by Linda Seed
“I know, but my mom’s been in the hospital, so I haven’t had time to study, and my dad died last year.…”
“I’m sorry to hear …”
“Could I maybe redo the paper? You made some notes on the introduction, what if I rewrote it?” She looked at him hopefully, her blond hair shining in the office’s fluorescent lights.
“Miss Brooks, the assignment has been turned in and graded.”
“I know, but …” She launched into further detail of the sad circumstances of her life, up to and including her brother’s drug problem, her grandmother’s dementia, and her own struggles with anxiety and unemployment.
He got a couple of these a week, and he always told them the same thing: He couldn’t change grades after the assignment was turned in and graded. If he did it for one student, he would have to do it for everyone, and then his professional life would be a chaos of sob stories, pleas, attempted bribes, and questionable ethics.
“I’m sorry, Miss Brooks, but there’s nothing I can do. If you want me to help you arrange for some tutoring …”
She got up from the chair and rushed out in a flurry of indignant emotion—the way they often did. He sighed, rubbed his eyes with his fingertips, and thought about Sofia.
Thinking about her was, more and more, the highlight of his day.
One of the problems with leading kayak tours was that business dried up when summer ended.
That meant Sofia had to look for a job.
Unlike her sisters, Sofia hadn’t gone to college. She’d traveled a bit after high school, then had settled into a pattern of physically demanding tourism jobs in the summer and doing whatever work she could get the rest of the year.
The temperatures had stayed comfortable well into September, so she still had enough clients to keep her going. But that was going to change soon, so she figured it was time to start asking around.
The list of things she’d done in the past was long: barista, hotel maid, ranch hand, waitress, personal trainer, clothing boutique sales associate, and wine bar server, to name a few.
All of those jobs had been pleasant enough, but none of them paid much. Fortunately, she didn’t have rent or a mortgage payment, so that helped. But she did have to pay for her share of the food and utilities, property taxes, and homeowner’s insurance. And she was considering buying a car. Riding a motorcycle was fine during good weather, but the rainy season would be upon her before she knew it, and on wet days, she’d have to borrow a car when she wanted to go somewhere. Her sisters were nice about offering theirs, but it would be so much better if she had her own.
And even if money hadn’t been a factor—even if she’d had no expenses at all—she liked to keep busy.
“Time for the annual job hunt,” she announced to her sisters over breakfast a day or two after the running date that had gone wrong, and then right. She had a mug of coffee in front of her at the big kitchen table. Martina was eating one of her hippie breakfasts—muesli with almond milk and flax seeds—and Benny had just emerged, yawning and tousled, from her room.
Bianca was puttering around the kitchen in her work clothes—black slacks, white button-down shirt, sensible shoes—making whole wheat toast in the toaster oven.
“You don’t have to do that,” she told Sofia.
“Well, I do if I want income. The tourists are starting to dry up.” There would be another surge of tourism in October for the Scarecrow Festival, and again around the holidays, but very few of them would want to kayak. For some reason, the average family visiting from Des Moines didn’t tend to put Christmas together with kayaking. A damned shame, Sofia thought, but it was the reality of her business.
“I didn’t mean you don’t have to work,” Bianca said. “I meant you don’t have to look for work. I’ll hire you.”
“You will?”
“Sure. You know Madison?” Bianca asked, referring to the receptionist at her pediatric office. “She’s getting married and moving down to L.A. I was going to post some help wanted ads, but if you want the job, I won’t have to.”
Sofia had never worked in a medical office before, but there was no reason she couldn’t. She’d answered phones and done paperwork in some of her other jobs, and that had gone well enough. “When is she leaving?”
“That’s the thing.” Bianca stood at the kitchen island with a hand propped on her hip. “She wanted to go last week, but I begged her to stay a little longer until I could find somebody. You could start right away.”
“Don’t do it.” Benny was over at the coffee machine, poised to pour a cup from the pot.
“Why not?” Bianca asked, offended.
“Because you should never work for family.” Benny shot Sofia a look. “Trust me on this one.”
Sofia figured she should take the warning seriously, considering that Benny had worked for Bianca for a while during grad school. Sofia seemed to remember a certain amount of angst. And fighting. Fighting wasn’t good.
“Don’t listen to her,” Bianca said.
“Was she a monster?” Martina asked Benny. “Was she the boss from hell?”
“I was not the boss from hell!” Bianca insisted.
Benny looked thoughtful. She stirred cream and sugar into her coffee. “No, she wasn’t the boss from hell.”
“See?” Bianca said.
“But there was a certain big sister vibe on top of the usual boss vibe. A certain, I know what’s best for you, and now that you’re working for me I can finally make you see the light kind of thing.”
“Uh oh,” Sofia said. “Maybe I’ll just ask around at the hotels on Moonstone Beach.”
“No, you won’t,” Bianca said. “You’re coming to work for me.”
17
Sofia had a few more kayak tours before the end of the season, but not enough of them to keep her busy full-time. Summer was almost over.
When Sofia had been a child, the stretch between the end of summer break and the approach of the holidays had seemed like an endless wait. Time had seemed to stretch interminably, making her think the Thanksgiving turkey and the gifts under the tree would never come.
Then, as an adult, that had shifted. Time had seemed to speed up between September and January first, going so fast that the days seemed to vanish one after the other before she’d even had a chance to notice them.
That sense of fall dashing by in a blur used to be merely a curiosity. Now she dreaded it.
Sofia’s parents had died in late November two years before, her mother right before Thanksgiving and her father soon after it. She no longer looked forward to the chilly weather, the festive lights, or pumpkin spice anything. If Sofia could have gone to sleep in September and awakened in January, she would have done it.
Since that wasn’t an option, and she wouldn’t have her kayaking clients to keep her busy for much longer, she decided to begin training at Bianca’s office. The more work she had to do, the more she could keep her mind off of the time of year and all that it meant.
Besides, keeping busy would help her not to obsess about Patrick and the question of when they would see each other again, and how, and where that might lead.
She put on one of her professional outfits—she had a few for when she had to take the inevitable job that required them—went into the office, and let Madison begin showing her the routine.
If Madison could do this job, Sofia was sure she could, too. The girl—and Sofia could only think of her as a girl, rather than a woman—was a perky twentysomething with blond, bouncy hair and the manner of a high school homecoming queen.
“It’s so awesome that you’re coming to work here!” Madison told Sofia as they got settled behind the front desk. “My fiancé wanted me to move to L.A. to be with him weeks ago, but I told him I couldn’t leave Bianca without anybody. And my fiancé was really understanding about it, but I know he was disappointed. When I told my fiancé that you were coming to take over for me, he was thrilled.”
Clearly, Madison enjoyed saying t
he phrase my fiancé. Sofia wondered if she would enjoy the actual marriage as much.
Sofia knew Madison was usually efficient, because she’d heard Bianca praise her in the past. But now, the younger woman’s excitement about her upcoming wedding seemed to have obliterated any number of her brain cells.
“So, when someone calls, how do I—”
“Did I show you my wedding dress?” Madison interrupted her. She clicked a few keys on the computer in front of her and brought up a picture of a princessy concoction of tulle and lace. “Isn’t it amazing?”
“You’ll look beautiful,” Sofia said. With her creamy complexion, deep blue eyes, and perpetually shiny hair, Madison was the kind of girl who would look beautiful if she were stranded on a desert island with a nasty rash, no conditioner, and only a torn, dirty boat sail for clothing. Sofia wanted to hate her, but it was impossible. The girl’s sunny disposition deprived Sofia of that simple pleasure.
“It’s lovely, Madison,” Bianca said warmly as she passed the front desk on her way to an exam room. “But if you could show Sofia the phone system, that would be a great help.”
“Of course, Dr. R!” Madison chirped. As if on cue, the phone rang. Madison punched a button and picked it up. “Russo Pediatrics. How may I help you?” After a pause, Madison said, “Oh, Mrs. Cruz! Sure, we can get Rodrigo in this afternoon. When you come in, remind me to show you my wedding dress.”
Bianca rolled her eyes and disappeared into a room where a six-month-old girl was waiting for her well-baby exam.
By lunchtime, Madison had settled down enough to teach Sofia some of what she needed to know. But now Sofia was the one having trouble concentrating, because Patrick had texted inviting her to his place for dinner.
When it came to dating a new person you hadn’t slept with yet, everybody knew that come to my house for dinner was code for let’s just rip the Band-Aid off and screw like rabbits. And Sofia wanted that—so much. But so far, their dates hadn’t gone very well. What if their sex date continued the trend? What if he was awful in bed? Even worse, what if she was?
After the text came in, Sofia nearly sprinted to Bianca’s office, skidding to a stop in the open doorway to make the announcement.
“Patrick wants to have sex.”
“Of course he does. He’s male,” Bianca responded.
“Yeah, but he wants to have sex tonight.”
“Of course he does. He’s male.”
“Would you stop that?” Sofia demanded. “What am I going to do?”
Bianca batted her eyes and cocked her head slightly to the side. “I thought Mom had this talk with you, but okay. Sometimes, when a man and a woman love each other very much—”
Sofia flipped her sister the bird discreetly, making sure no patients or their parents could see. “You’re hilarious.”
“Between you and Madison, this whole practice is going to grind to a halt,” Bianca said. “Just have sex with him already so you can concentrate.”
It was an idea.
Of course, Patrick had wanted Sofia to accept his invitation. But once she did, his nerves began to play tricks on him, telling him it was an awful idea that would end in disappointment, humiliation, and possibly a devastating house fire.
The house fire thought came into play when he realized he’d invited her for dinner but he didn’t know how to cook.
“I need to borrow your wife,” he told Ramon as they passed each other in the halls of the administration building.
“That statement should probably worry me,” Ramon said.
Lucy was not only willing to help, she was enthusiastic. It baffled Patrick how intent some women were on seeing that the single men in their orbit found mates. There was probably an evolutionary reason for it—something having to do with the perpetuating of the species.
“Here’s what you need to buy. Do you have a pen?” she said when he called her during his lunch break. He did have a pen, and he wrote down the items she dictated to him. “What time is she coming?”
“Ah … around seven.”
“I’ll meet you at your place at five.”
Certain matters had to be attended to when you were planning to have sex with someone for the first time, and Sofia threw herself into them as soon as she got off work.
First, there was the shaving. She generally kept her legs fairly smooth during the summer and early fall—she had to, because she frequently stripped down to her bikini in front of her clients and whoever else happened to be on the beach. But smooth enough to look at was one thing. Smooth enough to touch was another.
Then there was the tricky issue of her more intimate body hair. She usually waxed just enough for her chosen swimwear. But was that enough for this? If Patrick had preferences—turn-offs and turn-ons when it came to the proverbial trimming of the hedges—she didn’t know what they were. What if she went for the mostly natural look and he preferred Brazilian? Of what if she chose Brazilian and he thought it made her look like a twelve-year-old girl?
As an Italian woman, she was not unfamiliar with issues of body hair—and even facial hair. And that was another issue, now that she thought about it. She hadn’t had an eyebrow wax in a while. At least she didn’t have a mustache, unlike her aunt Donatella.
“I have too much hair!” she announced to Martina when she got home at just after five.
Martina was sitting on the sofa with a sketchbook and her laptop, working on some designs for a client. “What are you talking about? Your hair is beautiful.”
“Not the hair on my head,” Sofia clarified.
“Ah.” Martina didn’t even pretend it wasn’t an issue. She’d been blessed—or cursed—with the same genes as Sofia. “I can get you an appointment for waxing this weekend. Greta’s down in Morro Bay, but she’s great.”
“I don’t have time for Greta. Tonight’s the night.” She tossed her purse onto the sofa and freed her hair from the band that had been holding it in an office-appropriate bun.
Martina’s eyebrows shot up. “It is?”
“God willing,” Sofia said.
“I have a home waxing kit on the bottom shelf in the bathroom,” Martina said. “Greta’s better, but it’ll do in a pinch.”
When Lucy got to Patrick’s place, he was ready with the groceries she’d told him to buy. She’d come planning to cook the meal for him, but he insisted that he had to do it himself.
“It’s no trouble,” she told him. “It’ll be fun.”
“But wouldn’t that be … deceptive?” He settled on a word after thinking about the exact nature of his objections. “Part of the point of having her over is showing her that I’m willing to put in the work. That I don’t mind going to some trouble for her. If you’re the one doing the work and going to the trouble, it’s cheating.”
“Cheating,” she repeated, her hands on her hips as she stood in his tiny kitchen.
“Well … yes.”
“Patrick, I swear, if she doesn’t snap you up, I will.” She pointed a finger at him. “Do not tell Ramon I said that.”
He motioned locking his lips and throwing away the key.
“We’d better get to work,” she said.
18
Lucy supervised Patrick as he prepared a meal of roast chicken with lemon and rosemary; fingerling potatoes; and a green salad with feta cheese and pine nuts. For dessert, he would serve slices of buttery pound cake—store-bought—with berries and fresh whipped cream.
The dessert idea was inspired, he thought; he would be able to pull it together in just minutes when the time came, yet it would look elegant and upscale.
“How do you think I got Ramon?” she asked when he complimented her on it.
Privately, he thought Lucy could have gotten Ramon simply by agreeing to take him, but he knew better than to say that.
By the time Sofia was scheduled to arrive, the chicken was roasting fragrantly in the oven and the table was set with nice plates, silverware, and cloth napkins he’d borrowed from Lucy.
<
br /> Before she’d left twenty minutes earlier, Lucy had helped him to take care of everything except his nervousness. He supposed he would have to manage that part on his own.
He checked the chicken. Then he checked the salad. He looked at himself in the mirror to make sure his clothes were right. He straightened sofa pillows that didn’t need straightening.
He was just contemplating the issue of music vs. no music—why hadn’t he thought to ask Lucy?—when Sofia knocked on the door.
He took a moment before answering, because he didn’t want to seem too eager. But who, exactly, was he fooling? He was eager.
He took a calming breath and settled his thoughts. If he could risk death kayaking for her, he could do this.
He was feeling pretty good about his sense of inner peace—until he opened the door and saw her.
Once Sofia had gotten the body hair issue sorted out as well as she could, she’d taken care with her clothes, her hair, and her makeup. She didn’t usually worry much about those things—people could take her or leave her as she was—but this was different. This was special.
She knew her efforts had paid off as soon as he opened the door. Patrick was staring at her wordlessly, his jaw slack.
“Can I come in?” she prompted him.
“I … Yes! Of course!” He stepped back to let her pass. Actually, he jumped back as though he’d been hit with a hot branding iron. “You look … That dress …”
The dress was something she’d worn only once before, for a guy who hadn’t turned out to be worth it. Black, clingy, and short, with a low-cut neckline that exposed a generous expanse of cleavage, it carefully walked a tightrope between too slutty and just slutty enough.