She said yes.
I smooth down the front of my shirt before I ring her doorbell. I changed this shirt four times today. Laid out six outfits. I confidently chose this one, and now I’m second guessing it.
I ring her doorbell anyway.
She opens the door with a soft smile.
My eyes go wide. She is a work of art.
She looks at me, then down at herself. “Did we match?”
I glance at my shirt, then back at her, and laugh. “We did. I tried to wear your favorite color. Apparently, you did too.”
Her happily surprised smile spreads across her face.
“You look nice.”
“So do you,” she says.
I grin like a child at this.
She doesn’t reach for my hand or do anything like that, but she steps out, locks the door, and follows me to the car.
I open the door for her like I always have, then walk slowly to the driver’s side, breathing deep, trying to calm myself.
We’ve got all night. I can’t be in my head like this. I don’t want to say the wrong thing, so I don’t say anything at all for the first few minutes of the drive.
Then it starts to feel awkward.
“You’ve been painting lately?” I ask, wincing a little. “Just for you, I mean.”
“I haven’t,” she says.
I glance at her, and she looks a little pained. “What’s going on with that?”
“I’m just busy. There’s so much going on at work. Every day there’s another fire to put out. And then I have so many Lit with Lily events that I don’t have time to do my own art.”
She looks out the window.
“I’m always outlining canvases, creating images, getting the paint ready. I’m doing everything for the business, and I never have time for myself.”
“That doesn’t sound very soothing.”
She laughs. “It’s not. It’s exhausting and time consuming. I do love it, but sometimes I don’t like it as much as I want to. Being the one who has to do not only the art, but the business side, it kind of takes the fun out of it.”
“You turned your hobby into a hustle,” I say. “And now you’re hustling too much.”
She throws her head back and laughs, and I feel it in my chest.
I missed that.
“That’s exactly what I’m doing,” she says.
“But you don’t want to stop, right?”
She shakes her head. “Absolutely not. If anything, I don’t want to work at HR anymore. But I don’t ever want to give up Lit with Lily.”
When we pull up to the art exhibit, she looks at me, curiosity all over her face, but she doesn’t say anything until she sees the cars. The crowd.
