Chapter Thirteen
Thirteen
World Thrift was the largest thrift store in South Florida, and therefore Nina’s favorite.
She’d dragged me around the giant warehouse to search through racks of used clothing more mornings than I could count.
Though the building was nondescript, the clothing inside was arranged by color, rainbows as far as the eye could see.
In the middle of the open floor plan was the furniture section, and on the opposite wall from the entrance were shelves of seemingly random items. A few years ago, Nina had found a meat slicer and insisted on buying it.
She kept it on a shelf in her living room, and when I’d asked her why she never used it, she’d looked at me blankly and said, It’s a statement, Josephine. Stating what, I hadn’t bothered to ask.
Today we stood before a wall hung with formal wear: floor-length evening gowns, puffy-skirted prom dresses, and one deflated-looking wedding dress. Nina pinched the lace of the wedding dress between her fingers and scowled.
“Absolutely not,” she said, shoving it aside.
“You mean to tell me that Nina Lejeune, self-professed hater of love, doesn’t want to show up to my dinner party in a wedding dress?”
Nina inspected a mermaid-skirted dress and snorted. “Ha. Funny, Jo. If I remember correctly, you’re a supposed love hater too.”
“I don’t hate love.” I passed by a neon-green prom dress that reminded me of Alex’s running shorts.
“It’s just easier to be single.” After examining a sequined emerald dress from the rack, I held it out to Nina.
It shimmered in the overhead lights. Floor-length and with a plunging neckline, it easily outshone everything I’d seen that morning.
“Your size?” Nina asked.
I checked the tag and nodded.
“Does it smell okay?”
I took a hesitant sniff. “It smells like a thrift store.”
“Take it. Trust me, that’s the best you can hope for. You don’t want to know the smells I’ve had the misfortune of smelling in here.” She wrinkled her nose and continued browsing through dresses.
I draped the emerald dress over my arm, relieved to have one less thing on the to-do list for the dinner party.
When we got to the end of the formal wear, Nina sighed. “I’m heading up front to see if Butch has anything special in the back. He knows what I like.”
Dress in hand, I searched for Mia and Kitty and found them in the blue hues of the jacket aisle. Kitty held a yellow dress I was pretty sure was a Halloween costume. Mia didn’t have a dress at all. When I reached them, she had one arm into the sleeve of a denim jacket.
“You’re planning to wear a denim jacket to a fancy dinner party?”
Mia rolled her eyes. “It’s not for the party, obviously.”
“It looks good on you. You should get it.”
Mia slipped out of the denim jacket and held it out in front of her. She bit her lip, and the excitement faded from her face. “Never mind. I don’t want it after all.”
“Are you sure?” It really did look good on her.
“Yeah, I’m sure.” She put it back on the hanger.
I was tempted to ask her again but didn’t want to press the issue. We were in public, and I didn’t want to trigger a meltdown in case this was a grief thing.
“Well, don’t forget to get something for the dinner party,” I said.
“Do you think we should find something for Greyson?” We’d planned on her tagging along, but Alex had texted late last night saying they had a family thing to take care of.
Mia and Kitty shrugged, and I told them to pick something out, just in case.
Once Mia had chosen a black-fringed flapper dress for herself and a knee-length silver prom dress for Greyson, we brought our items to the front of the store and checked out. Nina waited for us by the entrance, her purchase hidden in an opaque garment bag.
I looked down at the grocery bags the cashier had given me and the girls. “Why do you get the nice bag?”
Nina shrugged. “Butch loves me.”
“What did you get, Nina?” Kitty asked.
Nina clutched the bag to her chest. “It’s a surprise, of course. I can’t show up to a dinner party with everyone knowing what I’m wearing. Where’s the fun in that?”
—
An hour before the dinner party, I opened the condo door, and smoke poured out into the parking lot. I waved it away, my eyes watering, and spotted Alex.
“Thank God, you’re here,” I said. I grabbed his hand and pulled him after me into the kitchen, where Mia and Kitty fanned at the open oven with takeout menus.
Everything had been fine until about five minutes ago.
I’d checked and double-checked each recipe, measuring ingredients with painstaking patience.
I’d spent a good half hour standing around, trying to figure out which dish needed to go in the oven when.
How did Alex do this every day? And so quickly?
But after the initial stress, things had been going well.
Near perfect, actually. I’d had a glass of wine and listened to a little music, feeling like Rachael Ray as I salted a pot of boiling water for deviled eggs.
Everyone would be impressed by my cooking, I’d thought, even Alex and Ollie.
But everything was ruined now. I’d burnt the main dish to a crisp and didn’t have a plan B.
I couldn’t feed a party of nine on deviled eggs and a salad.
The only thing Alex and Ollie would be impressed by was my incompetence.
Alex examined the still-smoking baking dish, but I couldn’t look at the charred, inedible mess that was supposed to be truffle chicken and potato gratin.
“Think I can pass this off as blackened chicken?” I said.
Alex winced, prodding it with a fork. “You really weren’t kidding when you said you couldn’t cook.”
Yup, I’d definitely impressed him with my incompetence. “I swear I set a timer. I don’t know what happened.”
“We can fix this,” Alex said.
I nodded to the baking dish. “You can fix that?”
“No. That’s beyond help. But we can still save the dinner party. I’ll be right back.” He clapped his hands together and sprinted from the condo.
“He’s come to your rescue, Aunt Jo,” Kitty said.
“How romantic,” Mia added.
I turned to where the girls sat at the dining room table and looked from one mischievous face to another, realization dawning on me. “I did set the timer, didn’t I? Did you two do this?”
“No,” Mia and Kitty said at the same time. Mia held my stare, revealing nothing, but guilt twitched at Kitty’s lips.
I closed my eyes, unable to look at either of them.
The skinny-dipping was one thing, but this was out of hand.
They could have burned my condo down, and for what?
So Alex could come to my rescue? When I opened my eyes again, even Mia looked a little frightened.
But Nina, Captain Xav, Ollie, and Belva would be here in fifty minutes. A brief lecture would have to do.
“I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you were trying to help me. Help I have zero need for, by the way. Whatever fantasy you’ve cooked up about me and Alex needs to fall out of your heads. The only thing you’ve managed to do is make me look completely incompetent.”
Kitty’s face fell, and tears sprang to her eyes. I sighed, holding back everything else I wanted to say. I already had one mess on my hands; I didn’t need another.
“Let’s get ready at Greyson’s,” Mia said, bumping shoulders with her sister.
“I think that’s a great idea.” I pinched the bridge of my nose and watched them leave. These girls, whom I loved more than anything in the world, could be a real pain in the ass sometimes.
Alex returned a few minutes after Mia and Kitty left, and I did a double take when he walked in the door.
He’d changed out of his usual shorts and T-shirt and into a tux that fit him perfectly.
His hair was combed back, the tousled waves neat for once, and his face smooth, as if he’d shaved that morning.
“That definitely didn’t come from a thrift store,” I said.
Alex followed me to the kitchen. “You won’t tell anyone, will you?”
“No,” I said. I pulled at the hem of my T-shirt.
Nina had bought it for me from a clearance rack in a Bonaire tourist shop a few years ago.
On it was a shark in a Santa hat eating a scuba diver.
A word bubble coming from its mouth read, It’s Beginning to taste a lot like Christmas!
Bonaire, Dutch Antilles. “But I feel a little scrubby now. Maybe I ought to change too.”
“That’s not what you’re wearing tonight?
” Alex said. “I’m a little disappointed.
You’d make an excellent novelty T-shirt model.
” He flashed a grin and set a reusable shopping bag on the counter.
Between the tux and the smoke, I could hardly breathe and considered fanning myself with one of the takeout menus.
“I won’t have time to change,” he explained. “Where’s your apron?”
“I don’t have one.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“Well I know what I’m getting you for your birthday now. I’ll just have to be extra careful not to spill anything.” He pulled items from the bag and lined them up along the counter: salmon, pistachios, a lemon, spices, Parmesan, a box of orzo, a mound of asparagus.
I stared at the ingredients. This was already looking fancier than my failed chicken, and he’d come up with it on the spot. “What are we making?”
“I’m making pistachio-crusted salmon with Parmesan asparagus and lemon orzo. You’re making deviled eggs and a salad.”
“Fair.”
He winked and set to work in the kitchen, fluttering through my cabinets and locating pans, bowls, and utensils.
I’d seen him move around kitchens before—at his place, at work—but this was different, and not only because my kitchen was tiny, but because it was my kitchen, and he was here, in a tux, saving my dinner party.
We worked together in silence, our arms grazing when we reached for an ingredient at the same time or swapped places: him to the stove, me to the sink.
It was all very distracting, but somehow, I finished the deviled eggs and the salad.