Free The Light of Hidden Flowers by Jennifer Handford Page A

against him.
    “Are you free for lunch?” Lucas asked. “Not today, of course. Maybe next Tuesday.”
    “Let me pull up my calendar,” I said coolly, pretending to scan my empty pages. “Looks good to me.”
    “Where shall we go?”
    “You choose,” I said. “I like everything.”
    “I don’t get out much for lunch,” he said. “What do you suggest?”
    “How about the Fruit Stand?” I suggested. “That’s always good. And don’t be put off by the name—it’s mostly a sandwich shop. I think it used to be a fruit stand, like a million years ago.”
    “I like fruit,” he said.
    As a garnish, I thought. But not for lunch. Certainly not for lunch. “Great! So you’ve never been?”
    “Never been,” he repeated. “Looking forward to it.”
    I found it hard to believe that Lucas had never been to this Alexandria mainstay, always packed with an eager lunch crowd.
    “You’ll love it,” I told him, “but we’d better meet at eleven or one; the noon hour will be too busy.”
    So at eleven o’clock on the following Tuesday, I met Lucas at the Fruit Stand. He was waiting for me on the front porch, wearing khakis and a golf shirt, his blond shaggy hair pushed back to the side. I straightened my posture and pasted on a smile because he was seriously cute. When I got close enough, Lucas held out his hand. We shook, and when we drew close, he smelled of soap and toothpaste.
    The restaurant was crowded, but we got lucky and were seated in a lovely corner table by the fireplace. When the waitress brought us a basket of their signature homemade dill-pickle kettle chips, I moaned out loud. “These are amazing,” I said.
    Lucas popped one into his mouth. “Yum! You’re right,” he said, and then resumed his discussion about the new tax law, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.
    “I’m eating all the chips,” I said. “Don’t you want any?”
    Lucas laughed as though I were making a joke. “I love watching you eat,” he said, and continued to ramble on about the portability feature in the new health-care legislation.
    When the waitress came, I ordered the walnut, pear, and Gorgonzola salad and a bowl of the she-crab soup. Lucas ordered the Virginia ham and brie panino with caramelized onions and cranberries.
    “Sounds yummy,” I said.
    Lucas smiled, nodded eagerly. “But can we leave off the onions and cranberries, and substitute a slice of swiss for the brie?” he asked the waitress.
    The waitress looked at him curiously, but Lucas just smiled and thanked her.
    “Are you a health nut?” I asked him when the waitress had left.
    “I guess I keep it simple,” he said. “But not necessarily a health nut. I find it hard to resist pie with vanilla ice cream.”
    When the food came, Lucas was still explaining the difference between the filing necessary for a domestic entity versus an international one, and I was still picking at the leftover shards of dill-pickle potato chips. In the time that he explained it, I worked my way through the most intoxicating bowl of soup ever. When I asked him if his sandwich was okay, he looked down at his barely touched ham and swiss, and said it was perfect.
    “What else?” I asked, steering the conversation away from work. “Tell me about yourself.”
    “Well, I’ve been in the area my whole life.”
    “Same,” I said.
    “Went to University of Maryland, and then to American.”
    “Tell me something that’s not on your résumé,” I said, smiling.
    Lucas’s face flushed red. “That’s a tough one!”
    Quickly, I thought of a laundry list of things that weren’t on my résumé: I was an Italian-language learning novice, gelato lover, Jeopardy! genius. I wouldn’t dare tell Lucas any of these things. “You’re right!” I admitted. “Believe it or not, I read that question in a magazine: questions to ask when on a date. Kind of stupid, now that I think about it.”
    “No!” he said. “It’s a good question. I just feel bad I can’t