The shop itself was nice. It was clean, new, brightly lit, and refreshing. It was styled like an old-fashioned ice cream parlor with red counters and chrome stools, but the ice cream selection itself was much more modern. The line was self-serve, with flavors ranging from vanilla to raspberry, and the counter hosted a selection of toppings so expansive that Lara couldn’t identify all of the crumbled cookies and candy pieces.
Seeing it all made Lara feel like a kid in a literal candy store. She spared no expense, loading her bowl with a little bit of everything in an attempt to taste test as many of the flavors as possible. Her helping was massive, way more than she could eat in a single sitting. She’d definitely end up taking the bowl home and putting it in the freezer.
“Did you get enough?” Paige asked, eyeing the plastic container weighing down the scale. In comparison to her own cup of chocolate vanilla swirl, Lara’s serving looked particularly chaotic.
“I figured if you’re paying, I’d get my money’s worth.”
That earned her a chuckle. “You’re an evil genius. I shouldn’t have trusted you.”
Paige paid for her mistake in actual money, and Lara picked out a couple of free seats for them at the counter. A window rested on the wall at eye level, and Lara watched the cars go by on the street. It wasn’t a particularly scenic view, but Lara had always liked the warm tones that fall gave to the leaves and the sky and the people who were enjoying the cooler weather after the oppressive summer heat.
When Paige sat beside her, Lara glanced over to see a pink spoon dangling from the corner of her mouth. She was eating and walking because of course she was. Paige wasn’t one to wait.
“Okay, that was expensive, but it was worth it.”
Paige licked her spoon clean as Lara dug in for her first bite. The sugar melted on her tongue like an exploding rainbow fireworks display. She had packed so many flavors into one bowl that her second bite was completely different than the first. The dish was a chameleon of flavors and colors, all of it absolutely delicious. Lara hummed lightly.
They ate in comfortable silence for a moment, staring out the window and watching the occasional passerby. The outing was working as Paige had intended it to. It was a childish fix— going out for ice cream to distract from one’s problem, but as Lara shoveled sugar into her mouth, she was barely thinking of Sanchez.
It wasn’t long before Paige was scraping the bottom of her bowl and licking her spoon in that loud, obnoxious way that Lara had always hated when people other than Paige did it. Somewhere over the course of living together, she’d gotten used to the sound of Paige eating. Or if not gotten used to, she had liked Paige enough that she forgave the pet peeve.
“There’s no way I’m going to be able to finish all of this.” In lieu of scooping up another bite, Lara used her spoon to gesture to the still massive mountain of slowly melting ice cream in her cup.
“That’s your fault for getting so much.” Paige tossed her own empty bowl into a nearby trash can. “If you need help finishing the rest, I’ll be glad to take it off your hands.”
Lara shielded her bowl from Paige’s threatening advances. “Back off. It’s mine. You don’t want my germs anyway.”
Paige rolled her eyes. “I’ve had your germs before, Lara.”
Good point. “Still mine,” Lara said. “I’m saving the leftovers.”
Cup in hand, Lara headed for the doors with Paige on her trail. Once in the car, she balanced the cup between her legs and decided that if an accident occurred and she got ice cream all over Paige’s interior, she’d only feel slightly guilty about not grabbing a lid.
Paige climbed in after her, in no hurry, the small smile on her face aimed at nothing in particular.
Lara buckled herself in and let Paige maneuver them out of the parking lot. Paige’s tire cut too close to the curb as she pulled onto the main road, but it didn’t bother Lara as much as it usually would have.
“Hey, do you want to get dinner?”
Lara blinked back her surprise. “I just ate a pound of ice cream.” She eyed the cup in her lap. The longer she looked at it, the more her stomach churned at the thought of eating more food.
“I meant later,” Paige said.
“I’ve already got plans tonight. Sorry.” Lara was not sorry. After their little ice cream outing, Lara was actually in a decent mood for once, and that mood was only going to get better when she saw Kerry tonight.
“You have plans?” Paige asked. “With who? Rocket?” Lara shot her a death glare. If Paige had been looking at the road like she was supposed to, she wouldn’t have seen Lara’s expression, but Paige did see it, and she did not look happy about being scowled at. “Not that you don’t have friends.” Paige scrambled to cover her trail, but neither of them were convinced.
“I do have friends,” Lara said. “And a girlfriend. Sort of. Maybe. Don’t worry about it,” Lara said, deciding that Paige didn’t need to know the answer anyway. “Just take me back to my car.”
Paige gave a sigh so small that Lara didn’t know if she was supposed to hear it. The car gave a tired sputter, a little more run-down than Lara remembered, but it chugged ahead.
“This was fun,” Paige said, and Lara quietly admitted to herself that maybe spending time with Paige wasn’t the worst part of this day. Maybe the nice weather was putting her in an extra-good mood. Maybe she was just excited to kill time until her date.
“It wasn’t bad,” Lara said.
“Want to do it again sometime?”
Lara felt the chill of the cup between her thighs, the warmth of the sun against her cheek. “We’ll see.”
CHAPTER 12
Lara had never been inside Taylor Made. Any clothing adjustments she’d ever needed she could easily take care of herself or by asking Betty to help her, but that had been for simple hems on outfits that were inexpensive and easily replaceable. Lara didn’t trust herself to fit an entire suit, which was why this one had never fit right.
She made sure to show up exactly when Kerry had told her. They might be dealing with fashion, but Lara didn’t do fashionably late. She didn’t want to risk coming too early and seeming desperate or interrupting Kerry’s work either, though. She approached the front door at exactly six and caught the store hours listed on the sign posted to the door. Nine to five. Kerry must have stayed late for her.
Lara felt herself smiling when she walked in. Kerry smiled too upon seeing her. She was sitting near the front of the shop at her work station. She had a measuring tape wrapped around her neck like a boa, and pencils tucked behind each ear like horns. She looked like something out of a variety show, and Lara wondered if she herself looked this eccentric when she was surrounded by her knitting equipment.
“Hey there, stranger.” Kerry stood, and her stool squeaked across the linoleum floor. “Welcome to my domain.” She held out her arms like a queen presenting her kingdom.
Lara took a brief look around. It was a nice little shop. Quaint, but not too small, considering the number of customers they probably had. There was Kerry’s messy work station, another cleaner sewing station on the opposite side of the room, and rows of shelves and fabric in the back that were harder to see. Only the front lights were turned on.
“If you’re looking for cats, you won’t find any, I’m afraid,” Kerry said, her tone teasing. “We only serve humans here, and having pets in the shop seems like an allergy hazard. Wouldn’t want to kill anybody.”
“Please tell me that you’re secretly all of the Internet trolls who go around calling me The Cat Killer, and that it was a fake prank all along.”
“I’m afraid not. Unfortunately those are real idiots,” Kerry said.
“Yeah, I had a bad feeling about that.”
“Is this the suit?” Kerry asked, pointing to Lara’s garment bag.
“Yep.”
“Let me see.”
Lara handed her the bag and Kerry unzipped it. She assessed the fabric carefully. “I like it. Get changed.”
<
br /> “Uh.” Lara shifted self-consciously. “Right here, or?”
“Yes, right here.”
“Oh.” Getting half naked within the first five minutes of the second date wasn’t exactly something Lara made a habit of, but in hindsight she probably shouldn’t have agreed to a suit fitting if she wasn’t prepared to take off at least some of her clothes.
Hand on hip, Kerry tapped her foot on the tile, stared Lara down, and waited impatiently for her to start undressing.
Sheesh. Talk about lesbians moving quickly.
Slowly, Lara dropped to one knee, prepared to make a fuss of untying her shoes to stall for time. Intently, she focused on the dirty gray laces, hoping the more tunnel-visioned she became towards the task, the less she’d feel Kerry’s eyes burrowing into the top of her skull.
A sharp bout of laughter caused Lara to look up into Kerry’s mischievous grin. “Lara, stop. I’m messing with you. We have a changing station.” Kerry walked to the corner of the room and pulled back a curtain to reveal a small, sectioned-off room with a mirror and several hooks. It reminded Lara of the dividing curtains in Betty’s old hospital room.
“Right.” Embarrassed, Lara stood up, took her suit, and entered the room. She’d forgotten how long it had been since she’d tried the outfit on. It smelled like musty mothballs, and that only reminded Lara of Betty’s hospital room even more. What was the point of wearing a suit to impress your date if you smelled worse than your grandmother while you were wearing it?
Oh well. If the smell of her was enough to scare Kerry away, Lara didn’t want to be with someone so shallow, right? Still, it was a bit unnerving to walk out in the oversized thing to be directly inspected for flaws. She pulled the curtain open and bent her voice into a sing-song tone. “Okay, I’m coming out!”
It was a stupid joke she already regretted. But she stepped out and spun around slowly, showboating in an ironic way for Kerry, who, to her credit, gave a couple of faint cheers and slow claps and generally papered over Lara’s insecurities with what seemed like genuine enthusiasm.
“You look great!”
Lara blushed at the compliment. “I’ll look a lot better once you make it actually fit.” Lara held her arms out and let the fabric drape out around her to show how loose it was.
“Yes, you will. Stand over here.”
Lara let herself be directed onto a small podium. Kerry invaded her personal space, and Lara let her. She quickly wrapped Lara in the tape and jotted down her measurements.
“This is a quality suit,” Kerry said, unfolding the tag from around Lara’s neck. “Cat sweaters must really bring in the bank.”
Lara had bought the outfit long before Festive Feline Fashion, but she played along. “It did until Roger Feldman ruined my business and made people think I was a serial cat killer.”
Kerry shrugged. “A little bad publicity never hurt anyone.”
“Tell that to my sales.”
“You just have to own it.” Kerry tightened Lara’s tie. Her fingers lingered at the nape of Lara’s neck, making the most miniscule adjustments to the fabric. “Everyone loves a bad girl, remember?”
Lara tried to ignore Kerry’s breath against her cheek. Her eyes flicked to the ceiling. “I’m not sure that applies when you’re selling cat sweaters on the Internet. I want to be the good girl for once.”
A car passed by outside. The floorboards creaked. Kerry’s body pressed into hers, and Lara instinctively closed her eyes for the kiss. Only it didn’t come.
“Shit.” Kerry’s whispered hiss made Lara’s eyes shoot open again. When she looked at the woman in front of her, Kerry’s face was draped in shadow. The store was pitch black. Kerry’s hand pulled away from the light switch to wrap around Lara’s wrist and yank it hard. “Hide!”
Before Lara could register what was happening, Kerry was pulling her towards the changing booth. When Lara’s back collided with the wall of the small space, her hiss of pain drowned out the sound of her spine slamming against the plaster. Kerry pulled the drapes closed and enclosed them in the makeshift room.
“Why are we hiding?” Lara whispered.
“Taylor is back. I’m not supposed to be here.”
“What? You do work here, right?”
“Of course! But employees aren’t allowed to be here after he locks up for the night. He’s the only one with a key, but he keeps a spare under the ficus out front. I found it once when I was sweeping.”
It took Lara a moment to process what was happening. “So we’re breaking and entering?”
“I prefer to think of it as trespassing.”
“That’s so much better.”
“Shh!”
Kerry’s hand clasped Lara’s mouth shut. Her palm was sweatier than Lara’s had been the first time they held hands.
Lara could hear rustling just outside the room. She cursed herself for asking any questions at all. He was close.
“He must have forgotten something. He can’t be here for too long,” Kerry whispered.
Now it was Lara’s turn to do the shushing; she bit down softly on the meaty part of Kerry’s thumb.
Outside the changing station, Lara could hear footsteps. First they were close, then they were too close, and Lara held her breath. The lights flicked on, and Lara could see them shining through the slit between the curtain and the floor. She was acutely aware of everything, from the tightness in her chest to Kerry’s breath on her palm to Kerry’s nails digging into her waist. They were bundled up closer together than Lara had first realized, and she hated herself for noticing it at a time like this. Everything was suddenly hot, and Lara couldn’t tell if it was Kerry’s body on hers, the adrenaline in her system, or the lack of oxygen in her brain.
The footsteps tread lighter, and the light switched off. The two of them pulled their hands away, and Lara finally released her breath. She didn’t risk taking in another until she heard the creak of the front door and the rusty twist of the lock.
“Is he gone?” Lara asked, making her voice nearly inaudible even to herself.
“I think so.”
Lara let out a sigh of relief. Kerry stepped away from her to peek her head out of the curtain, and Lara was glad for the space, even if part of her missed Kerry being so close.
“He’s gone,” Kerry said, her voice returning to normal volume.
Lara followed Kerry’s lead and stepped back out into the store. Through the front windows, they watched Taylor drive away. Behind the wheel of his car, he looked so nonthreatening. He was nothing but a small old man, hunched over and barely tall enough to see over the steering wheel.
“I wouldn’t have pegged Taylor to be so mean,” Lara said. “Would you really have gotten in that much trouble if he’d caught us?”
“He isn’t that scary,” Kerry said. “I probably could’ve sweet-talked my way out of trouble. But where’s the fun in that?”
Apparently Kerry thought that re-enacting the hide-in-the-closet scene of a horror film was fun. Good to know. “You could have at least warned me that we weren’t supposed to be here.”
“I didn’t think he’d come back,” Kerry admitted. “My bad.”
“Yeah, your bad,” Lara agreed. She lifted her arms as Kerry moved to resume her work and cringed. “Your punishment for scaring me half to death is having to smell my sweat.”
Kerry laughed. “I deserve that.” She picked up a needle and got to work. “When I get done, you’ll look so good that I won’t even care about your sweaty pits.”
At least Lara couldn’t say the date was boring.
CHAPTER 13
April’s garage was by no means small, but the float she’d built was so big that it left no room for her minivan, which was parked in the driveway when Lara pulled up. The float wasn’t massive, but it took up enough space that Lara was forced to hover by the door, leaving April with barely enough room to maneuver around the edges of the float and pick up a hammer to resume her work.
The float was still incom
plete, but April was making thorough headway. Where it had been a blank slate before, now blue streamers lined one side like doilies around a table, and a papier-mâché ball balanced at the back of the float with two giant papier-mâché sticks in front of it.
“Is that a skull and crossbones?” Lara asked.
April threw a loose streamer in Lara’s direction. It did a loop in the air and barely grazed her left leg. “It’s a ball of yarn and knitting needles!” April gave her work a critical once over. “It’s not finished yet. You’ll see.” As she went back to hammering, her pace was even more determined.
“I completely forgot about the parade,” Lara admitted. Her life had been so busy that the idea had fallen onto the backburner.
“How do you forget a parade?” April’s eyes stretched wide. Forgetting parades was apparently the only thing that could shock April Helm.
“There’s so many of them, they all blur together.” It was true. Why did small towns have so many goddamn parades? It seemed like everything from Homecoming to Arbor Day deserved its own all-out Macy’s Thanksgiving Day-style celebration. Oklahoma City was not nearly as festive.
“All the more reason to keep track of them, if you ask me,” April said. “I write them all down in my calendar.”
Of course she did. Lara didn’t even own a calendar.
“What is this one again?”
“The Harvest Festival!” April pointed the head of her hammer towards the wall where a puppy calendar was tacked next to the tool rack. It took Lara a moment to see where April was leading her eye. Harvest Festival Parade was jotted inside the November ninth square, but it was the monthly image that caught Lara’s eye. Four dogs sat around a dining table like it was a poker table and passed gravy boats to each other like poker chips. A dachshund wore a pilgrim’s hat. A boxer wore an over-the-top and historically inaccurate Native American headdress. Lara was missing out on a huge market here, apparently. She’d never been much of a dog person, but holiday sweaters for dogs might be a good way to expand the business someday. Cute Canine Clothes could be the sister company to Festive Feline Fashion.
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