Say hello kiss goodbye, p.3
Say Hello, Kiss Goodbye, page 3
“Oh, the Met! Love that place. What department?”
“The Costume Institute. I’m a collections management assistant. I help conserve, exhibit, and catalogue clothing. It’s pretty amazing. Some garments date back seven centuries.”
Tarquin blew out his cheeks before his jaw dropped. “I’d be afraid to touch them.”
She widened her eyes. “I am! But I put the gloves on and try my best not to destroy history.” She giggled. “It’s an honor taking care of them, especially for someone like me who geeks out over historical dress and beautiful fabrics. But the Met isn’t my passion. Upcycling clothing design—that’s my passion.”
“Upcycling? That’s like recycling?”
“Kinda, but there’s a difference.” She lifted her drink. “If I recycle this bottle, it will become another bottle—something of similar value. But if I upcycle something, the new product is more valuable. So, with clothes”—she pointed at her dress—“I take damaged and unwanted garments and fabrics and rework them into wearable pieces. The result is something new, and hopefully more beautiful and interesting. Also, upcycling saves discarded clothes from becoming landfill. Little goes to waste—so in my own small way, I’m helping the planet by creating unique sustainable fashion.”
Creative, enterprising, and smart—my kind of woman. Shame she’s taken. Tarquin leaned back in his chair. “Quality clothing with a conscience.”
“Yes, totally!” She sat up straight, her voice bubbly. “I want to prove that you can create eco-friendly fashions without sacrificing style and design. It’s a challenge, but it’s fun. And I love giving new life to old things. Like you, with your buildings.”
He grinned back at her. “I can see that. Your face lights up talking about it.”
“Yeah.” She tilted her head back, owning it. “What can I say… I see beauty in the broken and forgotten.”
You and me both, gorgeous. “And you made that dress?”
“Yep, finished it yesterday. Trust me, I don’t normally wear a party dress for errands!” She chuckled. “I’m test-driving it to see how it feels, how it moves. In a previous life, it was a vintage lace tablecloth, a torn silk blouse, and a curtain.”
“You’re kidding me.”
“Nope, they were all headed for the trash. I used the tablecloth for the sleeves, bodice, and overlay, added the silk for the lining, and the curtain became the skirt. Voilà, a dress was born.”
That frock is incredible. How does she even know how to… ? Tarquin’s eyes fought to stay above her sweetheart neckline. Someone’s a lucky guy. He motioned toward her dress with an open palm. “Well, it’s gorgeous, and if you don’t mind me saying, you look beautiful in it. I never would’ve guessed!”
A grin pinched her cheeks. “Thanks.” She lifted her bundled scarf off her lap and smoothed the skirt of the knee-length dress. “People are often surprised an upcycled dress can look like something in a fashion magazine, but my ideal customer is in on that secret. She’s bold, resourceful, a trailblazer, a risk-taker—and not just with clothes.”
That’s a great pitch. I bet that’s how people describe her, too. “What’s your label called?”
“Frill-Seekers.”
“Ha! That’s brilliant.”
Leia beamed. “I thought so. My label is all about pretty, comfortable clothes with form and function. They’re aspirational but also practical for people on the go. There’s no point in creating a dress that pinches when you reach for a subway pole or bend over to shoot pool.”
Tarquin raised an eyebrow. “You? Play pool?”
“One of my hidden talents—not that I have much time for it these days.” Her smile dimmed as she wound her scarf around her hands. “I’ve been sketching, making samples, doing special orders through word of mouth for ten years, but launching a brand and attracting customers is tough. Competition is fierce. My instructors at fashion school tried to dissuade me. They said creating limited-edition dresses wasn’t financially viable, but I like to prove people wrong.”
You’re not the only one, sweetheart. “Do you have industry contacts?”
“A few. I interned at a major fashion house for two years, learning the ropes, and I’m hoping to work with a friend who’s an actress—but nothing’s definite yet. For now, it’s status quo: making clothing for me, my sister, and any clients that come my way while I build my collection, piece by piece.”
I could help her. For real. He grinned. Plus, it’s a reason to stay in touch. “You know, you should meet a friend of mine, before you head off to Italy. He’s a designer, French-Canadian. He’s got a small shop in East London that’s going gangbusters.”
“Oh yeah?” Her sidelong glance snagged on a burst of activity at the checkout. She freed her hands from her scarf and slipped her arms back into her parka. “But he’s probably way too busy.”
“Simon? No, he’s always happy to talk fashion. You could visit his shop, share stories about Canada.” He picked up his phone, barely pausing for breath. Get her number. “Maybe Si would even stock your designs. He’s a smashing fella, you’ll love him.”
“Wow, that’s really kind of you but…” Her slight grimace flew under Tarquin’s radar as he typed in her name. “I can’t.”
Can’t? Tarquin looked up, meeting Leia’s determined gaze. Her fingers were picking at the dark purple polish on her nails. Oh, you wanker, Tarq. She’s known you all of twenty minutes. We’re strangers in a shop—nothing more. His shoulders deflated as he pasted on a smile, parking his phone. Don’t make this more awkward. “Oh, forgive me. I forgot—you’ve got family obligations, of course.” Busying himself with his paper cup, he swirled the cold, milky dregs around the bottom. “Holiday time is sacred. Loved ones should always come before work. I’m sorry.”
Leia twisted her lips. “But you left your family in Scotland for a meeting down here.”
Bollocks. I did. She listens, which is nice, but… “Uh, yeah, but with my family, sometimes you can have too much of a good thing.” He downed the last of his drink and winced, staring at a sticky coffee ring on the table left behind by a previous customer.
“You should be an honorary Canadian.”
“Why?” asked Tarquin.
She smiled quizzically at him. “You apologize too much.”
“Hello! Excuse me?” The store manager, ruddy-cheeked and perspiring, lingered at the edge of the bistro. “The card system is back up. Please join the queues and we’ll get your transactions processed as quickly as possible. Thank you for your patience.” He jogged back to the checkout, a cluster of relieved customers, including the twins and their father, close behind.
“Well, New Year’s Eve is back on track.” Leia nudged aside her unfinished drink.
Tarquin nodded. For you, Leia—definitely. The Shard with your boyfriend, champagne, fireworks, London at your feet. For me? Nope. A second date with a friend of a friend, dinner, a club. Probably an awkward morning after…
Leia’s phone lit up with a text beneath Tarquin’s business card. “My sister.” She grasped her parka, closing it over her dress. “I should get going.”
Tarquin pulled the knot tighter on his scarf. “Yeah, me too.” Let her leave first, don’t be creepy. A server swooped in, picking up Leia’s half-full bottle and Tarquin’s paper cup. “Oh, actually, sorry—I’m not finished with that.” The bistro employee shot Tarquin a pinched ‘Okay, loser’ glare, handed back the empty cup, and walked away. “I’ll let the crowd disperse first.” He hid his frown behind a fake sip. “Thanks for the company, Leia. It’s been lovely chatting.”
“It has.” She stashed her phone and his card in a pocket and stood up. “Well”—offering a kind smile, she hoisted her shopping bag onto her shoulder—“good luck with your business. And Happy New Year!”
Happy? I wish. A dull heaviness settled in Tarquin’s chest. “Happy New Year.” He flashed a sincere grin. “All the best to you, too, Leia.”
Sweeping her hair off her forehead, she stepped away, joining the rush of customers headed to the checkout. Tarquin awkwardly raised his empty cup as a fond farewell, but Leia didn’t look back.
He slumped in his chair. And she lived happily ever after—with someone else.
Three
LEIA
The next day
Nursing an orange juice and listening to Diana Ross through her headphones, Leia hunched over the table in her sister’s conservatory, sketching clothing designs in the back of her journal. The welcome warmth of the late-morning sun hugged the shoulders of her flannel Christmas pajamas, fending off the chill accompanying the first day of 2019. The glass-walled back room, a small addition to the one-bedroom ground-floor apartment, lay empty and still, albeit cluttered with the previous night’s excess. A stack of the just-purchased IKEA plates, now dirty, congregated on a bookshelf along with burnt tea-lights and discarded party hats. Empty beer and prosecco bottles and folded cardboard stuffed the recycling box by the patio door along with leftover sparklers, waiting to burn bright another night.
Sarah was still cocooned in bed, sleeping off the festivities, while her boyfriend, Jordan, desperate to make a good impression with their father, Eddie, had popped two extra-strength painkillers and joined Mr. Scott for a frosty New Year’s Day run around Islington. They’d been gone for forty-five minutes—Leia wondered if Jordan was keeping up or tossing his cookies behind a dumpster.
She flipped the pages of her journal, her eyes detouring past her snoozing laptop, Sarah’s framed London marathon medals, and the neat stack of her well-thumbed gossip magazines, then down to the floor and the two storage boxes she had purchased the day before. Filled with Canadian treats—boxes of Kraft Dinner mac ’n’ cheese, Rockets candy, Coffee Crisp and Mr. Big chocolate bars, and semi-crushed bags of various flavors of potato chips—the orderly stash was courtesy of their dad, who had arrived ten days earlier. Leia hadn’t lived in Oshawa, a city east of Toronto, for eight years, but such home comforts always transported her back to her parents’ tree-lined backyard, Hockey Night in Canada on TV, and weekend shifts as a teenager at one of her family’s two businesses, a bustling Tim Hortons franchise in the center of the city. Twenty-two years since opening its doors, Eddie, a former National Hockey League goalie, still stopped in daily, splitting his time with the car dealership he had founded with his wife, Jenny. For his daughters, cars took a back seat to donuts, so when Eddie walked through Sarah’s door before Christmas with the chain’s famous TimBits in his carry-on, the donut holes were wolfed down within minutes.
For Leia, no more TimBits meant Canadian Smarties were the next best thing. She ripped open a box and shook out a palmful of the colorful candy-coated chocolates. You’re procrastinating again. Listening to music, sketching, eating junk… stop it. She slid the candies back into their cardboard home and stared at the words written in ink twenty minutes earlier:
December 31, I was grateful for:
1. the lights coming back on at IKEA.
2. celebrating New Year’s with Dad, Sarah, and Jordan.
3.
Forehead scrunched in thought, she absentmindedly stuck her hand in an almost empty bag of Hickory Sticks, the smoky potato snacks a childhood favorite of hers. C’mon, what else am I grateful for? You’re not hungover—you have no excuse. She stuffed a handful of savory goodness in her mouth and chewed slowly, hoping something—anything—would pop into her head. Why is this so hard? She flipped a few pages to the front of the journal, desperate for inspiration, and read the first entry from Christmas Day, her birthday.
December 25, I was grateful for:
1. spending my birthday/Christmas with Dad and Saz.
2. food.
3. no more jet lag.
Her eyes jumped to the next entry.
December 26, I was grateful for:
1. yummy turkey sandwiches.
2. binge-watching all of Poldark. Aidan Turner is yummier than turkey sandwiches!
3. a day spent in flannel Christmas pajamas. Even if they’re in Saz’s signature blue.
December 27 was completely blank.
December 28 was half-assed with only binge-watching more Poldark (should I visit Cornwall while I’m here?) written on the first line.
The next two days were untouched. Leia had fallen off the gratitude wagon—but had she really been on it?
Before the holidays, Leia’s therapist had made her promise one thing—to keep a gratitude journal. “It will help diminish toxic emotions. It will ease your depression and anxiety,” she’d said. But finding time to do the homework stirred up more anxiety, not less, and the longer Leia sat cursing the blank lines in the cute zippered journal with the Brooklyn Bridge on the cover, the guiltier she felt. Gotta love the irony…
Her gaze leapt to the window sill in front of her and a glittery noisemaker, its golden streamers sadly splayed and torn. Out with the old, in with the new, so they say. Waking up her laptop, her fingers swept the trackpad and opened photo albums stuffed with New Year’s Eve memories: 2013, 2014, and 2015 in Pittsburgh, and 2016 and 2017 in New York. Over the years, the cities, faces, and multi-million dollar homes had changed, but the parties remained much the same, offering chef-catered cuisine, premium alcohol, and decadent desserts—everything Leia and her friends desired except a midnight kiss from their partners. Such was the life of a girlfriend or wife of a NHL player when their team had a New Year’s Eve road game. The league never stopped for “Auld Lang Syne” a reality Leia had endured, thanks to Tyler McClelland, her first love and recent ex-husband.
Diana Ross’s “Upside Down” filled her headphones, and Leia sucked in a breath, selecting New Year’s 2014—the night she sat in the stands watching twenty-two-year-old Tyler, an offensive defenseman for Pittsburgh, score the winning goal in a nail-biting 3-2 home win over Carolina. Afterward, the loved-up pair went out for a late dinner to celebrate. Four years feels like a lifetime ago. Leia clicked through her memories, an unsettled heaviness tightening her chest. First up, a photo brimming with youthful passion—Leia, all smiles entering her favorite Japanese restaurant, wearing a beloved upcycling design (a knee-length cocktail dress with a plunging neckline and bell sleeves created from meadow green velvet curtains), and holding hands with a beaming Tyler, immaculately dressed in a fitted charcoal gray suit, his blond hair still damp from his post-game shower. We looked so amazing that night.
She opened another photo: their secluded table romantically lit with candles. They always saved that corner for us.
Leia’s finger paused over the trackpad, but her heartbeat had already broken into a sprint. There’s no stopping now. She clicked. There he was, Tyler, the love of her life—the boy she had met at fifteen, the man she had followed to Pittsburgh for college at nineteen—on bended knee, a three-carat Tiffany dazzler in his hands. He was my meant-to-be. The one. Her jaw clenched as she enlarged photos of her tearful New Year’s “yes” and their romantic clinch. But I was one of many—so many—you fucking liar!
More clicks and she careened into their 2015 wedding album and the photos of a lavish mid-July affair in Toronto’s famous hilltop castle. Leia was twenty-two, Tyler a year older. If I had known what was to come… She landed on a black and white photo snapped while she happy-cried through her vows surrounded by teary-eyed friends and family.
I, Leia, take thee Tyler, to be my wedded husband, to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer… A sour expression pinched her lips. … in Pittsburgh and in New York, to love and to cheat, til divorce us do part…
She slumped in her chair, glaring at the screen. You heartless piece of shit. Her pulse pounded, outpacing the music filling her ears. Together for ten years, married for three, separated for four months, and divorced for two. You broke me. You stole the best of me and now I’m someone I don’t recognize anymore—someone who believes nothing lasts forever and there’s no such thing as true love. She gulped back a sob and trembled. At least I know better now. I won’t be hurt again.
Taking in a stuttering breath, she let it go and inhaled another, her watery eyes drifting from her laptop to Sarah’s shelves, her sister’s potted orchids, and a beloved childhood moment lovingly captured in a blue IKEA frame: the sisters, aged three and a half and five, hugging their mother in front of an iconic London telephone box. I miss happier times. Just look at us in our matching Spice Girls tees. We were super cute. And Mom… so beautiful. The wistful memory melted Leia’s frown. A guy’s love isn’t everything. I have the love of my sister and Dad. I have my career, my health. My anger at Tyler blinds me sometimes. I forget that I have so much. She blew out her cheeks. I’ve gotta be more mindful, more grateful… I need to take these journal entries seriously, starting NOW.
She picked up her pen. Okay, I need one more thing. Think, Leia, think. Every entry, every line has to count, otherwise I’ll—no. No, I won’t slip back! This year will be different. This year will be great.
A hand pressed the back of Leia’s arm. Fuck! With a gasp, she jolted in her chair, her finger panic-clicking to another wedding photo.
“What are you doing?” Sarah’s loud, accusatory tone infiltrated Leia’s disco inferno.
She dropped her pen and yanked off her headphones. “Having a heart attack. Jesus, Saz!”
“You would’ve heard me if your music wasn’t so loud.” Pushing the hand rim of her wheelchair, Sarah rolled closer. “Diana Ross, eh? God, Mom loved her.” She nudged her tortoise shell glasses up her nose and yawned. “I need caww—ffeeeee.” Blinking through her sleepy daze, the younger Scott sister leaned into the screen, squinting her large doe eyes. “Wedding photos? Seriously, Ley? So much for not pining.”
“I’m not. You know I’m not.”
“So, what’s this for?”
“My gratitude journal.” Leia rested the headphones in her lap. “I’m stuck. I need inspiration. I thought hating Ty might spark…I don’t know.”
