“No.”
That’s the only word that will come out of my mouth. I have just seen what Lucy thinks she’s wearing to go out on the boat, and no.
It’s early on Saturday, and she and I are scheduled to meet Brody and his best friend, Connor Perez, at the Green Will Lake Campground launch. We’re angling for trout, but mostly we’re trying to give Lucy a feel for what a fishing trip is like. And fact number one: It’s a fuckload messier than she thinks it is.
She stops in her tracks and looks down at her clothes. “I’m wearing jeans. And a t-shirt. And comfortable shoes.”
She’s wearing expensive-looking tight jeans, a pale-gray t-shirt, and those flimsy, lame shoes I think women call ballet flats. They’re basically slippers.
“You’re going to ruin your clothes, freeze your ass off, get eaten alive by bugs, and crack your head open slipping on the deck, not to mention impaling your foot on a hook.”
“Sounds like fun,” she says dryly. “Can’t wait. Have I mentioned you don’t know how to sell your trips?”
I glare at her. “I don’t sell. I tell it like it is. And you’re changing your clothes.”
She opens her mouth and shuts it again. Then: “This is the least dressy outfit I’ve got.”
“I was hoping you weren’t going to say that.” I cross my arms. “How can it be that the future of my outdoor adventuring business is in the hands of a woman who doesn’t know how to go outside? What size shoe do you wear?”
She looks down at my feet. “A lot smaller than yours.”
I can’t resist. “You know what they say.”
Our eyes meet.
“I do know what they say.”
And I instantly regret having gone there. All the heat we’ve been trying to tamp down is between us again. She looks away first. Thank God.
“What size?” I repeat.
“Eight.”
I text Hanna and Amanda. They’ll be awake—Amanda because of the kids, and Hanna because she’s Hanna. Pls tell me one of you wears a size eight shoe.
Hanna texts back right away: I do. Lucy?
Yup.
🙄 Wanna stop by and grab ’em?
Do you have some grubby clothes she can wear?
Do I have any clothes that aren’t grubby? she shoots back.
Have I mentioned how much I love Hanna?
My pants are going to be short on her. But yeah I’ve got stuff she can wear.
“We’re stopping off at Hanna’s,” I tell Lucy.
“I don’t care if these get ruined,” she says.
“You can’t wear those shoes, so we’re stopping at Hanna’s.”
“Do you boss everyone around?” she demands.
I think about it for a second. “Yes.”
“And they put up with it?”
“No.” I open the the Jeep’s passenger door for her and close it carefully behind her. I jog around to the other side, climb in, and start ’er up. “My brothers give me constant shit. And Amanda mostly ignores me.”
When we get to her house, Hanna leads away an unwilling Lucy and soon returns her in sturdy hikers, a pair of hiking pants that leave a couple of inches of ugly brown wool socks showing, a long-sleeved wool base-layer shirt, and a sweatshirt that swallows Lucy whole. Hanna has also pulled Lucy’s hair back in a high ponytail.
Lucy looks absolutely miserable. And I have to admit, the effect is pretty unflattering. Except for the high ponytail. What is it about ponytails? This one makes Lucy look both uptight and cute.
Which is pretty much straight-up Lucy.
Also, Lucy in unflattering clothes is still hot. I know she’s under there, and now I’m supplying the contours of her gorgeous body in my head. Thinking about sliding my hands under the baggy sweatshirt and outlining her with my palms.
“If you’re going to keep going on these trips,” I say to her, “you’re going to need some clothes that actually fit. Hanna can take you shopping.”
“Like hell I can,” Hanna says. “I don’t shop.”
“Where do your clothes come from?”
She shrugs. “Christmas presents?”
“I’ll take you shopping,” I say, even though there are few things I hate as much as shopping. Seeing Lucy in outdoorwear that fits would make it worth it, though.
We’re half an hour behind schedule when we finally leave Hanna’s. We drive in silence for a bit, until she says, “You know what we need?”
I have a lot of answers to that, but luckily she answers her own question. “Music.”
I snort. “Oh, yeah? How do you think that’s gonna go? I predict zero overlap in our musical tastes.”
She crosses her arms. “You think you know what kind of music I like?”
“I think I have a pretty good guess.”
She snorts. “Okay, go ahead. Guess.”
“If I can guess three songs on your phone, I get to choose the music.”
“No, wait. I get to guess, too.” She thinks a minute. “How about this. If you guess three on mine, I get to take a shot at yours. If we both guess right, we have to find music we both like.”
I give her side-eye. “Which we’ve already agreed is zero overlap.”
“I didn’t agree to that. I bet we can find music we both like.”
“That’s because you’re an optimist.”
She makes a sound at ‘optimist.’ “What gave you that idea?”
“You assumed I’d help you save the ducklings even though you’d never met me before. You agreed to have a drink with me even though I could have been an axe murderer.”
“It was a public place.”
“Still. And you assumed my brothers would listen to you, even though what you’re proposing to them is ridiculous.”
“But tell us how you really feel,” she mutters.
“Also, you thought you could go fishing in those clothes. Optimist. I rest my case.”
“I’m not an optimist,” she says. “Optimists think people are basically good and well-meaning.”
“Exactly. And that’s you.”
She shakes her head. Hard. “It’s really not.”
I don’t believe her, but I don’t try to argue with her. She’s the worst kind of optimist, the kind who thinks she’s a realist, but I’m not going to win that fight. Instead I say, “Shakira, ‘Try Everything.’”
“That’s low hanging fruit,” she says grumpily.
“But I’m not wrong?”
“You’re not wrong.”
“That’s one.” I think for a minute. “Walk the Moon, ‘Work This Body.’”
“I bet a lot of women have both those songs on their phones. Those are both on my workout playlist.”
I shrug. “Yeah, so? That doesn’t disqualify them. The deal was, I had to guess three.”
“Okay, but pick at least one that’s not a pump-up song.”
I frown. “How about, Plain White Ts, ‘Hey There, Delilah.’ That’s not a pump-up song. It’s from the ‘I love you/have sex with me’ subgenre of pop.”
“Wait, what? That’s not a thing.”
“Sure it is. Songs by guys singing about how much they love her so she’ll give it up, already. It’s, like, three-quarters of pop. Am I right?”
“No! It’s a love song!”
I sneak at look at her, pink-cheeked and outraged. She’s fun to rile up. “Suuure it is. But you’re avoiding the real point here. Am I right that ‘Hey There, Delilah’ is on your phone?”
She grunts.
“Well?”
“Okay. You won that round.”
I resist the urge to crow. “Now you.”
I discover I really want to know what she’s going to guess.
“Hmm,” she says. “Okay. John Mellencamp, ‘I Was Born in a Small Town.’”
I roll my eyes. “Speaking of low-hanging fruit.”
In my peripheral vision, she brings a knuckle to her mouth and nibbles it. It’s distracting. Like, really distracting. I’m thinking about other things I want her to do with that mouth. It doesn’t help that I know exactly how soft and warm it is, and how eager and responsive she is. I wonder how, exactly, she feels about oral sex. Can she let herself get the kind of messy that leads to the best, hottest sex?
I really want to find out.
“Mark Knopfler, ‘Money for Nothing.’”
Well, shit.
“Ha!” she says, seeing the expression on my face.
“That’s only two. You need one more.”
She makes a mmmm thinking sound that for some reason I can feel in my skin. All over. Then I realize that she made a very similar sound when I kissed her. And now I’m thinking about it again. That kiss.
“Got it! Alison Krauss and Brad Paisley. ‘Whiskey Lullaby.’”
I don’t say anything. She nailed it. And I’m torn between irritation at losing and feeling weirdly pleased.
She does an outrageous little victory dance, wiggling in the seat. My mouth goes dry.
“And here’s the best part,” she says. “That song’s on my phone, too.”
“Seriously?”
She shrugs. “I like country. Roots. Americana. Bluegrass.”
My mouth falls open. “You—what?”
“My mom lived most of her life in a small town. I was born in one. Country genes die hard.”
I’d forgotten. “But you hate everything about small towns.”
“I like the music,” she says simply.
I reach for my phone and press my thumb to the home button. “You heard Joss Ebert? Like Miranda Lambert and Margo Price had a love child?”
“Nooo.” Her voice is full of wonder. “But oh my God I want that.”
That exclamation roughs itself over my nerves. I want to give her what she wants, and not just in the pressing Play way.
I want to push all her buttons.
And lick and suck a few of them, while I’m at it.
I play the song for her.
She listens carefully, not talking, through the whole song. I like that. No one does that. You play something for them and then they talk at you while they’re supposed to be listening. But Lucy listens.
“I love that line,” she says, at one point. “Home’s the place you can’t forget.”
“You feel that way about New York City?”
“Not really.”
“Where, then?”
She thinks about it a minute. “I don’t really feel that way about anywhere.”
For some reason, that makes me sad.