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“But…they’re so chic!” Blake exclaimed.
Elsa looked to him. “What do you think, honey?”
“I think I want someone to kill me,” he replied.
For a second, Elsa just stared.
Then both women burst out laughing.
The sales associate approached, juggling five more shoeboxes in his hands.
Hale groaned audibly.
Both women busted a gut laughing again.
Right, so, he wanted them to get along.
Goal attained.
He just didn’t know how much it would hurt.
But they were having the time of their lives.
So he shut up, settled in and let them get on with it.
It would take a while—after more shoes, going somewhere for what Blake called “nibbles and cocktails” and finally heading home—when Elsa redonned the red stilettos with the thin ankle strap she bought that day, before she straddled him on the couch.
And he got his reward.
* * *
“Okay,but honestly, those last few scenes were worth it,” Fliss was saying. “I left the theater bouncing on my feet, still laughing.”
“I’ll give you that,” Gemma said. “I just wish I didn’t have to sit through two hours of boring to get to it.”
“I didn’t think that scene where Brad Pitt was walking though the compound was boring,” Blake put in. “I was on the edge of my seat.”
“Totally,” Carole agreed. “And DiCaprio’s monologue, I couldn’t tell you what it was about right now. Still, while I was watching it, I was riveted.”
They were talking aboutOnce Upon a Time…in Hollywood.
Their friends, at his dining room table, eating food he cooked.
Hale was at the head. Elsa the foot. Carole, Felicity, Blake, Gemma and Jadyn sitting down the sides.
The kitchen was spotless because Elsa might not cook, but she was a fantastic kitchen assistant. She could mince and chop, which helped, but mostly she wiped things down, rinsed stuff and put it in the dishwasher, and put ingredients away when he was done with them.
And she laid a mean table.
She’d come home that week twice with bags of stuff, and earlier, set the table with his dinnerware, but added a table runner she’d bought. Along that she’d laid slender, stemmed glass pieces that held tea lights, and she put five bigger glass vases, all in different shapes, one that sat on a small plinth, in the middle that she filled with water, and they held cream-colored floating candles. Last, she’d gone out that morning and got cream roses she’d clipped to the bud and set in little, ribbed shot glasses randomly down the center of the table, interspersed with those same shot glasses filled with more tea lights.
It was simple, but elegant and beautiful.
It was Elsa.
Now the table was covered in food. There were three empty wine bottles and cocktail glasses had been abandoned around the living room for when they sat down to dinner and wine.
Elsa had some classic jazz playing low on the sound system.
