Chapter Twenty Daisy
Chapter Twenty
Daisy
Mischief is best enjoyed in the company of friends.
—Rules for Witches
“What is the emergency coffee meeting for?” Nora asked as she and Daisy walked into Soraya’s apartment at far too early an hour.
“I have a date!” Soraya’s exclamation was halfway between a shriek of delight and a wail of despair, which, frankly, Daisy could understand.
Zach, and sex with Zach, was great and wonderful, but also the newness was weird, and in the midst of a whole bunch of other newness, it was a lot.
“With hot across-the-hall neighbor?” Nora was bright eyed and swept past them into the kitchen, where Daisy could hear her clattering around looking for a mug, then helping herself to coffee. She’d taken a seat at the small corner table by the time Daisy and Soraya joined her.
“Yes,” Soraya confirmed. “Declan.”
“Oooh.” Nora rubbed her hands together.
Daisy spotted a tarot deck at the center of Soraya’s table. “Getting more comfortable?”
Soraya huffed a laugh. “Comfortable might be the wrong word? Desperate, maybe.”
Nora took hold of the deck and opened the box, shuffling the cards in her hand.
“Here, I’ll do a pull for you.” She laid a card out on the table.
The Tower, with fire coming out the windows and men falling down to earth.
“The Tower means he likes you,” Nora said sagely before tucking the card back into the deck and stuffing the whole deck quickly back into the box like she was trying to hit erase on that draw.
Soraya was fussing with her coffee maker. Clearly, a tarot card didn’t have the power to make her more anxious than she already was.
“I don’t have anything to wear!” She whirled away from the coffee maker. “All I have are church-mom outfits.”
“Your outfits are pretty,” Daisy said.
Soraya took a breath. “They’re outfits I chose to fit in with a certain group and a certain image, and they don’t fit anymore. They fit physically, but . . .”
“You want an outfit that doesn’t say ‘going to a potluck.’ You want one that says ‘would like to get railed.’” Nora’s words were succinct and undeniable.
Soraya’s cheeks went red. “Honestly? Yes.”
“Then we need to go shopping. We were going to hang out today, and now we have a mission!” Nora was triumphant.
They started with iced coffee—because the coffeepot split three ways in Soraya’s apartment wasn’t enough—and trooped up the sidewalk of Hemlock, the flowers in full bloom, the breeze fluttering through the trees, casting a golden-green glow everywhere around them.
This was the kind of tourist stuff that Daisy never did.
She was too busy organizing the house, taking care of the kids, basically too busy living here to actually enjoy being here.
It was surprising to her that there were shops up on this end of town that she hadn’t even known were there.
A brand-new potted-plant store with immaculate vibes, and a shop that had locally made candles and handcrafted soaps.
The first boutique was decidedly for people in a different stage of life, and part of Daisy longed to wear the trendy styles, even though they were ephemeral and for bodies that hadn’t birthed humans.
“I just don’t understand who would want to wear this.” Nora pulled out a dress that had multiple holes in the bodice area. “If I put this on, it would look like a Play-Doh fun factory.”
It was a descriptive image. And one Daisy felt strongly applied to her too.
“My boobs would hang out of this.” Soraya stuck her finger through a cutout on a bright-orange dress that was likely to hit right at the rib cage.
Weirdly, Daisy felt like she might actually consider wearing it. To bed, with Zach. He made her feel hot in a way that she just hadn’t. Maybe ever. He was a magician like that, but it wasn’t ladylike to brag about wonderful men and multiple orgasms when your friends were still in the trenches.
Not that she wasn’t in a trench, still. There were all kinds of nonsense yet to deal with. There was still the fact that Amberly and Jonathan were getting married, which felt like it was stuck right underneath her ribs, and every time she took a breath, she could feel it.
“Okay,” Daisy said. “Something a little bit more demure.”
“I am demure,” Soraya said. “Just demure and hoping to also seem sexy.”
She looked deeply embarrassed to have even said the word.
“Okay. You’ve got to own your sexuality.” Nora tapped Soraya on the forehead.
“I don’t know how to own my sexuality. I was told my sexuality belonged to David.”
“No,” Nora said. “Your sexuality does not belong to that man. It belongs to you. Your vagina, your rules.”
“Thank you. I don’t know that I need to think of my vagina in those terms.” The work Soraya was putting in to not flinching was admirable.
“Look at you, saying vagina on a city street.” Nora clasped her hands in front of her chest like she was a proud mother.
“Strange times,” Soraya said dryly.
They walked into the next boutique, which boasted some lovely floral dresses in a 1950s style, and Nora shooed Soraya away from them. “That is too much like things you already have.”
“What about this?” Soraya asked, pulling out a powder-blue bodycon dress.
“That is acceptable.”
Daisy pulled a lavender dress off the rack and held it up, examining the silhouette. Then she lowered the hanger just slightly and gasped. Because there she was. Amberly herself, swanning into the boutique with that big engagement ring on her finger.
She almost swallowed her tongue.
“What?” Soraya asked.
“Is that . . . ?” Nora followed Daisy’s gaze. “It is. I’m going to go—”
“No,” Daisy said. “Nobody do anything. It’s not her fault anyway. She’s twenty-five. Her prefrontal cortex isn’t even fully developed, and my husband is . . .”
“That is very girl’s girl of you,” Nora said. “And I agree, blame must be allocated to the appropriate parties. But she’s not blameless.”
“We’re not going to get in a fistfight with my husband’s fiancée in a boutique.”
“We can just go,” Soraya whispered.
“Absolutely not,” Daisy snapped. “I am not going to sacrifice your amazing dress on the altar of Jonathan’s nonsense. You go try your dress on.”
“Daisy!”
Daisy looked over, and to her horror, Amberly was charging toward them with a smile on her face. “Are you trying that dress on?”
Amberly had said Daisy’s name and still, Daisy couldn’t internalize that Amberly was actually talking to her. Directly.
This was the first time she’d ever seen her without Jonathan around. The very weird thing was that Amberly always acted like she was happy to see Daisy. She waved, she smiled, she pissed Daisy off because she was sparkly and pretty and cheerful.
Because she wasn’t bitter and sad and jilted.
It made Daisy feel weird and small right then.
“I . . . was thinking about it.”
“You should! It’s your color. Oh my God! Do you ever wear emerald? You should.” Amberly plucked a very short emerald dress off the rack and handed it to Daisy. “I used to work here. I love this store. This dress looks so good on everyone.”
Daisy looked at Nora and Soraya for help, but they were just standing there, staring.
“Try it on! You have the play coming up. The kids are so excited!”
“Yeah. True. I . . . I do.”
What did this bright, sparkly woman see in Jonathan? It had been easy for Daisy to make Amberly a caricature in her head the few times they’d seen each other, but this interaction was nothing like she’d ever imagined.
“I’m Amberly,” she said, looking at Soraya and Nora.
Soraya smiled. “Nice to meet you.”
Nora said nothing. Her disapproval was rock steady, and no amount of smiling from Amberly would fix it. Daisy did like that about Nora.
Though Amberly didn’t notice it.
“Oh, Daisy, they have a green skirt I think you should try. Or they used to always keep it in stock. Come here.”
Daisy could tell Amberly no, but this was the kind of out-of-body experience not even drugs could provide, so she gestured to Soraya and Nora to keep shopping while she went to the opposite side of the boutique with Amberly.
Amberly’s smile faltered. “Um. I’m . . . I do want to show you a skirt. But I also just wanted to say, I know things are weird between us.”
Daisy blinked but said nothing.
“I don’t want them to be,” Amberly continued. “Your kids are so great. They love you so much. Whenever Jonathan says negative things about you, I shut it down. I know you guys weren’t happy together, but I can tell that you’re really great because of how the kids talk about you.”
Daisy’s head was spinning. For the first time, she wondered if Amberly didn’t know she was the reason their marriage had broken up.
Is she? The marriage was really over when he was open to having an affair. You finding out about her was the catalyst. But it isn’t her fault.
That thought seemed so reasonable while she stood there looking at Amberly.
Who was a person and not a symbol of anything.
“Well. Thanks.”
“Women need to lift up other women.” Amberly took a skirt off the rack and handed it to Daisy.
Daisy cleared her throat. “Yeah. They do.”
As she walked to the fitting room, Soraya was just coming out in the powder-blue dress. “Damn,” Nora said. “You are built like a brick shit-chapel, my friend.”
Soraya looked both embarrassed and pleased. “You think he’ll like it?”
“I think it will look amazing on his bedroom floor.”
“I’m not going to sleep with him on the first date.”
“Sure,” Nora said. “But you could.”
Soraya looked at herself in the mirror, and her lips twitched. “Well. Yeah. I could.”
“You can do whatever you want.”
Daisy looked behind her and saw Amberly ducking out of the store, giving her one final wave.
Soraya could do whatever she wanted.
So could Daisy.
Amberly couldn’t, though. Amberly, who was too sweet for Jonathan and was now engaged to him.
Daisy suddenly felt pity for a woman she would have called her nemesis only ten minutes ago.
It was helpful to remember who the real enemy was. It certainly wasn’t the twenty-five-year-old saddled with Jonathan and all his nonsense.
“I want to go try on that orange dress after I try these on,” Daisy said.
“In the nightmare store?” Nora asked.
Daisy smiled. “Yes.”
“Why, are you feeling too good and you need to make yourself cry?”
She laughed at Nora’s drama. “No. Because I can do whatever I want.”