The Wishing Thread by Van Allen Lisa

Author:Van Allen, Lisa [Van Allen, Lisa]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Romance
ISBN: 9780345538550
Publisher: Ballantine
Published: 2013-01-01T07:00:00+00:00

Aubrey’s sisters made a fuss over her after all—a lovely, gloriously indulgent fuss. Aubrey said the expected things: You don’t have to do this, and It’s okay. But the truth was, she loved the way her sisters tittered and clucked and made sure she had eaten a snack so she wouldn’t overeat at dinner. She liked that they deliberated about her clothes and hair, that they demanded to paint her toenails and would not let her wear her cotton granny panties even though they were much more comfortable than the one thong she owned. For the first time in a long time, they were a team. And Aubrey had milked her own romantic cluelessness for all it was worth, asking about shoes and coats and first-date rules until her face hurt from smiling, and until her sisters decided to give her a moment alone.

Now she regarded herself in her bedroom mirror. She wore dark leggings and a white sweater that slipped from one shoulder in an angelic halo of cashmere. It might have been the luckiest thrift-store purchase Aubrey had ever made. The earrings she’d borrowed from Meggie were slender silver threads that made her neck look pretty and long. There was only one problem with her appearance. The effect of mascara and eyeliner—Nessa’s doing—wasn’t quite enough to tamp the blue lightning of her irises. Aubrey could not see their awful blueness, which was one of the worst parts about them. But she knew they were shining like two blue flames set deep in her sockets. A horror show.

She sighed. Mariah had always said her eyes were something to be proud of: God doesn’t light a candle for you to hide it under a bowl. And yet what choice was there but to put on her dark glasses? Aubrey knew how people saw her. She wanted Vic to look at her without being appalled.

She pulled the frames from her dresser, slipped their thick plastic arms on her ears.

“Okay,” she coached herself aloud. “No need to be pessimistic. Vic already knows you’re weird, and he likes you anyway. So, relax.” She shook her arms and legs, wiggling them like a boxer warming up for a fight. She was not like other twenty-eight-year-olds. Her life was complicated. And Vic would have expectations, specific expectations of a romantic nature that she might not be able to meet. She half wondered if she should warn him.

“Relax,” she said.

The doorbell rang; it warbled like a sick wren.

“Aubrey!” Nessa sang up the stairs. “Your love-uh is here!”

For a moment, Aubrey did not move. She looked at herself, thought, This isn’t my life. She had the strangest sense that for things to be so wonderful, so right, something in the fabric of the universe must have gone wrong.

But—there was the rumble of Vic’s laughter at the foot of the hall stairs. There was the cotillion of female voices, Carson’s tinkling little laugh. There was the Stitchery, so filled up with possibility it seemed to be a different

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