The Promise of Lace (4 page)

Chapter Four

It was Friday, two weeks after Hailey and I had taken our
silly trip to the mall and one week after the two of us and Noah had gone out
for a our humiliating one. Hailey, Noah, and I were out at one of our normal
places: a bar that was all blue lighting and cracked glass fixtures. It leaned
a little pretentious, but the music was kept at a volume that actually allowed
you to talk to the people you had come with. And, unlike our with adventure earlier,
all the patrons were dressed like they knew they were out in public and seemed
to have showered recently.

I was glad that we were all out together. The mortifying
incident at the lingerie store not withstanding, I was having a damn fine week.
I had landed a major project putting together flyers for a music venue
downtown, and I’d had a fun creative couple of days drinking tea in my pajamas
and drawing up concepts and a few mock-ups. I was telling my friends all about
it when Hailey seized my hand like I was falling off a cliff.

“Ten o’clock!” she hissed.

“What?”

“The direction,” Noah clarified. “And she’s wrong; it’s
actually seven o'clock from where you’re sitting.”

I glanced back over my shoulder.

“Don’t look!” Carla whispered.

But it was too late. I had looked over, and he had seen me.
Dieter was standing at the bar, his tee shirt as tight as ever, but a deep
hunter green instead of black. He was wearing regular jeans, just as tight as
the ones I had seen him in before.

He smiled. The same broad, warm smile that he usually wore.

He started to come over. My first reaction was panic, but I
reminded myself that I was a grown woman. I smiled back at him and he sped up.

“Hi, you were in the store last week,” he said, waving
awkwardly at everyone else at the table with a quick “Hi. I’m Dieter.”

“Yeah.
That was me. Roxanne,” I extended my
hand, he gripped it a little too tight and pumped it twice in an oddly robotic
way. There was a slight chill against my palm when he pulled away and I realized
that his palms were a little sweaty.

“Roxanne.
Lovely name.
Could I…
Could I pull you away from you friends for a moment? Would that be okay?”

He seemed nervous. Was a broad, beautiful, charming man
nervous about talking to me?

That annoying flutter in my stomach cropped up again. I
cleared my throat.
“Yeah.
Yeah. Sure.”

He nodded his head back toward the bar and I scooted out of
our booth to follow him. When I glanced back at my friends I saw Hailey
whispering to Noah, who winked at me then stuck out his tongue.

I followed Dieter back to the bar.

“So… what’s up?” I asked.

Very
smooth, Roxanne.
‘What’s
up’.
You are a conversational wizard.

But he grinned. “I wanted to apologize for the other day.
Some bigwig who plays golf with the president of the company was bitching about
how his wife was really pissed because the sales people were really pushy with
her at a store somewhere in like… I don’t know.
Tennessee or
something.
So now because some rich bitch who could afford to shop in an
actual nice place wasn’t
perfectly
happy
everyone’s on red alert.
Corporate’s
got secret
shopper and all kinds of stuff going on. We were all told to be careful.
Especially me.
You know.
A guy in
this
job?”

“Nice,” I scoffed.
“Paying people to spy
on retail workers.
You guys don’t put up with nearly enough crap.”

“Right?”
He chuckled. “It’s a bummer. The only
thing I like about this job is making people feel better when they come in and
now, apparently, I can’t.” He
shrugged,
the movement
just a little awkward.
“Anyway.
I’ve felt bad about
being so rude to you all week. Let me make it up to you. What’s your drink?”

Normally I would have just blown it off. Told him it was
fine, that he didn’t have to apologize for protecting his job. But this was a
signal that even I could read, incompetent and out of practice as I was.

“Rum and coke, please.”

He waved at the bartender. “Jerry?
Rum and
Coke for the lady?”

“Thank you,” I told him.

“Absolutely.
So…
I bemoaned my job, what do you do?”

I smiled and chuckled to give myself a little time before I
answered. I was very conscious of how I talked about my job. I was finally at a
point in my life where I really loved what I did, and it was easy to let myself
get swept away and just keep talking about the differences between types of software
and brushes and printers forever and ever until the people around me actually
dropped dead of boredom.

So I started with just my basic spiel. Mentioned my new
project and how I was getting pretty excited about it.

But Dieter asked questions and seemed genuinely interested
in what I had to say. He made cute jokes back and forth with me. By the time I
was talking about my first terrible job I had managed to give Hailey a discreet
signal that I was doing just fine. It consisted of turning my body so my back
was to my friends, waving energetically to get their attention, and then giving
them a thumbs-up. They seemed to get the message. Hailey came over, invented an
imaginary appointment that she and Noah had to get to in the morning, and they
hugged me goodbye.

I let Dieter buy me another drink.
 
“So.
What about
you?” I asked. “How did you wind up where you are?”

“Selling overpriced underwear?” He scoffed. I shrugged. I
wasn’t totally sure how to reply to that. I didn’t want to insult him.

“I needed a job as quickly as possible, so I went to the
mall, picked up an application from every store that would give me one, went to
the coffee place, spent three hours filling them all out and handed them back
in. Got a couple interviews, but the lingerie place was the only one offering
enough money to make it worth it because they needed a guy to haul around boxes
in the back, and someone had just quit. I was there for maybe a week, when the
guy who used to do that job came back. There were some politics going on. Long
story short—he got his job back, but they couldn’t fire me, so they offered me
a sales floor position, but let me keep my backroom wage. It’s a thrilling tale
of how a straight guy got what can, with very little contention, be called a
girl’s job,” he smirked.

I nodded, figuring that was a safe enough move. It was the
best way of 1) not seeming like I was judging his job and 2) not letting on
that I was excited that we had official word that he was straight.
 
“What did you go to school for?”

“Biology,” Dieter said. “But I didn’t finish
. ”

I took a deep draft from my rum and coke, not sure how to
respond to that. Dropping out of college and ending up in retail was the fate
that my friends and I had all threatened each other with whenever a test or a
deadline was looming and we weren’t prepared for it. But Dieter didn’t need to
know that.

And despite myself, I heard Carla’s voice in my head from
months and months ago back when we were still talking:
“You could pick up guys, good guys, all the time and you always throw
them away for stupid little reasons.”

Isaiah had been a big enough and a completely justifiable
reason. A couple of the guys since then I had dumped or never called back
because I just genuinely didn’t like them, but there were a couple in there
that
maybe
had been rash decisions. I
could admit that. A few guys I had let fall by the wayside because they were
just a little too complicated, or had too much baggage for me to bother with.
Not when I had my own stuff to deal with first.

The fact that Dieter hadn’t finished college didn’t have any
bearing on his dateability. He was cute and charming and what the hell did I
care what sort of money he made? What sort of Stepford Bitch was I?

“And I’ve kind of been hanging out ever since. I figure why
spend tens of thousands of dollars on an education if I don’t know what I’m
going to do with it?”

“Do you ever think about going back?” I couldn’t stop myself
from asking.

“Sure. Yeah,” he said. “Just… gotta find my reason to be
there first. You know?”

“Maybe something artistic,” I suggested, mostly just
thinking out loud. I quickly grinned at him and followed up with, “Since you
seem to have such an eye for color,” in a light tone so that he wouldn’t think
I was getting preachy.

He
laughed,
a deep, sincere and
very attractive chuckle. “And shape. And line. There’s a lot more to underwear
than you think.”

I was feeling warm and oddly comfortable, despite the
nagging feeling that I could all too easily screw this conversation up.

“But enough of the basic, boring stuff.
I have an important
question.”

I bit my lip. I wasn’t far enough out of the dating game to
just assume that he was about to ask me to come home with him. Not after one
conversation, even such a pleasant one. This was Minnesota, not
Jersey Shore
or
Sex in the City
.

“And what is your important question?” I asked him.

“If you absolutely, inescapably had to choose,” he
asked,
his grin wide and showing off his white teeth.
“Would you rather lose and arm or a leg?”

I laughed out loud.
An entirely unflattering
hiccup/chirp noise.
“This is your important question?”

“Extremely important,” he said, bowing his head in mock
seriousness.

I looked into the ice swirling in my drink and laughed
again. “I think I’d choose to lose a leg, but because I’d rather lose a foot
than a hand. Actually I’d rather lose a foot than lose a thumb.”

He laughed.
“Excellent answer.
Well
reasoned.”

“What about you?” I countered. He wagged a finger at me.

“No repeats.” He took a gulp from his glass, still smiling
hugely. “You have to come up with your own.”

I crossed and uncrossed my legs.
Drank the
slightly coke-flavored ice water at the bottom of my glass.
Thought hard.
Came up with the perfect
one.

“Do you want my phone number?”

He laughed again, a huge, hearty guffaw that made a couple
of women on the other side of him jump at the noise.

I held my half smile rigidly, as though holding a pose for a
camera. He absolutely did not seem like the kind of guy who would laugh like
this and mean it cruelly, but it was still a somewhat alarming laugh. His eyes
lit up and he reached up to tug at his shirtsleeve, which just made it snap a
little further up his arm. This close I could see that the dark blue and green
on his arm created little flowers.

Odd tattoo for a guy
, I thought.

“Good follow up question,” he said, wiggling his phone out
of incredibly tight jeans. “Yes. I would love to have your phone number.”

I gave it to him and he turned the screen to show me that
he’d spelled my name right. He’d also typed a little smiley face behind it.
That gave me a warm feeling that started in my stomach and bloomed outward.

He pressed ‘call’ and I dug my phone out of my purse. He
laughed when it turned out that we both had the same cellphone case: a
translucent green plastic shell that I had picked out because the iPhone white
gave it the same pretty green as leaves fresh out of the bud. I thought it was
appropriate for spring. I saved the number,
then
quickly hid my phone back in my purse before he could see the truly sociopathic
number of texts that I’d gotten from Hailey.

“What about you?” I asked, snapping my purse shut. “It’s
your turn to ask a question.”

He sighed. “I would never normally piggyback on a previous
question this way—it
is
against all
of the official rules—but I have to open the store tomorrow and it’s almost
midnight.” He set his hand over mine. “Can I walk you to your car?”

I nodded, slung my purse over my shoulder and felt a thrill
spike through me as he took my hand in his large, strong, and now dry one. I
wondered if maybe I should try to peg down an actual
date
, time, activity and all, but it seemed more in keeping with
the spirit of a totally random meeting to just let the cards keep falling where
they may.

I clicked my unlock button, and he brought me to the door of
my slightly shabby, but still totally functional Saturn Ion. We stood by the
side of my car and I wondered for a moment if he would kiss me.

“I used to have a car like this,” he said.

“Used to?”

“Yeah.
My mom parked it on the wrong side of
the street during a show emergency. Plow dragged it nearly five blocks before a
wheel caught someone’s mail box and flipped it upside down.”