“I always thought you were funny, you know.” Renee bumps my thigh with the shopping basket. “I just didn’t know you could also be…” Her eyes slit as she searches for the word, and my brain butts in with a hundred dangerous suggestions.Sexy. Irresistible.“Thoughtful?” she says.
I clear my throat. “Interesting. I always thought you were both a total bitchanddeeply unfunny.”
Renee snorts. “And now?”
“Now?”
“Yeah. What do you think now?” Her mouth quirks up, and there’s a glimmer in the crinkled corners of her cool blue eyes. The longer I look at her, the higher the tide inside me rises. What do I think now? I can’t tell her that. I’m not even sure—it’s just an inkling. The early stages of a feeling I think I recognize, but it’s been so long.
Renee tucks back a stray blond tendril, and I follow her fingers, the way they brush against the shell of her ear. Gently. Intentionally. Something pulses inside me.
Finally, I say, “I’m still deciding.”
Outside, the dark has settled on a truly perfect Chicago summer night, the warm, breezy kind that should serve as a blueprint for the entire season. The rain has washed away so much of early summer; I can hardly believe it’s already July.
“I can take these.” Renee nods to the grocery bag of napkins in my grip. Her apartment is just down the block, but she goes out of her way to walk me to the bus stop: A small gesture but it swells inside me, fueling the fire every time her arm brushes against mine. It makes me wonder if I’m not the only one with an inkling. I’m fighting for my life to combat the urge to say something like—hey, Renee, you’re walking pretty close to me. Want to tell me what that’s about?But if I speak up, I’m sure she’ll stop, like this was all an accident she’ll take care to avoid from now on.
“So Tuesday,” Renee says, snapping me back to the world of logistics.
“Tuesday,” I repeat. “What time are you off work?”
Her stride breaks for half a pace. “It…kinda depends.”
“Oh…okay?” I look at her sideways. “Is it safe to plan for six o’clock?”
“Yeah, but…” Her face twists up. “I’ll just text you when I’m on the way home, okay?”
Renee finds her pace again, but I can’t get a read on her. She pins her focus across the street, toward home, and something spins inside me, a reversal. This is all backward. Shouldn’t Renee be trying to hammer down the details while I’m the one dodging specifics?
“You know, for such a planner, you don’t know your own schedule very well,” I tease, but Renee just rolls her eyes.
And then she hugs me goodbye.
Renee and I haveneverhugged. I’m not sure what moves her to do it now, but her arms fold around my neck, the bag of napkins rustling between my shoulder blades. It’s a soft breeze compared to the thunder of my pulse. My cheek presses to Renee’s soft shoulder, and I breathe her in—eucalyptus and clean cotton sheets, exactly the smell of our room in Palm Springs. I had attributed it to the hotel, but I guess it was her. That gentle, comforting scent was Renee all along.
By the end of the week, Chrissy has secured ten terrariums from a client, because of course she has. I have to pick them up, though, along with the four rugs she gets from “her rug guy.” As the only bridesmaid who doesn’t work nine to five, I spend my days off from Gentle Giant zipping around the city in my truck-turned-mobile-storage-unit. There’s no time to practice bass or work on my own projects or anything else these days—the wedding pulls every second of my free time. At least that’s what I tell myself every time I swipe away a text from Mom like it’s a spam email. I don’t have the energy to work through those feelings right now.
As planned, Renee and I return to Village Thrift to shop the restock—she texts me when she’s on her way, but she doesn’t arrive in work clothes. Her wine-red sports bra peeks out from beneath a half-zipped black hoodie, her bike shorts tight as a second skin.
“Gym?” I guess.
“What? Oh.” She toys with the zipper on her sweatshirt. “Sort of.” She tips her head toward the store. “Shall we?”
“Yes, andshall wediscuss where you came from, or are you being vague for a reason?”
I don’t mean to come right out with it, and when Renee’s eyes dart away, I feel the blood drain from my face.
“Sorry. Ignore that. That was an inside thought that just flew out.”
Inside, Renee bends to grab a shopping basket, then turns to me, visibly perplexed. “What do you meanflew out?”
“Just what it sounds like. I’m not always making a conscious decision to say something. Sometimes it’s…sort of like a sneeze? It has to come out.”
Her nose scrunches. “That sounds…made up,” she admits.
“I know. I wish it was. Instead, I get to feel bad about this shit forever. Like in Palm Springs when I made that comment to Chrissy about her filler melting in the heat? That was mean.”
“That was…funny,” Renee admits.
