Saying Yes to the Mess

by M. Kate Quinn

  She pinned on a smile. “I’m going in eyes wide open, Mom. I feel good about it.”

  Angie nodded. “Okay, then. The decision is made.” She chewed her toast.

  ****

  Darius left the Sycamore River train station and strode in the direction of Maple Avenue where Jo-Jo’s Java House waited with its fresh hot Brazilian blend. Jo-Jo’s was his favorite. This was a good town. He feasted his eyes on the sites with nostalgia’s eye, the clock tower atop the town hall building, the park in the middle of the square. It was quiet there today, the benches along the walkways empty. The air was too cold.

  He pulled the collar of his coat up around his ears. Head down, he tramped along the sidewalk to Jo-Jo’s. He entered and took his place in the typical line that reminded him of a gas station with a trail of cars waiting to fuel up. The door opened behind him, and a rush of cold air hit the back of his head.

  Darius heard her voice and knew it was her before he even had to turn around. And there she was, the girl with the cat eyes, and she wasn’t frazzled one bit this morning. She was with another young woman, but his eyes were only interested in her. She’d shed her baggy overcoat, and today she sported a short quilted jacket that stopped at her waist. He noticed the nice pair of dark jeans that fit her well, particularly in the ass. She had a nice one. Her hair was combed and shiny like a chestnut’s shell, and it was pulled into a high ponytail that swished as she approached him. She wore gold hoop earrings, and her nice lips shone with an application of gloss. Her cat eyes were bright and, frankly, stunning in the daytime. So much for thinking she hadn’t been much to look at. Right now he couldn’t pull his gaze away.

  He fixed his eyes on her. “Caramel macchiato, extra caramel,” he said before he could think not to.

  “Oh.” Her gaze darted to her friend and back at him. “Hi.”

  “Good morning.” He felt his mouth curve upward. Why did this woman amuse him so?

  “I, uh, am glad I ran into you.” She rifled through her satchel and withdrew a patchwork leather wallet. “It gives me the chance to pay you back for the coffee.” She unzipped the wallet and pulled out a five-dollar bill. Handing it to him, she said, “Keep the change.”

  He accepted the bill because he didn’t want to argue with her again. “Thank you. But like I said that night, it was no big deal.”

  After an awkward moment, he turned to face forward again. He heard her friend whisper, “So that’s your pirate?”

  “Shhhh…”

  The words gave him a jolt, a reason to turn around. So he did. “What’d she just say?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Yes, she did.”

  “No. Uh-uh. Nothing.”

  He looked at the friend. “Did you just call me a pirate?”

  They were a silent pair, saucer-eyed. The girl from that night looked scared shitless, and he couldn’t figure out why it cracked him up as much as it did.

  “It’s, um, your turn,” The caramel-macchiato girl pointed toward the counter. “Wouldn’t want to hold up the line now, would we?”

  After placing his order with the barista, he heard her companion apologize, and the caramel macchiato girl said, “You’re going to get me into trouble.”

  And then the giggle. Caramel Macchiato Girl had a nice giggle, and when he handed his payment for his black, no sugar, he stifled his own grin. A pirate, huh?

  So she’d told the coffee story to her friend. He had no idea why it mattered one way or the other. Although she looked pretty damn good today—there was no denying it—he was not in the market for starting up with another woman on any level. He just didn’t want the hassle. And that was where he and Jake differed as well. His boss and college roommate dated as though it were an Olympic sport.

  “Enjoy your day, ladies,” he offered as he passed them on the way out the door. He flashed a quick smile, and a warm flush climbed her cheeks. She met his gaze with hooded eyes and gave a little nod. That little nod jabbed her insides, which made no sense whatsoever.

  ****

  Rylee trod beside Kit along the cold sidewalk. She did her best to quell the niggle of buyer’s remorse that intermittently pinched her gut. It was one thing last night to take a stand amidst the coziness and nostalgia of her grandmother’s apartment. It was another in the light of day to grasp what she’d signed up for. Her chitchat with Mom and Sonny this morning hadn’t helped matters one single bit.

  “So you were right about the guy,” Kit said, interrupting Rylee’s train of thought. “He does look like a pirate.”

  Rylee pulled her gaze over to her companion. “Yeah, well, at least I was able to pay him back. That’s done. Can’t wait to tick it off my list.”

  “He’s a looker, though, huh?”

  “As far as pirates go.”

  “He looks familiar, though, for some reason.”

  “You’re thinking about the time you saw Peter Pan. The pirate was the bad guy.”

  When they arrived at the shop, Rylee pulled out her key, and the two of them entered. It was cold inside, the heat having been turned down, and that was where it was going to stay until she had things settled. No sense in having to pay an exorbitant energy bill.

  She took off her jacket and threw it onto the settee. She pulled out her notebook and consulted the list she had begun last night. “Okay. The pirate’s done. Now I need to go over the list of samples. The ones that are not embossed with the word sample are good for resale. So I’m going to start with those.”

  Kit put her hands on her hips. “Run it by me again why we’re selling off all the dresses?”

  “I’m going to need some cash if I’m going to get things ready to reopen. I’ll need to order soon enough for the upcoming season.”

  Kit started at one end of the rack of dresses while Rylee began at the other. One by one they inspected the dresses, unzipping each bag and pulling the garments free. They made a pile of dresses to sell on eBay.

  “You’re going to need a marketing budget as well,” Kit said. “Are you keeping the name of the place?”

  “Of course,” Rylee said. “This will always be Rosie’s Bridals.” She folded a dress over her arm. “Am I doing the right thing, Kit?”

  “Don’t second-guess it.” Kit flashed a quick look and went back to studying the dresses wrapped in plastic bags. “I knew that’s what’s going on in your pretty little head. But, seriously, don’t.”

  “I’m thirty years old.”

  “So?”

  “So I’ve been back living with my parents because I lost my apartment due to the fact that I picked a doozy of a roommate who turned out to be a thief, and then money went out the window when I got fired for losing someone’s prized poodle. Who knows how I even got through the holidays? I just hope I’m not deluding myself about this. You should have seen my mother’s face this morning. It was like I told her I’m getting a sex-change operation.”

  “We know how your mom can be. Don’t take on her hesitation.”

  “Well, the fact that this whole plan will get me out from under her roof is a powerful motivation. So I’ll try to keep that in the front of my mind.”

  “That is an incentive,” Kit said with a smirk.

  “I don’t mean to be so tough on my mom. On the Angie-o-Meter, she’s off the charts these days, you know? Granted, it took a failed marriage with my father followed by two ridiculously awful new husbands until she met Sonny and found her quote, unquote calling. She was in her late forties when she technically started behaving like a responsible adult. My father, well, he was in his thirties when he realized that, oh yeah, he was a gay American. So it took him that long to even discover who he was. Are you seeing a pattern here, Kit?”

  “You’re fishing for reasons to keep that doubt alive and well.”

  “Just stating the facts.”

  “Those aren’t your facts, Rylee. What your parents did doesn’t mean it’s your legacy. This,” Kit said with her arms wide. “This is your legacy.”

 
Rylee’s heart swelled. Dear Rosie Mandanello and her unconditional faith in her only granddaughter. If it killed her, she’d honor that old gal. Her parents’ issues were not hers, but God help her when she decided to pick a life partner. Rosie had tried coaching her on that front as well. Rosie knew her daughter had been no one to give tips on how to pick a guy. Rylee’s mom had a bad habit of marrying first and then finding out they were Mr. Wrong.

  She loved her mother. She did. But Angie had morphed into so many versions of herself over the years, and even from a tender age, Rylee had had to adapt to all those versions. There was the “got to find a man who isn’t gay Angie” she’d been when Rylee’s father first left. That was when Rylee was around ten years old and when she had begun to bond like glue to Rosie. She and her grandmother made the cupcakes for the bake sales. She and her grandmother had worked on book reports, dioramas, posters, and papier-mâché figurines. Rosie had taught her the way extra-cold butter made for flakier piecrust. Stuff like that.

  Then when Angie met stepfather number one, she had morphed into a leather-jacket-wearing woman who suddenly liked motorcycles and tattoos. Angie had a tattoo of a leafy vine that wound around her left ankle.

  The second stepfather brought a different Angie. She’d gone by Angela in those days, and their house smelled of oregano and basil most of the time with his Italian cooking. But he’d turned out to be a lying jerk who enjoyed the effects of illegal substances, and even Angie had a limit.

  After the second remarriage, Mom had taken a break from men and worked on getting her own act together. It was a good time for Rylee. Angie did her best to be the mom she thought Rylee needed. Rylee had been sixteen then, and now she was the first to admit she had been less than lovely to be around. Her favorite pastime had been watching old movies on television and eating Cheez Doodles right out of the bag. It was a chubby time for Rylee, and the girth made her cranky. What a cruel twist of fate that she’d finally gotten an attentive mother when she just wanted to be left the hell alone.

  Eugene Dalton, who went by Sonny, came along around the time Rylee was about to graduate high school. Her mother dating an art teacher in Rylee’s school had been awkward. Word spread fast because that was what Sycamore River did with gusto—gossip. Rylee had been prepared to hate him just because that seemed like the thing to do with Angie’s men, but try as she had, she just couldn’t dislike Sonny. He was affable enough, helped around the house, and he made her mother laugh with her head thrown back and her mouth open.

  Angie blossomed into a cool and calm person who hummed to herself all the time, learned about yarn and needle sizes, took up crochet. She found yoga and meditation. Sonny bought her a loom. She became a very likeable Angie. Namaste.

  Rylee’s father, well, what was there to say about a man who married, had a daughter, and then decided one day that he didn’t want to be a car salesman anymore but wanted to be an actor, and, oh yeah, he was gay? So Dad was alive and well these days living in San Francisco with someone named Dean, and they were both pursuing their passion for acting while working as line chefs in a waterfront restaurant.

  The only one in her lineage who knew how to choose a mate and choose a life was Rosie. She and Grandpa Sal had been something. Although he died when Rylee was just a teenager, she knew the love those two shared. The handholding, the shared giggles, the playful razzing of each other. The way Grandpa would show up at the salon with Rosie’s favorite sandwich from the deli and say “Thought you could use salami and provolone on a kaiser roll.”

  It was their brand of love. A simple sandwich that said it all. I know you love this, and I love you, so here I got it for you. She hadn’t had to wonder if Rosie and Sal experienced that elusive zoom when they were within a few feet of each other. Even with gray hair and the smell of Ben Gay, those two still felt it.

  Rylee envied that fairy-tale kind of love, but she feared in her heart that it was reserved for Rosie and Sal and people from their generation. Not for a thirty-year-old who agonized on how to tell her boyfriend she hadn’t wanted to move in with him, all while he was falling in love with Abigail, the magically delicious triangle player.

  “What are you thinking?” Kit asked. “I see your wheels going on in your head.”

  “I’m just thinking about Freddie and how wrong I was about him.”

  “Oh, so what? You weren’t that into him anyway. No, as you say, zoom. Am I right?”

  An image of Darius Wirth and the coffee-buying incident popped into her mind. The pirate with the dark skin and the flashy eyes and, goddamn it all, the man whose proximity had made her blood flow quicken and caused her heart to jolt up, then down. And wasn’t it just her luck that meeting the guy had been screwy and he’d overheard the pirate comment to boot? If he ever saw her again, he’d probably run the other way. Nice.

  “You’re not the only one that’s dabbled in dead-end relationships,” Kit said. “Don’t forget my lovely situation with Mike.”

  “Stupid Mike,” Rylee said. Mike had been Kit’s college boyfriend. They’d moved in together and had been on the path to happily ever after when he decided it wasn’t working. So he moved out, quit his job, and who knew where he was these days. Men.

  “Yeah, no more stupid men.”

  “Definitely.”

  “Does that include pirates?”

  Rylee threw a wad of paper at her.

  ****

  After going to The Wedgewood Home for the Aged in Madison, Darius felt like crap. His father was not going there. He didn’t care how he’d finagle it, but no, even though the home was the most affordable option before hitting the list of state-run facilities The Memory Center had provided him. He had hoped that The Wedgewood would have turned out to be the answer. But with its water-stained ceiling tiles, smell of puke or something in the air that made you want to puke yourself, and dour-faced staff members who didn’t even look you in the eye, no way.

  It was lunchtime, and he found himself again in Jabberwocky’s. But instead of one of those signature burgers, he ordered himself a grilled chicken salad. And a beer. The Wedgewood’s sad-looking façade with the droopy shutters about to fall from their wrought-iron hinges and the heavy satin drapes in the office that looked like a goddamn funeral home called for a pint of ale.

  He’d purchased a copy of a daily newspaper that included the part of Morris County in which Sycamore River was located. He hoped for more insight for the show.

  The cover story was all about the highway improvements on the fringes of Morristown, the county seat, and how traffic would be a pain in the ass for a while. The bridge on Bethany Lane was part of the improvements, and the anticipated completion wasn’t until sometime in the summer. Morristown’s traffic pattern would surely impact Sycamore River, considering the town was just south of it by way of Route 202. That could be good news for Sycamore River if commuters used their downtown while construction put a snag in Morristown traffic. Feeling a glimmer of anticipation, Darius read on, turning to page 5A where the story continued.

  And there it was at the top of page 5A, just below an ad for the Elk’s Club’s annual pancake breakfast, blaring at him like a beacon on a foggy shoreline.

  The photograph of the old lady from the bridal shop who’d recently passed away, the owner of the place that was top on his list for Wirth More. Rosie Mandanello, with her gray hair puffed up and sprayed stiff, looked into the lens of someone’s camera with crinkly-cornered lively eyes, as if she had a secret she wasn’t about to share. She was standing inside her store, Rosie’s Bridals on Main Street. Why hadn’t he ever laid eyes on the place? Granted, the storefront was small and tucked in between the Ladies Club and a mom-and-pop pharmacy. More to the point, though, was that he shied away from all things wedding. He was reminded of Caroline’s ultimatum. His former girlfriend had wanted marriage and babies. Darius wasn’t that guy. He’d wanted to kick himself for anything he’d done or said that made Caroline believe forever was where they’d been headed. There was no altar in
his future then or now or ever. It wasn’t that he didn’t believe in love and all that. He did. But at thirty-five, he’d never once felt as if he’d better sell his boat, not that he had a boat, to buy a painting so a woman would agree to be his bride.

  His parents’ story was unique, granted, and that kind of all-in love didn’t happen to people on a regular basis. And that was fine. Darius’s life was easier that way. Less mess. That kind of love had its price. Pop’s intense mourning had to have played a part in his mind’s fogginess, even acting like a big fat eraser to his mind. Who’d sign up for that?

  As he munched his salad, he read the entire human-interest piece. He’d already known the stuff about the bridal shop, that it had closed with Rosie’s death, but the article went on to elaborate on Sycamore River’s struggle to keep their old-town feel. With all the new restaurants and megabanks, little shops like Rosie’s Bridals were becoming a thing of the past. The scenario was ideal for Wirth More. He had to find out the scoop on the place.

  Chapter Eleven

  Up in the apartment Rylee and Kit worked through the morning, past lunch, and into the afternoon. Finally, they took a break and assessed their progress.

  With all the superfluous stuff boxed, bagged, or put out for the garbage pickup and all the necessary things put in proper places, Rylee could actually see some decent progress in the space that she just might start to call home.

  “I can’t believe it,” she said. “Thanks for helping with all this.”

  “We did good,” Kit said.

  Kit and her smile had a way of making Rylee believe that maybe she wasn’t such a screwup after all. When Kit first crossed the threshold to Rosie’s Bridals as the new seamstress, she’d appeared so young, but, man, had she impressed Rosie with her tailoring skill. Rylee remembered feeling a tinge of jealousy. She’d wished she had some true skill. But her jealousy hadn’t lasted long because she and Kit had bonded in record time, and on some gut level Rylee knew she could trust her. She didn’t get that feeling often. With all her bad choices in life, particularly in boyfriends along the way, she needed to be more discerning when it came to forging a bond of any kind. She’d been easily fooled. No more.