Her manicured brows rise as she inspects them without touching. And then she offers a polite, “Mm-hmm. Yeah. Those could be nice.”
She doesn’t like them.
Ordinarily it wouldn’t matter if she didn’t like them, but she’s the one throwing down the plastic.
“I’m just a tennis shoes kinda girl.” I try to lighten the tone and add a shoulder shrug. “Boots are great, they can just get kind of heavy for every day.”
“But do you like them?” She holds up the black boot, and I catch a glimpse of the $200 price tag dangling from the tongue.
“Yeah, they’re nice.” I mentally calculate how many TOMS a girl could buy with two hundred bucks while I pretend the price doesn’t floor me.
“Why don’t we do both?” She takes the canvas shoe from my hand and raises it over her head, flagging the attention of a bored-looking associate by the register. “Could we try these on?”
“Size six,” I say.
“In a size six,” she calls over the chill music pumping through the speakers.
The associate nods, disappearing into a back room and returning with two boxes stuffed with tissue paper and pantyhose socks. I take a seat and try them on while Merritt watches.
“Walk around and make sure they’re comfortable.” She points, watching me. Such a mom. Not that I know what that’s like. My mom was always bringing home hand-me-downs from various coworkers when I was younger. I’m not sure we ever set foot in an actual store together. “They good? Think they’ll work?”
I slide the second pair off and set them carefully in the box. “Are you sure you want to get these? You just bought me perfume . . .”
“Lydia.” She splays a hand across her décolletage, over the diamond pendant hanging down to her cleavage. Eyes glistening, she says, “It would be an honor and a privilege to help you get back on your feet.”
I can’t do emotions. Or emotional people. I had to tamp that shit down early on, or The Monster would feed off it. It was chum to a shark. I didn’t want to give him more than I had to.
“Stop. Come on. Don’t cry.” I wave my hand, frantic, as if it could make the tears dissipate before they have a chance to slide down her creamy pink cheeks and ruin her flawless makeup. If we were true friends, maybe I’d hug her—or at the very least, rub her arm out of comfort. “There’s nothing sad about this. This is awesome. I love these shoes. Love the perfume. And I’m enjoying my time with you.”
I add the last line as a bonus, figuring a little white lie won’t hurt her. If things were different, maybe I would enjoy my time with her. Guess we’ll never know.
Within seconds, she fans her eyes, manages a laugh, and composes herself. This can’t be easy for her—my return to Luca’s life. I don’t want to make this harder for her than it already is. None of this is her fault.
“What about a coat? Do you need a winter coat? I know you have a light jacket, but it gets cold out here sometimes . . .” She switches gears, scanning the various racks of jeans, tops, and sweaters until she settles on a small selection of seasonal gear. Puffy coats, mostly. The kind meant to make you look like an expensive marshmallow on the ski slopes.
But I do need a coat.
While I’d prefer not to look like the Michelin Man, beggars can’t be choosers and all that jazz.
We find an extrasmall in “snowcap white.” The last one on the rack in my size. I drape it over my arm and give it a squeeze because I can’t resist. The tag on the sleeve reads $349. With the shoes and the perfume, we’re already well over six hundred bucks, and she’s started eyeing the sweater section.
“Tops? How are you doing on sweaters? Do you need blouses? Anything like that?” Merritt asks next, making her way to a new section.
“You really don’t have to do this.” I follow.
She offers a polite smile, obligatory almost. And her focus is soft—until it settles on the dangling J on my zipper. She couldn’t hide the undercurrent of revulsion if she tried.
I’m sure I look ridiculous in my velour getup, like I just stepped out of a September 2006 issue of Us Weekly. But I’ve got no one to impress, and I don’t want to offend Delphine by replacing her dead daughter’s clothes with fancy new threads. At least not all at once. It should be a gradual process, much like mourning and moving on. Little by little. One step at a time.
“I think we’re good for today, don’t you?” I make one final visual sweep of the chic boutique surroundings, knowing full well I don’t belong here.
She scans the store one more time as well, lingering on the jeans section before she sighs.
“Yeah. You’re right,” she says, hand gliding across her smooth bump. “We can always come back another time. Are you hungry? I’m famished.”
My body learned long ago how to shut off those hunger signals. It’s like a broken stoplight constantly flashing red. I’m rarely hungry. Most foods irritate my stomach anyway, and more often than not, I forget to eat until I’m hit with a screaming headache.
“Yeah. Starving,” I say because I’m not about to walk off with this massive haul and turn down her invitation. There may be a multitude of questionable things in my DNA, but rudeness isn’t one of them. “What’s good around here?”
We carry our items to the register, laying everything across the glass counter.
“We own a deli just a few doors down,” she says. “Monday’s clam chowder day, and believe me when I say we have the best clam chowder on the entire Oregon coast.”
I lift my brows and pretend to be blown away by that fact.
I’ve never had clam chowder in my life.
“All right. Sold. Let’s do it,” I say.
We finish the transaction with the swipe of her black credit card and carry our bags to the deli on the corner.
“Mrs. Coletto,” a red-haired teenager says in greeting. Despite it being nearly noon, the place is dead. Just a man in a gray suit finishing lunch in the back. Other than that, it’s just the two of us. “How’s the boss man? Haven’t seen him in a while.”
“Busy as ever.” She offers him a breathy smile, then points to the menu and leans closer to me. “The soups are there, on that first panel. Highly recommend the chowder, though. In the second column are the salads. Then there are wraps. They can make anything you want, and it’s all amazing. Can’t go wrong with any of it.”
Overwhelmed by choices, I find myself momentarily distracted by the crystal chandeliers hanging above the register. The crisp white walls, outfitted in vintage photography art in mismatched frames, also seem like an unneeded touch. This is, after all, a glorified sub shop, is it not?
We order our meals, grab our numbers (gold leafed, I might add), and find a table in the back corner, sidling up in chairs fit for a French bistro.
“Thank you so much for lunch,” I say. “And for . . . everything. I have to admit, when you said you wanted to get together, this wasn’t what I was expecting.”
She rests a casual elbow on the table, head tilted as she examines me, wide smile covering her pretty face. “I just want to do what I can to make this an easy transition . . . for everyone.”