Page 48 of Lessons in Love at the Seaside Salon
She doesn’t ever want to be in a position to have to pretend to not know Sam. It’s corny to think it – and she’s certainly not going to say it out loud – but she feels as if she’s known Sam before, in another lifetime. At least one. Yes, yes, she’s heard people say things like that and thought they were ridiculous, but now she knows it’s because she hadn’t found it yet. Hadn’t found him.
Once she talked to Trudy about Laurie and how she was sure he was the man for her, and Trudy had said she just knew. ‘It’s a feeling, pet,’ she said, ‘and there’s no mistaking it.’
Evie can’t mistake this feeling. It’s not butterflies fluttering in her stomach, it’s eagles flapping their huge wings inside her whole chest, impossible to ignore or write off or pretend that it’sjust a crush. She’s had crushes. They are feeble things compared to what she feels now. Moths, not even butterflies, let alone birds. Crushes are silly and transient and they give you the equivalent of a sugar fix with no substance whatsoever.
Sam’s leg and hand are still there. Right next to her. Oh, how she wants to touch them. She’s not going to, though. That is definitely too forward. But it shocks her, how strongly she feels like doing it. How much of anurgeit is. Not even an impulse. There’s this force inside her that could make her reach out and touch him if she doesn’t keep control of it. That’s definitely something she’s never felt before.
Is it lust? Partly. Sure. But that sounds too … shallow, too tawdry, not noble enough, for this experience she’s having. It’s stronger than feelings. It’s … Oh god, no, she can’t think the word. Can she?
It’s destiny. Yes, that’s what she believes. She was meant to meet Oliver so he could bring Sam into her life. What if she hadn’t gone to putt-putt that day? Would Oliver even have contacted her about Sam working at the salon? Perhaps not. So it was destiny that put her at the putt-putt at the same time as Oliver.
Beside her Sam cackles and she blinks, coming back to the present.
‘God, I love her,’ he says softly as Marilyn looms on the screen. ‘She’s so funny.’
Funnyis not a word Evie has associated with Marilyn Monroe but if Sam thinks she’s funny, Evie will start watching her movies and figuring out why. Because she wants to know Sam better. Just like he wants to know her better – he’s always asking her questions about Billy, for example.
Once the movie has finished they wander out into the cool early-winter air, hearing the sound of waves breaking on AvocaBeach. She wants to take his hand, but she knows that’s too much, too soon. They’ve only had this one maybe-date.
‘I’m so glad you wanted to come to this movie,’ Sam says as they stroll toward his car, other moviegoers also taking their time to leave the cinema. There’s never much of a rush in these parts. Why would anyone hurry? The Coast lifestyle is laidback no matter where you go.
‘Thank you for suggesting it,’ Evie says, hoping she doesn’t sound too keen. It never pays to sound as keen as you feel.
‘I’d love to do it again,’ he says, fishing his car keys out of his pocket and turning to give her a big smile.
‘So would I,’ she says after a beat, holding back her keenness.
‘Great!’
He opens the passenger door and sees her in, and her heart leaps because he has manners, just as her mother said men always should, and she tries not to read too much into it, but manners are so rare and it’s so hard not to get excited about them.
When he drops her home he’s even better mannered: not so much as a kiss on the cheek. But he walks her to her door.
‘See you Monday morning?’ he says with a wink. ‘For those ladies and their gossip. I love it!’
‘Me too,’ she squeaks out, before she waves him goodbye and lets herself inside.
She sits on the couch for an hour staring into space, and later, when she goes to bed, she stares at the ceiling and tries to quiet the racing of her heart, knowing she doesn’t want to, will never want to, because finally, at thirty-three years of age, she is in love.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
After Gary left – actually, she needs to stop thinking of it like that, because technically she kicked him out, as her mother keeps reminding her – Anna realised that while she rarely saw him at home, he had still occupied a large part of her brain space. She had to run the household and do all the things he needed in order to go to his job, like wash and iron his clothes, take his suits to the dry cleaner, make food for him to take to work, keep the house clean and everything that went along with that so that he didn’t have to even think about it; and she also had to do all the thinking about their home and family. All the worrying. All the remembering: bills to pay and birthday cards to send and dinner-party invitations to turn down because he could never guarantee he’d make them. But mostly the worrying, about the kids and their schooling and the future and her mother and his parents and his sister and her family … The housework is tiring but the worrying is exhausting.
It’s not as if she could turn it off either, because if she didn’t do it, who would? Their children needed her to worry about them. It’s part of the mum job description. But it shouldn’t be part of the wife job description. Her husband should make it easy to be with him, not hard. She had never expected to be one of those wives who complained about hubby-this and hubby-that, yet she’d find herself at school pick-up doing so. It wasn’t likeable, to her or anyone else. She resented Gary for putting her in that position.
So with him gone she’s cut out the worrying and the whingeing, and lo and behold she has more time and energy for other things. Which is why she finds herself at jazz ballet with Ingrid on a Thursday morning. The other class time was Monday morning, but as that’s the start of the school week she didn’t feel like she could organise herself to do it on a Monday, so Thursday it is.
Before taking the kids to school she got herself into tights and a leotard – something she hasn’t donned since childhood ballet classes, and she’s not sure if anyone even wears that sort of gear to dance classes any more – and put flats on her feet. The teacher told her she could go barefoot today and then, if she wants to come back, there are special shoes to buy. That sounds like quite a commitment, and she’s a little anti-commitment at the moment, but she’ll try to keep an open mind.
‘Hi, Mama,’ she says as Ingrid gets into the car. A while ago Anna tried going to Ingrid’s door to pick her up for the salon and Ingrid snapped, ‘I’m not decrepit!’ so since then she’s waited in the car at the appointed time. Presumably her mother will tell her when she feels she’s decrepit enough for social niceties to take place. In the meantime Anna gives her a peck on the cheek to say hello, then they’re off.
Ingrid looks as lithe in tights as she did when Anna was a child; Ingrid did ballet classes then. ‘Never too late to look your best, darling,’ she would say as she pinched the non-existent fat on her thigh. As a teenager Anna thought this was a ridiculous attitude – that was the 1960s, after all, when the social conventions of previous decades were being chucked out – but now she tends to think that looking one’s best is more an act of rebellion than letting it all hang out.
‘A ponytail today, I see?’ Ingrid says.
‘I don’t want my neck getting sweaty.’ Anna self-consciously touches her hair. Whenever her mother remarks on her appearance she feels like she’s failed some kind of test.
‘Don’t worry, darling – the fitter you get, the less you’ll sweat.’
