Week 1: Friday

Friday was different. Friday, Lindsay had work.

As a real estate agent, she more-or-less got schedule her own hours and she had deliberately set aside time to make sure this adoption process had gone smoothly. She taken four days off. But the housing market waits for no one, so she could only delay meeting her clients for so long.

She was up before the sun, showered and standing in front of her closet in a towel while her hair dripped onto the carpet. She had afternoon showings — two of them, a young couple looking for their first condo and a retired professor downsizing from a big house to something manageable — and she needed to look like someone who could be trusted with life-altering financial decisions. The charcoal pencil skirt came out first, the one that hit just below the knee and made her legs look longer than they were. The cream silk blouse, fitted through the waist, with a small bow at the collar that was feminine without being fussy. Low heels — nude pumps, the expensive ones she'd bought on sale three years ago and worn to every important showing since.

She dressed in front of the full-length mirror on the back of the closet door. The skirt zipped up the back with the particular resistance of fabric that had been cut to hold its shape. She tugged it into place over her hips, smoothing the material with both palms, feeling the way it hugged her waist and then flared just slightly at the knee. It sat well. It sat exactly the way it was supposed to.

The blouse was trickier. She buttoned it from the bottom up, and when she reached the third button from the top — the one that should have fastened easily over her chest — the fabric pulled. She frowned, adjusted, undid the button, tried again. Still tight. She was on the outermost clasp of her bra and it was still digging into her sides slightly, leaving faint red marks when she twisted to look. Her breasts were fuller than they'd been a month ago, rounder, the veins faintly visible beneath the pale skin. She'd noticed this before — the way her bras had been fitting differently, the way her blouses were pulling — and she'd chalked it up to the usual fluctuations. Water weight. Hormones. The last flickering embers of perimenopause. But this morning, standing in front of the mirror with her blouse gaping slightly at the chest, she made a mental note to go shopping. She needed new bras. Bigger ones. This was a practical consideration, nothing more.

She turned sideways and examined her profile. The cream silk pulled against her breasts, which were full and round and strained the fabric in a way that was just barely professional — not inappropriate, not yet, but closer to the line than she usually allowed herself. Her waist narrowed beneath them, still trim, still the waist of a woman who ran three times a week and watched what she ate. The charcoal skirt followed the curve of her hips and hugged the swell of her backside with the tailored precision of good fabric. Her legs, sheathed in nude hose, looked long and shapely. The pumps added just enough height to change the angle of her spine.

She looked good. She looked more than good. She looked like a woman who took care of herself — a woman you'd trust to negotiate a mortgage and also a woman you might think about later that evening, in the privacy of your own thoughts, and then feel slightly guilty about. Not bad for forty-three. She'd kept her figure. Better than kept it — the curves had gotten more generous in the last few years, fuller in the hips and chest, and she was vain enough to appreciate it, to look at herself in the mirror and think yes, still got it with a small private satisfaction that she would never admit to anyone.

She put on lipstick. A soft pink, not too bright. She blotted it on a tissue, leaving a faint kiss-print on the white paper. She let her hair down — loose blonde waves falling over her shoulders, catching the light from the window, the way her husband had liked it before he'd stopped noticing. She looked at herself one more time. The blouse was still tight. She decided she didn't mind.

Downstairs. Waffles with sliced bananas on top. Real maple syrup, warmed slightly in the microwave because she'd read somewhere that warm syrup absorbed better. Scrambled eggs on the side. A glass of orange juice.

She didn't tell herself "last time" anymore. She'd stopped having that conversation with herself. It was Thursday, or Friday, or whatever day it was, and she was making waffles because that was what she did now in the mornings, the same way she made coffee and checked her email and brushed her hair. It was just part of the routine. She didn't examine it. She didn't justify it. She just did it.

Damian came down. He sat. He ate.

"The bananas are amazing," he said, his mouth full. He chewed, swallowed, took another bite. "You were right about the fruit thing. Like, the way the banana gets all warm and soft and the syrup soaks into it — it's so good. Thank you for trying it."

Lindsay hadn't said anything about the fruit thing. He'd read about it online and asked for bananas. But she didn't correct him. She cleared his plate — and her own — without comment. She wiped down the counter, the stovetop, the table. She washed the waffle iron, dried it, left it on the counter because she'd be using it again tomorrow.

She was gathering her keys and bag, checking her phone for the showing address, mentally running through the details of the first property — two-bedroom condo, updated kitchen, good light, a little overpriced but negotiable — when Damian said from the table:

"Lindsay?"

"Hmm?"

She didn't look up. She was scrolling through the listing, trying to remember whether the HOA fees included parking.

"I know it's probably rude to comment on your appearance."

She stopped scrolling.

"But you look really pretty today."

She looked up. Damian was sitting very still, his hands folded on the table in front of him, his eyes fixed on them as if they contained some fascinating detail he'd never noticed before. His face was red. Not a subtle flush — a deep, obvious blush that started at his collar and spread all the way to his hairline. He wasn't looking at her. He was looking at his hands as if they were the only safe thing in the room.

Something burst in Lindsay's chest. Not a flicker — a burst. A bloom of warmth so sudden and so intense that she felt herself flush in response, her own cheeks pinking before she could stop them. It was pleasure — pure, sharp, unmistakable pleasure — and beneath the pleasure was something softer, something almost maternal, a rush of tenderness for this boy who was so awkward and so sweet and so obviously terrified that he'd said the wrong thing. He probably hadn't talked to many women in his life, let alone complimented one. The poor kid didn't even know if he was allowed to say it. He'd made himself say it anyway, and now he was sitting there blushing like a tomato, waiting for her to tell him he'd overstepped.

"That's very kind, Damian. Thank you."

She meant it. Her voice was warmer than she'd intended. She could hear the warmth and couldn't do anything about it.

He looked up — just for a fraction of a second, a quick glance at her face to check that she wasn't angry — and then looked back down at his hands. The blush was still there, but his shoulders had relaxed slightly.

"You should, like — you should wear clothes like that more often. Instead of the sweatpants and stuff."

The words came out in a rush, slightly jumbled, as if he'd been holding them and they'd escaped. He was still looking at his hands.

Lindsay opened her mouth. The answer was right there, already formed, already on her tongue before she'd consciously decided to say it.

"Of course! I—"

She stopped.

Of course? Why had she said of course? What did of course mean? He was telling her to dress up more often — to wear skirts and blouses instead of sweatpants, to present herself in a way that pleased him — and she'd said of course as if he'd asked her to pass the salt. As if it were a reasonable request. As if it were a request at all and not just a — a statement, a preference, a thing he was allowed to have an opinion about and she was allowed to —

But Damian was already talking again, his voice returning to its normal register, the tension of the compliment already dissipating as if he'd forgotten he'd said it.

"The bananas really added a lot to the waffles. Like, the combination with the maple syrup is really good. The texture works way better than I thought it would."

"I — yes, it is." Lindsay was still standing by the counter with her keys in one hand and her bag in the other, off-balance, her mind trying to go back to the outfit exchange and finding that the conversation had already moved on without her. She was still processing you look really pretty and of course while Damian was talking about bananas, and she couldn't catch up.

"Lindsay, could we try strawberries tomorrow instead? I want to see if they're even better."

"Sure," she said. "We can try that."

"Thanks! Have a good day at work. You look really nice."

He got up. He left his plate on the table — she registered this automatically, distantly, a data point she'd address later — and went upstairs. His footsteps faded. His door closed.

Lindsay stood in the hallway with her keys in one hand and her bag in the other and stared at nothing.

Two things had just happened. Two things, and she could only focus on one of them, and it was the wrong one. She was thinking about the outfit comment — you should wear clothes like that more often — and her response — of course — and she was trying to figure out what she'd agreed to. Had she agreed to dress up more often? She'd said "of course." She'd definitely said "of course." It had come out of her mouth with the same reflexive ease as every other concession she'd made this week — sure, one time, tomorrow, next week — and now it was sitting in the air behind her, a commitment she didn't remember making.

But that was different from waffles. Waffles were waffles. Waffles were breakfast. Agreeing to change how she dressed because a nineteen-year-old boy told her she looked pretty was — that wasn't — there was a category difference there, a line, and she couldn't remember crossing it but she could feel the ghost of the line behind her, as if she'd walked through it without noticing.

She caught her reflection in the hall mirror. The cream blouse. The charcoal skirt. The blonde waves over her shoulders, still catching the light. She looked good. She knew she looked good. She'd known it before he'd said anything, standing alone in the bedroom with the mirror and the lipstick. She'd dressed up for herself. For her showings. Not for him. She hadn't been thinking about him when she chose the blouse. She hadn't been thinking about him when she put on the lipstick. She'd been thinking about her clients, about looking professional, about the particular calculus of presentation that helped close a sale.

You should wear clothes like that more often. Instead of the sweatpants and stuff.

She pushed through the front door and walked to her car.

In the driver's seat, she adjusted the rearview mirror. She looked at herself. The lipstick. The hair. The way the blouse sat across her chest, pulling slightly at the buttons. She was still thinking about it when she pulled out of the driveway. She was still thinking about it at the first stoplight. She was still thinking about it when she merged onto the highway, and then she **** herself to stop because she had showings, because she had clients, because she was a professional and she needed to focus on work.

She forgot about the strawberries. She'd agreed to strawberries on the waffles tomorrow, and she'd forgotten, and she wouldn't remember until she was halfway through her second showing, standing in the kitchen of a condo she was trying to sell while the young couple argued about closet space, and the realisation would slip into her mind like a note passed under a door: strawberries. Tomorrow. You said yes. By then it would be too late to care, and besides, she was driving past the grocery store on her way home.

She was smiling faintly when she arrived at the first showing. She didn't know why.