Page 20 of Mom-Com
A tilt to her lips and then a full smile took over her face, letting the sunshine come out again. “Yes, shopping sounds great. How about Friday night? The kids don’t go to their dad’s until Saturday morning.”
Now that the ceasefire was called, I should have been ecstatic to escape without a scrape. But my chest felt heavy, like something was off. It wasn’t until I said my goodbyes and walked to her door to head back to my place that it came to me.I was making a skirt to catch a man.
What the hell?
I froze as her words reverberated through my brain. One hand on the doorknob and not one rational thought to be found pinging around in there. My brain scrambled like my words and my body followed suit, acting like that of a robot. Reaching up to my shirt cuff, I grabbed a button and pulled. A discreet cough and the button was off without a sound. I let it slip through my fingers and fall to the floor, pinging off the tile and over my shoe. It rolled until it hit the wall by the door, falling over and coming to a stop.
Lily-Marie, having been behind me as we walked to her door, followed the path of the button and then stooped to pick it up. She flipped it over in her hand and then eyed my shirt. I was like a deer in headlights. The woman had more intelligence in her pinky finger than I had in my whole brain, science degrees or not. There was no way she was going to fall for the fact that my button had magically come off my shirt. I wasn’t that good of an actor.
“Are you missing a button?” She trailed a finger down my torso, my muscles jumping and convulsing beneath her simple touch. I would have answered her if I still had breath in my body. She didn’t wait for a response, simply grabbing my hands and examining my cuffs, finally seeing the empty spot where threads dangled in the air. “Aha! Here. Damn mass-manufactured shirts these days. Always dropping buttons and seams coming unraveled.”
She released my wrist and held the button out toward me. Time to go for broke. I rubbed the back of my neck. Anything to stop the tingling in my arm from where she held me. “Yeah, thanks. Um, any chance you could help me sew it back on? Seeing as how you’re good with a needle and thread.”
Her gaze whipped up and behind the guardedness from earlier, I could see a hint of pleasure. The tiny lines around her eyes relaxed and smoothed over at the compliment. She finally nodded. “Sure, I can do that for you. Just—”
All I heard was “sure” and I started unbuttoning my shirt right then and there.
“What—what are you doing?” Her mouth dropped open.
I continued unbuttoning and then took the shirt off, revealing the tight white undershirt below. How else was she going to sew it back on? I was pretty sure she couldn’t do it while I was still in the shirt. “Giving you my shirt so you can sew the button on.”
Her eyes darted back and forth across my chest and if I wasn’t hallucinating, I could see a soft blush spreading across her cheeks.
She accepted the balled- up shirt from my outstretched hand and chuckled. “Clothes keep coming off when we see each other...”
9
Lily-Marie
“So I wore the skirt and not one man at work said anything to me. A lady from accounting complimented me in the break room, though.”
“And how old was she?” Gabby asked me over the phone.
I grimaced. “Close to retirement,” I mumbled.
A bark of laughter had me pulling the phone from my ear. I got defensive. “Listen. So far, most of these fifty ways to find a husband have been total duds, but the Band-Aid thing totally worked. Just happened around the wrong man. I gotta keep going, Gabby. Besides, getting a new skirt out of the deal is better than being pickpocketed, so I’d have to rate my methods better than those stupid dating apps so far. Don’t you think?”
Gabby had calmed down enough to listen. “I will give you that. But I still don’t hold out much hope of you finding success with this scheme of yours. I’m sorry. I love you and I want you to be happy, but following advice from the 1950s seems a little cray-cray.”
I pulled the phone from my mouth and shouted up the stairs, “Clark! You better be reading right now.” When I heard a grunt in response, I went back to talking to Gabby. “I know it’s a little crazy, but I’m willing to do whatever I need to, to find Mr. Right. Can’t ding me for trying.”
“Girl, you gotta let me write this stuff up in my column. Pretty please? I promise you it’ll be anonymous and complimentary toward you. I’ve already written up three articles and I just need to hit submit to send them to my editor to get the series going.”
I rubbed my forehead. She’d been lobbying hard to use my dating dilemmas for her newspaper for a while now and I just couldn’t say no anymore. My defenses were low. “Fine. Submit it.” I raised my voice over her loud whooping. “But make sure you keep details out that could ever be traced back to me. Promise?”
“I vow on my firstborn child—whenever that might be—to protect you. Thank you, Lil. This docu-series is going to go viral, I can feel it.”
I rolled my eyes.Viral. “Yeah, whatever, just make sure you remember me in your acceptance speech of whatever awards they give to newspaper columnists.”
“Uh, there are no awards.”
“Well, shit. I guess I’ll take a rain check. I kinda like you owing me one.” It was my turn to giggle, but she was all business and didn’t even acknowledge the imbalance of favors owed.
“Okay, so tell me about your latest interactions with Jameson.”
I shook my head. “I’m not trying to marry Jameson, nor am I using my list where he’s concerned. Forget him. Let’s talk about my next moves.”
“Nah-uh. Back up and tell me about Jameson and then tell me your next moves.”
