14 - JUST LUNCH
Lacey
Lunch. Sunday. But if it gets weird, I'm leaving.
She replied in under a minute.
Lunch felt safer than dinner. Dinner implied evening, which implied darkness, which implied things I wasn't ready to imagine. Lunch was just food in the middle of the day. And I could always get up and leave from lunch.
Sunday arrived without fanfare, with no regard for the fact that this one was different.
Morning rounds, the routine of the work that had been holding me together since the cat cam, the way a cast holds a bone.
I got home to Whiskers winding around my ankles and an empty house that had finally stopped feeling like a wound. Progress, maybe. Or just time.
I stood in front of my closet for forty minutes.
I pulled out the cream silk blouse first, the one I'd bought for a cardiology conference two years ago, worn once for the keynote, never since. It was beautiful. It was too beautiful. It said I tried, which meant it said I want you to like me. I put it back.
Navy sweater. Something a thirty-five-year-old doctor wears to a sensible lunch with a friend's acquaintance who means nothing yet and might mean nothing ever. I put it on, looked in the mirror, and thought, I look like I'm going to a committee meeting. I took it off.
Back to the silk.
Slacks or jeans. Slacks felt like armor. Jeans felt like I was trying to look casual. I went to the slacks, then the jeans, then stood holding both. I was a woman who made life-or-death decisions without breaking a sweat and was paralyzed by trousers.
I put on the jeans. I put on the silk blouse.
I drove across town telling myself this was just lunch. People had lunch with new people all the time. I parked across from The Bluebird at 12:55 and sat a minute with my hands on the wheel, getting up the nerve to go in.
Bread, coffee and a garlicky scent from the kitchen hit me at once. Half the tables were full. I found Janice at a corner table by the window, already on her feet and beaming, and some of the tightness went out of my shoulders at the sight of her.
Behind her, a man.
Average height, slim, dark hair swept back, a mouth that went easily to a smile. Brown skin, dark eyes with something playful working in them. Very good looking. He was comfortable in his body in a way I noticed because I never had been.
Janice reached me first. I let her hug me and held on a second longer than I meant to. "I'm so glad you came." She pulled back, both hands on my arms. "This is my friend, Ricardo Guzmán García."
He put out his hand. "I'm very pleased to meet you, Lacey." His voice was low and warm.
I accepted his hand. Warm, firm, a callus ridge across one fingertip from the strings. His eyes went over me once, half a second, frank and unbothered about being frank. "Nice to meet you too."
"Janice told me you were beautiful," he said. "She undersold it."
Brad used to compliment me like he was checking a box. You look nice tonight. This was not that.
"Thank you," I said, and heard how small it came out.
His smile shifted, amused and not unkind.
"Lacey," Janice said, laughing. "Lacey. Hello. Do you want to sit down?"
I startled. "Right. Yes. Sitting. Good idea."
I sat. They sat. I folded my hands in my lap.
The server came. Ricardo ordered sparkling water with lime, Janice her iced latte, and I asked for black coffee even though I'd had two cups already and my heart didn't need the help.
"So," Ricardo said, leaning back. "Janice tells me you save tiny hearts for a living."
"I try. Most days they save me right back."
A woman with dark hair and a fitted dress passed the table on her way to the restroom, and Ricardo's eyes tracked her for a full two seconds before they snapped back, and he didn't seem to know he'd done it.
Janice looked at the ceiling, recalculating something.
I caught her eye and shook my head a little.
It's fine. She mouthed work in progress and picked up her cup.
"Sorry," Ricardo said to no one in particular. Then, to me, without a trace of embarrassment, "You were saying?"
"I wasn't saying anything yet."
"Good." He grinned. "Then I didn't miss anything."
He was charming.
"Janice said you’re studying music theory."
"Grad student, yes. I play guitar, write songs that will never leave my apartment, and teach undergrads who are all certain they're about to be famous."
He leaned in on his elbows and caught the water glass with one of them, saved it before it went over, set it back from the edge with exaggerated care. "Sorry. I do that. I need a wider table than the rest of the population."
Janice spoke in a stage whisper. “Never let him sing to you, unless you’re ready to lose your mind. It’s incredibly seductive.”
Our food came. I had a salad that I mostly moved around my plate.
Ricardo ate a sandwich with his whole attention and talked between bites, hands going when a topic lit him up, now and then losing the end of a sentence because a better one had shown up in the middle of it.
We got onto music. He played flamenco, loved the old jazz records, and found most of what was on the radio physically painful.
I told him I'd played piano as a child and stopped when medical school ate all my free time, and hadn't touched one since.
"What did you love most?"
"Debussy. Clair de Lune."
"You should play again. Even badly. Especially badly, it's good for the soul."
"Maybe. When there's time."
"Make the time." Then he spread his hands. "Says the man who hasn't called his mother back in two weeks. Don't take life advice from someone who can't remember to charge his phone."
He was looking at my mouth when he said it and made no effort to pretend he wasn't. I looked back, and didn't pretend either.
"See?" Janice said, choosing her moment. "Told you he was good for you."
I shot her a look. She grinned, unrepentant.
By the time our plates were cleared, I realized I hadn't looked at my watch in over an hour.
Janice paid, her hand claiming the bill before either of us could move. Ricardo had a rehearsal to get to. He offered his hand again on the sidewalk and held it a second, his thumb pressing once against the back of mine before he let go. "I hope I'll see you again, Lacey."
"Maybe," I said, because I couldn't commit to yes yet.
He smiled like he knew the gap between maybe and yes was narrower than I was making it sound, and then he was off down the sidewalk, long strides, guitar case over one shoulder.
Janice waited until he'd rounded the corner, then turned to me with her arms crossed and her whole face pleased with itself. "So?"
"He's so young," I said. "I feel as if I should be asking about his homework."
"He's twenty-four, he has a degree, and he's lived in three countries. If anyone's the beginner here, it's you, and we both know it." She wasn't wrong.
"He kept looking at other women," I said.
Her expression flickered. "I know. I'm sorry about that. He's, well. Young."
"I thought it was funny."
She looked at me. "You're not bothered."
"His eyes wandered and then they found their way back, every time, and when they were on me, they really saw me." I worked out how to say the rest. "It was honest. I think I liked it better than a man performing a focus he didn't feel."
That stopped her. "You know what you did in there?
" she asked. "About forty minutes in, you stopped watching the room.
You quit checking the exits. You sat there and talked to a beautiful man and forgot to be afraid, and I have known you for years and I'm not sure I have seen you do that once.
That's the whole reason I'm about to say what I'm about to say. "
She steered me to a bench and sat, pulling me down with her. The light was still warm, the street easy around us.
"The Second Circle," she said. "I want to take you. This week."
I'd known somewhere this was coming.
"Janice."
"Before you say no. Listen. You went to the singles bar.
You went to this lunch. Those are real steps and I'm proud of you for them.
But they're steps into the same world you already know that doesn't work for you.
" She paused. "The Second Circle isn't that.
The rules are explicit. Everything is chosen.
Nothing happens that you didn't choose, and they take that seriously. "
I looked at my hands. "I'm not ready for any of it."
"You don't have to do anything. You watch.
You have a drink, you watch and you leave whenever you want.
Ricardo's a long-term guest of my membership, so he'll be there.
I'll be there." She let it settle. "Mostly I think you need to stand in a room that takes the wanting seriously.
That doesn't treat it as something to manage and apologize for. "
That hit harder than it should have. "When?" I asked.
"Saturday. I always go on Saturday. No pressure. You wake up and if you can't, you text me and we get dinner instead. No consequences."
"I'd just be watching," I said.
"Just watching."
"And I can leave whenever I want."
"Whenever you want. My word."
I picked at a thread on my sleeve, already running the logistics, what I'd wear, where I'd park, whether I could have a glass of wine first, whether I could build a plausible reason to cancel by Friday night.
"Okay," I said. "Saturday."
Janice had the sense not to pump her fist.
She walked me to my car. At the door she stopped, squeezed my arm, and let her hand linger, her thumb pressing once against the soft inside of my elbow.
"That woman who forgot to be afraid back there.
She's who you are under all the armor. I've always known she was in there.
" Then she continued with her smile tilting. "Wear something dangerous, Saturday."
Then she brightened. “Oh, I almost forgot! Listen, Lacey, the Women in Medicine cruise is coming up and now you have no reason to say no. I really want you to come with me this year."
The cruise. I would love to, but Janice knew there was no way with my finances. "Janice, you know I can't afford that, not until next year at least," I said a little reproachfully.
Janice just grinned at me. "I knew you wanted to go!" She handed me an envelope. "And so I bought your ticket!"
I looked down, stunned. "Janice. That's—I can't accept this."
"Sure, you can! Anyways, it's not for you, it's for me. I've always wanted my BFF with me. Say you will, otherwise I just tossed all that money for nothing!" She paused. "Of course, you'll share a cabin with me, to save money, right?"
"I guess so," I said. "Is that how it usually works?"
Janice's smile widened. "Yeah. That's how it works."
Of course I agreed. I was so lucky to have Janice.