He meant to fix it. He meant to call her in Georgia some night, have one of their epic long talks, and all of a sudden, he’d be buying a train ticket, or she’d be in town, and little by little they’d reclaim what they had. But as the months went by, he knew she was doing better and better, and there he was, right where she’d left him, sinking.
Now, at the toy store he tries to stand straighter （the way his mother would instruct）。 “Well, I hope you have fun at the shower,” he says. “It was great bumping into you.”
“You, too, Luke.”
“If you’re ever in town again, we should—”
“Yeah,” she says. “Say hi to your mom and Mary Jane, and happy birthday to your niece.” She starts to walk away.
“Um, do your parents still have Thunder?” He has no idea why he asks this. It’s been ten years, and ten years is an eternity for any pet. But in his head their border collie is still the puppy that used to love that red whistle ball Luke would throw. The happy dog that used to let out a certain bark when Luke’s car would pull up, and Ginger would say, “We knew it was you. Thunder told us.”
“They do. He’s still kicking. He rides with my dad to the post office every day.”
“That’s awesome.”
“You should come see him,” she says. “He’d remember you.”
“I should,” Luke says, and waves to her as she heads toward the back of the store. She turns sideways past a little girl winding the handle to a jack-in-the-box, and she smiles and helps a young boy who dropped puzzle pieces on the floor.
“There you go,” she says to the boy, and she glides behind the next rack, her shoulder bumping a set of chimes before she’s finally gone.
5. Yes to Love
The green paisley dresses are not a hit.
When Ginger agreed to be in the December wedding, she imagined velvet gowns. She imagined snow outside the reception hall, lanterns in the trees. She imagined a grand Christmas tree and poinsettias on the tables. She did not envision this scratchy green paisley with a small fur collar shawl that made her feel like an American Girl doll from the Victorian era.
The other bridesmaids are incredulous as the seamstress kneels at their feet to pin the hems. Cameron, who is tall and lithe, who does CrossFit and Pilates on alternating days, who in high school had two football players fight over who got to escort her out on the field during homecoming, doesn’t even look good, and she’d look good with an army surplus blanket draped around her body. The cut of the dress is boxy and thick, and the waist is too high. “This is not what I pictured,” she says. “I look like Oscar the Grouch.”
“You don’t like them either, do you?” Cecilia, Suzette’s grad school roommate, whispers to the quiet seamstress who appears to stare at the lopsided faux fur shawl Cecilia wears. The seamstress in her V-neck orange shirt and fall boots, who looks good for forty or whatever she is, takes a moment to register the question.
“Well,” the seamstress says. “They wouldn’t have been my first choice.” She scribbles a note on her small clipboard. “But I’ve gotten fairly used to them over the weeks, and they’re definitely one of a kind. The bride seems to like them, no?”
“Tuh,” Cameron says.
“She’s just doing a psychology experiment on us,” Cecilia says.
Ginger stands off to the side and tries to like herself in this dress. She squints and thinks about Luke Crowley with his messy hair and those complex eyes. What are the chances she’d run into him? She forgot how easily they could start talking, how sincere even his smallest words could be.
She wonders if he still sings. She can hear his voice at the concert at Woodsen Park singing “The Air That I Breathe” that Memorial Day when they were twenty-one. She remembers how the people in the audience stirred with the chorus of that song （And to love you…）—with Luke in the T-shirt she had bought him from Macy’s—how the retirees, the teenagers, and the young kids on their mothers’ laps stayed still and just watched him. He was young and charming, his voice smooth and gravelly all at once. The sky wasn’t dark yet, and the pink magnolia trees were in full bloom. There were strings of lights crisscrossed above his head, and he hit every note. She remembers looking up at him, and the old woman who sat next to her, who saw her get to her feet as she listened, hands clasped with pride, tapped Ginger on the arm. “You’re smitten,” she said.