14. Lulu

14

LULU

You know how tunics became popular with tweens? How they all started wearing long shirts over their yoga pants?

Those girls have nothing on Tabitha Diamond.

No one rocks a tunic like my mother.

She owned that look before it became trendy. She’s paired her clingy black top, cinched with a silver chain-link belt, with slinky leggings and black ankle boots. The woman defies age. Her dyed blonde hair—obviously it’s dyed, she likes to say with a knowing grin—is cut pixie-short.

She rises from her spot at the restaurant bar, embracing me then turning to Leo and clasping his shoulders. “Look at you.”

“How do I look?”

“Like someone we need to see more of.”

Leo laughs then drops a kiss to her cheek. “Pleased to see you again, Miss Diamond.”

She waves a hand affectionately. “Oh, I love you. Thank you for calling me ‘Miss.’”

“You forbade me long ago to ever call you ‘ma’am’ or ‘madam’ or ‘Mrs.’”

“And you remembered.”

He taps his skull. “Your daughter makes me work my brain.”

My mom turns to me with an approving nod. “And I made her work hers, even when watching TV.”

I hold up a finger to make a point. “Especially when watching TV.”

She shifts instantly into professorial mode. “When you watch it with a critical eye, you can study people, psychology, and human interaction. More so, we can understand the images that shape our world and perception.”

“Have I mentioned my mother teaches media and culture?” I tease.

“I had no idea,” Leo jokes.

“I can go on and on, and I will. Just giving you fair warning. But, Leo, just call me Tabitha.”

He nods. “I’ll do that . . . Tabitha.”

She smiles, gathers her bag, closes her tab, and gestures to a table. “Come, sit. The host held us this table when Lulu told me you were coming.”

“Thanks for letting me crash your dinner.”

“You’re the kind of dinner crasher I welcome.”

“And what kind is that, Mom?” I take my seat in one of the bright blue chairs at the table.

My mom winks. “Someone who’s entertaining. I can’t abide boring dinner guests. That’s my hard limit.”

“It’s good to have standards,” Leo says dryly.

She drums her short, unpolished fingernails on the table as she looks at Leo. “Tell me everything. How have you been? How is work? How’s life?”

The two of them chat after the waiter drops by to take our drink order, and I listen, enjoying the ease of their interaction, enjoying, too, that Leo thanks the waiter and so does my mom. They dive right into conversation, volleying with a steady cadence. When appetizers arrive, my mom tastes the shrimp and rolls her eyes. “You have to try this.”

I take a bite, and it melts on my tongue. “Fantastic.”

She holds out her fork to Leo. “And you.”

“Delicious.”

Between courses, she returns her focus to Leo. “How is your mom doing? Is she still making the most beautiful arrangements of irises and lilies in all of Philadelphia? When I led a symposium there a few years ago, I stopped by and ordered a bouquet from her to thank the organizers. She looked lovely and well.”

Leo smiles warmly. “She’s great. She mentioned you’d stopped by. She said, and I quote, ‘Lulu’s mom is a total delight, and I can see why you—’” Leo slams the brakes on that word, then takes a sharp right. “‘I can see why Lulu is the way she is.’”

I stare at him quizzically, as if I can will him to say what he intended, but his eyes are impassive.

My mother laughs, sets a hand on my arm, and squeezes. “Lulu is the way she is because she’s an amazing woman.”

“Raised by an amazing woman,” I add, but even as they chat more, my brain keeps snagging on his unfinished sentence— I can see why you . . .

Why he what?

“What is she up to now?” my mother inquires.

“She retired a year ago, along with my dad. I helped them pay off their mortgage, so they don’t have to worry about that.”

My heart warms instantly. “Leo,” I say softly.

“What?”

“That’s so sweet.”

“Your parents must be so proud of you,” my mother chimes in. “That’s a very lovely gift to give them. The gift of no longer worrying.”

“It’s the least I could do.”

“And your two brothers?”

“I saw them a few weekends ago. Took in a Phillies game. Owen works in retail, and Matthew manages a hotel. They’re doing well. Matthew’s wife is expecting.”

My eyes light up. “When is the baby due?”

He squints as if he’s thinking. “About three more months, I think.”

“Lulu has always been good with little kids. At the park she used to play with younger children, helping them down the slides or on the swings.”

Leo smiles like it contains a whole galaxy. “Is that so? You were like a camp counselor at the park.”

“And then I was a camp counselor. I always liked kids. They were easy to get along with.”

My mom pats my shoulder, stage-whispering, “And they always loved her clothes. Especially when she wore purple tutus and pink tiaras along with her cowgirl vests.”

“Mix and match was my jam,” I admit. “Don’t forget I had cowgirl hats to go with everything too.”

“Pink, purple, red, and green cowgirl hats,” my mom adds.

Leo stares at me, grinning. “What other outfits did she have, Tabitha?”

My mom regales Leo with more tales of me as a tot, then as a tween and teen, and he seems to eat it all up. After they crack up over a story about me wearing tiaras to school every single day in third grade, my mom downshifts, taking a drink of her wine. The twinkle in her eyes flickers off, turning dark. “Have you heard from Tripp’s mother lately? Is she still fundraising?”

Leo nods. “We chatted a few months ago. She was starting to organize a 10K, I believe, for an addiction awareness and advocacy group. I actually need to connect with her again, especially since we’ve been playing phone tag lately.”

My mom sighs sympathetically. “Bless her. She’s taken a terrible thing and done her best to make some good of it.”

The mention of her makes my throat hitch. I haven’t seen her since the funeral, and she lives in Manhattan, relocating here after spending most of her life in Virginia. I ought to look her up, but then again, what would I say?

Mom wipes her eyes, her voice wobbly. “I can’t even imagine what she went through.”

“ Hell. She went through hell,” I answer quietly, an invisible fist squeezing my heart as an image of Tripp’s mother, grief-stricken, breaking down into piercing sobs at the memorial service, blasts cruelly before me. Her husband comforted her as best he could, but there’s no comfort for that kind of loss. No salve for her wounds.

Later that day, she set a gentle hand on my shoulder, her voice stretched to the edge of sorrow. “Thank you for trying.”

“I’m sorry it wasn’t enough.”

A tear threatens to escape, but I keep it at bay.

Mom turns to me. “I don’t ever want anything to happen to you, okay, baby?”

I fasten on a smile, willing away the tears and the memories. “I’ll do my best to live. And to live well.”

“It’s all you can do.” She reaches for her glass. “Let’s drink to moderation.”

“Amen,” we all say together.

When Leo clinks his glass to mine, his gaze lingers on me. “To living well.”

“To going after what you want,” I add, a strange little flutter in my chest.

“To chasing your dreams,” my mother adds. “And to finding them.”

She looks to Leo once more. “You’re a dream chaser. A go-getter. Have you found your dreams?”

I watch Leo, eager for his answer, searching for it in his expression. At times like this, he’s nearly impossible to read, even as I study the cut of his jaw, the darkness in his eyes.

“Most of them. Some slipped away though.”

He sounds so wistful and resigned that I want to dig in, ask him what slipped away, and comfort him. Instead, I say, “Then you make new dreams.”

Before the food arrives, Leo excuses himself for the men’s room. My mom tips her chin in his direction. “My, he is like a fine wine. Did he get better with age or what?”

“Mom, stop it.”

“I’m not allowed to say if a man is good-looking?”

“Are you making a play for Leo?”

She scoffs. “Please.”

“Are you?”

“I’m fifty years old, and I’m very happily enjoying my thirty-five-year-old boyfriend, thank you very much.”

“How is it that you have a thirty-five-year-old boyfriend?”

“Pilates.”

I laugh then look her over. She’s gorgeous and always has been. And she’s never flaunted it. “You’re ridiculously hot for any age.”

“That’s because I don’t believe there’s anything wrong with being fifty and sexy. You only live once. Make the most of it. Be beautiful. Be your best beautiful self.” She smooths her hand over her napkin. “But why were you so worried if I was making a play for Leo?” Her question drips with curiosity. “Are you making a play for him?”

It’s my turn to scoff. “Please.”

“It’s not out of the realm of possibility.”

“Tabitha.” I use her first name to make it clear I don’t want her to go there. I can’t go there because of the past, and I can’t go there because of the present.

“Seriously, Lulu. I always did like him, but I’m not merely talking about his looks. He has a good head on his shoulders.”

“He does.”

She taps her chin. “For a fleeting second at the table, he looked at you like . . .”

She trails off, but I pounce on her statement. “Like what?”

“Like you were . . .”

Again, she doesn’t finish. But she needs to finish. She must . I have to know how he looks at me. I’m wildly compelled, and I don’t even understand why. “You’re never at a loss for words. He looked at me like what?”

“Like there were years in his eyes.”

“You mean stars, right?”

“I know the saying about stars in their eyes. I meant years.”

The word burrows into my cells. Years.

There are years between us. A whole decade of friendship, challenges, sadness, and now, new hope in a new era of friendship. But I don’t think she means it that way. Trouble is, I don’t know what to make of how she means it. “That’s insane.”

“I know you’re friends, but I swear there was something there. I swear, Lulu.” She studies my face for a moment, humming. “And I saw how you looked at him too.”

“And how exactly did I look at him?” I challenge her.

“Like there’s something there that wasn’t there before.”

“Did you just go Beauty and the Beast on me?”

She laughs. “I suppose I did.”

I shake my head, like I can dismiss these crazy notions in a single gesture. My dismissal works as a shield too. “And you should know, it’ll never happen with him.”

She arches an eyebrow. “People say that, and then it happens.”

“Seriously, you need to just stop talking.” I stick out my tongue at her, deflecting. The ideas she’s presenting are . . . dangerous. “Because that’s not going to happen.”

The more I say it, the more it’ll stick with me.

“Your lips say one thing, but your eyes say another.”

Exasperated, I toss up my hands. “He’s good-looking. There’s that.”

“Who’s good-looking?”

My shoulders straighten, and my face feels like it turns every shade of red as Leo returns to his seat.

Undeterred, my mom arches a brow at him. “You. She meant you.”

A grin hijacks his face. “Well, thank you.”

He doesn’t seem to stop smiling, not as we eat, not as we talk, not as we laugh and catch up and my mom shares stories of her new students and her boyfriend and the life she’s living so richly now.

As she’s always done.

Even when her life turned upside down when she was pregnant with me at eighteen, she never stopped pursuing her dreams. And she’s never stopped encouraging me to live my best life.

Right now, right here, this is the closest I’ve come in a long time to feeling like I might be on that path.

Something else occurs to me too. Even though we’ve never done this before—dinner with Leo, my mom, and me—it feels like old times. Like good times. Like no one is waiting for the other shoe to drop at the end of the night.

When the evening ends, my mother says good night and heads home. Leo takes the subway with me then walks me to my apartment.

As we near the stoop, time seems to mock me.

I want to stop the clock. To live in this moment where everything feels possible. Where the evening won’t need to end.

So I lap up the last few seconds of tonight, looking at Leo. The moonlight sketches his face, illuminating his cheekbones, his eyes. I like the way his hair falls, how his gaze hooks on me, how his lips part softly when he speaks. I look at him in a whole new way.

That way terrifies me.

For a million reasons.

I choose the well-worn path, the friendly one that’s familiar. “Wednesday morning. You, me, and the team. We’ll be ready to own this scavenger hunt.”

“So ready.”

“Like we better be.”

“The readiest.”

“Good night, Leo.” I lean in and give him a quick kiss on the cheek, and for a hair’s breadth of a second, I swear I hear a hitch in his breath.

Or maybe it’s in mine.

When we separate, he gives me that lazy, handsome grin. “So you think I’m good-looking?” His dark eyes twinkle with something like desire.

Tingles spread their wings and fly down my chest, then soar to the night sky. “I’m not blind, Leo.”

We say good night.

I turn around and don’t look back because of all those millions of reasons.