Page 37 of Lessons in Love at the Seaside Salon
‘We work together.’
‘Right. So there’s been flirting?’
‘Yes.’
‘He likes you.’
‘He’s really sweet to me.’
Fran takes another sip of Coke. ‘Is he generally sweet to people?’
Evie takes a breath. ‘Yes, but –’
‘Evie, don’t confuse attention for affection.’
Fran says it seriously but Evie wants to tell her that sheknowsthat – it’s not as if she hasn’t rolled it around in her brain over and over and over and over …
Instead, she needs to make her case.
‘I don’t. I can tell he likes me by the way he looks at me,’ she says, thinking of how Sam’s eyes light up when he sees her. How he walked in the other day and said, ‘Iloveyour dress,’ his hand reaching out to brush the fabric, his fingertip finding her thigh in a way that Evie did not think was an accident. She couldn’t look at him in case he guessed what she was thinking. Except she wanted him to guess what she was thinking – and isn’t that the conundrum for anyone who has a crush? They want the object of their crush to return their feelings, but that would mean making the feelings known and that prospect is mortifying, because what if the feelings aren’t, in fact, returned?
All of it made Evie feel like she was back in high school, except she never had a crush of this intensity on anyone in high school. There was no one worthy. Not even Si Hardy.
‘I need to see this in action to make sure,’ Fran says.
This irritates Evie. ‘You don’t believe me?’
‘I want to check the guy out! You’re my friend. I want to make sure he’s not just sleazing around, checking out every woman who comes into the salon.’
‘He doesn’t.’
Fran stays quiet.
‘Promise,’ Evie adds.
‘All right, I believe you. But he’s a co-worker. Is it a good idea to get involved? The salon is so small.’
‘There’s no involvement. Yet. We’re just …’ Evie can’t help smiling as she thinks about the conversation she and Sam had in the back room the other day, how he asked after Billy, asked questions about her life. How interested he was in her.
‘Let him ask you out, then.’ Fran raises her eyebrows. ‘I’m serious, Evie. He has to make the first move.’
Although Evie hopes he will, she has thought about taking the initiative herself.
‘Why? We’ve had women’s lib. We can ask them out if we want.’
‘Because men will say yes toeveryone.’ Fran says and points her finger around the room. ‘You could crack on to every guy here and he’ll say yes to you, married, single, halfway single, whatever.’
‘That’s not true!’ How can it be? The women’s magazines all say men are hard to get.
‘It is. You should hear the stories Steve has about his married mates and the women they go home with when they’re all out on the town. They don’t approach any of them. The women come to them and they don’t say no.’
‘But –’
‘If he asks you out it’s because he really wants to spend time with you,’ Fran says. ‘He could be with any woman who asks him, right? But you want to know that he really wants to seeyou. So wait for that. And if it doesn’t come …’ She shrugs. ‘Then he’s not for you.’
‘But he is for me!’ Evie feels stricken at the idea that she and Sam may not progress if she’s unable to do anything about it. Can’t she take charge of her own life? Fran doesn’t know everything.
‘Then it will all be fine.’
