Page 70 of Stony Point Summer
The truck eventually turns into a small parking lot outside a two-story wood-framed building on the busy road. Hanging beside the building’s front door is a burgundy-and-gold sign:Reed and Reed, Attorneys-at-Law. But the truck doesn’t park near the front door. It pulls into a space near a side entrance leading upstairs to what looks like an apartment.
No one gets out for a minute, as though the passengers inside the truck might be talking something over. Arguing is more like it, from the sound heard when the passenger door opens. A woman’s voice is tense as she steps outside.
“Really, Kyle,” she says, tucking back her crimped blonde hair, “it shouldn’t besoannoying to you.” Her cropped peasant top over low-slung bell-bottoms exposes her tanned torso. She reaches into the truck’s cab and lifts out a large platter—which is cumbersome in her hold. So with her hands full, she kicks the truck door shut right as his flies open. “I just couldn’t make a decision,” she yells over.
“Whichisannoying.” This Kyle, he wears navy twill work pants with a matching short-sleeve shirt. And he looks beat, walking to the truck bed and lifting out a lunch cooler and small duffel, then grabbing a ribboned tray of cookies, too. “Come on, Lauren. You couldn’t make a decision aboutcake? It’s not life-changing. It’s cake. What’s the big deal?”
Lauren silently follows Kyle up the side staircase to the building’s second-floor landing. Holding that covered platter, she waits behind him as he finagles his key ring, unlocks the deadbolt there and shoulders the sticking apartment door open with a good shove.
“I mean, after all that,” Kyle says when he flicks on the light switch in a shabby kitchen and drops his bags and cooler and cookie tray on the counter. “Driving to the bakery, dragging Jason along—”
“Which wasyouridea.” Lauren sets her own platter on a table pressed against a side wall in the small kitchen. “Not mine.”
“Itoldyou, I got tied up at work. Had to finish a job.” Kyle drops his keys on the countertop, too, and opens the refrigerator. “Anyway, what do you want for dinner? I can fry up some steak and onions.”
“After all that cake?”
Her question gets Kyle to look over his shoulder from the open refrigerator.
Lauren tosses up her hands while standing at the table. “I’m just not hungry now,” she explains while sitting on a vinyl-padded chair at the old Formica-top table. A plastic-wrapped loaf of bread nudged aside by her tray sits precariously close to the table edge.
“But maybe you’ll feel better with a hot meal in you.” Kyle turns to a tall wire-shelving unit tucked in a nook against the wall. The shelves are stacked with pots, lids, a blender, a slow cooker. Assorted pans hang from S-hooks beneath the top wire shelf. Kyle lifts off a large pan and sets it on a stove burner.
“I really don’t have an appetite.” Lauren goes to the sink set beneath the slanted dormer roofline and fills a glass with water. After a long sip, she turns to him. “All those cake samples, they just … threw me.”
“Why?” Kyle asks, pulling butter from the refrigerator and olive oil from a painted cabinet. He gives the cabinet door an extra nudge to shut it tight. “How hard was it to sample and pick your favorite?”
“I’m telling you, I just couldn’t decide.”
After setting down the butter and oil, Kyle crosses the black-and-white checkerboard floor, lifts the blinds on a tall window and gives the dried-out sash a light shove to push it up. “I need some air in here,” he says, then unbuttons his navy work shirt so it hangs loose over his tee. Sitting at the Formica-top table then, he bends down and unlaces his heavy work boots before slipping them off. “And the consultant made iteasy, prepping all those cake samples.” He motions to the tray of covered pieces of cake when he stands. “Set them all out nice, in an order to suit your palate. Explained her sketched designs—which metallyour requirements,” he tells Lauren while heading down a dark hallway.
Lauren walks to that open kitchen window, leans her hands on the sill and takes a long breath of fresh air. Standing bent like that, her low-cut, cropped peasant top shows her exposed rounded shoulders; shows a flash of skin over her hip-hugger jeans.
“Then she had to go and send the sampleshomewith us,” Kyle is saying when he returns with slippers on his feet. He stops at the stove and drops a fat slab of butter in his frying pan. “Not good, Lauren. We gave her our deposit twoweeksago at our consultation. Gave her a picture of your flowers to coordinate with the cake.” He adjusts the stove flame and lifts the pan to get the butter melted. “She drew up custom sketches instead of using a standard cake. And we were supposed to make our decision.Today. The wedding’s getting really close.”
“But I tasted each sample and … I couldn’t pick one.”
“I did. Chocolate cake with buttercream frosting. It was amazing. Hell, Jason atetwopieces.”
Still looking out the window onto the late evening, Lauren doesn’t turn with her answer. “I don’t know,” she says, almost to herself. “What if it’s not the right one?”
“What do you mean?” Kyle glances over at her before taking a package of steaks out of the refrigerator. “It’s just cake,” he says, setting the steaks on the counter. “And sometimes to make a decision, you just have to go with your gut. Who cares what anyone thinks?”
Lauren turns then and looks at Kyle. She paces the small kitchen, too, walking from the window, around to the sink, back to the side door—which she opens to the screen door. “Who cares?” she repeats, finally looking at Kyle again. He’s leaning against the counter now, with his arms crossed over his chest. And he’s watching only her. “But everything can fall apart with the wrong choice,” Lauren quietly insists.
“Aboutcake?”
“What if someone doesn’t like it? Say,Evamaybe, doesn’t evenlikechocolate cake.”
“Eva? You’re worried about … Eva? Ell, it’sourwedding.”
“And our decisions, decisions.” Lauren dumps the rest of her water in the sink and sets her glass on the counter. “The smallest thing gets my mind all tied up in knots.”
As she’s saying it—as she’s complaining about sheet cake or layers; round layers or square; sugar flowers or real flowers—Kyle slices an onion. His back is to her while working his knife and then scraping the onion slices into the frying pan and letting them simmer. But he says nothing. Not until Lauren’s decision-list drifts off in silence. When it does, she just stands there in the middle of the tiny apartment kitchen above the local law office.
Which is when Kyle turns and looks at her. Then he turns back to the counter, picks up the package of steaks and returns it to the refrigerator. After giving the onions a flip and wiping his hands on a dishtowel, he walks to Lauren, puts his hands on her bare shoulders and sits her down at the table.
“Kyle,” she starts to protest, half standing.
