30
Now Four Days Until Bridget’s Wedding
There’s no four thirty alarm. No sneaking out. There’s only me and Felix in a bedroom dappled in dawn. His body is wrapped around mine, naked.
Memories of last night stir as Felix kisses my shoulder good morning.
His tongue and mine. Palms on flesh. His hands on my waist.
I’ve waited so long for this.
You feel so fucking right.
Muscles shaking. Eyes meeting. Ecstasy. Relief.
“Stay here,” he says now. “There’s no rush. There’s nothing to do.
There’s nowhere to be.”
I fall back to sleep, and he’s gone when I pull myself from the bed and slip on my nightgown. I feel stomach muscles I thought you had to pay a trainer to identify. My thighs ache. Felix’s head and hips were between them countless times yesterday.
I find him in the kitchen, hulling strawberries. There’s an empty milk glass vase and a heap of flowers on the counter.
“What’s all this?”
“Good morning to you, too.” He holds a strawberry to my lips, and I open my mouth. I taste the berry, that burst of summer, and then his finger.
“Lucy.” He’s biting his lip, and I’m thinking about how dropping to my knees first thing in the morning sounds like a very good way to start my day
when he says, “Later. I brought you supplies. I liberated them from my mom’s garden, and they’ll need water.”
I let his finger go, and survey the delphiniums, snap dragons, sweet peas, and daisies.
“Your mother wouldn’t be happy about this,” I tell him. Our love of gardening is something Christine and I bonded over. I helped her divide and replant peonies when I visited at Thanksgiving three years ago. But I know she prefers seeing her blooms outdoors, rather than on her table.
“If I were the one putting her flowers in a vase, she’d kill me. But you?
She’d be thrilled.”
“Really?”
“Really.” He kisses my temple. “I have an idea.” A Clark sentence if there
ever was one.
“Uh-oh.”
He grins on the left side. “I thought we could cook tonight, for Bridget and Miles. I have a feeling everything will be okay there, and we can tell them about us. Toast the future.”
“You,” I say, kissing him, “are a very thoughtful man. I’d forgotten Bridget and Miles existed. I forgot the rest of the world existed.” But it does, and Felix and I are going to be together within it. We’re going to tell Bridget the truth. There’s nothing left to hide. It’s hard to fathom how different things will be.
I look at the flowers again. “Thank you for this.”
Felix brushes my hair to the side and kisses my neck. “You’re welcome.
“I’m making bacon and French toast,” he says.
“Of course you are.”
He smiles. “Meaning?”
“Meaning French toast is my favorite.”
“I know.”
“Meaning you’re perfect.”
“I’m really not.”
I begin to pull my hair back so I can get it out of my face, but Felix tells me to turn around. I face the cupboards, giving him my back. His fingers
skim my spine as he gathers my hair in his hands. I feel a gentle tugging.
“What are you doing?”
“Helping.” More tugging. He’s braiding my hair.
“How do you know how to do that?”
“Barbies.”
“Barbies?”
“Mmhmm. I grew up with a very bossy older sister.”
There’s one final tug, and then his fingers are at my wrist, slipping off the hair elastic I’ve stored there.
“That’s better,” he says, kissing my cheek. He nods at the flowers. “Now get to work.”
As Felix makes me coffee, I trim the stems. As he begins to cook, I fill the vase. But Felix has brought me so many flowers, I hunt for more of the milk glass vessels Christine keeps in the hutch. I arrange half a dozen before breakfast is ready. I love how the shears feel in my hand, how satisfying it is to clip each stalk at just the right length using only my eye, balancing the arrangements so that they look precisely as I want them to. Wild and flowing, tumbling over the lip of the vase as if there’s no way to contain them. But I am. I am containing them. They are my pastels, and I am the illustrator. They are my clay, and I am the sculptor.
I’m here and nowhere else. It’s me and my hands and these flowers that Felix picked for me. There’s no bride I’m worried about pleasing. No client I’m trying to impress. I’m not rushing to get it done before the delivery van pulls up.
This is what I love. Creating. Shaping. Building.
For the first time in so very long, I lose myself in imagining a cutting garden of my own, the way I used to, riding the streetcar to and from work, doodling in my sketchbook.
When I’m done, I set the arrangements on the table, with the biggest in the middle, the rest surrounding it. It’s nowhere near my most elaborate grouping of arrangements, but it might be the most beautiful. I look at Felix, who’s standing over a pan of sizzling bacon, and think, More. Felix.
“What time does your flight land on Friday?” I wrap my arms around his middle as he’s at the stove and bury my face against his spine. I breathe him in deeply.
“Eleven something,” he says. “Are you okay back there?”
“I don’t think I can exist without this smell.”
“Lucy.” He turns his face to kiss my temple. “The things that come out of your mouth.”
“The things that go into my mouth.” I clamp my teeth around his earlobe.
He laughs, but it turns into a groan. “Shush,” he says. “I’m trying to feed
you.”
I trail my hand down his torso.
“Lucy.” He turns his head, looks at me over his shoulder. My hand dips lower.
He shuts off the stove. Turns around, his grip firm on my waist, bringing me snug against him. I plait my arms around him.
“I’ve imagined this,” he says, palms skimming up my back. “You and me, in the kitchen together.”
I push a wayward lock of hair off his forehead. “Cooking?”
“Cooking. Kissing. Fucking on the table.”
“I like these sexy stories you tell,” I said. “Is it an East Coast thing—like a sea shanty?”
“Of course. Every islander has an erotic shanty up their sleeve.” He puts his lips to my ear. “Although in my version, we’re not in my parents’
kitchen.”
“Fair. Get back to breakfast, then.”
We eat on the deck, plates on our laps. He’s in his armchair and I’m in my sofa nook. The maple syrup is the good kind. The French toast tastes better when Felix makes it. There’s a square of Cows cultured butter melting over the thick slice of bread. The sun is so bright, it puts Felix’s profile in shadow.
I can only make out the glorious shape of him. I can’t see what his eyes are saying. But now I don’t need to. Now I know.
It’s a gorgeous day. Sky blue sky. Green, green grass. Red cliffs. Birds.
Breeze. There’s a fox slinking across the grass, unbothered by our presence.
This is the place I love.
I spoke to Farah earlier this morning to make sure all went well at the flower auction and texted Bridget to ask when we can expect her and Miles today, but she hasn’t replied. I’m nervous to tell her about Felix, more so now that there’s a possibility of an us. I want there to be an us. But I also feel like I’ve been carrying a heavy parcel for five years, and I want to set it down. I want to talk to my best friend about the guy I like.
“How is this going to work?” I ask when we’re done. My guess is that Bridget will freak. My hope is that she won’t disown me. If that’s the case,
she’ll want to know our plan.
Felix arches a brow.
“You and me,” I clarify.
He rises, catlike, and sits beside me, pulling my feet onto his thighs, kneading the sole of my left foot with his thumbs.
“How do you want it to work?”
“I don’t know. Your sister will ask. I thought it would be smart to have an answer.”
“Well, for starters,” Felix says. “I know how close you and Bridget are, but you don’t owe her an answer if you don’t have one.”
I take this in.
“But you want to have an answer,” Felix says, studying me.
I nod. “A loose one?”
“Okay.”
“I want to know if you’re going to keep seeing other people.”
“Are you going to see other people?”
I chew on my cheek.
“What are you thinking, Lucy?”
“I’m trying to decide how honest I should be.”
“Completely,” he says. “I can handle it.”
I watch his fingers working the arch of my foot. “There hasn’t been anyone in a long time.”
Felix’s gaze is scorching. “Define long.”
“For the past year there hasn’t been anybody else. But I’m not you,” I rush on.
“Lucy, for the record, I dated two women over the past year. I was trying to move on.” He gives me a meaningful look. “No one comes close to you.”
“But let’s say you do meet someone you’re interested in.”
“How about we don’t say that? I’m not interested in other people.”
I smile. “Me neither.”
“All right,” he says, squeezing my foot. “Our rules are very out of date.
So this can be our first one. It’s just you and me.”
“And what do we tell our friends and family?”
“We say we’re together and request they back off while we figure it out.”
It feels radical. “You are great,” I tell him, poking the cleft in his chin. “I wish I was like you.”
“We’ve already got one of me. We need you to be exactly like you.”
I stare at him. “Are you real?”
He looks down at himself. “I think so, yes.” He pats his chest. “I feel real.”
“Well, you don’t look or sound real, Felix Clark.”
“I can show you how real I am.”
“Right here?”
His eyes flare. “Right now.”
“You,” I say, “are indecent.”
“Very.”
“But you’re also the most thoughtful, steadfast, unreasonably attractive man I’ve ever met.”
His lips twitch. “ ‘Unreasonably attractive’?”
“Yes,” I say, nudging him with my toes. “It’s rude. I thought so our first night together.”
Felix’s mouth sneaks up at its corner. “I can show you rude.”
“Let’s see it, then.”
Felix stands, taking me with him. He undresses me carefully, like a beautifully wrapped gift. He sets my braid behind my shoulder, then unties the ribbon at my neck, eyes on mine. That look. I feel it between my legs. He
opens every one of the buttons lining the bodice and slips it off. The nightgown falls to the wood. I’m naked, dressed only in sunlight. There are houses in the distance, perched atop the cliffs, but unless they have binoculars, we have privacy.
I reach for his shirt, and Felix gives his head a shake. “Lie down, Lucy.”
• • •
WE WANDER DOWN TO THE SHORE MIDMORNING. FELIX BRINGS AN OLD QUILT, THE one the Clarks use as a beach blanket, and we rest our sex-slack bodies on the sand.
I don’t want to go back to work. I’ve never felt it as sharply as I do right now. I want to arrange flowers. But the rest of it—the Cena meeting, the never-ending emails, the positions I’ll have to fill—right now, I could leave all of it behind. I hadn’t realized it until now, but I’ve burned myself out.
Felix and I are lying facing each other, and he’s skating his fingers along my arm.
“Tell me your flaws,” I say. “You must have some.”
“I have plenty.”
“Such as . . .”
“I’m not always great at handling my emotions. Sometimes I get overwhelmed, and it seems easier to shut them out, pretend like what I’m feeling isn’t there.” He pauses. “And I’m not a big fan of risks.”
“What kind of risks?”
“Any. All. I’ve been burned in the past, which you know. I rebuilt my life once. I can’t rebuild it again. I make sure I get things right the first time.
Going slow is good for me, too.”
“That can be our second rule,” I say. “We’ll take it slow.”
He kisses me once, softly. “I have an idea.”
“Uh-oh.”
“For how this could work. We got sidetracked earlier. It’s straightforward. Do you want to hear it?”
“Of course.”
“I’ll come to Toronto for the wedding. We’ll have four nights together.
You’ve spent a lot of time in my world; I want to spend more in yours.”
“You do? You hate the city.”
“I don’t hate it,” he says. “I want you to show me your apartment. I want to know where you keep the seeds I sent.”
“They’re in a glass box on my desk in your sister’s old room.”
“I want to see the box on your desk. I want to watch you arrange flowers and then go to the wine bar. Instead of saying goodbye at the end of the night, we’ll go back to your place and wake up together in the morning. I want to see what type of coffee maker you have.”
“My coffee maker?” I’m laughing now.
“Yes. I want to be able to picture exactly where you are when we’re not together.”
“I’ll show you my sketchbook. The one with all my ideas for the farm.”
“That’s the first thing I want to see.”
“I like this plan.”
“Good. So I’ll come to Toronto for the wedding, and then we’ll save so we can go back and forth. You’ll come here in September. I’ll go there in October.”
“But I love the island in October. I want another Clark family Thanksgiving feast.”
The dimple surfaces. “So I’ll come to Toronto in September. And you’ll come here in October. My parents would love to have you.”
It could work. We’ll text, we’ll talk, we’ll send tasteful nudes. We’ll send distasteful nudes. “We’ll see each other once a month?”
“If we can afford it. If not, as often as we can. It’s a short flight. You’ll bring me a book. And I’ll bring you a packet of seeds. We spend a few days
together. We don’t see other people.”
“What will you tell your parents?”
“What should I tell them?”
I push a lock of hair off his forehead. “I think you should tell them we’re
dating.”
He smiles. “Dating.”
I smile back. “Dating.”
“I think you should be there when I do. I want you to see my mother’s
face.”
“Why’s that?”
He looks surprised. “Don’t you know? Christine Clark is the president of your fan club.”
I kiss his ear. “Mmm. I think maybe I did know that. She sent me a knife once.” It arrived after my first visit. An enormous Henckel. Use it, her card read. I found it odd since Bridget already owned one, but I guess Christine knew we wouldn’t be roommates forever.
“I know,” he says. “Have you ever taken it out of its case?”
“Never.”
He laughs. “I think she decorated that guest room especially for you.”
“No.”
“Just a hunch.”
“My parents aren’t like yours. They might not be so excited.” Bridget’s brother, long distance . . . “They’ll have doubts.”
“I’ll comb my hair when I meet them.”
“Ha.”
“Would that bother you, if they had doubts?”
“Is it terrible if I say yes? I’d want them to see how great you are. But they’re not the most encouraging people. They’re very safe, and I think this would seem risky.”
His eyes move between mine. “They don’t want you to get hurt.”
“No, never. But they overcorrect.”
“Because you’re the baby.”
It took my parents years to stay pregnant after Lyle was born. It was my aunt who told me there was more than one miscarriage, and that when my brother took to skating at three, they poured their grief and love into his hockey. I was a complete surprise, one they treated like blown glass.
“Always and forever. They still call me Goose.” When I was a toddler, I was always falling, always getting into mischief, breaking things. I became Lucy Goose. “Unlike you, I don’t appreciate my nickname.”
His fingers sweep to my shoulder, then back to my wrist. “Have you ever thought about telling them that?”
“My aunt said I should. I just don’t want to offend them, you know? My mom is sensitive, and she shuts down when she’s upset. She can be a bit icy.”
Felix took this in. “What’s your brother like? He’s older, right? Lyle?”
“Yeah. I’m pretty sure he didn’t know I existed when we were kids. But we’re okay now. I did the flowers for his wedding.” He and Nathan got married two years ago. “He lives in St. Catharines, but we have dinner when he’s in the city. I think you’d get along. He’ll talk your ear off about hockey, and Nathan’s sweet.”
“I’m glad I got to meet your aunt,” he says after a moment. “Even if it
was just for a few minutes.”
“Me too.”
“She was your mom’s sister?”
“Mm.”
“Are they similar?”
“Oh god no. I thought they hated each other until my aunt got sick.”
Felix is silent for a moment. His fingers, which had been traversing up and down my arm, rest on my elbow. He’s waiting for me to continue.
“Stacy and my mom were never friends the way some sisters are, and I never understood why. But when my aunt was sick, I heard them talking, and . . .” I take a breath, remembering what Stacy told me in the hospital after my mom left that day. “My aunt wasn’t a fan of my dad when my parents started dating. She didn’t think they had chemistry, and she kept hoping my mom would realize that they weren’t a good fit. She thought my dad was more boring than dry toast, that he didn’t make her laugh. But she didn’t say anything, and then the day before the wedding, she just unloaded it all on my
mom.”
“Bad timing,” Felix supplied.
“Exactly. I always wondered why their relationship was so tense, but now it makes sense. And my dad knew Stacy had questioned their relationship, so that added to the strain.”
A cloud passes, muting the sun. I get lost in Felix’s face. The lines that have deepened. The brow that arches. The tiny spot of hazel on his eye.
“My mom visited a lot when my aunt was sick. They laughed more than I’d ever heard them in my life.”
“Do you think your mom forgave her?” Felix asks me.
“She did,” I say. “In the end. But they let this one thing come between them and they lost so much time. It wasn’t soon enough.”
