“Sexist,” Erick said.
“She’s a smart fellow American,” Clover said, laughing. “Even if she can’t mind her own business.”
“Better me than Sven,” Erick said. “I’ll give your money back at the end of the week if you’re not satisfied.”
“Sounds like a very good deal especially since I’m not paying you.”
He zipped up his coat and patted his pocket to make sure Ruthie’s phone and Clover’s address were still there. “You need me to pick up anything before I come over?” he asked. “Food? Wine? Whips? Chains? Condoms?”
“I’m on the pill,” she said. “Heavy periods. Sorry. TMI.”
“I have a teenage daughter. You’re going to have to do better than heavy periods to TMI me. And I’m buying condoms, anyway. Not because we have to use them. Just because I want someone to know I might be getting laid this week.”
“I’m allergic to latex.”
“It’s okay. I’m so clean it’s depressing.”
“We’ll talk about it. Later. We’re just sleeping tonight. Right?”
“Right. Just sleeping. And kissing.”
“That, too.”
He started to leave.
“But maybe more than kissing,” she said.
He didn’t answer. He just walked out the door before he walked back to her and kissed her for a good three or four hours. Soon as he was in the cold night air on the way to his truck he pulled his own phone out of his pocket and sent a text message to Candace, his ex-wife.
Give your daughter a message for me, he wrote. Tell her she’s in trouble.
For what? Candace wrote back. She should know better by now than to ask that question.
She’ll know what I mean.
I’ll tell her. Anything else?
Yeah, Erick wrote. Tell her thank you.
3
DON’T PANIC, CLOVER told herself. Then she told herself that again. It wasn’t working. She was panicking.
She stood in the middle of her living room and glanced around at her house. No denying, she had a cute house. Not big. Perfect size for a woman who lived alone. Living room, office and kitchen downstairs. Master bedroom and guest bedroom upstairs. Half bath by the kitchen. Full bath by the master. Bamboo floors covered in woven rugs. Walls painted a rustic red downstairs and a pretty lake blue upstairs. Plants were everywhere, of course—ferns, ficus and flowers. She hoped Erick wasn’t allergic to flowers. This slumber party would be over before it started if he was. Ruthie had worked for her nearly a year and Erick picked his daughter up all the time. Had she ever seen him sneeze around the plants? Not that she recalled, but then again that would be a really bizarre thing to remember. She was freaking out and she knew it.
“Calm down, Clover,” she told herself.
“I am calm,” she said but she knew she wasn’t. She hadn’t been expecting company tonight. Certainly not tall, handsome, male company. She was torn between excitement and panic.
“Priorities, Clover. First things first. Man coming over...spending the night. What do I do? Clean stuff. What stuff? All the stuff.”
She’d fallen asleep on the sofa last night reading and the throw pillows and blankets were still a mess. She straightened the pillows and folded the blanket neatly. But it was a throw blanket and didn’t look right in a neat rectangle so she tossed it over the back instead. It ended up looking nearly identical to how it looked before but at least it was purposefully messy and not accidentally messy.
All the dishes in the kitchen sink she crammed into the dishwasher and started it running. She put the basket of her yet-to-be-folded socks and underwear in the laundry room, draping a clean towel over the piles of panties on top. She dug through the linen closet upstairs for clean sheets. Currently on her bed was red and blue flannel. She liked a cold house to sleep in at night with warm blankets piled high. Sometimes she even slept with the window cracked to let in the cold night air. She lived near Lost Lake and the air was as clean and fresh as anyone could ever want, and it seemed a shame to not have some of that crisp clean air in her house. If she remembered correctly, men tended to be warmer than women. Maybe no flannel sheets, then. She found her summer sheets, plain blue cotton, and stripped the white-and-blue-checkered quilt off her bed. She replaced the sheets and fluffed the pillows. Then she had to decide—did she want to remake the bed? Hadn’t she already told Erick she had to change the sheets? Would he think she was some kind of freak if she made the bed all of an hour before unmaking it to sleep? Was she overthinking this? Yes, she was overthinking this.
“You’re overthinking this, Clover. Stop it.”
She stopped it and just made the bed, anyway. She liked made beds. The room looked more inviting when the bed was made. On the bedside table was a little milk glass lamp that she switched on, flooding the room with low gentle light. Clover stepped back and took in the effect. Nice. Her small bedroom looked almost...romantic? Like a room at a cozy inn. Rustic but pretty.