Suze gave me an amused glance. She squeezed my hand. “Now do Phoebe.”
“Sure,” she said, but I could tell she was not enthusiastic. As my grandma always said—not about me, obviously, because she thought I was gorgeous—you couldn’t make a silk purse from a sow’s ear.
“That’s okay,” I said. “We want to keep shopping.”
“No!” Suze protested. “I want to see.”
So I reluctantly submitted to the same full makeup treatments, and when she spun me around—surprise!—I didn’t look like a model.
“I love how that makes your mouth look so sexy,” Suze said.
The makeup had made my freckles disappear, and my eyelashes looked great, but I was still just me, not a presto chango version like Suze. “It’s nice,” I agreed. “Can I buy the mascara?”
“Of course,” the woman answered. “Anything else?”
“No.”
We cruised through the fashion shops, trying things on, low-rise jeans in saturated shades of red and purple and green, some so low I was afraid my butt crack would show if I bent over. We tried on bodysuits to go with the jeans, and I was pretty happy with the way my shape was displayed with those low jeans and clingy sweaters. Like my grandma, like my mother, I was curvy. Suze looked like a stick in those clothes, but when she tried on a silky blouse in blues and greens, she looked like a future version of herself, some person she’d have to grow into, and it was amazing.
We passed a jewelry store and stopped to admire the diamonds. “What kind of engagement ring would you want?” I asked.
“Not a diamond,” she said. “Maybe a ruby.”
“I think that might be bad luck.”
“Superstition.” She waved her hand dismissively. “Emerald would be fine, too. How about you?”
“Something super simple, but very sparkly.” I pointed to a pear-cut solitaire. “That one is pretty.”
But Suze had moved on to the bracelets. “Wow,” she cried. “Look at this one!”
It was a delicate tennis bracelet, set with small, square-cut jewels in the colors of the rainbow, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple. It was set in silver or maybe white gold, and it shot fire from every stone.
“That is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,” she breathed. “What kind of wife would be lucky enough to have a bracelet like that?”
“It’s beautiful. Maybe it wouldn’t be a wife, but a mistress.”
“Imagine having something that was so beautiful. For no reason except beauty.” She touched the glass, and I could feel her yearning like a fire. It made me wish I could buy it for her myself.
After that, we spent ages wandering the record store and the bookstore, and then split up for one hour. We would shop for each other and then meet at Walgreens for lunch and eat strawberry shortcake and exchange presents.
I headed for the makeup counter and bought the eyeshadow and liner, then rushed to Foxmoor for the silky shirt, and then popped into the bookstore and bought a copy of Green Darkness, a time-travel novel by Anya Seton, which my grandma told me we’d both like. I’d give it to her, then borrow it back.
I barely made it back to Walgreens in time, but Suze wasn’t there. I popped into the store side and bought a funny birthday card with a kitten on the front. She wanted a cat so badly.
Her beauty always made it so much easier for her, I think now, feeling anxious about my body as I flip through the clothes in my closet.
The thought lands with a thud in my gut, full of the weight of the lies I tell myself about her. Easy? No. Life was never easy for Suze.
When Ben comes to the door at last, he’s carrying a bouquet of pink and white carnations. “I actually bought these,” he says with a wink. “They didn’t have anything as pretty as the farm, but pretty enough.”
I laugh and bend my head to smell their pepperminty freshness. “One of my favorites to paint, honestly. Thank you. Let me put them in water and we can go.”
He follows me to the kitchen, watches as I pour water into a vase and cut the packaging from the stems. I’d settled on a simple wrap dress. I’m suddenly conscious of the plunging V-neck, the way it hugs my gigantic butt. In contrast, he’s brushed and polished, wearing a softly elegant blue suit coat over a pale-pink shirt and jeans. Dressed up but not too much.
And so gorgeous. His bright eyes, his beard, his wavy, dark hair. Every woman over forty on the entire Oregon coast would be more than happy to invite him into her bed. What in the world is he doing with me?
Stop that. Again, I would hate it if Stephanie or Jasmine thought that way about themselves. I meet his eyes. “You look wonderful. Every woman in the county will be jealous of me.”
“Not as jealous as the men will be of me.” He admires the display of cleavage with a smile. “That dress suits you.”
“Thank you.”
He holds out his arm. “Shall we?”
We drive up the coast to a restaurant that’s locally famous for its setting, Poseidon. It sits by itself on a promontory overlooking a stretch of ocean littered with sea stacks and crashing waves. With very little beach for humans, it attracts seals and sea lions, and at certain times of year, whale sightings are not uncommon.
“I love this place,” I say as we pull into the parking lot. I’m feeling as giddy as a teenager, full of anticipation and possibility and nerves, but I’m also steadied by the recognition that this is Ben beside me. Ben, who’s been in my kitchen and my studio a hundred times the past few months. Ben, who makes tea the way I like it. Ben, who is as steady as anyone I’ve ever met. “My grandma and dad and I used to come here.”
“It’s an institution, for sure, but they say it holds up pretty well.”
“I’m sure it does.”
The building itself is a ’60s beauty made of timber and glass. The host leads us to a corner table, with views for miles outward to the horizon. Beneath us, high tide is rolling in under the blue dusk, and for a moment, all I can do is admire it. This. The view, the low murmur of voices and clink of dishes, the smell of garlic wafting through the air. How long since I’ve been out? Ages. Years.
When I look up, Ben is watching me, his eyes bright as morning.
“What?” I ask.
“I just like your face,” he says, and I feel a slight blush.
“I like yours, too,” I say, but it sounds stupid and I feel awkward again.
But we are just ourselves. Ben and Phoebe. We’ve been hanging out as friends for months, and I enjoy him so very much, I’m not going to make this weird. “This was such a great idea,” I say.
“Let’s pig out,” Ben says. “Appetizers, salads, mains, all of it. What do you say?”
“I’m in.”
He grins.
We order crab cakes and prawns, beet salad and Caesar salad, halibut and duck, and share all of it. He tells me about the food in a village in Sudan and waking up to the sound of roosters on a trip to Spain.
Images of a soft gray dawn fill my head as I peel the shell from a shrimp so fresh it was swimming this morning. “That sounds incredible. I haven’t traveled much, honestly.”
“Any particular reason?”
“Not really. When I first married, I was pregnant, and then we had Stephanie so fast, and both of us were artists, so we weren’t exactly rolling in money. Then I was a single mother and working freelance as an illustrator. Haven’t had a lot of space.”
“When Stephanie left home?”
I poke a crab cake with my fork, mulling that over. With anyone else, I would make some excuse, blow it off, but with Ben I feel the yearning to be real. My actual self, not some vague, idealized version of me. “I came back to Blue Cove to help my grandmother. Maybe I was afraid of going out on my own. I was comfortable here. Then she got sick and I took care of her.”
His expression is kind. “It’s not too late, you know.”
I lift a shoulder. “I guess.”
“Where would you go? If you could go anywhere.”