Now or Never: A Last Chance Romance (Part 1) Read Free

turn out to be my lifelong career.  But it’s worked out just fine.
    I’ve heard that lipstick is one of the few recession-proof items, and I believe it.  Through the years, I’ve seen lean times hit the designer shoe department hard.  I’ve seen the handbag department — directly across from the cosmetics department — get very quiet for weeks at a time.  But my customers never disappear.
    Friday afternoons are busy at the Macy’s Ardmore, Pennsylvania.  It’s the anchor store in Suburban Square shopping center, directly across from the free parking lot.  It’s often people’s first stop on the way to other errands.
    Twenty years ago, when I started as a part-timer selling make-up at the Prescriptives counter, this store wasn’t Macy’s.  It was the family-owned department store Strawbridge & Clothier.  Now Prescriptives is out of business, and Strawbridges no longer exists.  But I’m still here.
    I pull eyeliner, shadow, and lipstick out of my handbag.  Sometimes when I’m running late I end up doing my own make-up at the counter before the store opens.  I actually prefer the store’s bright lights and oversized mirrors to my own bathroom.
    My figure might be on the decline, but I can’t complain too much about what’s going on from the shoulders up.  I have strong eyebrows that do a good job framing my dark brown eyes.  My hair, wavy and thick, is still a natural deep chestnut.  I have good skin.  I doubt I would ever succumb to the Botox craze, but as of now, I don’t even need it.  I look young for my age, but it’s difficult to enjoy that illusion now that my body is in crisis.
    Across the floor, Patti waves me over.
    Oh no.  She wants a report on last night.
    I’m dreading this conversation.  I don’t like lying to my best friend, but she’ll be so disappointed if I admit I didn’t go to the support group.  Even if I explain I accidentally wandered into the wrong room, she’ll tell me I was subconsciously avoiding the breast cancer support group.  Patti is big on pop psychology.  If she had things her way, she’d be a therapist.  “But I suppose helping people with their retail therapy isn’t a bad Plan B,” she always says.
    “So, how did it go?” she says with a big smile.  Patti is an attractive woman — maybe not in a movie-star sense, but for a regular gal in her mid-forties, she looks, as her devoted husband Geoff says, “damn good.”  She has thick, shoulder length brown hair  with bangs.  The same style she’s worn since nineteen years old.  She has big hazel eyes and very good skin, aside from unusually deep crow’s feet she says are genetic and defy even the best anti-aging eye-cream in the department.
    “You know, it wasn’t that helpful.”  This is true.
    “Oh, Claire.  Really?  Will you give it another try?”
    “Definitely not.”
    Last night was, as my son Max would say, an “epic fail.”  Listening to those women tell their erotic stories made me think how very much I’ve been missing.  It brought home the fact that I’m forty, my life has passed me by.  And it’s not going to get better from here.
    Worse, I found myself thinking about blue-eyed Justin from the AA group.
    Thinking about him a lot.
    I don’t need this shit.  I haven’t needed it all these years raising my son and working my way to counter manager at Chanel.  I certainly don’t need it now, when I have this health stuff to deal with.
    “Claire, I’m glad you gave it a try.  I’m proud of you.”
    “Oh stop, Patti.  Really.  It’s nothing.”
    “Not just about you going last night.  I mean the way you’re handling this whole thing.  A lot of women would be curled up in a ball right about now.”
    “I was curled up in a ball that first night you came over.”
    “What are you talking about?  You made lasagna.”
    I don’t remember.  The day I found out The News is pretty much a blur.  And by The News, I don’t mean that I have breast