So after making a few more tweaks to the model based on Oliver’s feedback (he wants us to overpromise how much Turpi can automate so it makes it look like we’re saving them more money), I disappear into my bedroom and try on a few different outfits. Nothing seems quite right, but I settle on a plummy velvet topwith high-waisted corduroys. I finish the look with heeled boots and hoop earrings that probably went out of style years ago, but I haven’t had the time to notice. My fringe is finally long enough to swoop out of my face, so I wrap it around my curling wand for a wavy curtain bang effect and pull the rest of my hair into a fishtail braid at the back of my neck.
Jules whistles as I reemerge into the kitchen. “You look smashing,” she says. “Rory’s not going to want to eat my cooking after seeing that, if you know what I mean.” She sniggers at her own joke while I scowl.
“He has agirlfriend,” I remind Jules.
“Thought you said they were broken up?” Jules asks.
“Technically, yes. But effectively, they’re still together. It’s complicated.”
Jules grins, as if “complicated” indicates a green light. It makes me want to launch into all the reasons Rory and I aren’t compatible anyway, but the buzzer to Marlow House rings promptly at six thirty.
My armpits start sweating even more excessively than usual. Probably just the nerves of hosting my first holiday dinner. And sure, maybe I’m slightly worried that Rory might think I’ve tricked him into a double date. I haven’t, of course, but the optics aren’t exactly in my favor.
“Hey there,” Rory greets as I open up the door to my flat. “Happy Turkey Day!”
He’s in dark wash jeans and an untucked flannel shirt that makes him look lean but not scrawny. It’s more casual than his Mr. Cooper look, and I get the feeling he went home and changed after school. His hair is still damp from the shower, and it looks like he’scombed his cowlick in an (unsuccessful) attempt to get it to lie flat. He’s wearing a faint cologne—something woodsy and natural that makes me think of summer nights on the lake where I grew up, back before I had anywhere I needed to be.
Rory goes in for a hug that I’m not prepared for. I pat his shoulder instead, bungling the whole thing.
“Deligh’ed tofinallymeet you, Rory,” Jules croons as Rory takes off his threadbare Nikes and lines them up neatly next to the door. “Kat ’as told us all about you, of course.”
I could swat her and her big mouth, loosened by a couple glasses of punch.
“This is my fiancée, Nina,” Jules says, proudly presenting her partner. “She’s quite tidy, hey?”
Jules and Nina are both beaming, as if they’re just the luckiest humans in the world.
It’s impossible to be very jealous of them, but I amslightlyjealous. It just seems unfair that some people fit together so seamlessly while others of us try so hard to fit square pegs into round holes, sawing the edges off puzzle pieces so they might fit into place, but always coming up short.
Rory doesn’t bat an eye at a lesbian couple, which is a relief. I didn’t think he would, but you never know with Midwesterners. An alarming percentage are still homophobic.
Jules and Nina wiggle their hands in Rory’s face so he can see their engagement rings. “Which one do you like better?” Jules wants to know.
Rory looks entirely out of his element as he studiously examines both rings. Jules’s is a prominent halo-cut rock, while Nina’s is a tasteful solitaire. “I don’t think I can pick,” he says. “They’re bothgreat, and if I’m being honest, jewelry all kind of looks the same to me.”
It makes me smile to myself. Somehow it seems fitting that Rory’s future bride forgo a diamond ring. She’ll wear a simple band of brass or maybe wood. The thought of an oak ring on my own finger makes me feel snug and serene for a split second, before I remember the utter nonsense of it.
“Typical men. Completely useless,” Jules says with a good-humored humph. “Ooh, what’ve you got in there?” she asks, catching sight of a blue cooler that Rory’s brought with him.
“I told you not to bring anything,” I chide Rory.
“It’s only a few small things,” he says. “My mom would disown me if I showed up empty-handed. This here is her corn casserole recipe,” he says, pulling a dish out of the cooler. “Though I definitely didn’t do it justice. And I brought some Bell’s too. Thought it might be a little taste of K-Zoo for ya.”
He takes out a case of Bell’s, a craft beer brewed in Kalamazoo. Now stocked internationally, it’s the town’s single claim to fame. That and the fact that Derek Jeter grew up there.
My dad used to love sipping Bell’s on the back porch, watching the sun dip down over the water. During my teenage years, he’d let me take a few sips here or there.
Rory’s taking something else out of the cooler—a chocolate pie covered in Saran wrap. “This one was a bit of a gamble,” he says. “Never made it before.”
“Excellent,” Jules says. “Now it won’t matter so much if my pumpkin ones turn out to be rubbish.”
“We’re saved,” Nina teases, dropping a kiss on Jules’s lips. “What flavor is it?” she asks Rory.
It’s … a Kit Kat pie,” Rory says, ears turning pink as he glances at me. “Since you said your family used to call you that.”
Something happens inside my body and outside my body too. It’s not a stomach flip, nor a heart flutter, but it’s a lifting sensation, a levitation of parts of me I thought were tethered to the ground.
“Blimey,” Jules says as Nina looks like she’s fully melting. “Might have to nick some of that before dinner.”
