Page 65 of Tilly in Technicolor
TILLY
“Do you like my new clogs?” I ask, kicking my feet out and tapping my wooden heels as we walk and eat our ice cream. I try not to wince at the stab of pain that shoots from the blisters straight to my kneecaps. “I’m practically a Swedish local at this point.”
Ollie frowns, looking at my shoes as he takes a lick from his mint chocolate-chip swirl. “They’re completely made of wood.”
“Nothing gets past you, kid,” I say with a wink, trying to make my collapse onto a nearby bench look casual and not like my feet are in so much pain they just gave out on me.
His frown deepens as he sits next to me. “But that’s wrong, isn’t it?”
“What? No.” I pause. “How?”
“Well, wooden clogs like that are… Dutch, I believe?”
“Please don’t stereotype the Scandinavians, Ollie. It’s not cool.”
“The Dutch are from the Netherlands. Just like that style of shoe. I mean, they even have tulips and a windmill painted on them.”
I pause, staring warily at my shoes. He can’t be right. “I know you’re some sort of ridiculously amazing color-wordsmith-person whatever, but you clearly don’t know fashion like yours truly,” I say, hooking my hand under my knee and hoisting my leg in the air so my fabulous clogged foot dangles in front of his face.
Oliver pulls out his phone and types for a minute then holds up the screen for me to see. Sure enough, it’s a little graphic showing that Swedish clogs tend to be wooden bases with leather tops and the all-wood look with the pointed tip is… Dutch. Damn it.
I push his hand away. “Why would they sell Dutch clogs in Sweden?”
“To make sales to gullible tourists?”
I growl at him. “Well… whatever. They were a steal and are still my new favorite pair of shoes. I’ll probably wear them every day.”… If they would stop rubbing my feet raw.
“How much did you pay for them?”
“Twenty-two hundred krona.”
Ollie eats the last bite of his ice cream cone, tilting his head to look at me. “You consider that a steal?”
Oh no. A small trickle of dread travels down my spine. “Yeah. I think they’re handmade. And that’s like… what? Eighty bucks?”
Ollie pulls out his phone again and types for a moment. “Closer to two hundred,” he says, showing me a conversion calculator of krona to US dollars.
My heart sinks.
Holy shit. TWO HUNDRED DOLLARS? I paid two hundred dollars for a pair of two-by-four torture devices parading as shoes? I can’t even return the damn things because they’re soaked in my foot blood.
“Looks like you can get a pair online for about twenty-fivequid,” Oliver says, scrolling through his phone as he pours salt in my (foot) wound. “I’d say you drastically overpaid.”
I turn my head away from him, feeling like an absolute idiot. An embarrassed breath rattles my chest, and I want to cry. I can feel Oliver watching me, so I do what I can to keep it together.
He does one of his little cough things that always snatches up my attention. Nope. Not gonna work. I will not be Pavlov’s freaking dog to those strangely precious nervous coughs of his. Not me. I’m impenetrable. I’m made of ice. I’m—
“I’m sorry,” Ollie says, shocking the hell out of me by reaching out and placing his palm on my upper arm. “I was teasing you. I love your new shoes. Worth every penny.”
I turn to look at him, my gaze tracing the knuckles of his hand, up the curve of his arm, to that sharp jaw and big nose and those soft brown eyes. Did I say I was made of ice? Because, at the moment, I’m more like a puddle of warm… goo. Or something less gross. But warm. You get the idea.
“The colors are brilliant,” Ollie says, leaning forward to look at them. “Controlled chaos at the tips of your toes. Could I take a picture of them?”
And, for some odd reason, that right there makes them worth the embarrassment of my cultural confusion and the devastation to my poorly converted bank account. Or, at least, it does for a second. I really do wish I hadn’t spent so much money on them.
Ollie pulls out his phone, snapping a few pictures. He smiles at the screen, then inches toward me on the bench, showing me.
“The lighting is a bit dark,” he says, his shoulder brushing mine. “But I think I captured it well enough that I can correct it later. I love the hints of pale pink and yellow to illuminate the scene and draw your eye to the center. I’m guessing it’sPantone 12–1706, Pink Dogwood, and 11–0620, Elfin Yellow. I actually have the perfect other three photos to go with that pink.”
