He leaped up from the table, dropped down to one knee, and held out a hand, clasping hers in his. “You’re a goddess.”
I laughed, only to cover up what I was really feeling. Left behind.
Some things you just know.
I knew then that he’d win Lulu.
Tripp had an easy way about him. An effortless charm. He was sunshine and go-for-it mornings. I was nighttime and careful plans.
When he returned to the seat, he extended his hand toward Lulu. “Tripp Hudson. You have one green eye and one . . . not so green.”
Her smile grew galaxies bigger, like someone had seen into her soul. She leaned closer to him, their body language instantly fluent. “Everyone says one is green and one is blue. But really, they’re just different shades of green.”
“Everyone else is wrong. We’re right. One is a darker green than the other. And you wear contacts too.”
She shook his hand. “I’m Lulu Diamond. I want to be a great chocolatier, and someday I’ll get Lasik.”
“How fortuitous. I want to be a great chef, and I’ll pick you up from your eye surgery.”
As if he’d just remembered I was there, he jerked his gaze to me. “And Leo? Leo Hennessy is going to fucking dominate. He’ll be running your chocolate business and owning my restaurant. This man?” He pointed at me exaggeratedly. “He’s got game when it comes to numbers and business and how shit runs. No one is better.”
I just shrugged, smiling softly.
Maybe I should have said something else.
But it was clear that the brief chocolate-utopia moment from class was no more. And that Tripp had won a race neither one of them knew had started.
I took the back seat.
7LULU
Present Day
Three-legged stools work well.
Better than four-legged ones. That’s what my friend Cameron told me years ago when I had explained that yes, it was weird on the surface, but Leo, Tripp, and I got along like the Three Musketeers.
He reminds me again tonight as I bound up the subway steps, phone to my ear, chatting with him as I walk to The Pub after working in the shop all day.
“It has less constraints that would make the stool wobble.”
“English, please.”
“It’s the theory of the three-legged stool. Its power. Its strength. Its stability. Ideal governments strive for a three-legged-stool model because the foundation is solid.”
“You’re such a brainiac.” Cameron is a foodie by job and a philosopher by heart. “Why is it more solid?”
“Why do tripods have three legs instead of four?” He’s like a professor practicing the Socratic method.
“Why? Tell me why?”
Laughing, he answers, “Because it’s the ideal number for maximum stability, but not too many to make it wobble.”
“So Leo, Tripp, and I were better as a threesome than we’d have been as a foursome? Is that why we worked well even when Leo wasn’t involved with anyone?”
“That is indeed why.”
“What about when he had girlfriends?” I pause, reflecting back on those times. Truth be told, I didn’t see him as much then. “I guess we never hung out as much when he had girlfriends.”
“Because you hated them all.”
My eyebrows shoot into my hairline. “Take it back. I did not hate any of them.”
“Fine. You simply didn’t think any of them were good enough for him.”
“They weren’t! No one was good enough for him.”
“I love that you’re the self-appointed arbiter of who is good enough for Leo.”
“I like Amy,” I admit, picturing the smart brunette I met once. “She was intelligent and sweet, and she seemed like she really cared about him.”
“And it hardly sounds like it pains you at all to admit that.”
I lift my chin as I march down the block. “She’s lovely, I’m sure.”
“Be sure to let him know she’s obtained the Lulu seal of approval.”
But something gnaws at me as I think of Leo’s woman, and it’s not about approval. It’s not even about her.
