Necessary Changes by Mary Kay McComas

Author:Mary Kay McComas [McComas, Mary Kay]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4804-8435-1
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2014-03-07T21:43:00+00:00

Seventeen

TWO YEARS LATER, BRUNCH was so California she could hardly stand it.

She squirmed in the padded metal chair, feeling conspicuously alone at one of the eight or ten empty tables on the sunny patio. It was early summer of 1974. She was so excited she could hardly stand anything, really. The silly-looking palm trees. The incredible beauty of the early summer morning made her feel as if she had a good chance of living forever. The pink and yellow and white blooms spilling over pots and cascading the rockery that surrounded the cozy patio. The ocean. The seagulls. The air. The sunshine. The California people walking by with their singular attitude and manner. The stylishly casual outdoor restaurant in Santa Monica where Brian suggested they meet.

And seeing Brian, of course.

She had so much to tell him, so much she wanted to hear.

He’d been better about writing to her. Christmas and birthday cards, typically late, as he was now. But there always seemed to be more news left between the lines, unwritten, than what actually got scribbled on paper.

She released some of her tension with a silent laugh and a smile, thinking of the brouhaha she’d gone through getting dressed that morning. Lord, you’d have thought she had an audience with the Pope.

No world class traveler she, there were two suitcases full of clothes and more to pack when she finally came to the conclusion that a Tennessee girl couldn’t be expected to know how to dress in California. She’d had piles marked California casual dress-up, California casual business, California casual-casual, and California casual-very casual. The distinction between the latter two being new jeans with creases and old comfortable jeans with holes. Hemlines were another minor controversy.

On the off chance that Archie Bunker was right, and “Men are men and girls is girls and that’s the way the good Lord made ’em… ever shall be. Amen,” she packed two outfits from each pile for three days and hoped she could make the best of them.

The first day she did. Business. However, meeting with Brian on the second day was an ambiguous occasion—in the sense of what to wear only. She wanted to impress him, but not overwhelm him. She wanted to look well employed but not… Republican. Up and coming but not too ambitious. Like a woman, liberated but not radical. Excited to see him… but not as excited as she really was.

She smoothed out the already smooth skirt of the polyester-jersey T-shirt dress she’d decided on at the last minute, and hoped she looked somewhere between California casual dress-up and California casual-casual—of course, looking around, most of the natives were wearing jeans. Very casual jeans. She sighed. She was probably overdressed and looking too excited.

“Man, are you a sight for sore eyes.”

“Brian,” she said, happy, flustered, anxious all at once as she recognized his voice and found him standing in the doorway across the small patio, watching her.

His physique was entirely familiar, but somehow she’d forgotten how tall he was, that he was remarkably good-looking.

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