20
No sooner had he spoken the words than the grandfather clock softly chimed the half-hour, as though an achievement had been unlocked in a video game, or a childhood dream had been realized.
For here, unbelievably, was Jesse Flores, the grown-up version of all her preadolescent fantasies, wearing a necktie and holding a rose and asking her to be his Valentine. Nine-year-old Clara would have fainted dead away.
Twenty-four-year-old Clara was just glad that she had not choked on the chocolate truffle she’d just bitten into. She badly wanted to say yes, even if he didn’t really mean it and was asking for the wrong reasons. But the fact remained that she had already made plans.
She swallowed the truffle without even tasting it.
Jesse used a paring knife that had been on the counter to cut the long stem off the rose, holding her gaze while he did it. “Please.”
The single syllable hit her like a bolt of lighting, raising her hair on end. She couldn’t look away from his eyes, but reason had not entirely deserted her yet. “Why are you asking me? Because you can’t go home and you waited too long to ask anyone else? Or because you and my dad think I need a bodyguard?”
He smiled, and a dimple appeared in his cheek.
“Okay,” she heard herself say, like a dope. “Wait! No, I told Yoli I would go with her.”
“Yoli,” he appealed.
“Clara, don’t be a fool!” Yoli begged. “Go out with the hot doctor! No offense, Dr. Flores.”
“None taken,” Jesse said handsomely. He gave her another winning smile. “Come on, Clara. Don’t be a fool.”
She knew the smile was calculated to charm her, but it was working anyway. “You can chaperone with us if you want.”
“No, no,” Yoli objected. “Miserable single people only.”
“So what do you say?” he asked.
Clara used all her willpower to sound reluctant. “Okay, fine.”
She froze as he pushed off the counter he’d been leaning against and came very close to her. Thanks to her platform heels, their faces were inches apart. Jesse tucked the shortened stem of the rose very carefully into her hair behind her ear, met her eyes again and smiled.
“Cool,” he said, and turned away to get himself a slice of Oreo pie.
She raised her hands to her flushed cheeks and looked wide-eyed at Yoli, who was fanning herself with a takeout menu and nodding approval.
Clara pulled herself together and offered her friend a piece of dark chocolate.
Yoli selected a bordeaux. “Well, girl, you got a Valentine.”
“I know,” she said, sitting down at the table. He had asked her out! Or, did this really count? She wasn’t sure. No, it counted. “A little eleventh-hour for my taste.”
“Well, he told me he doesn’t do Valentine’s Day.”
Jesse brought his pie to the table. “You guys need to talk about this stuff after l leave the room.”
“Where are you going to take her?” Yoli asked him. “I hope you don’t expect Clara Wilder to grab a beer at the Gila Monster on Valentine’s Day. Now, obviously, there’s the Love Fest.”
“The what?”
“The Love Fest. The annual Valentine’s Day Festival.”
“You remember,” Clara urged him. “Think way back. The Moose Lodge puts it on. They’ve done it forever. There’s a tunnel of love with real swans.”
“Oh,” he said slowly. “That does sound familiar.”
“You could win her a teddy bear,” Yoli suggested. “How are you at ring toss?”
“I don’t know. It’s been awhile.”
“And there’s a dance.”
“Jesse won’t dance with me,” Clara put in quickly, watching him for a reaction. “Will you? Will you dance with me? You don’t want to dance.” Then she made herself shut up.
He looked up from his plate and studied her with interest as he chewed and swallowed a mouthful of Oreo pie. Then he took a sip of coffee. Finally he said, “Why not?”
Nine-year-old Clara was fainting again.
“I just couldn’t picture it,” she said with a shrug.
Smooth, Clara. Nice save.
“I get the feeling you want to dance,” he said dryly.
“Of course she wants to dance!” Yoli exclaimed impatiently. “She’s a young girl in her prime! Clara, you better run home now and get a change of clothes, because I know you want to wear something pink and swishy tonight and you told your dad you wouldn’t go home later.”
“I can’t go all the way home now ,” Clara protested half-heartedly. “That’d be crazy.” She looked at Jesse for confirmation, because she wasn’t at all sure it wasn’t a great idea. “Right?”
He did that thing again where he stared at her for a while before answering. “Right.”
“Right,” she echoed, a bit disappointed. But, of course, he was right. “I couldn’t be back by one o’clock.”
“I can cover the desk!” Yoli said, beginning to sound irritable. “Go home and get a sparkly party dress!”
Clara looked at Jesse again.
“I’m not your boss,” he reminded her. “Do what you want.”
“You’re supposed to be the voice of reason!”
“Well, I’m not going to tell you not to wear a sparkly dress,” he surprised her by saying, and he sounded nearly as irritable as Yoli.
Her heart swelled, and she jumped out of her chair, put her arms around his shoulders and kissed his cheek. Then she hugged Yoli even harder. “Y’all are the best! I’ll bring you a fresh shirt,” she added as she let herself out the back door.
Only when she reached her car did she realize two things: she’d left without her coat, and Jesse had looked stunned when she’d grabbed him. She laughed out loud, and her voice echoed across the empty parking lot.
“I’m home,” she called, entering her parents’ house. The place was a mausoleum with all the boys gone again. “Please don’t be naked!”
“Why would I be naked? What are you doing back so early?”
Clara popped her head into the kitchen. “I got a date for tonight, and I came home to get extra clothes.” She glanced at the TV. “ Murder, She Wrote ? Nice.”
Dr. Wilder was polishing her wedding silver. “Who’s your date?”
“Jesse Flores.”
Her mother’s eyebrows rose. “I thought he doesn’t do Valentine’s Day.”
“False alarm.”
“Huh.”
“Yeah,” Clara agreed with a smile. “Huh.”
“Where will you be going?”
“Just the Love Fest. He says he’ll dance, so I’m going to wear a dress.”
“Are you sure he hasn’t been body snatched?” her mother asked.
Clara laughed. “He liked my outfit today.”
“Did he?”
“He said he liked my VB dress, but I could tell he was being nice because I made it. But today he said I looked adorable, and after he said it he looked horrified.”
Her mother laughed. “So you know he meant it.”
“Exactly. A Freudian slip.”
She ran up the stairs and was surprised when she caught a glimpse of herself in her mirror—she still had a rose tucked behind her ear. She put it in the bud vase on her vanity and gave it a little water before going to her closet. She already knew which dress she would wear, and she just so happened to have a pair of custom cowboy boots that matched it perfectly.
She always kept enough makeup in her purse to refresh her look, but now she packed a shimmery eyeshadow palette and a few extra lip options. Then she grabbed an outfit for work the next day, pajamas and her bedtime toiletries.
As she let herself into Jesse’s room, she got an illicit thrill and had to remind herself that her errand was legit this time. She’d been a nosy kid, the kind to open every drawer and cabinet in the house and spend rainy days rummaging through coat closets, linen closets, everyone’s closet. She liked exploring, liked finding and smelling and touching things, liked knowing secrets even if they weren’t important. Even if she hadn’t been in love with the guy, she would have gone through his room once in a while because at the time she’d felt it was pretty much her job to be familiar with everything in the house and aware of all goings-on.
Teenaged Jesse declined having any part in decorating his new bedroom, but Dr. Wilder had somehow managed, with dark, subtle wallpaper, cushy striped bedding and interesting things to look at on every wall, to strike just the right balance between the inquisitive, energetic boy and the driven, scholarly young man he was becoming. It was the bedroom Jesse deserved, the one that celebrated his nature and personality, his boyish ambitions and pursuits, and Clara knew (from eavesdropping on her parents) that her mother had absolutely hated that it had taken him fifteen years to get it.
The decade or so since she’d last crossed the threshold had not been sufficient to quench Clara’s admiration of the room and its atmosphere. But this time she didn’t go through his drawers looking for secrets; she merely enjoyed the scent of him in the air as she consulted his available wardrobe.
His closet contained four collared shirts that her mother had probably washed and ironed in her copious spare time. She selected a black shirt, recalling that he was wearing black slacks and subtle but unmistakable black leather Stetson boots (which, come to think of it, was a bold and brilliant alternative to penny loafers, or whatever doctors usually wore), and then went into her parents’ room to browse her father’s necktie collection. Ultimately she decided against a tie, and bagged the shirt with the dress and her work clothes before carting everything out to the car.
“Do you think Dad would mind if I borrowed this?” she asked her mother, brandishing her father’s finest headwear. “I’m pretty sure it would fit my Valentine.”
“I don’t know. He’s not back from town yet. You’d better text him.”
“I will, but I’m taking it with me because I think he’ll say yes.”
“Would you like a bran muffin for the road? I made them an hour ago.”
“Thanks, Mom. I kind of forgot about lunch.”
“I don’t blame you. So much has happened,” Dr. Wilder teased.
Clara grinned. “I’m staying at Yoli’s. See you tomorrow.”