Will:To take pictures of your car. I need to show my cousin.
Josie:What does your cousin have to do with literally anything?
Will:Just give me your address, Josephine
Josie:154 marmot Lane
Will:See you tomorrow night
I push my phone onto the bedside table and force my eyes shut, trying to block out everything, let sleep steal me away. But I drift off imagining versions of him between seventeen and twenty-seven. Will at twenty. Twenty-two. Twenty-five. I imagine the divot in his chin sharpening with age, his shoulders broadening, his voice dropping lower. And I fall asleep to the sound of him saying,You and me.
Thursday is my favorite day of the workweek. Objectively, worst to best, the list goes like this: Tuesday, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Thursday.
I’m not taking questions on the list.
But Thursday is the best because it’s my creative day. I get to mess around with the design team, gossip with Camila on brand strategies, watch the social team shoot content, and do the other fun, sparkly things. Plus, I have Pilates on Thursdays and the entiresoundtrack is female rappers. It fills up my well, and on my way home after the day, just as the summer sunshine is fading to a purplish hue behind the far tree line, I’m still in a great mood. Not even dinner with Derrick Lovell and Will Grant tonight, as off-kilter asthat’sgoing to be, will sour this day.
Until I find him waiting on my doorstep.
Which is a problem because it’s not even eight o’clock yet, and I’m wearing a neon-pink athletic bra and very tight bike shorts. My hair is in a matted blond knot on top of my head. I’m still glistening.
Will Grant, by contrast, is sitting on my front porch in a suit, looking like James Bond or maybe Harvey Specter, his brown hair combed back, hands behind him on the concrete to support his upper body weight. When he sees me pull into the driveway, he stands.
Of course he stands.
I get out of my car, hauling a backpack in one arm and a shoulder bag in the other, and head toward him with a tense face. If this was aBachelorclip, I would plainly and simply not be getting the first impression rose.
His eyes flick up and down me, then flash back up to my face. Is that a red flush beneath his chin?
Will clears his throat. “I take it you’re struggling with the dress code as well?”
“He jokes,” I say.
Will’s dimples grow larger and larger with every passing second. “Did I get the reservation time wrong?”
“No.” I move past him on the steps, fiddling with my keys. “I just expected you to be here five minutes before the reservation, considering I livefive minutes from the restaurant.”
“How was I supposed to know that?”
“Because you’refromhere?”
Will gives me a look. “When I lived in Austin, my family didn’t go to dinner at restaurants like this one.”
It’s a subtle way of saying his family doesn’t come from money—like mine does, to a degree, and like Derrick’s kids will, to amuchlarger degree.
“Give me twenty minutes,” I say. “Make yourself comfortable.”
“Um.” Will eyes the bachelorette paraphernalia scattered literallyeverywhere.“Okay.”
I’m in too much of a rush now to explain, so I barricade myself in my bedroom and turn on the shower, imagining what he’s thinking about only a few walls away.So much pink. So many sparkles. All those cardboard boxes piled by the door.
After I scrub my body down with soap under the warm spray and dry off, I throw on a simple green smock dress and strap my feet into a pair of low nude heels. I slap on a few makeup necessities and dry-shampoo my hair, then swirl Listerine. The longer I leave Will alone in my home, the more insecure I become. Forget picking my brain tomorrow at the office. He’s going to take one look around and say,You know what? I think I already get the gist of who Josephine Davis is these days, thanks.
“You have three sewing machines in this room,” Will informs me when I make it back to him, slightly breathless. He’s absentmindedly rubbing a thumb over his full bottom lip as he turns to look at me.
“Four,” I correct, knocking on a vintage piece of rolltop furniture. “This one was passed down from my oma. It’s a foldaway, and it doesn’t work.”
“What’s in progress over there?” He points at the Brother, which I use for embroidery. It’s set up on the table in the midst of the props.
