“You knew she was coming,” Dahlia said.
“But not here. Not this early. I’m so happy to see you.” Marianne waved a manicured hand in the air, her bracelets jingling. “Tell me everything. Tell us about London. And now that you’re home, and I don’t have to worry about you, tell me about all the crazy things you did.Pleasetell me you did some crazy things.”
Ruby ducked her head, her cheeks turning pink.
“Oh, yay,” Marianne said. “Please tell all that I might live through you.”
She went back behind the counter and grabbed a few bottles of lotion, putting them on the edge, a clear indicator that she wanted them to sample something. Dahlia was never one to turn down a free sample. And Ruby was never one to disappoint, so they both chose different bottles and squirted some onto their hands.
“I did a lot of wine tasting in Italy. And many a pub crawl occurred in England.”
Marianne rolled her eyes. “Is that it? What I want to know is, did Italian men occur?”
“At least one,” Ruby said.
“And how was it?” Marianne fixed Ruby with a keen look.
“You do not want to hear about that,” Ruby said.
“I do. Please indulge me.” Marianne clasped her hands in an over-the-top begging posture. “I have a business and a husband and children. And I am not a world traveler.”
“It’s not like you couldn’t travel if you wanted to,” Dahlia pointed out.
“Did you not hear the euphemism under my words? I am not aworld traveler. I have not slept with European men. I have not slept with anyone but my husband, in point of fact, so I am owed stories.”
Marianne was nothing if not dramatic. Always.
And had been so since she was a teenager.
“Gosh,” Dahlia said. “If you wanted to hear stories of disappointing extramarital sex, you could’ve always asked me.”
“The Italian guy was not disappointing,” Ruby said. “Cannot say the same for the French guy.”
“Shame. Details on the French Disappointment,” Marianne said.
“Well. I think I was supposed to feel exceptionally grateful. But honestly I was bored. He wanted to watch a black-and-white movie after? I really wanted to leave.”
“And... Did you?” Dahlia asked, interested in spite of herself.
“Yes. Because, I feel that as it was my sexual exploration, I was free to do as I wished.”
“Good for you,” Marianne said. “I support you in theory.”
“Do you wish that you...are you—” Ruby looked at Marianne keenly “—sad that you’re not a world traveler?”
Another thing Dahlia was curious about, in spite of herself.
“No,” Marianne said. “I love Jackson. I love him entirely and completely, with my heart and my body. That doesn’t mean I don’t want to hear stories of people who are more adventurous than I.”
“Well, I had some adventures.” Ruby shrugged. “That was the point.”
“It was why you broke up withDarling Heath,” Dahlia said.
Ruby tilted her head back as if she could not contain the force of her eye roll. “Don’t call him that. We are not thirteen.”
“I’m sorry,” Marianne said. “I can’t take a real live man named Heath seriously.”
Ruby sniffed. “That’s because you never read the classics. It’s close enough to Heathcliff to appeal to me greatly.”