The Light of Hidden Flowers by Jennifer Handford Page B

Jenny to schedule some lunches and golf dates with some of his buddies. And me? I came in late and stayed late.
    And Lucas Anderson became part of my vocabulary.
    The phone rang just as I had swept the Great Men category in Jeopardy! “Who was Charlemagne? Who was Pope Alexander? Who was Pericles? Who was Hannibal?”
    What’s it like to be such a know-it-all? I heard my old boyfriend Jason ask. But of course it wasn’t Jason, it was Lucas, who called every night at seven o’clock. And Lucas would never say such an awful, angry thing to me.
    Lucas and I chatted, made dinner plans for Saturday night.
    “But I’ll need your car keys early that day,” he said. “No questions. I have a surprise for you.”

    Saturday morning bright and early, Lucas came by for my car, looking very pleased with himself. Then promptly at six that night, he rang my doorbell and kissed me hello. “Would you like to see your car?” he asked.
    We walked down the few steps to a positively gleaming version of my Subaru. Lucas opened my door. I slid into the driver’s seat. The interior was almost comically immaculate, as if I had just driven it off the showroom floor.
    “Wow.”
    “I didn’t just clean it, I detailed it,” Lucas said. He reached down past me, showed me how he had scrubbed my carpets and degreased the wheels and waxed the exterior. “ And I had the oil changed, and filled the tank.”
    “It’s so . . . clean,” I said. “And it has—a new car smell?”
    “That’s because I cleaned your air ducts,” he said. “It’s a hobby of mine. I spend a good couple of hours washing my car every Saturday.”
    “Thank you,” I said.
    “I shine shoes, too,” he said. “I could do yours.”
    I peered over to spy his shoes. They were shiny.
    “I’d like to do a lot of things for you,” he said, a bit shyly.
    I smiled, took in his blue eyes.
    “It’s just my thing,” he said, backpedaling a bit. “It’s a little weird, right? But Saturday mornings are for the car and the shoes. I’m a bit of a creature of habit.”
    “I’m the same way,” I said. “Not the cleaning part, but my patterns.” I thought of my morning routine at work: the computers, the charting, the testing. The listing, the filtering, the inputting of data. And my after-work routine: the Rosetta Stone CDs, the homemade dinners, flipping through the mail one piece at a time. The pistachio gelato in front of Jeopardy! , peeking in on my Facebook friends, planning trips on Expedia that I’d never take.
    “Two peas in a pod,” Lucas said, grinning widely.
    In the restaurant, we were seated by the window. The sun was just setting over the Potomac, the ball of fire resting at the water’s edge. When the waiter came, I ordered a glass of Chardonnay.
    “And for you, sir?”
    “I’m fine with water,” he said.
    “Sparkling, tap?”
    “Tap’s fine.”
    “And to start?” the waiter asked, looking at me. “An appetizer, a cup of soup?”
    “You have to try the clam chowder,” I said to Lucas.
    “You go ahead,” he said, placing his hand over mine. “I’m fine with bread and water for now.”
    “I’m good,” I said, the disappointment audible even to me.
    “Don’t be silly,” Lucas said. “Order whatever you want.” He looked up at the waiter. “A cup of clam chowder for the lady.”
    The waiter nodded, jotted it down. When Lucas turned back to his menu, I looked up at the waiter and mouthed, “A bowl”—a tiny cup would only leave me wanting more.
    I let my heart process Lucas’s hand covering mine. It was warm, and he was sweet and considerate, and he adored me. And he had spent hours detailing my car and getting the oil changed and filling it with gas. I wanted to be with him. I wanted to be with a guy as kind as he was. On the other hand, he had just eschewed clam chowder and Chardonnay in favor of bread and water. When the waiter returned with my soup, I pulled my hand from under Lucas’s and dipped my spoon into the