5. Nolani
By twelve forty five Sunday afternoon, I’d changed clothes three times and stopped insulting myself by pretending the weather had anything to do with it.
The pale-pink sundress had been too soft.
The cream linen set made me look like I planned to negotiate somebody’s commercial lease near the marina.
I stood in front of the bedroom mirror, wearing a coral dress that skimmed my waist before falling loosely around my calves, trying to decide whether the narrow straps looked effortless or like I had spent forty-five minutes engineering effortless.
Downstairs, a card slapped against Nana’s dining room table.
“Your granddaughter still up there changing?” Miss Corrine called.
“She claims she only changed once,” Nana answered.
“That girl been walking back and forth so much, the ceiling got footsteps.”
Laughter rose through the floorboards.
I leaned toward the mirror and adjusted one curl near my cheek. “I can hear y’all.”
“We know!” Nana called back.
My phone rested face-down on the dresser. I’d checked it once after breakfast, answered Nyla, and resisted the urge to open Crème & Chill’s schedule, sales report, or inventory notes. The shop had opened without me. Scoops & Stories had survived another morning without my supervision.
Apparently, civilization remained intact.
I fastened the silver pendant at my throat just as Nana appeared in the doorway wearing a sunflower-yellow housedress and an expression already carrying judgment.
“That the one?”
“I think so.”
“You thought so about the last two.”
“The first one was too plain.”
“It was pink.”
“Pink can still be plain.”
“And the pants?”
“Too structured.”
“They were pants, Nolani.”
“That’s not what structured means.”
Nana came farther into the room and stopped behind me. Her eyes traveled over our reflections before she reached around and straightened the pendant where it rested against my chest.
“You look pretty.”
“Thank you.”
“I ain’t talking about the dress.” I glanced at her through the mirror. “You look lighter than you did Thursday.”
“I’ve been sleeping.”
“That helped.”
Her hands settled briefly on my shoulders before she gave them a small squeeze. Nana had already said enough about rest to last me through several therapy sessions and one church revival, so I braced myself for another lesson.
She surprised me.
“Go have fun.”
I blinked. “That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
“No wisdom?”
“I done gave you enough wisdom. You keep collecting it like coupons and forgetting to redeem any.” I laughed.
Nana smiled. “Let that man show you his city. Eat something good. Laugh too loud. And stop touching that necklace every time somebody tells you the truth.” My fingers were already halfway toward the pendant. I dropped my hand. “There you go.”
“You did that on purpose.”
“Absolutely.”
She kissed my temple and headed for the door.
“Nana?”
She looked back.
“Did you send Nyla a picture of me?”
Her face became entirely too innocent.
“I might’ve.”
“Nana.”
“She asked what you were wearing.”
“She did not.”
“Then I volunteered.”
My phone buzzed before I could respond.
Nyla:
Coral dress???? Curls curling???? SHOULDERS OUT???
I stared after Nana.
She kept walking.
Nyla:
My sister is OUTSIDE.
Me:
I’m going sightseeing.
The response came immediately.
Nyla:
With a fine football coach who already gave you a candy nickname. That is called a DATE, beloved.
Me:
Goodbye.
Nyla:
Don’t call the shop.
Me:
I wasn’t going to.
Nyla:
Your lie just made my phone hot.
I laughed and reached for my purse.
Another message appeared.
Nyla:
Have fun, Noli. And let that man be nice to you without turning it into a debt.
That one stayed on the screen longer.
Nyla could aggravate the natural life out of me, but being my twin meant she knew exactly which joke could be left as a joke and which truth needed to arrive underneath one.
I locked my phone without checking anything else.
The doorbell rang at exactly one thirty.
Punctual.
Smart man.
The card-game aunties went silent downstairs for one expectant second before Miss Corrine shouted, “Nolani, your football coach here!”
I closed my eyes.
Nana laughed from the foyer. “Come on down, baby. Bring them rejected outfits too. We taking a vote.”
“I’m leaving all of y’all.”
“No, you ain’t!” Miss Corrine called.
I drew one steady breath and headed downstairs under the full weight of five women’s curiosity.
Landon stood just inside the foyer with a small cedar garden box tucked beneath one arm and a white bakery box tied with green ribbon in his other hand.
And Lord.
The man had apparently decided Sunday deserved effort.
Cream linen trousers rested low and clean against his waist beneath a deep green short-sleeved button-down left open enough at the collar for a thin gold chain to rest against his chest. Dark ink climbed one side of his neck and disappeared beneath his sleeve.
More tattoos covered part of his forearm beneath a gold watch, and his locs had been gathered high with enough left loose to fall toward one side of his face.
His beard looked disrespectfully precise.
Diamond studs flashed at both ears.
The overall effect sat somewhere between somebody’s distinguished professor and the man your mother warned you not to let smile at you too long.
Landon didn’t merely look polished.
He looked like the polish knew better than to remove the hood from him.
That man was fine as hell.
His attention found me before I reached the bottom stair.
The look that followed was slow enough to answer every question I’d asked the mirror upstairs.
“There go Hershey.”
Miss Corrine hummed behind Nana. “He said that like he been waiting all day.”
“Been waiting on her,” Landon said without taking his eyes off me.
Heat climbed beneath my skin.
Nana folded her arms. “You planning to greet the rest of us, or you came over here to stare at my grandbaby?”
That finally pulled his attention away.
“Good afternoon, ma’am. My apologies. Nolani distracted me.”
“That happen often?”
“Been happening since Friday.”
Loretta slapped a card against the table. “I know that’s right.”
“Nobody asked you,” Nana said.
Landon laughed and offered her the cedar box. “Nolani told me you garden. Flowers looked too temporary, so I brought something you can actually put in the ground.”
Nana accepted it and opened the lid. Several seed packets sat inside beside a pair of gardening gloves and small wooden plant markers.
“Heirloom tomatoes?”
“The woman at the nursery said those do well near the coast.”
Nana looked at him. “You cook?”
“Enough to keep myself alive and know cinnamon don’t belong in rice.”
A laugh escaped me.
His eyes came right back.
Of course they did.
He lifted the bakery box next. “Pralines from Magnolia Row. Hershey mentioned the card game, and I wasn’t showing up empty-handed.”
Miss Corrine rose so quickly her chair scraped. “Give me that box. Pearl gon’ have us splitting one praline five ways if she hold it.”
Nana handed it over without looking away from Landon.
“Where you taking her?”
“Marina first. Promenade, bookstore, gallery. Dinner later if she still likes me by then.”
“What time you bringing her back?”
His attention shifted toward me before he answered. “Whenever she’s ready. I planned the date. Her time’s still hers.”
Miss Loretta leaned toward Corrine. “That was a good answer.”
“I heard him,” Nana said.
Landon looked entirely unbothered by the inspection. No extra chest in his posture, no performance designed to convince Nana he was harmless. He simply stood there like a grown man who understood that entering somebody’s life sometimes meant meeting the people already standing inside it.
Nana tapped the tomato packet against her palm. “You coach football?”
“Yes, ma’am. College ball and youth clinics.”
“Then you know how to return something somebody trusted you with.”
“I do.”
“Bring her back with everything she left here with.”
Landon glanced at me. “I can promise the same number of limbs. Opinions might multiply.”
“They usually do.”
Laughter moved through the foyer.
I grabbed my purse. “Are we done interrogating him?”
“We ain’t interrogating nobody,” Miss Corrine said around a praline. “This hospitality.”
“This is hospitality?”
Landon moved closer and lowered his voice. “Told you Self Ridge people had a hostile understanding of directness.”
“You’re in Willow Run.”
“Regional influence.”
I shook my head.
His eyes traveled over the coral dress once before returning to my face.
“You look beautiful, Nolani.”
“Thank you.”
“Nah.” I looked at him. His expression stayed easy, but the teasing left his voice. “You look beautiful.”
My fingers found the pendant.
Landon noticed.
I knew he noticed because I knew his patterns now too.
He didn’t say a word about it.
That made it worse.
Nana followed us onto the porch, carrying the cedar box and claiming she needed better light to read the planting instructions. The card-game aunties crowded the front window with no excuse whatsoever.
Landon opened the passenger door of a black SUV and waited.
I stopped beside it. “You know I’m capable of getting in by myself.”
“I know.”
“Just establishing the record.”
“Record established.”
I got in.
He closed the door.
Through the windshield, I caught Nana watching from the porch with a smile she tried to hide when she realized I’d seen her.
A little before two, Willow Run disappeared behind us.
Sitting beside Landon proved considerably more dangerous than looking at him across Nana’s foyer.
Distance had at least allowed me to pretend I wasn’t inspecting the man.
Up close, every detail became its own problem.
His cologne settled against the leather interior without overpowering it.
Sunlight struck the gold watch at his wrist. Dark ink followed the back of his hand toward his fingers whenever he adjusted his grip on the wheel, and the chain beneath his collar moved when he shifted in his seat.
I looked out the window.
Then back at his hand.
Then out the window again.
“You survived,” I said.
“Wasn’t nothing to survive. Your people love you.”