I stared at her, trying to figure out where she was going with this. “We’re dating.”
She took a deep breath and looked way more awkward and nervous than I’d ever seen her. “Okay, let’s go for the blunt approach. Are you two having sex?”
I blinked.
I blinked again.
And then I burst into laughter. I had to dab at my eyes before my mascara got all smeared.
“I know I’m not your mom,” she said, looking flustered, “and I’m not here to cast judgment on you if you are … doing … that, but I just want to make sure you’re being safe.”
“Is this, like, the talk?” I asked, trying not to giggle, and totally failing. I decided to spare her the embarrassment of having this conversation. “No,” I said adamantly. “We are not having sex. I will let you know if we do.”
She still looked kind of awkward and nervous, but relieved, too. “Good. You have your whole life to live without worrying about being physically intimate with another human being.”
I nodded gravely but on the inside I was laughing again—Adrian wasn’t exactly a human being.
“There,” she said, releasing the last strand from the curling iron. She ran a comb through my hair, twisting the individual strands into larger, more elegant curls. “You’re all set.”
I hopped off the toilet cover and stood in front of the mirror. And had another Green Thing moment. I forgot that underneath normal, plain Caitlin was a more sophisticated, somewhat less-plain Caitlin. It also helped that Rachel had done my makeup; she was wicked good with eyeliner. As much as I was interested in fashion, I hadn’t exactly mastered makeup yet—Mom hadn’t worn any, ever, so I’d tried to copy what I saw in magazines and Vogue shoots, to very, very limited success. Most of the time I went really simple: foundation, mascara, ChapStick. Tonight, though …
Norah passed by in the hallway, stopped, backtracked, and looked in. “Is prom early this year?” she asked, staring at me.
“Is it too much?” Rachel asked her daughter, looking worried.
“No,” Norah said. “I’ve just never seen Caitlin look so…” She trailed off as if the reflection in the mirror spoke for itself.
“Thanks, Norah,” I said, and meant it.
“Adrian’s here,” Norah said suddenly, turning. Wow, how had she heard that?
“Hurry up and get dressed!”
I ran into my room and threw off my bathrobe. Careful not to mess up my makeup or frizz my hair, I tugged the dress over my head and looked at myself in the full-length mirror hanging on the inside of my wardrobe. It was a knee-length black dress with a square-cut neck and sheer, wrist-length sleeves. I slid on my Halloween stilettos and contemplated what coat to wear. My regular jacket would look awkward over this outfit.
There was a knock at the door. “Come in,” I called, rifling through the wardrobe a little frantically.
“I thought you might not have anything to wear with that dress, so I dug this out,” Rachel said, stepping through my door. In her hands was a black, floor-length wool coat.
“That’s gorgeous,” I breathed.
“I bought it on a whim when I lived in the city,” she said, holding up the coat to me. “Don’t have much use for it now.” I slid my arms through the champagne-pink satin lining.
“You lived in New York?”
She smiled. “A long time ago. I’d won a few beauty pageants in high school; thought I wanted to be a model.”
I had not known this. “Why’d you leave?”
Her smile grew. “I met Joe. My car broke down in Stony Creek on my way to visit a friend and he happened to be the only one around for miles. I fell in love with the town, and I fell in love with him. After that, I didn’t want to be anywhere else.”
“Rachel,” I began, and she looked at me. I didn’t know exactly how to say this. “A while back, Joe mentioned that he knew why you and my mom stopped talking. If there’s really a reason why I never met you guys before my mom died, would you tell me, sometime?”
She pressed her lips into a thin line, and I couldn’t tell if she was sad or angry. After a moment, she smiled. “Yes. But not tonight. Now go on, I bet Adrian’s waiting.”
She pushed me gently out the door and I tried not to trip going down the stairs wearing the high heels and the bulky coat. I reached the bottom, looked up, and realized that Adrian was standing there, next to the door, watching me with a small smile on his face. He was wearing his usual understated designer jeans, but he’d put on nice shoes and beneath his coat I could see a collared shirt. I was glad I wasn’t the only one who’d sort of dressed up.
When I reached him, he bent down and kissed me on the cheek, whispering, “You look beautiful.”
I blushed and mumbled, “Thank you.”
“I expect you to take care of Caitlin,” Joe warned.