Iced Tea (6 page)

“I’m ok Mom.
 
Don’t worry.
 
I brought this on myself, I’ll take care of it myself.”

“That is the kind of thinking that will get you in trouble, Love.
 
You did nothing wrong.
 
You did a favor for a family friend.
 
There was no way you would know that doing a favor for a priest would bring you to such ends.”

“Thanks.”

“So, what will you do now, Love?”

“I’m going to go home and let the wisdom of the universe rain down on me.”

“A little less sarcasm would be appreciated, Love.”

“I wasn’t being sarcastic.
 
I’ve decided that I do my best in life when I allow the universe to speak to me in ways that it just doesn’t speak to the rest of the world.”

“Well, then, I’ll hope that you come to a glorious discovery.”

“Me too Mom.”

“Off with you then.
 
Would you like to come for dinner?”

“No, I think I’ll pass.
 
Until I figure all this out, I don’t want to spend too much time around the family.
 
I just don’t want to bring danger to your door.”

“Don’t be silly Love.”

“I’ll call you as soon as I figure out what I’m doing Mom.”

“You’ll be sure to call me before that if I can do anything at all.”

“I promise.”

“See that you do.”

FOUR

My phone rang as I was walking into the apartment.

“Hey.”

“Hi Gorgeous.
 
Are you busy?”

“Not really.
 
What can I do for you?
 
Where can I do it?
 
And can I do it again thirty minutes later?”

“Don’t do that, I’m in public, you’ll get me arrested.
 
I was hoping that you would allow me to bring you to dinner tonight.
 
You remember Jovana and her husband.
 
The woman that I’m going to be sharing workspace with.
 
She invited us to dinner.
 
I know it’s really short notice, but can you make it?”

“Of course.
 
Where and when?”

“I’ll be home in a little while.
 
We need to leave at about seven-thirty.”

“Sounds perfect.
 
If you actually get home in a little while, I’ll be able to go with my plan, followed by your plan, followed by my plan again.”

“You should be a motivational speaker.
 
I guarantee I’ll be home in a little while.”

“Is this a dress up thing?”

“No, we’re invited over to their house.
 
It’s casual.”

“Works for me.
 
I’ll see you in a bit.”

I started through my closet.
 
In the back, on the left, are the clothes that I know I have, but really don’t wear very often.
 
Most of it is stuff that Teagan bullied me into buying when I really didn’t want to, but couldn’t come up with a reasonable argument not to buy it.
 
Teagan thinks that just because I’m a grownup, I should have at least some grownup clothes.
 
I am of the opinion that I’ve never had the kind of job, or any other reason, to have more than two good dresses, one for funerals and one for rosaries and weddings, and one pair of dress pants with matching blouse and jacket for whatever other thing I might run into.
 
Family weddings always require something special, but I don’t pick those out, and I don’t keep them.
 
If I’m not part of the wedding, I donate to that organization that supplies women in need with something to wear for a job interview.
 
Tells you where my taste runs, I can wear it to a wedding or a normal person can wear it to a job interview.
 
Not very festive.
 
I really need to do something about that.

For me, in theory, all the wardrobe I need is jeans and workout clothes and every beautiful piece of lingerie I come across in life.
 
Looks like Teagan might have been right, at least a little bit.

In the very back of my closet, I have a pair of black pants from Banana Republic that I really like, but I have to wear really high heels with them, so I don’t wear them that often.
 
I also have a cream colored cashmere jacket, no buttons or anything, with this really unusual collar that makes my neck look long and graceful, which means I will be wearing my diamond hoop earrings, a gift from my parents years ago.
 
I dug out a tone on tone cream-colored blouse, that’s really sheer, and a cream colored cami that shimmers gold.
 
Skinny black belt with gold buckle, strappy black sandals with gold on the heels, that could go hooker or elegant, just depending on what you wear them with.

I made sure everything was in order to wear tonight, then I went in and took a nice long bath with smelly good stuff, shaved and pumiced and buffed everything important.
 
Painted my toenails and put big pin curls in my hair.
 
That way, if we went for plan A, I would still have presentable hair for plan B.

AJ got home, dumped his stuff in his room, and came back out to the living room.
 
“Is that hairstyle in progress or done?”

“In progress.”

“Can I mess it up?”

“Doesn’t matter either way, if it holds, then I’ll have curls, if it doesn’t hold, then I’ll just blow it out, why, what have you got in mind?”

With an evil little grin on his face, he scooped me up, and deposited me in the shower, where he joined me, so to speak.
 
We ended up on the floor in the hall, and in his room, and then back in the shower, and then it was a race to get dressed and ready for dinner.

He was at the computer doing something with pictures when I walked out into the living room.
 
I love it when he looks at me that way.

“You are stunning.”

“Thanks.”

“No, I mean it, you are stunning.
 
Don’t brush it off.
 
Listen to me.
 
You are a stunningly beautiful woman.”

There’s nothing you can say to that.
 
All you can do is smile, so that’s what I did.

“Well, are we ready?”

“We are.
 
Your car or mine?”

I smiled, “How about we go all traditional, and you drive.”

“I can do that, and Cara, thanks for coming to this with me.”

“My pleasure.”

The drive was uneventful, which was good, cause I’m not overly comfortable with someone else driving.
 
We ended up on the complete other side of town, in a very nice gated community.
 
Some of the houses are a little close together for my taste, but some of them have quite a bit of land, and some are horse properties, but those are the ones at the very edge, and I’ve always thought of them to be the ones for the truly blessed.
 
We drove past the truly blessed up to the back of the development, where I’d never been and I came up with a whole new definition of blessed. Oh my gosh.
 
I started to get a little bit uncomfortable.

“Don’t worry.”

“I’m not worried.”

“You just tensed up.
 
You’ve met these people, you like them, there’s no reason to be nervous.”

“AJ, you have been to my parent’s house.
 
Their house could fit in the foyer of these houses.
 
I’m just not a shee-shee poo-poo person.
 
I don’t know how to do that.”

“No one is expecting you to be anything other than who you are Cara.
 
When are you going to understand that being you is a good thing?”

AJ turned right, and there was a gate.
 
A gate inside a gated community.
 
I knew there was no need to panic, but it didn’t stop me.

The gate opened without us having to do anything, so I’m assuming we were on camera.
 
We drove up a winding driveway, not movie length, where the victims drive up a driveway so long you know they won’t be heard screaming, but still, pretty long.
 
The house is beautiful.
 
Mostly glass.
 
I love that.
 
When I grow up, after I win the lottery, my house is going to be all glass, in the middle of a field, where I look out over everything and no one is around to look in at me.
 
I saw a house like that on the Internet, for sale in California; I think the price was thirty-five million dollars.
 
Little rich for my blood, but I’d like about a fourth of what they built, and a much smaller price tag.

AJ jumped out of the car, opened my door for me, and we started toward the house.
 
From a side door I hadn’t noticed, Jovana and her husband appeared, he was comfortable in old jeans and she wore a beautiful maxi dress that suited her well.
 
They looked comfortable and casual and happy to have us there, and put me completely at ease.
 
Guess that’s why they’re both in the service industry, they have a gift for making their clients feel good, and based on this house, I’d say they do it well.
 
Really well.

We walked into the kitchen.
 
It was huge, and bright and open.
 
The cabinets were sleek matte white.
 
They didn’t have any handles, and looked more like a solid surface than traditional cupboards.
 
The countertops were glass.
 
Thick glass.
 
With huge splashes of color showing through from the bottom.
 
They were different than anything I’d ever seen.

“Your kitchen is beautiful.
 
I’ve never seen counters like these.
 
They’re a work of art.”

“I’m so happy that you describe them that way.
 
That’s how we feel about them too.
 
A very dear friend of ours creates them.
 
He went to school with my son.
 
When he was just starting out, we wanted to support him.
 
We knew he had talent; we just had no idea how much.
 
Originally we thought that maybe we would have him do the guest bath and maybe something in the pool area.
 
We saw his sketches and thought they were a bit ambitious, but he was like a second son to us so we went ahead.
 
One of the better decisions we’ve made.
 
You’ll see his things all over the house.
 
Most of the work you see in this house shows up in his brochures and on his website.
 
He gave us a great price.
 
Turns out that he helped us, much more than we helped him, but in our lives, that seems to be a theme.”

The great room was huge, but they somehow made it feel cozy.
 
The entire back wall of the great room opened up onto the pool area.
 
They had floor to ceiling doors that accordion-ed onto themselves and the two areas became one.

“I hope you like casual fare.”

“I love casual.
 
Is there anything I can help with?”

“Honey, we have everything done.
 
Why don’t you and I go putter in the kitchen?
 
The guys can stay out here and play with the grill, and then we can enjoy our meal out by the pool.”

“That sounds great.”

The kitchen seemed even nicer upon second inspection.
 
The cabinet fronts didn’t open like a closet door, Jovana touched the bottom of the cabinet and it made a swishing sound and the door came out and up, more like the door on an airplane than a kitchen cabinet.
 

The surprise on my face must have shown, Jovana saw it, and laughed, a wonderful deep, from her toes kind of laugh.
 
Teagan laughs like that.
 
I am starting to.
 
I think it has to do with self-confidence and having a sense of humor about yourself.

“Pretty fancy, huh?
 
It still tickles me every time I open a cabinet.
 
I was not to the manor born, Honey.
 
Never saw myself living in such a shee-shee poo-poo place.
 
We’ve worked hard, but we’ve also been real lucky.
 
This place was only half finished when we bought it.
 
The builder was a regular at the restaurant.
 
He just started talking to my husband one night about getting rid of it.
 
His momma got sick, and he just wanted to walk away from the house and go take care of her.
 
He was ready to cut his losses and be done.
 
We came out to see it, and we just loved the bones of the house.
 
We sat down and figured out how long it would take us to make it livable, and decided to go ahead and buy it.”