Working for Love

It's About Time (16)

Thanksgiving ended surprisingly well. Mom dismissed the conversation about retirement homes and Delilah left soon after. Langdon and Emmalynn stayed as long as they could, but they had to get their kids to bed. Carl was actually the one who remained at the end of the night. He seemed loathe to leave, probably because my place, small and cheap as it was, was better than his own home. If he still had a home. I didn't want to ask.

It was eleven o'clock before Mom went to bed. She stayed up until then to finish the puzzle, and I stayed up with her. We were both exhausted from the long day, but Mom couldn't stand to leave it undone.

The next day was Friday, but Damon had given most of us an extended weekend, so I didn't have anything to do. I accompanied Mom to a lunch with her friends, but stayed home the rest of the weekend and decorated for Christmas, anticipating my date on Monday.

Viveca and Emmalynn responded appropriately to the news of my date, both squealing a little and laughing a lot. Naomi had responded with a dumbfounded, "what?" at first, then slowly got more excited. She wasn't as exclamatory as the other two, but she was still happy for more and demanded to know all the details.

When Monday rolled around, I woke up with a feeling of anticipation I couldn't pinpoint until I remembered that our date was that evening. I wonder what club we're going to? What should I wear? I should ask Damon when I see him today. How all-out should I go? Fancy hair and fancy makeup? Just one or the other? Or just simple? I could ask Milly what would appeal to Damon best. Gracious, am I really about to decide my makeup based on Damon's preferences?

Damon was chatting with Milly when I strolled into work, so after greetings were exchanged, I asked him what would be best for me to wear. "Something nicer," he said. "You don't have to go overboard, but it's a nice club, so you're not going to want to wear comfortable home clothes."

"What will you be wearing?"

"Dark jeans, casual button-up, suit jacket."

How do you make a button up casual with a suit jacket? "Sounds great. I may have to really dig through my closet though to find something nice that isn't for work." I laughed a little.

He smiled. "You'll look lovely in whatever you choose."

I found it hard to focus on work that day. With my daydreaming tendencies, I had a difficult time focusing anyway, but today it was worse than usual. I couldn't stop thinking about how wonderful, or terrible, our date would go. There were so many different things that could happen, my brain didn't seem to want to rest until it had travelled across every single scenario.

I sat with Viveca at lunch like I normally did, blushing as she told everyone at our table about my upcoming date with Damon. Everyone seemed surprised, but the girls cooed over me and assured me everything would go great, while the men joked about Damon.

The day crawled by far too slowly yet ended far too quickly. Viveca offered to come over to help me get ready, but I declined. I had enough anxiety getting myself ready for tonight without someone else watching and imputing their advice. I had already gotten makeup advice from Milly. It was actually quite useful for Damon to have a female friend he was close with, because he often talked to her about women, so she had an idea what he liked looking at. He was more for the natural look, but with sparkles, which was great because I liked sparkly makeup as well, so I had some of that.

After half hour of debate when I came home, I decided on a white dress that went to my knees, with light leggings underneath to keep me warm and my grey suit jacket over top to give it some class. I paired the outfit with my only pair of black heels to give me some height. Since Damon wasn't much taller than me, we would probably be face to face now.