“The Molson Export is bottled, not draft, and it’s all me. So’s the sweat.”
“Wow.”
“Jayne’s bar sells twenty-dollar cocktails,” she says earnestly. “I’d go broke if I drank them every day, and Molson is the least fancy beer she has. She’ll think I’m cheap if I don’t get anything.”
Ana’s gold tooth glints when she speaks. Compared to my standard black V-neck sweater and dark jeans, her look is as eclectic as her part of the store. Today she’s decked out in mustard crushed-velvet leggings with an oversize green hoodie that comes to her knees and reads “Fred’s Gas ’n Go.” Always on brand, she’s wound a gold-sequined cord around her waist for a belt and puffed out the bottom of the sweatshirt like a mushroom. Little disco balls hang off the ends of the cord and bounce when she moves.
“That wouldn’t be a problem if you were girlfriends. Like you want to be.” I’m not psychic; Ana has no filter when it comes to talking about her life. I don’t mind, so long as she lets me be quiet about mine. “It’s nice you have a crush.”
“Crush, smush. This is love, I’m telling you.” She looks distant. “I remember my first crush.”
“Yeah?” Sometimes conversations with Ana are only a matter of adding in the occasional word.
“His name was Marcus. He had brown hair and was good at soccer,” she reminisces. “Then Kimmy moved to our town, andshehad brown hair and was good at soccer. It’s also when I realized I liked boys and girls.”
I look over. “What happened?”
“My personal epiphany aside, Marcus and Kimmy got together at the grade 8 dance. Let me just say, they did not leave room for the Holy Spirit.”
“What did you do?”
“To drown my sorrows, I chugged so much McDonald’s orange drink that I threw up neon sludge all over the girls’ bathroom. How about your past mistakes?”
“I haven’t had a crush since I was a teenager.” I suppose my voicesays more than I want it to, because Ana looks at me, her blue-lined eyes troubled.
“Oops, I didn’t mean to pry.”
It’s been a long time since I thought of Rafe, but as always, the memories shove past my mental barriers.
It was a classic storybook crush. I fell for him when we were thirteen and had been shooed out of the house where our parents were talking, under the assumption that all kids the same age must be friends. He trailed after me to the beach and showed me a sea star, looking at it with a gentle, unabashed wonder that made me realize boys didn’t have to be mean to be cool.
That was all it took. I was in love. I was in love for years. We hung out and read books and watched movies, and each moment was special because we were together and he was my best friend.
Then, when I was twenty, it was all over.
I laugh and pack thoughts of Rafe back into the mental suitcase I use to drag my emotional baggage to each new home. One day I’ll have the courage to forget it in a closet. “I’m only upset you’re wearing a summer scent in the winter.”
As expected, this derails her from exploring my love life. “You’re such a stick-in-the-mud, with your rules about seasons and what’s appropriate when.”
“I don’t make the rules.”
“Au contraire, you love rules. But a free spirit comme moiself—”
“That’s the worst French I’ve ever heard.”
“—moiselfknows there’s no better time for a beach scent than days when it gets dark at five in the evening. C’mon, Lucy. Tell me what you think.”
This time, when she leans in as if offering her jugular to a vampire, I close my eyes to lose myself in the fragrance. I’d smelled it in the store on one of my regular surveys of new scents. It’s always good to track trends. Although I hadn’t been impressed at the time, on Ana,Plage melts into a charming softness. A hit of tiare adds depth to the creamy coconut, conjuring up the scent of freshly applied sunscreen, which is layered with marine and shot through with the sea spray of calone.
“It suits you,” I say. “Good choice.”
“Correct answer.” Ana shakes out her shoulder-length curls from her hat.
“Why did you ask if you were already sure?”
“I’m psychologically weak and crave validation.” On her way to hang up her coat in the back, she lights one of my candles, which will eventually fill the space with lush ripe fig and black currant touched with cedar. “By the way, those Duran Duran ‘Reflex’–era lace gloves you hate? I sold four pairs today.”
“I don’t hate them,” I say, noting a small blemish in my ballet-pink nail polish. I hide my hands behind my back. “I said they were retro monstrosities that I wouldn’t be caught dead in.”
