She hadn’t watered her rosemary plant this month.
Emerging from her room for the first time since she’d made her smoothie just after seven o’clock, she mixed a teaspoon of fertilizer into a watering can, then fed the bushy, pungent herb sitting in the kitchen window above the sink. Its soil absorbed the moisture with instant and desperate gratitude, so she turned on the faucet and soaked it until water ran out into the saucer under its pot.
“Sorry, Grant.”
She’d named the herb after Rosemary Grant, an evolutionary biologist at Princeton who studied Darwin’s finches in the Galápagos. Wes had thought it was funny. Despite a fair amount of abuse, she hadn’t killed it yet. Survival of the fittest.
Or maybe Kai or Ashley sometimes watered it?
She replaced Grant on his sill. When she stretched up to put the watering can back on top of the refrigerator, her bra wire jabbed her again.
“Ouch!” Grimacing in defeat, she switched into a shelf-lined tank top over a pair of old, faded jeans, shouldered the small backpack that she preferred to a purse, carried her bicycle down the stairs, wiped pollen from its seat, then pedaled off across the bridge over San Francisquito Creek toward the Stanford Shopping Center. She paused at a traffic signal to cross Sand Hill Road, adjusting the straps slipping off her shoulders as she waited for the light to turn—she’d forgotten to reapply sunscreen after her shower, and she’d likely arrive back in Menlo Park with a stripey burn—while grousing at the inconvenience of having to spend her afternoon this way. She could’ve been working, or reading, or going to a Pilates class. Or messaging Bannister. But instead, she’d be squinting against the glare of artificial lights off a sleek department store floor and trying to see her own back in a dressing room mirror.
Lingerie shopping was rarely fun. It always took much longer than she planned, too. Not because she couldn’t manage her time like Ethan claimed, but because of the fashion industry’s idiocy around sizes. Men never seemed to appreciate how easy it was to fit their clothes! Also, they could get away with a standard workplace uniform of the same collared shirt or polo in multiple colors and one pair of jeans or slacks. For women, though? The required balance between professional polish and a style that was too much, too little, too feminine, too masculine, too bright, or too drab was designed to be impossible. It was even worse in STEM fields—and worse still with lingerie, because after all the effort to find a bra that fit, in the end, the choice was invisible.
At least for her. When had she last bought anything except plain basics that only she and the bathroom mirror would ever see?
It had been a while since she’d gone on a date.
Martina would sip Chenin Blanc and remind her that this was by choice, however.
The light turned green and she sped through a clog of weekend traffic, skirting the worst of the jam near the shopping center by peeling off into the Nordstrom parking lot across the street from the main thoroughfare. She locked her bicycle outside the store’s massive brick archway and micro-cafe that led to the first floor, assailed by a disorienting blast of air conditioning and perfume as she navigated to the escalators while typing a message to her mother.
Erin
I’m at Nordstrom. Bra shopping. Help.
She edged around a group of chattering teenagers and consulted the directory. Level 2:Women’s Lingerie.
Ping.
Mom
I’m happy to consult, sweetheart. What are you looking for?
Erin
Just the basics. The wire on my nude bra popped out this week.
Mom
Send me photos once you’ve found some choices.
Those choices spanned a solid quarter of Nordstrom’s second level.
She scanned the racks and sighed.
Ignoring satin push-ups and a bralette constructed from star-sprinkled midnight blue lace, she gathered an armload of options in neutral tans, whites, and blacks, and set up in a dressing room.
Erin
Options 1–5.
She snapped pictures in the mirror, capturing herself from shoulders to hips, unposed, still in her jeans, and sent them off to her mother.
Mom
I like the third option. The tulle trim on the cups is pretty.
