Beautiful Mistakes

Nodding her agreement, Julie said, "Divorce is always so much uglier when there are kids involved."

The buzzer went off and Julie sat down the pitcher of lemonade, saying, "I'll get it."

Frowning, Aaron jumped up, "No, I'll get it. We haven't even moved in yet, who would come here?"

"Oh, I'm sorry," she said, shaking her head. "It's Leigh, I told her to come by."

"Why?" he asked, confused.

"Well, when I was packing up I found a whole box of old magazines and stuff that I had been holding onto—" Pausing, she buzzed Leigh up—"and Leigh told me last week at work if I had any magazines lying around the house to give them to her because at her other job—I don't know, they're sending magazines to soldiers so they have something to read. I don't really know, but I told Leigh that I would look and I told her we were moving stuff over here today… you don't mind, do you?"

Shrugging, he said, "No, I guess not. I just didn't realize Leigh would be coming over. I thought she would be uncomfortable."

"She's been getting better," Julie told him more quietly. "I mean, she isn't bursting with friendship or anything, but... I think it's because at her other job she's getting a lot more attention—probably just because she's not so visibly hung up on you there. Leigh's a pretty girl, it really doesn't make sense that she hasn't had more suitors. Anyway, I guess a few of the guys there just lavish attention on her—she told me the other day one of them even tried to kiss her. I think the attention is making her ease up on her resentment toward me. She's finally discovering the other fish that are just swimming all over the city."

"Really?" he asked, looking totally surprised. "I knew nothing about this."

Nodding, Julie said happily, "The one guy—not the one that tried to kiss her, but a different one—even asked her out. She told him no, but last I heard she was considering just going out once to see. Since it's just a part-time job she isn't worried about dating a co-worker."

Aaron looked dumb-founded. "I can't believe… that I've missed all of this. I mean, it was just a little over a month ago that she… wow."

Grinning, Julie winked, tugged lightly on the collar of his shirt and said, "What can I say; when I'm right, I'm right."

"I guess so," he replied.

Her smile relaxed a little and she said knowingly, "How’s your ego doing?"

He looked just startled enough that she assumed she hit the nail on the head, but he replied, "It’s fine. It's good that Leigh… got over me so fast."

Julie merely smiled at him, then she went to answer the light knock on the door.

As Julie pulled the door open, she offered a friendly smile at Leigh. "Hey, I'm so glad you could come."

Leigh offered a smile and said, "Yeah, no problem. You have the magazines?"

"Yeah," Julie said, distracted by the sight of Leigh's legs beneath her jacket. Leigh was wearing a quite short mini-skirt with a pair of low heels. "You look nice," she remarked.

Glancing down at herself, Leigh said, "Oh, thanks. I borrowed it from Danielle. I'm always cautious about borrowing things from her, but… I figured what the hell, right?"

"Are you off today?"

"Yeah," she replied. Then, off-handedly, she said, "Hey Aaron."

"Hey," he replied, nodding, but Julie noticed—and forced herself not to be even slightly jealous—that Aaron's gaze wandered over Leigh as if he was seeing her for the first time in his life.

Since everything had blown up a little over a month earlier, Leigh had changed. Before she had been friendly, but reserved in her own looks. She wore a t-shirt and jeans to work every single day, she wore her glasses to hide her face and her hair pulled back in a boring pony tail so she didn't have to bother with it.

Since the day she had told Aaron that she had an interview at another job and she needed a change, she had definitely been following through with the changes. Even though she only worked weekends at her other job, apparently the entire kitchen was male, and even though she had walked in wearing her jeans and her glasses and her pony tail, there had been a couple guys there who saw the promise of what she might look like if the thought occurred to her to try. Within two weekends at her second job, Leigh went out and bought a few new outfits, she got highlights in her hair, and she started wearing contacts.

The Leigh that came walking through Julie's kitchen in a pair of heels and a short skirt didn't look anything like the more timid version of herself that wore jeans and tennis shoes and lacked the confidence to "own a room."

Leigh's confidence, strangely, had been shooting up since Aaron finally rejected her once and for all.

"Leigh has legs," Aaron stated quietly to Julie, as if it surprised him.

"Indeed, she has two of them," Julie replied, looking amused.

Steve, who had been in the middle of chewing, stopped dead when Leigh came walking in, and he kind of just stared rudely for a moment. Then he swallowed, jumped to his feet and offered a smile.