Chapter Nineteen

Labor Day weekend approached, and my excitement and my nervousness boiled over like an unwatched pot. The restaurant was going to be closed Thursday through Monday and would reopen on Tuesday. I was packing and washing clothes simultaneously. I wondered if it was bad form to pack the green nightgown I had already worn. This was exactly the kind of thing I would normally ask Reggie or Elle about, but I knew I couldn’t reveal why I had already worn it. I loved the nightgown. It made me happy. So, I packed it.

I arrived at Elliott’s apartment at six-thirty p.m. I had my large overnight bag and a painting I thought would be perfect for one of the walls in his apartment.

When Elliott opened the door, I was amazed. I was speechless. It was a completely different apartment than the one I had been to on New Year’s Eve. He could see my surprise.

“Come in. Do you like it?” Elliott’s apartment had been transformed. The things that were in it before were now gone. It had morphed from the quaint English country look into a modern, sleek New York apartment. I was in awe. It was perfect. I wondered if those had been Jane’s things. Elliott was moving on from an old life too.

“Well, what do you think? I told the decorator she had to be done by today. You were coming, and I wanted to impress you.”

“Mission accomplished. It’s beautiful. It’s fantastic. It is so you.” I believe I handed my things to Elliott as I continued looking around. I had a case of astonishment. I loved everything about it. I wondered if I could push my own vision to these limits. I also secretly wondered if I could do this to Griffin’s condo on the modest budget he had given me.

In truth, I was a little jealous. Jealous that someone else’s talent had these nuances. Feelings of inadequacy flooded my being. Jealousy and inadequacy are not exactly the kind of feelings you want to have before having sex with the man you love for the first time.

The walls had been freshly painted in soothing warm beiges and grays. I walked over to his bedroom door. The artwork caught my attention first. It was a lovely painting of robust greens and blues. Nothing faint or bashful about these colors. The painting was hypnotic. The walls were obviously painted to complement the blue-green in the painting. Gone were the frayed Oriental rugs and the English chintz. The stitching and monogram of his white bedding coordinated perfectly with the colors in the room. Nothing in the apartment was coincidental. Every item was picked with purpose, with a grand plan. I liked that attention to detail. Elliott joined me in the doorway.

“I told her the bedroom must have shades of green for the woman I love.”

I blushed. I had never had a man decorate his bedroom to please me.

In his bathroom hung monogrammed towels complementary to his bedding. The grays in the marble played nicely with everything else. I wanted to see the kitchen. Would this decorator have chosen marble countertops for his kitchen? Because marble, as beautiful as it looks, is not very practical for a kitchen used often. I would love to catch a mistake. But she was without error.