She worked damn hard for no paycheck. The thing that made Size Me Up unique was that in addition to selling cute clothes in a large variety of sizes, Ellis—having amazing skills with a needle—altered clothing. She mostly provided the service for her shorter customers, but she had one seven-foot client who practically kissed her feet when Ellis made her a pair of jeans that covered her heels. Ellis’s personal services weren’t cheap, but when those women walked out with a garment that fit them perfectly, they were more than happy to pay the price. They were grateful and loyal, and they were the reason Ellis would continue to live on canned soup and boxed cereal.
If things stayed just the way they were, she would be fine. But if anything happened, anything at all—if the air conditioner broke, or her computer died, or the wind blew the wrong way—she would be done for. She couldn’t let that happen. She couldn’t give Jack the satisfaction of watching her fail. She couldn’t go back to the career that made her miserable.
“I can see you thinking,” Cherri said. “You are having that daily internal battle where you’re wondering if quitting your job, dumping your asshole boyfriend, and opening this store was a mistake.”
“You know me so well,” she grinned at Cherri.
“I do,” Cherri said softly. “I want to be you when I grow up.”
Ellis could barely afford to keep Cherri on as a worker, but she would forever. Cherri was a good girl. She was mature. She worked hard, went to school full-time, had another job in her college’s library, and took care of her grandmother, but those weren’t the only reasons Ellis admired her. Cherri was probably the most beautiful woman Ellis had ever seen, with thick golden hair and a face so classic it should have been painted. But Cherri wasn’t like most twenty-one-year-old girls. She was over six feet tall, and while her body was ample and lush it was far from model-like. Far from the notice of boys her age. Ellis knew how she felt. Ignored. Like an outsider. Ellis had opened Size Me Up for the outsiders, and she would gladly forgo a paycheck to ensure Cherri had this place, too.
“I want to be you when I grow up.” She gently squeezed the girl’s arm. “Now be a good little worker and go to my office and balance the books.”
“Sorry. I can’t. I’m no good with numbers. That’s why I majored in art.”
Ellis threw back her head and whimpered. “Please. I suck at the business part of owning a small business. I just want to make pretty clothes.”
“You don’t have to worry about the books, Ellis. Just let them sit there. Of course if you do, the only clothes you’ll be making will be out of old newspapers you find on park benches. We can make it a trend. Call it homeless chic.”
“Wow.” Ellis blinked at her young friend. “That’s some effective guilt.”
“I live with a seventy-four-year-old lady. I learned from the best.”
Ellis flashed Cherri a grin before taking a huge bite of her cookie. The sugary rush gave her the strength she needed to stop whining and face the mess in her office. “I’m heading back to the grind.”
When she got back to her office, papers were still scattered all over her desk and her bookkeeping software was still up. All the numbers were the same as when she’d left half an hour ago. Apparently the office-managing elves had yet to pay her a visit.
“This is fucking depressing,” she whispered, taking yet another bite of her Black and White. The cookie was really good. Just like she’d imagined, and she didn’t even have to touch a penny from her meager savings to enjoy it. Too bad that whenever she ate one from now on she would think of the man who’d bought it for her.
Mike Edwards played a bigger part in her life than anybody had known. At first he was the hot guy in her neighborhood she fantasized about from afar. Her secret crush. Which became not so secret anymore when she pointed him out to her older sister. To this day she didn’t understand what had possessed her sister to go after him. But Dina did go after him. She brought him to Ellis’s apartment. Forced Ellis to spend time with them and then had the nerve to try to have sex with him in her bed the night of her law school graduation party.
That was the night things irrevocably changed between Ellis and her sister. After their huge argument they didn’t speak for months. Even four years later they could barely stand to be in the same room. Dina had broken her trust as a sister, but Mike … Even though he had been inside her home, even though they spent three hours alone talking about everything that came to their minds, as soon as Dina came around he had forgotten about her. He proved to her that hot guys don’t go after brainy fat girls.
She wanted to blame him for Jack. For making her feel like she was not good enough. But that wasn’t fair because that’s just what guys like him did. Maybe she should blog about the experience and call her post “The Man Who Ruined Love for Me.” But she disregarded that thought as soon as it entered her mind. It was too dramatic even for her.
“Ellis?”
She looked up to see Belinda in the doorway. Belinda became her best friend in high school. She was curvy and exotic and the most fashionable person Ellis had ever met. But besides just her best friend, she was Size Me Up’s store manager. Ellis thanked God daily for her experienced, efficient retail manager. She would have been sunk long ago without her.
“I love you, Belinda,” she blurted out. “I mean it. I’m really glad that you quit your job and took a pay cut to work for me. You know I couldn’t do this without you and I promise that as soon as we start bringing in more cash I will give you a huge raise.”
“I rather have a shrine built to my awesomeness,” the redhead grinned. “But honestly, honey, you know I’d rather work for you than that old bitch who was draining the life out of me. That combined with the much shorter commute is worth the shitty pay.”
“I really wish I could pay you more,” she said seriously.
“I know.” Belinda sighed after hearing that promise for the hundredth time. “I won’t leave here until we go down in flames, and we won’t. So stop stressing so much. The customers love this place. We’re going to be fine.”
“From your lips to God’s ears,” Ellis mumbled, feeling slightly better.
“Well, boss lady.” Belinda glanced at the clock. “I came in here to remind you that if you don’t leave right now, you’re going to be late for dinner at your parents’ house.”
“Shit.” Ellis looked at the clock and then at her calendar. “Shit. Was that tonight?”
She wasn’t sure if she could tolerate a dinner with her parents (her mother) after the day she’d had.
“Yes, and hurry before Phillipa calls here.”
“I’m going.” She stood, shoving the last bit of cookie in her mouth before running out the door.
*
Instead of driving to her parents’ cottage she decided to walk. It gave her a chance to burn off the cookie she’d inhaled and get reacquainted with the town she had left ten years ago. Rhode Island. Boston. Manhattan. The whole time she was away pursuing a career she didn’t want she knew that something was missing in her life. It took a brutal breakup with Jack to make her realize that this place was what was missing in her life. Durant was a college town. A cool place with dozens of funky shops and cafés, an expansive green where new bands played every Saturday night, and young idealistic kids filling the streets. But it was more than that. At its heart Durant was a small town, with locals who cared about one another and a sense of community that she had a hard time finding elsewhere.
She opened her shop on St. Lucy Street because it was the lifeline of the small city, and even though she had been away for so long not much had changed. Mrs. Underwood still ran the yarn shop. Postal worker Mr. Conner still stopped into every shop on his daily route, and the guy in the purple bandanna still played his guitar on the patio of the Don Luca Café for lunchgoers every day.
It was good to be home. And good to be near her parents again. Even though they sometimes drove her crazy, she’d rather be near them than anywhere else.
“El
lis? Is that you?” she heard as she entered her parents’ home.
“Yes,” she answered, hearing that question for the second time that day.
Her father looked up from his spot on the couch, not making eye contact, just giving her a once-over to confirm it really was her.
“Hi, Daddy.” She sat next to him, studying her dashing father’s ensemble for the day. Blue collared shirt, matching blue tie, and pajama pants. “Snoopy pants?”
“I’ve always liked Snoopy,” he said not looking at her. “Peanuts premiered in eight newspapers the day I was born. Snoopy did not appear until the third strip. He wasn’t identified by name until November fourth of that year.”
Ellis nodded slowly at the wealth of information her father had gifted her. He knew all kinds of useless facts; if he ever went on a game show, he could rack up some serious cash. But Dr. Walter Garret wasn’t the type of man who would play or even watch a game show. He was a scientist by trade, a physiologist who studied the physical and biochemical functions in humans and animals. Truthfully, Ellis had no flipping clue what her father did for a living.
“I bought you some chocolates.” Walter looked at her nose. “I put them in the cabinet above the sink in between the brown and white sugars.”
“Thank you, Daddy,” she said.
“I asked your mother to order Chinese food tonight. Chicken with garlic sauce, dumplings, and fried rice. That’s what you like.”
“Yes, Daddy, I do.”
That was how he showed her he loved her. Food. Not once had he ever said the words, nor could she remember him ever embracing her, but he always spent time with her. He always asked her to come in his office and sit with him while he researched, feeding her gummy bears and marshmallows, only quiet foods so her chewing would not disturb his thinking. He was the reason she had eight cavities the year she turned ten. Every filling had been worth it.
She gently placed her hand on his knee, earning her a look at her forehead. “How’s work, Daddy?”
“Good, good.” He nodded. “Very good. My colleagues and I are studying the heart functions in bears while in hibernation and how the organ adapts to stressful situations. We hope to compare it with the functions of the human heart during rest.”
Ellis drifted off while her father spoke in scientific terms she would never understand. “I’m glad to hear that, Daddy,” she said when he paused. “Where’s Mom?”
“In the garden. The deliveryman should be here in fourteen minutes. Please ask your mother to wash her hands.”
“Of course.” She smiled at her father and left him to go find her mother, wondering what it was about him that had caused her mother to fall in love.
*
She found Dr. Phillipa Gregory sitting in the middle of her tomato plants frowning. Ellis took the chance to study her mother as she rolled a small tomato in her hand. Phillipa was a tiny speck of a woman with a huge brain and big mouth. She was head of Women’s Studies at Durant University, author of four feminist-themed books, and a former wild-child hippie. Phillipa drove her bonkers, but Ellis could honestly say she missed the pain in the ass while she was in the big city. And every time she saw her in the garden she thought, It’s good to be home.
“Ellis, come here,” she ordered in her still-thick Queens accent. “Doesn’t this tomato look sickly to you?”
“Um.” Ellis studied the small perfectly red fruit, not at all bothered by her mother’s lack of greeting. “Yes?”
“It’s too yellow on the bottom.”
“Okay, if you say so.”
“I do.” Phillipa took off her enormous straw hat, revealing her very long mass of silver hair, and wiped her brow with her forearm.
“Daddy would like you to come in for dinner and wash your hands. The deliveryman should be here in twelve minutes.”
Phillipa waved her hand, brushing off her husband’s request. “The food will still be hot if I’m three minutes late. Sit and chat with Mommy for a little while.” She patted the dirt beside her.
Uh-oh. Phillipa wanted to “chat” with her. Chats weren’t good. They usually involved Ellis biting her tongue while Phillipa offered up life lessons.
“How about we sit together on the glider?” Ellis suggested instead of saying no like she wanted. Ellis couldn’t control her mother’s mouth but she could control where she sat, and she wasn’t about to walk around for the rest of the day with brown smudges on her behind. That would give somebody else an excuse to study it.
“Oh, I forgot Miss Fancy Schmancy boutique owner can no longer sit in the dirt.” Phillipa rose more gracefully than Ellis ever could, more gracefully than any woman in her mid-sixties should be able to, and joined Ellis on the back porch.
“I never liked to sit in the dirt. Just because you’re a crunchy granola hippie doesn’t mean I am.”
“How did I raise such a smartmouth?” Phillipa looked skyward in mock horror. “My own daughter!”
“I learned it from the best.” Ellis shook her head at her mother’s bad acting as she sat next to her on the glider. “What did you want to talk about?”
“Oh, nothing.” Phillipa gave Ellis a sideways glance. “I’m just waiting for you to tattle on yourself for being rude to Agatha Toomey in the coffee shop.”
“She told you?”
What a bitch!
Ellis couldn’t believe the woman had contacted her mother so quickly. She thought she had until tonight before the hag tattled.
“Of course she told me.” Phillipa shrugged. “She said that maybe if you had a nicer mouth you and Jack would still be together.”
“Oh no she didn’t.” Ellis’s head snapped toward her mother. “I hope you set her straight about who dumped who because—”
“Relax,” Phillipa cut in. “I told her that you had no interest in Jackass and that you were moving on and dating again.”
That wasn’t true by a long shot but it was better than having Agatha throw Jack in her face at every opportunity. “Why are you still friends with her. She’s a bitch. Did she tell you I was there to buy a cookie?” Ellis huffed. “Or that she told me I should eat more fiber to help with my massive bloating or that she was willing to put me on a diet?”
“Yes.” Phillipa nodded. “She did, but don’t pay her any attention. If Aggie doesn’t recruit two new clients a week, a piece of her soul dies. And we’re not friends. She’s just somebody I exercise with, since my youngest daughter won’t.” Phillipa gave her another sideways glance. “It wouldn’t kill you to go to yoga with me three times a week. It’s just good for your heart, your balance. Everything.”
“Mom,” Ellis warned. Her mother was extremely fit and exercised religiously. She also had the metabolism of a ten-year-old boy. All of that made Ellis slightly bitter.
“Fine.” Phillipa put her hands up in surrender. “If you don’t want to talk about your health and potentially extending your life span, then we won’t. Let’s talk about your love life. When’s the last time you had sex?”
“Mom!”
“What?” Phillipa frowned as if she were confused, like it was okay for mothers to ask their daughters such extremely personal questions. “Sex is healthy. Didn’t you read my book Your Body, Your Canvas? It releases all kinds of endorphins.”
“We don’t have to have this conversation right now. The food should be here.” Ellis stood and tried to walk away but her mother grabbed her by the back of her pants, preventing her flight.
“There is nothing wrong with talking about sex, honey. It’s a natural expression of our bodies. I thought I raised you to believe that, but I guess our puritanical society has stomped all of that out of you.”
Ellis struggled to get away from her mother, but Phillipa proved to be freakishly strong. “I have to go to the bathroom. Please let me go.”
“You know your father and I have sex quite frequently, and we both are extremely happy.”
“Mother!” Ellis whipped her head around to stare at her mother. “This is not normal!
You are not normal. No daughter wants to hear any detail about her parents’ sex life, and I can’t believe you think that I’d want to share any part of mine with you.”
Phillipa rolled her eyes, unperturbed by Ellis’s outburst. “I just thought that if you were getting some you wouldn’t be so stressed out all the time. I worry about you, Ellie. What kind of mother would I be if I didn’t?”
“I’m fine. I promise. Now let me go. Daddy is waiting.”
“How is the store doing?” Phillipa ignored her daughter. “It looked beautiful last time I was in but, honestly Ellis, I don’t understand why you had to quit law altogether.” Phillipa let her go and raised her hands to ward off the inevitable verbal attack. “I know. I know you hated doing corporate law and personally I don’t blame you for not wanting to represent those scum-sucking bastards, but couldn’t you at least take a few clients here and there? Do some environmental law or some civil liberties stuff? Do you know how much money it cost to send you to Harvard Law?”
Here we go again. Phillipa and she had had this conversation every other week since Ellis announced that she was quitting her high-paying job in Manhattan. At first Ellis valiantly argued why it was better that she stopped practicing, but even all her arbitration skills couldn’t win her an argument with Dr. Phillipa Gregory.
Her mother just didn’t understand that her old life made her unhappy. Being a lawyer was Phillipa’s dream for her, and she went with it because she wanted to make her mother proud. But when she broke up with Jack, she realized that she couldn’t live her life for others. She should only do what made her happy.
“Thousands and thousands of dollars.”
“There’s a guy,” she blurted out before her mother could continue. “We just met and he’s gorgeous and I’m crazy about him.”
Liar, liar, pants on fire.
“What?” Phillipa stopped her familiar rant. “Who is he? What’s his name?”
“Um.” Ellis pulled her lower lip between her teeth. “I don’t want to tell you because I’m afraid I might jinx it. We really just met.”
Dangerous Curves Ahead: A Perfect Fit Novel Page 2