“I guess you’re right,” I agree as we walk together down the parlor’s walkway.
“Were you married for a long time?” he asks, glancing down at me.
“Eighteen years.”
“Yikes. You got married young.”
“Yeah . . . seemed liked a good idea at the time.” I look down at my feet as we walk. It’s surreal to think that half my life was spent with someone who let me go so easily.
“Can I ask what happened?”
I breathe out a long sigh. “He met someone else, and that was it. He just left.”
“Just like that? Really?”
My car and an older Corvette are the only cars parked in the dark lot, and he leads me right to my car. I turn to him before unlocking my door. “Yeah, pretty much just like that,” I reply. “It was devastating. I never saw it coming. I thought everything was fine.”
“That really sucks. I’m sorry.”
I hug myself against the cold chill in the air. “Thanks. I thought we’d be married forever, ya know? I didn’t think I’d be dumped at thirty-six for the first younger, gorgeous girl that gave my husband a little bit of attention. I guess our vows and our family meant more to me than to him.”
“He’s a fool.”
“Maybe, or maybe I’m the fool, thinking I’d be living that fairytale of happily ever after.”
Lukas opens my car door for me. “Nah, don’t give up on that. You know how fairytales go. You gotta kiss some frogs before you find the prince, right?”
I laugh as I climb into my car. “Hey, I didn’t think guys knew about fairytales,” I tease.
He grins down at me, holding on to the doorframe. “I’m not like most guys, Ivy. See ya in two weeks.” He pushes my door shut, and I watch him walk across the parking lot back to his shop, when he turns around about halfway and gives me a little wave. Blushing, I wave back at him as I start my car. Hot damn, he’s cute.
LUKAS
I’LL BE HONEST, I REMEMBER MOST of my clients by the design I put on them. All their actual names and faces kinda mesh together in my mind. It’s the canvas of their flesh I remember forever. But tonight, Ivy’s coming back, and I’m actually looking forward to seeing her again, which is unlike me because I don’t usually form any attachments to my clients. Of course, I enjoy working with them, but I’m usually so focused on my designs that I’m lucky if I can remember anything else about them at all. Something about Ivy is different, though. The moment I met her, it was like getting struck by lightning, and I haven’t been able to get that chick out of my mind since.
Right before Ivy’s appointment, I make a last-minute decision to run upstairs to my apartment above the shop to put a clean shirt on and wash my face. Just as I’m coming down the spiral staircase from my place to the back of the shop, the front door cowbell sounds, and I find her in the waiting room, looking at some artwork on the wall, her back to me. She’s short, petite and curvy, with long wavy auburn hair that I suddenly have an urge to take in my hands and feel it sift through my fingers like silk. It looks like she came directly from work this time, because she’s wearing a black pants suit instead of jeans.
“Hey,” I say, and when she turns and smiles at me, I get that zappy feeling inside like last week when she looked at me.