“Well, uh ... since you finished it last night, and Faith had been asking about your stuff, I decided to take the chandelier in to the store this morning.” Her cringe looked a little less fake as she reached the end of her confession. Probably because my face must have shown complete horror.
“You did what?” I barely got the words out as the blood drained from my head. I wasn’t ready. “It wasn’t ready!”
Dear God, I felt like I had just woken up naked at a fair.
“Jazz, you had no right to do that. I wasn’t finished, there was still so much, and the wiring ... the wiring hasn’t been tested, and I’m not sure I’m ready yet, what would I even charge for that piece of crap, and who the hell—”
Faith had said something, and her words finally penetrated. “It what?”
“It sold,” Faith repeated with a shrug of her shoulders and a huge smile.
“It did?” I whispered. “How much?”
Faith and Jazz beamed, and Jazz bounced up and down as we all looked on.
“Well,” Faith said. “I usually have a forty percent mark up on my home furnishings, and I wanted to make it worth your time, and mine, so I sold it for forty-one hundred dollars.”
I made some sort of weird squeaking sound as I reacted in shock. “You what? Four thousand and one hundred dollars? Who in their right mind would pay that much for a glued together bunch of washed up stuff?”
“It was beautiful, Keri Ann,” Faith pronounced, as Jazz nodded and murmured her agreement.
“You mean I made,” I quickly paused to calculate, “about two thousand four hundred dollars today?”
I was breathless and a little shaky. Mrs. Weaton steered me onto one of the rocking chairs, and I made to sit down, and then stopped cold.
“Who bought it?” I asked.
Oh hell, no. I glared at Jazz. “Who bought it, Jazz?” She furrowed her brows in confusion.
“What do you mean?” she asked, and then she got it. “Oh.” She looked at Faith. “I wasn’t there when the sale happened. Faith, who did you say bought it? Did someone come in to the store?”
I grabbed onto Jazz’s hand and she gripped me hard back. I didn’t even want to acknowledge the kinds of feelings I would be having if she told me a guy bought it, or someone from California called. And it would be the latter probably, at his behest, if the flooring debacle was any kind of indication.
“Oh,” said Faith, oblivious to the tension. “This lady is here with her husband on vacation from Ohio, some kind of second honeymoon, whatever. Anyway, she saw it and almost went into spasms of pleasure. She couldn’t stop touching it, absolutely adored it. If she hadn’t bought it, I was going to have to start charging her groping fees.” She laughed.
My hand relaxed infinitesimally. The fact that I had automatically assumed it wasn’t a legitimate sale wasn’t lost on Jazz, and she’d give me a hard time about it later. But for now we grinned at each other stupidly. At least, I was grinning stupidly. Jazz would cluck like a hen if she could, such was the proud bearing of her shoulders and I told you so eyebrows.
“And I’d like to commission three more, all slightly different of course. Do you have any other things I can put in the shop?”
“She sure does,” said Jazz. And the next half hour consisted of us bringing stuff down from the attic and Jazz showcasing all my various projects ... from an old mirror framed with driftwood to sea glass-bejeweled photo frames ... like she was hosting a promo special. I looked on in bashful wonder.
Finally, both Jazz’s mom and Brenda arrived and we all got comfortable on the porch to start the book discussion.
“So, who thinks the parallel dimension theme is symbolic of the unattainability of the perfect man?” Jazz asked loudly. And basically, for me, it went downhill from there.
Between the pointed observations from Mrs. Weaton and Jazz about the heroine having to learn to trust and suspend her disbelief, and the references by the oblivious members of the book club about how perfectly cast Jack Eversea was in the role, I decided to stay out of most of the discussion.
Instead I opted to refill ice tea and offer snacks. It was the longest hour and a half ever.
*
At about six o’clock we were wrapping it up, and I felt my phone buzz. I waved goodbye to Liz and Faith who were catching a ride with Brenda and slunk into the kitchen for some privacy. A bubble of nervous tension lodged in my throat.
Late Night Visitor: Do you ever watch sunsets?
Me: Yes, we get those here, too. You missing California?
I wondered if my text responses came over snarky, or amusing.
Late Night Visitor: California, not especially. You, yes. I found a spot for a sunset—you want to come watch it with me?
I put the phone down and was banging my head against the kitchen wall when Jazz came back in. She cocked her head at me. I pointed at my phone. She picked it up and looked at the text.
“Late Night Visitor? Interesting ... Oh man, sunsets? Does he have a playbook?” She rolled her eyes. It would have seemed cheesy from anyone else but not from Jack for some reason.
“Jazz, I’m in so much trouble. I really, really, like him. And he has to go back to Audrey.”