“Thanks.” I head over to the nook, with Cicero and Roxie right behind me. Sitting down in one of the seagrass chairs with ivory cushions that encircle the small dining table, I admire how nicely Brody’s arranged everything. There are flowers in the center of the table, a beautiful mixture of blooms in varying shades of pink (Did he remember that pink is my favorite color, or is this just a happy coincidence? Either way – love!) and white plates sitting on woven rattan chargers with matching rings that have linen napkins pulled through them. That’s right, I said, “Linen napkins!” This is the first time in my life I’ve had a man, who wasn’t a waiter, give me something other than a paper towel to wipe my hands on. Brody is so classy, or maybe he’s just a real, honest-to-goodness grown-up. I haven’t had a lot of experience with men who act their age.
Coming in from the kitchen, Brody places a bowl of soup down on the plate in front of me.
“Wow!” I stare at the gazpacho, wide-eyed with awe. “This is way too pretty to eat.” Seriously. The gazpacho looks like a piece of art, with the creamy yellow soup providing a beautiful backdrop for the small, star-shaped blue flowers and dots of green oil speckling the surface, as well as the sprinkling of lavender-tinged almond slivers floating in the center. “I have to get a picture of this! My mother will be so impressed. She’s an artist,” I explain as I pull my phone out of my purse and start taking snapshots of the soup from various angles like I’m Annie Leibovitz shooting a supermodel for the cover of Vogue.
“Ah.” Brody takes a seat next to me, placing his napkin in his lap. “You never mentioned that before.”
“Mmmm hmmm, she’s a painter.” I set my phone on the table. “A really good one. Her stuff is abstract, super colorful and vibrant, just like her. I have a couple of her pieces hanging in my apartment.” I wonder if I should invite him over to see the paintings, or would that sound like the female equivalent of “Wanna come up and see my etchings?” I try a spoonful of soup while I contemplate it.
“What do you think?” Brody hasn’t started eating his gazpacho yet; he seems to be more interested in my reaction to it.
“Tastes just as divine as it looks.” I’m not lying. It really is fantastic. So many levels of flavor. Yum!
“That’s a relief.” He leans forward and whispers, “Between you and me, I’ve never made gazpacho before. It was a lot more complicated than I thought it was going to be.”
“Kudos for a job well done then.”
“You should reserve that kudos until the end of the meal. Dessert might be a little sketchy,” he warns, grimacing.
“Dessert can never be sketchy!” I assure him. “I’ll happily eat anything sweet.”
“I’m afraid baking’s not my strong suit in the kitchen. I probably should have paid more attention when my mother was making all those cookies, cakes, and pies during my formative years, but all I cared about at the time was licking the batter and filling off the mixing spoons.”
Brody’s never referenced his family in our chats before. I’ve been imagining that he’s an orphan whose unwed mother abandoned him on the steps of a church, so he was raised by a kindly, old priest, or maybe a group of nuns. I hadn’t really worked out the details, but it was all very tragic and romantic, leading him to become the stoic, resilient man he is today.
“Tell me more about your parents. What do they do? Are they both science-y, like you?” Brody chortles. “Not even close. Dad’s in advertising and Mom’s an interior designer. I’m the left-brained freak of the family. My sisters certainly weren’t asking for microscopes and doing paper chromatography experiments with leaves when they were in elementary school.”
“Isn’t it interesting how a person can be born with a talent for something that’s totally unprecedented in their family?”
“No other pet psychics in the Tobin clan?” Brody gleans that I’m not just talking about him and his bent toward botany.
“Just me, but there’s fifty percent of my genetic makeup that’s unaccounted for since my father was out of the picture before Sloane and I were born. For all I know he, or someone on a distant branch of his family tree, could have the same gift I do.”
“Oh, I don’t know. Seems to me you’re pretty special.” Immediately upon uttering those words, Brody looks embarrassed, like he thinks he said too much. He dips his head down, suddenly finding his half-empty bowl of soup really fascinating. “I mean . . .,” he starts making swirls in the gazpacho with his spoon, “. . . I doubt there are many people in the world who can communicate with animals the way you do. That’s definitely a unique . . . uhhhh . . . I should go put the fish in the steamer, so it’ll be ready when we’re done with the soup.” He jumps up from the table like his seat cushion just burst into flame and hurries into the kitchen.
Aw, men – they’re so adorable when they get all awkward and weird about letting you know how they feel.
Brody returns a few minutes later, seeming less agitated, and we continue to talk about our families and childhoods while we finish the gazpacho. I am once again wowed when he serves up the main course – steamed Pacific rockfish and nasturtium flowers, with tuberous begonia vinegar and pansy oil, and fresh asparagus on the side. Brody has to explain all the elements of the dish to me as I have no clue, only that it smells incredible and the red blooms look really striking next to the white fish and green asparagus. It’s like Christmas on a plate!
I snigger. “No way! I can’t believe you dyed your hair green.”
“I took my role as ‘The Cherry Tree’ chopped down by George Washington very seriously. Trees are green, ergo it made sense that I should be that color. If I hadn’t run out of green food coloring, I would have used it on my face, too.”
“Couldn’t you have just worn a cherry tree costume?”
Brody shakes his head as he swallows the bite of fish in his mouth. “I was taking a Method approach to the role, so I had to be the cherry tree, not just wear some lame costume.”
“You were a Method actor at age six?”
“Oh, yeah, and I went really deep when I was prepping for the part, keeping a journal where I pondered questions like, ‘How did Cherry Tree feel when little George cut him with that hatchet? Sad? Angry? Betrayed?’” Brody’s doing his best to pretend like he’s serious, but the mischievous twinkle in his eyes gives him away.
“You’re teasing me! Six-year-olds can’t write.”
“I think we’ve already established I was very advanced for my age.” Brody winks at me, and I laugh. I’m really enjoying seeing this lighthearted side of him.
“Now I don’t even believe you about dying your hair green. I bet some other kid in your class did it.”
“No, it was me, but the idea originated with my sister, Katie. She was always encouraging me to do things that ended in disaster. I blame her for several very questionable fashion choices in high school – ripped jeans, frosted hair tips, yellow-tinted sunglasses.”
I chortle at the mental image I now have of teenage Brody. “Sounds like you were the missing sixth member of 'N Sync!”
Come to think of it, Brody does bear a slight resemblance to JC Chasez, who was my dream man when I was in my mid-teens. Oh, the wedding I had planned for the two of us! On the beach, at sunset, me in a frothy pink gown, JC serenading me with a beautiful ballad he wrote for the occasion. “Willa, you’re anything but vanilla. Let me whisk you off to my villa . . .” Yeah, I know, it’s a good thing I never wanted to be a lyricist.
“I had posters of 'N Sync all over my bedroom walls back in the day. Well, on my side of the bedroom anyway. Sloane hated boy bands.” When we were eight, she threatened to rip the tape out of my New Kids on the Block cassette and strangle me with it. Her rage was probably justified because I’d been rewinding and listening to “Step by Step” for three hours straight while she was trying to write a book report.
Brody winces in sympathy. “I feel her pain. My sisters had similarly appalling taste in music throughout the ‘90s.”
“E
xcuse you!” I give him a playful shove. “What were you listening to back then that makes you feel so musically superior?”
“I was into–”
My phone, which is still sitting next to my knife, chimes, signaling that I have a new text message. “Sorry. I should have put that away.” I think it’s the height of rudeness for people to take phone calls or read texts when they’re already conversing with a real person. I reach for the phone, intent on shutting it off and dropping it back in my purse.
“It’s okay. Check the text. It might be important.”
“I’m sure it’s just my sister.” Who knows nothing about my lunch date with Brody and probably thinks I’m home working on her gown for the hotel gala.
I look down at the phone’s display and quickly read the message.
I gasp. “Oh, no!”
“Something wrong?” Brody frowns with concern.
“Fred ran away.”
“Who’s Fred?”
“A very high-strung Jack Russell puppy. He was adopted into a family with a senior dog named Norman, who was very unhappy about the new addition. I’ve been working with the two of them to try and forge a sibling bond, but Norman’s very resistant.”
“Because he’s old and set in his ways?”
“Exactly. And Fred’s tired of getting the cold shoulder from Norman. He wants a brother who will be his buddy and play with him. I’d hoped to get the two of them to meet in the middle, but I guess Fred got fed up with waiting for Norman to come around, so he took a powder. Poor Jayden!” My eyes fill with tears.
Brody looks panicked. He must feel the same way about crying that Sloane does. “Who’s Jayden?”
“He’s the five-year-old boy who’s Fred’s owner. Of course, his parents are the dog’s actual owners, but Jayden picked Fred out and he loves him dearly. His mom says that he’s bawling his eyes out because they’ve looked all over the neighborhood and they haven’t been able to find Fred anywhere.”
“You should go help them.”
“Really?” I sniffle. “Are you sure? You went to so much trouble with this lunch . . .” I’ve only eaten half the fish and I know he made dessert. Okay, now I really do want to cry. We’ve been having such a nice time; I feel awful having to cut short our date. It is a date, right? I’m still not one hundred percent sure about that.
“It’s okay. You can take a piece of the cake to-go. Probably best that I don’t see the look on your face when you first take a bite of it.” He smirks.
“You are so sweet. Thank you.” I place my hand on top of his, and to my surprise, he flips his hand over so that he can hold mine in the palm of his. SWOON
“Can I give you a ride to wherever Jayden and Fred live?”
“It’s in Alameda.” That’s a thirty-minute drive. No way is he going to want to spend his Saturday afternoon carting me across the bridge.
“I’ll grab the cake and my keys.” Giving my hand a squeeze, he gets up from the table, and I’m left to sit in stunned silence. Could this man be any more perfect?
Chapter 19
(Sloane)
“Oh, my God, this is taking forever!” I adjust my position in the vanity chair because I’ve been sitting in it so long one of my butt cheeks has fallen asleep.
“It would go faster if you’d stop squirming like a toddler who just drank five juice boxes and needs to tinkle.” Willa admonishes from behind me.
“Why’d you have to mention tinkling? Now I need to pee!”
“Well, you can’t get up because I’m at a crucial point in the hairstyling process here, so cross your legs or something.”
“I’d better not. I’m paranoid about snagging these thigh-highs. You know this is the only pair of cream ones I have. If I get a run in them, I’m screwed.” Before you say it, fashion historians, I already know that thigh-highs weren’t yet on the hosiery scene in 1914, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to wear the period-appropriate corset with garters and stockings get-up that Willa suggested and be miserable all night. Ditto on going without an underwire bra. Early twentieth-century women might not have minded looking flat-chested and/or saggy, but I’ve experienced the joys of having my B-cups lifted and enhanced and I’m not going back to the Undergarment Dark Ages.
“You’ll be fine. Even if you get a run, the dress is long, so all anyone will see is a bit of ankle when you walk or dance. I need a few more hair pins.” She extends a hand over my shoulder.
“More? You’ve already used half a pack. I’ll probably be picking these things out of my hair for a month.” Carefully reaching forward, I grab some black hair pins from the vanity table and deposit them in her outstretched palm.
“You want this chignon to be secure, don’t you? Your hair’s so silky; it’s not easy to keep in place.”
“Chignon,” I mimic my sister’s pronunciation of the word. “Sounds so fancy when it’s just a bun.”
“Well, this is a very elegant and intricate bun, so I think chignon is fitting.”
Willa falls silent while she focuses on coiling and pinning up strands of my hair, and it occurs to me that she hasn’t been her usual bubbly, chatty self tonight. Normally, when we’re together, I can’t get her to shut up. She rambles on and on about all the trivial things floating around her brain, but she’s been here a half-hour now and she hasn’t once mentioned that she’s thinking about applying to be the next Bachelorette, or that she’s got her eye on some silly tea pot-shaped purse, or that she’s been using a sample of a new organic moisturizer with mangosteen and it really does make her skin glow, blah, blah, blah. I’m so used to her happy babbling that the absence of it is a bit unsettling.
“Something wrong?” I wonder.
“No, I think your hair’s coming out really well. I was worried it wouldn’t hold the wave, but–”
“I meant with you. You seem off tonight.”
“Do I?” She turns the question back on me and studiously avoids making eye contact in the vanity mirror. Something is definitely going on.
“Yeah, you do, so spill. Is it work, or did Tommy do something stupid? He stiffed you for his half of the cable again, didn’t he? I can give you some money if you–”
“There are other things in life besides work and money.”
“You have your priorities; I have mine,” I tease her, but she doesn’t respond; she just keeps fussing with my hair. That’s okay. She doesn’t have to say anything. I’ve got her number. The wistful look in her eyes, the reticence to talk, the loss of her natural effervescence . . . they mean only one thing – my sister is in a love funk brought about by some guy who’s disappointed or hurt her. I’d bet good money that the guy in this particular instance is Brody. I tried to warn her, didn’t I? Both of our lives would be so much easier if she would just listen to me! “Are you going to tell me what’s got you down?”
“I’m not down; I’m just . . . contemplative.”
I snort. “You’re never contemplative. I think that’s the first time I’ve ever even heard you use the word.”
“I’m not an airhead!” Willa asserts tetchily, jabbing a pin into my hair so hard that it pokes my scalp.
“Ow!” I protest, touching the now tender spot on my head.
“Sorry,” she apologizes half-heartedly.
“I know you’re not an airhead. I always say you’re just as smart as I am. It’s just that you’re more of a feeler than a thinker.”
She sighs. “That’s true. It’s hard for me to remove emotions from the equation and look at things logically.”
“Too bad you don’t know anyone who’s good at equations and applying logic,” I say, with a smirk.
“But can you do that without getting all Sloaney on me?” Her eyes meet mine in the mirror, and I see skepticism in them.
“My name’s an adjective now?”
“Sloaney: to be strongly opinionated, judgmental, and have a tendency to issue orders rather than kindly suggest things.”
“You should double check that defin
ition in the dictionary. I’m pretty sure it means ‘to always be right and give others the benefit of your insight and wisdom.’”
Forgetting her melancholy for a moment, Willa chortles. “All right, I’ll tell you, because I really would like to get your take on the situation. But . . . no lectures and no ‘I told you so’s. Agreed?”
I make a face. “You’re really tying my hands here, but okay.”
Walking around the chair, Willa picks up the two ornamental hair pins (three rows of small pearls in a circular design) she’s letting me borrow to add a little “pizazz” to my ‘do. “I went on a date with Brody last Saturday,” she confesses, leaning back against the vanity table. “At least I think it was a date. It was lunch at his house. He invited me over, said he wanted to try out some edible flower recipes.”
“Sounds promising.” This is me being non-judgmental and supportive, even though I want to say, “What kind of lame first date is lunch at his house? Edible flowers – gross! Why couldn’t he take you out for a decent meal? Cheap men are the worst; he’s probably stingy in bed, too!”
“Yeah, I had high hopes, and the lunch went even better than I could have imagined. He put a lot of effort into it, dressed nicely, set a beautiful table, cooked some amazing food that he seemed eager to get my opinion on. We talked, and laughed, and shared funny stories about our childhoods, and he didn’t mention Justine, not even once!”
“He must have finally bored himself on the subject,” I snark, which earns me a recriminatory look from my sister. “I mean, that’s great! Progress in the right direction. Yay!” I raise my fisted hands in the air and shake them like I’m rooting for Team Brody.
“I thought so . . .” She absent-mindedly smooths down the floral, cutout-embellished skirt of her spearmint-colored dress, and I wonder if she made the garment herself. It’s a little too short (above the knee!) and cutesy for my taste. Looks great on her, though. “But our lunch ended more abruptly than I would have liked because I got a text from a client. It was an emergency, so I had to leave.”
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