Page 27 of The Love Haters

Rue… was the shop owner.

I peeked my head through the curtain. “Rue,” I said, squinting against her inevitable answer. “Areyouthe owner?”

“Of course I am, sweetheart,” she said. “Now get out here.”

Reluctantly, I stepped out, draped shoulders to ankles in a long, bell-sleeved, silky, orange-and-white,patterned-so-aggressively-it-was-almost-violentcaftan.

Feeling like I’d been body-snatched.

“Stunning,” Rue proclaimed, taking in the sight. “How do you feel?”

The only word that came to mind was “Surreal?”

“Don’t think,” Rue said, implying I was doing it wrong. “Justexperience.”

I gave it a second. Then I said, “My experience feels surreal.”

“Try spinning,” Rue said, like that might help.

“In a circle?”

“Yes,” she said, turning me by the shoulders to wind me up.

I did it, but clompily.

“Faster,” Rue said.

Obediently, I turned faster. She was my new landlord, after all.

And then a fun thing happened: the fabric started to glide on the air and float out around my calves, like a pinwheel. For a moment, until I got dizzy and stopped, I felt several things other than weird: the smooth wood floor under my bare feet, the wind swirling around my legs, the very bizarre—but not totally unpleasant, if I’m honest—sensation ofhaving no underpants on… and, as I looked down at the bright fabric fluttering below, a micro-flash of the delight you can only get from glimpsing something beautiful.

Genuine delight—just for a half second.

There, and then gone. Like a firefly.

As I came to a stop and watched all the fabric settle around me, Rue held up a hair clip with a hot-pink hibiscus flower hot-glued to it.

“I want to put your hair up,” she said, and it didn’t even occur to me to protest.

“Rue,” I said then, as she twisted my hair. “I’m very sorry about the Lilly Pulitzer commentary. From before.”

But Rue patted my shoulder as if it hadn’t bothered her at all.

“Don’t even think about it,” she said. “It’s a lot for a chromophobe.”

“For a—what?”

But Rue just nodded.

“Awhatkind of phobe?” I asked again.

“Chromophobia,” Rue explained then, gently, like she was breaking the news of my diagnosis, “is a fear of color.”

“I don’t have chromophobia!” I said.

But Rue gave me a minute to consider it.

I thought about all the neutral colors in my apartment. My Harbor Gray living room and my Abalone curtains and my Pearl River cabinets. Not to mention my black underwear. And then I thought about Beanie’s safety-cone-orange throw pillows that were still—eternally—stacked in my closet.

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