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r /> “I understand. Nico thinks I quit because I typed ‘I quit’ in a text and then didn’t hit send and handed my phone to my friend’s one-year-old. He managed to send the text. It was almost disastrous.”
“You’re kidding. Looks like we were both outwitted by babies.” Was that why Nico had sent me the ultimatum? He was worried Isla really would quit? He must really respect her as a chef.
“This is a sad day.”
“It is.”
There was a pause, and then she said, “Well, goodnight. Go make Kennedy some mac and cheese.”
“You should taste my mac and cheese,” I said, because I was proud of it and for whatever reason I wasn’t going to look at too closely, I didn’t want her to end the call.
She obviously didn’t feel the same way. “I don’t need to taste your anything. Bye, Sean.”
She’d already tasted my tongue. Tangling with hers. I was going to point that out but she had hung up on me.
I stood up and went to the kitchen to see what Kennedy was doing. I’d been able to see her from the living room, an advantage of small apartment city living, and she was rooting around in the refrigerator. She had two juice boxes in her hands. She handed me one.
“Thanks, kiddo.”
“Um.” She ripped the straw off and tried to undo the wrapper, without much luck. “You should go to the playground with Isla.”
I took the straw from her and undid it. I popped it in the box and handed it back to her. “I would love to go to the playground with Isla.”
Dirty thoughts that had no business being in my head when I was babysitting crowded my brain.
Shit. From now on, I was going to think of my bedroom as the playground.
Given what my grandfather and I had talked about (feeling lonely, not that deeper stuff about handing someone my heart on a silver platter), I decided if I didn’t want to fall off the radar of my friends, I needed to make sure I was reaching out to them regularly and consistently and being sympathetic to their crowded schedules. I had suggested we all go shopping Saturday but Dakota was the only one who was free and I was happy that at least someone could go. I wasn’t going to get cranky that my girls had found love. I was just going to appreciate when they did have time to hangout with me.
I’m not even a huge fan of shopping but I do like thrifting, so I had talked Dakota into poking around some second hand clothing stores.
“This would look so cute on you,” she said, holding up a sparkly shirt. “You could wear it as a dress.”
That made me snort. “You’re out of your mind. That’s your style, not me. You pull it off. I would just look like I was trying too hard.” My style was a combination of utilitarian and rock with a dose of the feminine whimsical thrown in with my jewelry.
“You're right. I should try it on.”
She already had a stack of clothes over her arm. Dakota was tall, with a lithe body. Sometimes she struggled to find pants that weren’t too short and weren’t strangling her crotch, but otherwise she could wear just about anything. I was a tweener. In-between. Not thin, not curvy, not tall, not short. I felt comfortable in casual clothes like jeans and T-shirts. I could do a dress, but it wasn’t my first choice.
I was actually kind of embarrassed that Sean had found my dating profile. I only looked at it every few months and my picture was from Leah’s engagement party last fall, updated when I’d come home buzzed that night. I’d been wearing a dress and had thought it was a cute shot but now I feel self-conscious that Sean had seen it, along with the quote from F. Scott Fitzgerald I had written underneath it. It was too… revealing. Especially because Sean made me feel flustered and that was super annoying. I would have never posted it if I hadn’t been drinking, and yet, hadn’t cared enough to go back and delete it.
Until now.
But if I deleted my profile, changed the pic, or removed the quote now, Sean would wonder why. If it had anything to do with him. Or conclude that I was super active on the app, which I wasn’t. So annoying.
I pulled a vintage Rolling Stones T-shirt off the rack. I didn’t need yet another rock band shirt, but I couldn’t help myself. Black cotton was my lodestone. It drew me to it.
Dakota went into the dressing room and emerged a minute later in the silver sparkly shirt. It was barely legal, it was so short. “What do you think?”
“One false move and you’re flashing,” I said. “Maybe with tights or skinny jeans?”
She attempted to tug the shirt down but it barely budged. “I think you’re right.”
“Uh, I know I’m right. Put some pants on, girl.”
She made a face but she dutifully went to search out pants. I would have gone back to the dressing room and put my own pants back on first before wandering around a public place in a shirt that could have been bought at Baby Gap, but that didn’t faze Dakota. She started pulling pants off the rack and throwing them over her arm.
A very tall, very muscular guy was trying to move between the racks, and kept bumping into them. He looked twenty-five, but like he still didn’t quite know how to exist in a world where everything was too small for him. He also looked familiar but I wasn’t sure why. I was fairly certain if I knew a six-foot-eight man I would remember why.
