as if it was no big deal.
“How did it feel seeing him again after ten years?”
“It felt fine. We're adults.”
Mom picks the dress back up, shakes it out, and drapes it over a hanger. She doesn't look at me while she does it, which is how I know she has more to say, and she's choosing her moment.
“Do you remember what those people did to you?” she asks.
“Of course I do.”
“Do you remember what that woman said to you about hockey families and certain kinds of women? And what did that boy do? He packed his bags, got on a plane, and never looked back.”
I swallow hard. It hurt terribly at the time, but I did get over it and moved on with my life. But I guess for my mother, it’s still very raw.
“Then you don't need me to tell you to be careful,” Mom says. “But I'm going to tell you anyway.” She hangs the dresson the rack and straightens it until it falls perfectly. “Be careful, Jasmine. That family has a way of making you feel like you belong right up until they decide you don't. I won't sit through that again, and neither will you.”
The woman in the green coat approaches the counter with two blouses, and Mom shifts into shopkeeper mode, warm and attentive, asking about sizes and recommending a scarf to go with the cream one.
I finish tagging the rest of the dresses and carry them to the floor and arrange them by color on the rack near the fitting rooms.
My mother is my protector, loudest critic, and my safest place. She held me together when Logan left and built me back up piece by piece—she’s earned the right to say whatever she wants about the Shaws.
