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CHAPTER
3
They got a table on the sidewalk, just inside the railing lined with planter boxes and petunias. Thursday morning was slow for breakfast. When they came for weekend brunch, they always ended up wandering the garden shop next door while waiting an hour for a table. It was the precise reason Lucy owned so many succulents. They dined with other Westsiders in workout gear, people reading books and sipping coffee, the occasional mom with a stroller.
Nina nibbled tiny spoonfuls from her yogurt and granola bowl, abiding by the self-imposed rules of low-calorie breakfast. Lucy took a bite of the most gorgeous bagel sandwich she’d ever seen in her life: layers of melted jalapeño cheddar, bacon, fluffy scrambled eggs. She normally joined Nina in what they deemed careful eating: dining on clean food, juice cleanses, keto this, no-carb that. Foods that often tasted like dirt or cardboard and left literal hunger pangs stabbing at her belly and mood all day, all so she could fit some standard that was a tight dress, a toned body, a bikini in the summertime. So she could be the slender woman the world demanded she be when sometimes all she wanted was a goddamned bagel sandwich.
It suddenly struck her as insane, cruel even, to deny herself something as delicious as the bagel she sank her teeth into. A glob of cheese strung from her chin. She swiped it into her mouth and let out a little moan of satisfaction. She thought of offering Nina a bite, but she knew she wouldn’t take it, and she wanted it all to herself anyway.
Nina scooped a single blueberry onto her spoon and ate it like a bird. “Do you think Caleb is going to propose tonight?”
“No.”
Lucy startled. Not at her friend’s blunt question—Nina had permission to ask things like that—but at her own response. And more importantly, how easily it rolled off her tongue.
She silently asked herself the question again, just in case she hadn’t heard Nina and answered the wrong thing.
Do I think Caleb is going to propose tonight?
And the answer popped up just the same.
No.
For so long, she’d been telling herself yes, yes, yes and that tonight’s the night. He’d had so many opportunities—beach sunsets, Michelin restaurants, even that one time at Disneyland that would have topped the clichés, but Lucy wouldn’t have cared—and he still hadn’t asked. And somehow, even though she knew he’d have the opportunity of a lifetime that night—her birthday, the day of her promotion, a rooftop in downtown L.A.—she somehow knew that night still wouldn’t be the night.
She let the answer sit, not really sure how it made her feel. Disappointed, maybe, because she’d been waiting for so long. But maybe also relieved? She’d been waiting for so long, and knowing that the will he, won’t he distress would be missing felt kind of... great?
There was something freeing in it, the certainty. Where it came from, she didn’t know, but she suddenly felt like a bug struggling on its back, legs flailing, that had finally been flipped over.
“No, I don’t think he will propose tonight,” she told Nina, and buried her face back in her bagel.
Nina watched her with a raised brow, no stranger to her tonight’s the night mantra.
When Lucy first whispered her suspicion to Nina last fall, after a perfect day in Palm Springs where the guys golfed and the girls hit the spa; when Lucy and Caleb snuck back to their room and had midday sex before joining everyone at the pool; when Lucy was so caught up in the sun and the drinks and the warm fuzzy vacation vibes, she was absolutely sure Caleb was going to ask her to marry him that night, Nina joined her in delighted squeals and freshly manicured hand clapping. But then he didn’t ask. And then he didn’t ask again and again, and the novelty wore off. Nina’s squeals simmered down to smiles and encouraging nods, the occasional thumbs-up, despite Lucy still insisting tonight’s the night.
That was why Nina stared at her with no small amount of skepticism.
“You sound remarkably... okay with that.”
Lucy studied her glorious bagel sandwich, sad to see she only had a few bites left, and shrugged. “Maybe I am okay with that.”
Nina didn’t argue or point out the hypocrisy in her sudden change of heart after all the times tonight’s the night resulted in pints of ice cream, sweatpants, and Grey’s Anatomy reruns on her couch. Instead, she nodded, albeit with a confused look on her face. “Okay, then.”
They let their breakfast span the same length of time spin class would have, enjoying the pale sunlight on the sidewalk, the sounds of Los Angeles coming to life for another day, and started their walk to their respective apartments. They lived together through college and for a few years after but had expanded into personal space once their careers took off.
But not too personal; they still lived three blocks from each other.
Lucy took a deep breath of morning air just as a man across the street whistled at them.
Living in a big city, Lucy had tried, hard, to train herself not to look when someone whistled, called, sucked their lips like they were summoning a cat, or made an otherwise lewd sound, but most of the time, reflex won out and she turned her head toward the noise.
The man looked like he’d seeped out of a crack where dark things went to hide during the daylight. His grungy clothes sagged, his backpack hung near his thighs, and Lucy wondered, as always, why he thought he had the right to harass them while they were just walking down the sidewalk.
“Hey, ladies. Where you heading?” he called, and suggestively grabbed his crotch.
“Oh god,” Nina mumbled with a sigh.
Lucy knew what to do in the everyday situation: ignore him and keep walking. Do not engage was rule number one for staying safe as a female out in the world, even if she wanted to turn and give him a piece of her mind—especially in that case. Who knew if he had a weapon or wanted to hurt them in other ways? And that exact uncertainty was what gave him and others like him all the power. Lucy and Nina knew they were the ones with something to lose, whether it be their sense of security, their dignity, or something far worse. And because people like the strange, vulgar man on the street existed, they’d been trained to walk away or risk endangering themselves.
