The Decent Proposal by Kemper Donovan

Author:Kemper Donovan
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2015-11-19T16:00:00+00:00

THE SLEEPOVER

THEY WERE SUPPOSED to meet at Elizabeth’s house the next day. She half expected him not to show; they’d never done two days in a row before, and when she woke up (much later than usual), it felt like the day after a raucous office party—the aftermath to an evening of workplace transgressions. If there were a lesson to be taken from her ongoing “tutorial” in dating, it was that meeting your date’s friends en masse was to be avoided, especially in a setting as volatile as an alcohol-fueled party. She would have been better off meeting each of Richard’s friends—Mike in particular—in a more intimate setting, at dinner, or a night at the movies. All day long—at coffee with Orpheus (she chattered nervously for much of it about Richard’s impending visit that evening), in the ocean on her surfboard (the waves were puny, so she spent most of her time watching the pelicans skim the water with their long, scissorlike beaks), and in her armchair, staring at (instead of reading) Gaskell’s Wives and Daughters—she felt an anxiety akin but not quite identical to dread. She had nothing to be embarrassed about, after all, and while she was by no means eager to see Richard so soon after their night together, she was curious to see how he would handle the unexpected turn events had taken less than twenty-four hours earlier. (She counted to five on one hand a total of five times that day—squaring the number like this pleased her.)

At 5 p.m. exactly she heard a knock on the door, and there he stood with a gift-wrapped package in one hand and a bottle in the other. He offered up the bottle first:

“Nonalcoholic.” He grinned sheepishly.

Elizabeth walked inside to place the bottle on the kitchen counter, and he followed her, thrusting the box forward with both hands, as if it were a bowl and he, Oliver Twist asking for more:

“Here. To help make up for last night.”

What could it possibly be? Elizabeth tore off the wrapping. It was from Saks Fifth Avenue. She lifted the lid, tossed it aside, and pawed through multiple tiers of tissue paper.

It was a skirt.

She lifted it out of the box. It was black, like the one she’d worn the night before, but the material was denser, with an intrinsic shine, like the glow of an animal’s pelt. It was obviously very expensive—much more expensive than the one sitting in a crumpled ball in her “to be dry-cleaned” hamper.

“You really didn’t—”

“Yeah, I did. I still feel so bad about last night.”

Why was he harping on the stupid skirt? It felt to her as if he didn’t want to owe her anything, as though he wouldn’t be comfortable till he’d repaid her. She saw the size on the inside of the waistline: 12.

“I’m actually a ten,” she said. “And sometimes I’m even an eight—”

“Mike said this designer runs small. I called her while I was in the store. She’s good with stuff like that.”

It

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