now, it would look like she was trying too hard, wouldn’t it? The idea here was to look like she happened to be a sex goddess, not like she spent the entire day on it. So she settled for a curl-taming lotion and hoped for the best.
And then, to the closet. She picked through a drawer full of jeans until she found her nicest and darkest ones, the straight-leg pair that she considered the most flattering. She put them on the bed and started sifting through hangers in her closet. She had a black slouchy top with a ribbed waistband, and a black wrap top that tied at the side, and a lightweight short-sleeved sweater. Without knowing where they were going, it seemed awfully hard to pick. The idea was to achieve a result that was only possible with sustained effort, but without giving the appearance of any effort at all. She could not look like she was not trying. She could not look like she was trying.
She pulled out the sweater and laid it on the bed. But what about a whole different approach? What if she wore her Decemberists concert shirt? Wouldn’t that be casual? Wouldn’t that be effortless? He’d come home, and she’d be padding around the kitchen in her—no, that would be different jeans, and not nice enough for dinner, and for the love of God, she thought, just pick something. So she slipped out of the robe and shimmied into the black underwear and wiggled everything that belonged in it into the black bra, and then she slipped on the jeans and the sweater and gave her hair a toss. She was almost done. Almost.
She went back into the bathroom and took out her little makeup bag. Foundation would be too much; she’d look made-up. She wasn’t sure Dean had ever seen her in a whole made-up face before; what if he thought it was weird? She was pretty sure this was a sex date; what if something got on the pillow? How old was this bottle, anyway? No, no, just a little powder and a little blush, and a little mascara. Oh lord, how old was this mascara? She probably shouldn’t use it, because she had definitely not bought mascara since her husband died (a handy but grim way to date her perishables), but she dabbed it on anyway and promised internally that she would buy new eye makeup before the next time she had sex.
“I’m an adult woman,” she said to herself in the mirror. “This is stupid.”
She wandered downstairs and into the living room, where she plunked down on her sofa and pulled the Sports Illustrated out of the pile of magazines next to her. She noticed that, up in the corner, there was a little square of the photo of Dean and Marco chest-bumping, and a headline across the top that said, “Not So Fast: Is There Life in Baseball’s Exiled ‘Head Case’?”
She found the little article inside, which included a shot of Dean sitting in the dugout three years earlier. His elbow rested on his knee, his cap was in his hand, there was a little bit of sweat on his forehead. She leaned down close to it to look at his eyes. The piece referred to him as “troubled” and “once-brilliant” and “dynamic.” Searching his face, having known him for all these months, Eveleth could think only about how hot he was.
Oh, boy, he was hot. He was…he was smart, and he was sharp and funny, and he’d been so kind to her, and he was a good tenant, and he was a good ballplayer, and he was good with Andy’s kids and Andy’s mom and Eveleth’s dad. He was supportive of the town, and he had helped Evvie’s neighbors shovel their driveways once when it snowed a foot and a half overnight in January. He made good French toast (his new specialty) and a solid grilled cheese, and he was…well, he was getting better at pinball. But God almighty, he was hot. When he’d kissed her the other day, it was like everything between her chest and her knees made that noise she’d made when he showed her his tattoo: that noise, buuuuuuuh.
She went into the kitchen and took down a bottle of wine that she’d picked up the day before while driving back from Catherine’s (which she’d been calling Catherine’s House of Presentable Brassieres in her head for the last twenty-four hours). She peeled away