The bell over the door jangled, and I stood up from where I was cleaning the ice cream case, taking a breath to welcome the customer to Paradise, but I stopped when I realized it was only Dawn.
“Hey,” I said. “What’s up?”
“Okay,” she said, hurrying across the store and then leaning across the counter toward me, talking fast. “We have to discuss the fact that you made out with that dude for like half an hourin the pantry, and we have to talk about Matthew, because he seems awesome, and after all that, I have something for you.”
“It wasn’t half an hour,” I protested, but Dawn just raised an eyebrow at me and I felt myself smile.
“I need details,” she said, taking one of the perpetually empty metal seats and settling in. I noticed that today, her shirt read Captain Pizza—We do PRIVATE parties!
“Okay,” I said, coming out from behind the counter, realizing that before we gossiped about my make-out session, I had to tell her the truth. “So . . . you know my best friend, Sloane? The one who sent the list?” Dawn nodded and I took a breath. “She’s not camping in Europe. I don’t know where she is. She just left, and all I have to go on is the list.”
Dawn looked at me for a long moment. “Why didn’t you just tell me that?”
“I don’t know,” I said, looking down at the black-and-white patterned floor. “It just . . .” I shrugged. I hadn’t wanted to admit I had no idea where my best friend was. Now I knew that Dawn wouldn’t have judged me for it, but I hadn’t known that—or her—then.
“Wait a second,” Dawn said, leaning forward. “Was that why you wanted to go on that delivery with me? To cross off ‘Hug a Jamie’?” I nodded, realizing that while I’d been making out with Benji in the pantry, Collins must have been filling Dawn in on the rest of the list. “Well, I’m really glad you didn’t,” she said, her eyes wide. “Jamie Roarke’s puggle is crazy. He would have freaked out if you’d tried it.” She stood up and rummaged in her bag, then placed a pair of mirrored sunglasses on the counter in front of me.
“What are those?” I asked, picking them up. As I turned them over, I suddenly realized that they looked familiar—I was pretty sure these were the ones I’d seen on Bryan. “Dawn,” I said slowly. “What . . .”
“Number four on the list,” she said. She grinned at me. “Want to break something?”
Music: Better for Running than Observational Comedy
Make Me Lose Control
Eric Carmen
Let My Love Open the Door
Pete Townshend
Jolene
Dolly Parton
Springsteen
Eric Church
Badlands
Bruce Springsteen
Compass
Lady Antebellum
When You Were Mine
Cyndi Lauper
Let’s Not Let It
Randy Houser
Sunny and 75
Joe Nichols
And We Danced
The Hooters
Don’t Ya
Brett Eldredge
Anywhere with You
Jake Owen
867-5309 / Jenny
Tommy Tutone
Nashville
David Mead
Kiss on My List
Hall & Oates
Here We Go Again
Justin Townes Earle
Me and Emily
Rachel Proctor
We Were Us
Keith Urban & Miranda Lambert
Where I Come From
Montgomery Gentry
Delta Dawn
Tanya Tucker
Things Change
Tim McGraw
Mendocino County
Willie Nelson feat. Lee Ann Womack
The Longest Time
Billy Joel
The summer began to take shape. I had my largely customer-free job, I had early morning or late afternoon runs with Frank, and I had the list. But I was no longer, it was becoming very clear, on my own in trying to finish it. My friends were helping me.
“Want to go to a gala?” Frank asked, sliding something across the kitchen island at me. I’d been driving around with Dawn, keeping her company while she made deliveries, when Frank had called and invited me over, and he’d extended the invitation to her, so it was the four of us at his house. Dawn was out on the beach with Collins, and Frank and I had been tasked with bringing snacks outside. I looked at him over my armful of sodas, waters, popsicles, and the energy drink Collins loved and which I had a feeling would soon be banned by the FDA.
I glanced down and saw that it was the gala invitation I’d noticed when I’d been at his house the night I’d kissed Benji. Before I could read where it was being held, he put it back on the fridge with a Porter & Porter magnet. “It’s for my parents,” he said. “Collins is coming too, but since they’re going to have to be in the same room together all night, pretending they don’t hate each other, I could use as many friends as possible.”
“A gala, huh?” I asked, setting the waters down.
“And this way, we can cross off number eight.”
I smiled at that—it had actually been my first thought. Though I realized that I hadn’t checked on the dress in over a month, and it might have finally sold. “I’d love to.”
“It’s the last day in July,” he said, giving me a level look. “Do you need to check your social calendar?”
I laughed at that, taking the rest of the drinks with me and leading the way outside.
The next day, I stepped into Twice Upon a Time, blinking at the dimness of the store, which was a stark contrast to the brightness outside. It was a consignment shop I’d been to many times with Sloane, but never alone. Maybe it was just that I had more time to pay attention now, but the store seemed somehow smaller than I remembered it seeming only a few months before, and a little more shabby.
“Hello there.” Barbara, the owner, emerged from the back room with a vague, fixed smile, the kind she always seemed to give me. “Welcome to Twice Upon a Time. Have you shopped with us before?”
I swallowed hard and made myself smile at her. I wasn’t sure why I was surprised that she hadn’t remembered me, despite the fact I’d been in a dozen times at least over the years. “A few times,” I said, already heading for the last place I remembered the dress hanging. It had never been a question in my mind which dress Sloane had meant. It was a dress I’d tried on purely for fun one afternoon when she seemed determined to try on every skirt in the store, twice. I tried it on as a lark, since I had no pressing need for formal wear.
But as soon as I put it on, I realized I didn’t want to take it off. It was floor-length and black, with a high neck edged in gold and a plunging, open back. It was the most sophisticated thing I’d ever worn and I somehow felt different in it, like I was a person who had places to wear a dress like this, and exciting adventures to recount afterward.
Sloane had freaked out when she’d seen me in it, and insisted I buy it, right then and there, which was of course what she would have done. She even tried to buy it for me, sneaking it over to the register while I was getting dressed, and I had to wrench it away from her to get her to stop. Because the fact was, it was too fancy, too expensive, and I had no place to wear it.
Until now.
“I was actually looking for a black dress,” I called to Barbara, as I looked around the store, beginning to panic because it wasn’t hanging in any of the places I was used to seeing it. “I think I saw one in here, it had a low back . . .”
Barbara just blinked at me for a moment, but then recognition dawned. “Oh yes,” she said. “I think I just moved it to the sale rack. Did you want to try it on, dear?”
“Nope,” I said, as I plucked it from the rack and brought it up to a very surprised Barbara at the register. “I’ll take it.”
Getting through the list was apparently making me more bold in other aspects of my life—which was how I found myself sitting in a chair in front of Dawn’s cousin Stephanie, at Visible Changes, the downtown salon where she was apprenticing.