And my husband’s headache cured itself on sight.
He dropped his arm off his eyes. He sat up. He stood up so fast his chair scraped backward in the sand.
“Lauren! Here — let me take your bag.”
Five minutes earlier he had watched me haul a forty-pound cooler three hundred yards and said nothing.
The Look She Gave All of Us
Lauren handed over a small straw tote with an amused little laugh.
And while Ryan was settling it under our umbrella, she took off her sunglasses to wipe a grain of sand off one lens.
Her eyes were sharper than I’d expected. Cool. Watchful.
In one measured glance she took in Ryan. Then me. Then the mountain of supplies at my feet — the cooler, the tote, the bags, the blanket covered in sand.
Then she smiled at him.
At the time I thought it was interest. I thought, oh, she’s taken with him. A woman who notices that much, surely she’ll notice the charming, attentive, energetic man my husband had decided to become for the afternoon.
