saw Lily hooping in the backyard yesterday and-”
“Woah, hold on here. Lily was hoop dancing- outside?” Belinda gasped in mock horror.
“I do have a privacy fence, you know.”
‘With a missing board, darn it,’ Lily wanted to add.
“Seriously, though, good for you for getting out of the dungeon,” Belinda said.
“My basement is not a dungeon,” Lily said indignantly. Belinda guided Paula over to a barber’s chair.
“I know, I know. But I’m just happy to hear that you ventured out of it. In fact, I’m jealous. I’ve never even seen you hoop.”
“It’s nothing that spectacular,” Lily said.
“Not according to James,” Paula said, “He’s an instructor and he says you’re really good.” Lily sighed and quickly pinched the bridge of her nose.
“I’m sure he says that to every-”
“In fact, he wanted me to invite you again to that hoop jam on Saturday.”
‘Not that again!’ Lily thought.
“Oooh, a hoop jam? That sounds like fun. You can take Saturday off if you wanna go, we’re actually not that busy for once,” Belinda said, her voice rising in excitement.
“That’s okay; it’s not ‘til the afternoon- WAIT! I am not going!” Lily cried.
“Lily, you have got to come out of your shell one of these days,” Belinda said in a serious tone. Lily looked around the salon to see if anyone had overheard them, but other customers were engrossed in their own conversations with their stylists.
“Sorry, but I am NOT going to go out and hoop in front of a bunch of other people,” Lily said firmly.
“I’m sure all the others would be busy with their own hooping and wouldn’t even be watching you,” Belinda said.
“Um, hello? There won’t just be hoopers at Central Park on a Saturday afternoon!” Lily exclaimed. Belinda sighed.
“You’d be in a large group, Lily. It probably wouldn’t be that big of a deal.” Her friend’s constant refusal to step out of her comfort zone often frustrated Belinda. Paula could feel the tension between the two of them and squirmed in her chair. Lily sighed and paused before speaking again.
“I just can’t do that yet, Belinda,” she replied. “But,” she took a deep breath. “I have been wondering if James offers private hoop lessons.”
“Oh! Private lessons! That’d be awesome! Is he cute?” This time, Lily did groan, and Paula giggled.
“Belinda!” Lily exclaimed.
“Lily, Honey, it’s been two years now. You need to start opening your eyes and at least think about dating.”
“Belinda, I don’t want to talk about this right now,” Lily said in a low voice.
“All right, all right,” Belinda said in defeat, raising her hands in the air, “I’m sorry. I just want what’s best for you.” Lily looked upward before replying.
“I know you do, and I appreciate it,” she said with a gentle smile. There was a pause before Paula piped up.
“In response to your question, he IS cute.” This time, all three women burst into giggles.
“Just have him call me on my cell phone sometime about the lessons, okay?” Lily said. “And I’m not in any rush.”
Later on, Paula chose to ignore Lily’s final statement from the morning’s conversation.
“Private lessons?” James asked in disbelief after she relayed Lily’s response to him on the phone that evening.
“That’s what I said.” James sighed. He hadn’t had time to give private lessons to anyone in years. Right now he was lucky to have Mondays and Tuesday mornings off.
“I doubt she could afford them, anyway,” James continued. Paula sighed.
“You wouldn’t offer my neighbor a little discount?” She asked in disbelief. James suddenly felt bad.
“Sorry. Snap reaction from a hard-working business owner.”
“She is a widow, you know.”
“Okay, okay, please don’t send me to the Grand Guiltmore Hotel,” James said with a laugh. “I’m sorry if I offended the poor orphans and widows of the world.”
“She’s actually not doing too badly financially. I just had to give YOU a hard time for once.”
“Touché,” James replied with a grin, “All right, let me think this over.”
“Good. Once you have an answer, give her a call. I’ll text you her number when we hang up.”
“You sure she’ll actually talk to me?” James asked, remembering her shyness.
“She told me it was fine. She’s not a total shrinking violet, you know. Besides, it’s time I got out of the middle.”
After exchanging goodbyes, he put the phone down and sighed before getting a beer out of the fridge. Was he really willing to give up some of his rare free time?
‘For Lily… Yeah,’ he thought.
Some sort of gut instinct, which James had learned to finally trust years ago, told him that Lily Black was special, and not just in hooping. He had seen a deep love in her eyes for her daughter Melissa, and a gentleness of spirit. James’ heart went out to her when he thought of how hard life must be since her husband had died. From what he could imagine, Lily probably had some inner courage he hadn’t seen yesterday.
He looked at the time and then texted Kayla. Since Lily had been home Tuesday morning, he was guessing that might be a good time for a lesson. Kayla replied that he was welcome to use one of her smaller spaces for a few weeks from 10 to 11 a.m. Perfect.
Since his mother had always drilled the rule of “no phone calls after 9” in his head, he hesitated about calling Lily at 8:50. But he was so eager to hear her voice again that he finally called the number Paula had given him. He almost thought her phone would roll into voice mail when she picked up on the sixth ring.
“Hello?”
“Hi, is this Lily?”
“Yes,” she replied slowly. James felt like a telemarketer.
“Hi, it’s James, Tim’s brother. We met yesterday.” Suddenly he heard an explosion of giggles in the background.
“Sorry, my daughter has some friends over.” He could hear Lily walk to another room.
“Oh, no problem. Listen, Paula told me that you’re interested in some hoop lessons?”
“Yeah,”
