Page 49 of Summer Romance
“Dressed to go to the diner?” asks Iris.
“I’ve promised Frannie she’ll never see me in these sweats again,” I lie. “I’ll be quick.”
I find a black T-shirt dress that looks pretty good with some sandals. I brush my hair and put on lip gloss. I will never admit this to Frannie, but that took less time than staying in my sweats and looking for my Birkenstocks.
“You look better,” Phyllis says when I’m clearing yesterday’s glasses to the kitchen.
“Thank you,” I say.
“I thought he was handsome, the man who brought you home this morning.”
I blush and turn toward the kitchen. “He is,” I say.
“It wouldn’t kill you to have a romance,” she calls over my running water.
“It might,” I call back. I scramble her eggs and mentally relive the entire night with Ethan. I let myself step back into yesterday.
“What are you so afraid of?” Phyllis asks when her eggs are on her TV tray.
“He’s leaving at the end of the summer.”
“Those are the best kind of love affairs. The great love of my life was a summer romance.”
“Then what happened?”
“He came back the next summer, we got married andbought a fairy-tale house.” The twinkle in her eye makes me feel like he’s still here.
“Well, that’s one in a million.”
Phyllis shakes her head. “Nonsense. Happens all the time.”
“I’ve had a summer romance. But he’s…he’s something more. If you actually fall for someone who’s leaving, it’s as crazy as getting a dog.”
Phyllis looks confused.
I explain. “You get a dog and you know two things—you’re going to fall in love with it and it’s going to die one day. You knowingly walk headfirst into a heartbreak. That’s the basic madness of dog ownership.”
“You’re really too young to be so dark,” she says.
I don’t say anything.
“Alice, besides you and my girls, everyone I know is dead. I’ve buried them all. Do you think I wish I’d never met them?” She focuses on getting a bite of eggs on her fork and without looking up says, “Do you wish you never met me?”
“Of course not.” I am so uncomfortable talking about this. I do not want to talk about her dying. I do not want to engage with death in any way. I can’t believe I brought this up.
She smiles at me. “You got a dog. You’re a proven risk taker.”
When we walkinto the diner, he’s at the counter, just like he was in my daydream. He looks up from his coffee and smiles at me and then at all of us. “Here for French toast?”
“Pancakes,” I say, and move my hair behind my ear in a way I don’t think I’ve done since college.
“Ali!” Frannie calls as she brings Ethan his omelet. “You guys want to sit at the bar or at a table?”
I want to sit on that stool right next to Ethan, but Greer says, “Table, please.”
“Okay, take that back booth in the corner,” she says, and Ethan shoots me a look that makes me go liquid. Frannie hands me a stack of menus. “Are you guys free for dinner tonight? At Scooter’s?”
“Will it be fun-tastic?” asks Cliffy.
