Beach Season by Lisa Jackson Page B

on her head. “I’m going to read you some information on spaceships while you sew.”
    “Superb. I can always learn more.”
    She put down her pen and clipboard. “You know, June, I don’t fit in with the other kids at school.”
    “I don’t think I’ve ever fit in, kiddo.” I gave her a hug. “Don’t try to fit in. Be yourself. List ten things you like about yourself. If you force yourself to be someone you’re not, you will be one unhappy caterpillar.”
    “Yeah. I know.” She fiddled with her white space gloves. “A lot of the other kids have dads.”
    “They do. But you have the coolest mother on the planet.”
    “She is pretty cool. Do you think my dad would like me if he saw me again?”
    “Definitely. What’s more important is, do you think you would like him ?”
    She didn’t say anything for a minute. “I don’t know. He left us. I’m going to have to think about that.”
    “Okay.” I hurt to see Morgan hurt. What hurt the most was seeing her emotional dependence on a father who had skipped out of town, oblivious to the demolition he had brought to her life. He did not deserve her adolation. “Remember that supersmart kids like you can open the door to a world filled with adventure. Like the adventures you’ll have at NASA. Now, tell me about the wings of a space shuttle.”
     
    “It’s incredible,” he said, his voice low. “Incredible.”
    Reece the chariot rider sat on a stool in the middle of my yellow studio. My French doors were open, the stars up and twinkling over the crashing waves, the lights of two fishing boats flashing in the distance.
    “I am absolutely in awe, June.”
    Amidst the lace, flounce, silkiness, and sewing machines he looked steamrollingly masculine. Hard-core man. Sexy and huge. He was a manly man in a woman’s territory, yet in some incongruous way ... he fit in.
    “I ... well, I have to be around color.” I thought of the colors in the home I shared with Grayson: Beige. Black. Soul-deadening. “Color helps me to think, and bright and interesting things—whether they’re bird nests or a collection of odd teapots—help me create.”
    “I understand. I do.” He nodded, and I knew he did understand. We’re both creative; he got it.
    “You are amazingly talented, June. This whole studio, these dresses ...” He shook his head, indicating the mannequins that were draped with August’s wedding dress and our bridesmaids’ dresses. “Wow. That’s all I can say, wow. How do you make a wedding dress?”
    “You’re kidding.”
    “No, I want to know.”
    “But you’re a ... you’re a man.”
    “Yes. Last time I looked.” He ran a hand through that thick blondish hair. “Could have changed on the long walk over from my place to yours, but I think not. Shall I check?”
    Whew! Another graphic image! I shut that one out.
    “No, no checking.” I took a wobbly breath. “Okay, I’ll make it short, don’t want to bore you right out of your skull.”
    “I won’t be bored. Start with what you do when someone calls and wants a wedding dress.”
    I told him. I watched him closely for signs of nauseating boredom and acute distress. I watched to make sure his eyes didn’t glaze over and he didn’t fall asleep, his head banging on my work table. None of that occurred. He wanted to know how my ideas sparked to life, how I worked, thought, imagined. The conversation was a huge turn-on.
    Grayson hadn’t even wanted to know about my sewing, calling it “June’s 1950s backwards housewife hobby.”
    “To launch my company, I sewed straight through for weeks until my eyes were burning, my body a limp noodle from exhaustion. I designed a traditional, exquisite white wedding gown, then three nontraditional, eye-popping sorts of wedding gowns, and August, September, my mom, and I modeled them for a professional fashion photographer. I threw a humongous amount of money at advertising, online and in print, and I was, miraculously, soon in