10 DOWN: Genuine; real; dependably trustworthy
The afternoon sky was gray and dismal, and the breeze had a brisk nip to it. Cassie hurried back into the house and grabbed a hooded sweater from her closet. She slipped into it as she strode down the length of her newly repaired dock, sat down at the edge, and dangled her legs over the side.
The water in the canal had a choppy current to it, and the tops of the small waves were foamy with white-gray caps. She chuckled as she zipped the sweater. Since when did 60 degrees constitute a chill?
“What’s so funny?”
She whirled around and saw Richard crossing the grass toward the dock.
“I had to get a jacket,” she told him. “It’s 60 degrees, and I needed a jacket! That’s spring weather in Boston.”
He squeezed her shoulder when he reached her and then folded down beside her and swung his legs over the edge of the dock, too. “Looks good,” he said, running his hand along the wood.
“They did a nice job. And much faster than I’d expected.”
Sophie rushed out through the open sliders, excited to say hello to Richard, and she dropped her ball on the dock beside him.
“How much more do you have to do to the house?” Richard asked, and then he tossed the squishy fleece ball across the lawn.
“I decided against the French doors, and that was the last thing on my list,” she replied, and then she turned to face him with half a smile. “The place is all ready to sell.”
“What did you decide?”
“About the offer?”
He nodded.
“I really don’t know. I thought I’d put it off until after New Year’s.”
Sophie trotted back with the squeaky toy, which looked very much like a large speckled cotton ball protruding from the side of her mouth. Instead of dropping it, she just chewed the thing and it squeak-squeak-squeaked. Richard pried it out of her mouth and tossed it again.
“That’s just a couple of days.”
“I know.”
Richard surprised her by reaching over and taking her hand and then lifting it to his lips. He planted a soft and sincere kiss on her knuckle before guiding her hand to his face and nuzzling it gently.
“I don’t want you to go.”
She had absolutely nothing to say in reply. Not one single thing crossed her mind except to ask herself what she could say to ease his mind.
Nothing. There’s no promise I can make, no hope to lay out there for either of us.
“I’m sorry,” she managed.
“I’m sorry, too,” he replied on a whisper, releasing her hand.
Cassie looked into Richard’s eyes and felt stranded there, disoriented. She couldn’t pull away from his gaze.
He’s so handsome, she thought as she watched him.
The wind kicked up a blustery stream around them, and his chestnut hair feathered back from his face in sections. His blue eyes darkened like a night sky, and the parenthetical dimples that she loved so much were nowhere in sight. He would have had to smile for her to get a glimpse of them, and Richard wasn’t smiling.
He lifted his hand and pressed it softly against her cheek. Then he guided her toward him with two fingers beneath her jaw. Cassie knew she had the choice to pull away, but she just couldn’t manage it. She couldn’t even entertain the idea.
When his soft lips touched hers, it was a tender kiss, as smooth as the flight of two soaring birds or a petal falling from a flower. They lingered in that kiss, both of them lost in the poetry of the circumstance.
The heavens rumbled faintly and then rain began to plummet, but Cassie and Richard were spellbound, absorbed in one another and the perfect moment they’d been given. When they finally parted, Cassie felt as if she’d just been awakened from a deep and abiding sleep. Her eyelids were heavy, and her lips ached for more. It wasn’t until Richard was on his feet and extending his hand toward her that she realized it had begun to rain.
“Come on,” he called, and she scrambled to her feet.
By the time they made it to the sliding doors and rushed into the dark house, they were both drenched. Richard peeled the hooded jacket from her and stretched it out over the back of a chair, and then he brushed his hands through his hair and shook the moisture from it in splashes. Sophie quaked as well, adding to the mist of flying water.
“That downpour came out of nowhere,” he said, but Cassie couldn’t reply. She just stood there in the open doorway, trembling slightly.
“Are you all right?” he asked her.
She nodded without looking up. She didn’t think she could speak to him even if she gave it her best effort. Words had drained out of her, along with much of her strength and most of her reason.
“Cassie?”
She glanced at him and then felt trapped by his eyes again.
“What’s wrong?” he asked her.
She struggled to look away, and then she sighed. She felt it—but what was it?—moving up, up, and over the top of her head, and she could hardly move beneath the weight of it. A warm, heavy glaze of emotion and dread and fear and—
“Cass?”
With that one syllable of familiarity, the fire was stoked. She was freed. She moved toward Richard, clenched the front of his soaked shirt with both hands, and dragged him into another kiss.
“Well, I’ve probably been more embarrassed before, but I certainly can’t recall when.”
Rachel’s laughter taunted Cassie through the telephone. “What did he say?”
“He said he had to leave.”
“Just like that?”
“Just like that.”
“He left?”
“He flew out of here like the wind. I probably scared the poor guy half to death, Rach.”
“You didn’t. He probably left like that because he’s a good guy and he didn’t want the two of you to do anything you couldn’t take back.” Rachel gasped. “Would you have? Would you have done something you couldn’t take back?”
“Of course not,” she scolded. “I didn’t accost him, Rachel. I kissed him.”
“Depending on the kiss, maybe he felt like he was being accosted,” she said. She started to giggle again.
“Thank you very much. I call you for some comfort, looking for you to tell me that I haven’t acted like a foolish teenager, and this is what I get.”
“I’m sorry. Really. I’m sorry, Cassie. So…how was it?”
“How was what?”
“The kiss.”
“Rachel.”
“You can tell a lot about a man by the way he kisses. Was it soft and sweet?”
“Very.”
“Not vulgar.”
“Of course not. I’m hanging up on you now.”
“No, wait.”
“Vulgar!” she exclaimed. “You’re vulgar.”
“I am not. I’m just—”
“Hanging up.”
“Cas–sie.”
“Love you, but you’re about to hear a click.” And in the next second, Cassie made that click happen.
She sat at the table, twirling the disconnected phone in her hand as she stared at the “Surprise Yourself” box in front of her. She entertained herself with imaginings about the next card in the box: Chuck your whole life back home and dive right in to a new life with someone who looks a little like Dennis Quaid.
Or perhaps Viva la romance! Talk about surprising yourself! We thought you’d never be kissed again. Way to go!
Cassie dropped her face into her hands and cackled with a half groan, half laugh. The truth was that she’d sometimes given great, flapping wings to that fear. She’d worried that Zan was the last man who would ever kiss her, that she’d spend the rest of her time on earth eating whatever she wanted until she grew into a rotund old woman who drank coffee by the window and dreamed about that last kiss so very long ago while her ancient dog snored and many, many felines rubbed against her leg, meowing for her to share her cat food with them.
Zan had always kissed her with the same enthusiasm and sheer joy he’d displayed in everything he did. They were often slightly sloppy kisses, filled with eager and appreciative emotion. She loved those kisses of his.
But Richard…
She dug her fingers into her hair and combed it away from her face and then sighed. Richard’s kisses were monumental in their unexpected passion, burgeoning with frightening ingredients, like promise and hope. Two kisses from Richard and Cassie felt changed, as if her soul had suddenly crawled out from its hiding place. But now what was she going to do with it? In fact, she decided, her soul needed to just slink back inside and hush up and stop all that singing.
Oh boy, she thought. I might be in real trouble here.
“Yoo-hoooo!”
Sophie popped up from the floor and tore through the kitchen, barks escaping her faster than she could run.
“No no no, Sophie, it’s just me. I’m a good guy, not a bad guy.”
“Sophie, come here!” Cassie called. Sophie whipped past her and peered at Millicent as she walked through the door from the garage.
“I’m sorry. The garage door was open.”
“It’s fine.”
“Some of us are heading over to the thrift store to find some disco getups for tomorrow night. You wanna come along, hunny?”
“What a great idea,” Cassie said, hoping that she still had a New Year’s Eve date. “Let me take Sophie out, and I’ll meet you out front. Do you want me to drive?”
“Would you, Cassie? Then we can take two cars and I don’t have to be all jammed in the backseat with Stella. She’s in the middle of a dissertation on the history of disco. I can hardly take it anymore.”
Cassie laughed. “I’ll pull out the car. Just give me a couple of minutes.”
Sophie tended to her business in the backyard, and Cassie had barely closed the slider after bringing the dog inside when she heard her car door slam shut in the garage.
“I sent them on and told them we’d catch up in a few minutes,” Millicent told her from the passenger seat of her car once Cassie reached her. “That Stella just twists my earlobes.”
Cassie snickered as she started the car and pulled out of the garage.
“I don’t have one of these,” Millicent told her, clutching the remote for the garage door and pushing on the button.
“You have a carport,” Cassie reminded her.
“I know, but I like the button.” She pushed it again and the door stopped mid-close and went back up again. “Oh dear.”
“Here,” Cassie said, taking the remote from her. “You just push once.”
They watched the door lower, and Cassie clipped the remote back to the visor above Millicent’s head before pulling out of the driveway.
“Where are we headed?” she asked.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, where is this store we’re going to?”
“Oh. I don’t know.”
Cassie paused at the stop sign and shifted into PARK. Turning toward Millicent, she asked, “How can we meet them there if you don’t know where we’re going?”
Millicent tilted up one shoulder in a tentative shrug and admitted, “I didn’t think of that.”
“Okay, well, let’s call Stella on my cell phone and find out where they are. What’s her number?”
“Stella doesn’t have a cell phone, hunny.”
Cassie popped with laughter at that and then sighed. “Do you feel like some lunch?”
“That sounds lovely.”
They grabbed a salad at Angelo’s, and while they were there, Cassie referenced the phone book to find the address of the secondhand store in Holiday. When they finally arrived, sure enough, Stella, Georgette, and Maureen were still there, going through the racks of clothes.
“What took you so long?” Stella snapped.
“We stopped at Angelo’s,” Millicent sort of sang, and Cassie realized that she was bragging a little. “Cassie wanted to take me out for lunch.”
It hadn’t occurred to her before then that Millicent was the only one in the group of women from the church who didn’t have a husband or children with whom she could spend time. Presenting herself as the one Cassie chose to spend time with was a bit of a win for her.
“I want to spend as much time with Millicent as I can while I’m here,” Cassie told them, and Millicent beamed. “Have you ladies found anything yet?”
Georgette held up a fringed flapper-type dress and a hat with netting and a feather. “It’s no disco outfit, but I sure do love it.”
They all laughed, and Cassie took Millicent by the arm and headed past the row of dresses and toward some bell-bottom pants and tie-dye T-shirts.
“Let’s look through here and see if we can find something shiny,” she suggested.
The first hanger Millicent produced wore a red satin halter dress with cleavage cut out down to the belly button.
Cassie covered her mouth and shook her head. “Nnn–o. Let’s keep looking.”
“Cassie, look what we found,” Georgette called to her. She held up a pair of silver glitter platform shoes. “I think we’d break our neck in these for sure, but you might be able to wear them! Can you wear a size 7?”
“That’s my size,” she said with a nod, and Georgette passed them to her across a clearance table.
“What about this?” Millicent asked. She fluffed a pair of hot pink satin bell-bottoms out over the table. When she finally found the tag, she grimaced. “Size 6. About eight sizes too small for me. What about you?”
“I might be able to wear them,” Cassie said, and she took them from Millicent and held them up in front of her in the mirror.
On another clearance table, Cassie spotted a dark knit top with a sequined ripple pattern across the front in red, gold, green, magenta, and blue. Over the next hour, they found outfits for every one of them, plus a polyester leisure suit for George with a bright scarf to tie around his neck.
“You’d better practice walking in those shoes tonight,” Millicent told her as they stood in line at the cash register. “You fall off those things and it’s a long, long way down.”
After Cassie finished paying for her purchases, she excused herself and went to the car to wait for Millicent. The minute she tossed her bag into the backseat and closed the door, she plucked her cell phone from her purse and dialed.
“Hi, Richard. It’s Cassie. I’m sorry I missed you, but I just wanted to say that…well, I hope we’re still on for tomorrow night. I, um, wondered if you wanted to…you know…talk about anything first. If you do, you can call me. I’ll be home tonight, taking my new platform shoes for a few laps so I can figure them out before I try to disco dance in them. Okay…well…give me a call when you get this?”
A flock of butterflies took flight in her stomach as she pressed the button to end the call. She wondered what Richard was thinking today. He’d left in such an immediate rush after she’d grabbed him and kissed him the way she had.
Maybe he thinks I kiss like a platypus. I am out of practice, after all.
Perhaps after all those years of kissing only Zan, she’d lost touch with the correct way to pucker…or the proper angle of the head. Or maybe she’d given him whiplash, the way she’d grabbed his shirt with both hands and yanked him toward her.
Cassie gasped and covered her mouth with her hand as she suddenly wondered, What did I have for lunch that day? I can’t remember. But…maybe my breath smelled like a shrimp-and-garlic sandwich!
While she knew she hadn’t had either shrimp or garlic, she worried about the state of her breath just the same. Richard’s breath was minty-fresh, she recalled. Sweet and clean and inviting. No wonder he left in such a hurry. Her breath couldn’t possibly have been right.
“Oh…man!”
“Are you talking to someone, hunny?”
She hadn’t even realized Millicent had opened the car door, much less climbed in beside her.
“Oh, no. I was just thinking about something. Millicent, do you mind if we stop at the pharmacy? I need to stock up on a few things.”
“Sure. Like what?”
“Oh, toothpaste and floss. And some mouthwash. And a few packs of mints.”
“Getting ready for the big kiss at midnight, are we?”
Millicent hiccuped and chuckled, so pleased with herself for making the joke. But the truth was, Cassie hadn’t thought of kissing Richard at midnight until her friend mentioned it.
Maybe I should get something for a queasy stomach, too.