And when he pulled back, he looked as lost as I felt.
Then he seemed to remember something, and he gave me a sly smile.
“What?” I asked.
The smile deepened, and he looked down at the beaded pin against my neck and then back up to my eyes. And then, as he took a reluctant, almost woozy step backward, he pointed at me, like Gotcha.
“You,” he said then, “owe me a thousand dollars.”
Twenty-Nine
A DATE. AT Jack Stapleton’s house.
What the hell was I thinking?
I was crazy to go. But I’d be crazy not to go.
Still, it was going to take some courage. And some prep.
Especially since I hadn’t unpacked. So when I suddenly needed to find a great outfit—one that could, in theory, if I chose right, help me feel up to the challenge—I couldn’t find one.
I mean, after a while, I just started dumping the boxes out on the floor and pawing through them.
I had some date-wear in there somewhere.
I’d left myself plenty of time, but as box after box turned up wrinkled sweatpants, I started getting tense.
That’s when I heard a knock at my door.
I looked through the peephole.
There, in the fish-eye lens, was Taylor.
“I’m not home,” I called through the door.
“You clearly are.”
“I’m busy, though.”
“Can I have sixty seconds? I need to say something.”
I cracked the door. “Sixty seconds,” I said.
She held out a grocery sack, and as I looked at it, she said, “It’s the shoes you lent me for that thing. And it’s your heart-shaped baking pan I borrowed. And some books.”
“Keep it all,” I said. “I don’t want it.”
“I’m not keeping it,” she said.
“Fine. Donate it, then.”
“You love these shoes!”
“Not anymore.”
Taylor had been holding the sack out to me, but at that, she pulled it back.
“Okay, then,” she said.
“What did you need to say?” I asked then, like Let’s get this over with.
“More like ‘ask,’ really.”
“Fine. Ask.”
“Is there … anything I can do for you?”
I frowned. “That’s why you came here?”
“I just … want to do something for you. Anything.”
“What could you possibly do for me?”
“That’s what I’m asking.”
“Are you trying to make amends?”
“We don’t have to label it.”
Of course my answer was no. No, there was nothing she could do for me. No, I wasn’t going to let her make herself feel better by magnanimously doing me favors. No. Hell no.
But.
Something about the quietness of her voice got my attention.
“I guess,” she said then, “I just want you to know that I’m genuinely sorry.”
It’s not all that often that people who’ve wronged you actually apologize. Usually, in my experience, they go on and on maintaining their innocence. Insisting that they weren’t so bad, or they had their reasons, or you were somehow partly to blame.
But, in classic Taylor fashion, she was just owning it.
It made me miss her.
She was backing up now, and then turning, and then walking off down the hallway. The collar of her jacket was flipped the wrong way.
My plan was to let her go.
I told myself to let her go.
But then I heard myself say. “You could help me find something to wear.”
Taylor froze. Then she turned around. “Something to wear?”
I stood up a little taller. “I have a date.”
Taylor had the good manners not to ask who it was with.
I went on, “And I can’t find anything to wear. I mean that literally. The movers didn’t label the moving boxes. So you could help me find my clothes.”
Taylor tried to hold back her smile. “I can totally do that.”
“I’m not forgiving you, by the way,” I said, pointing at her as she walked back toward me.
“I wouldn’t want you to.”
“I’m just letting you reduce a small amount of your soul-crushing guilt.”
“Thank you.” She stopped in front of me. “Do you maybe also need your hair and makeup done for this date?”
I held very still. Now she was pushing it.
“I just offer because sometimes when you do your own eyeshadow you wind up looking like you got punched in both eyes by two different people.”
“Thanks for that.” She wasn’t wrong.