Pleasantly Popped: A Sweet Romantic Comedy (Love & Alliteration Book 3)

by Holly Kerr

  “What should I do about this?” I ask the table.

  “Throw it out?” Liam pulls the bottle back from me. He’s nineteen and trying to make up for the time he missed drinking with us. Owen is more subtle at twenty. Plus, I used to sneak him bottles when he was in school, so he knows what he’s doing.

  “It’s my engagement ring,” I tell him, rubbing the redness of my finger after I took it off.

  “You’re engaged?” A fair amount of spittle flies out with the word and Flora subtly gives the table in front of Liam a swipe of her sleeve. “I didn’t hear anything about that.”

  “And you won’t, because it’s over.” Patrick frowns at his brother. “What happens with the cousins, stays with the cousins.”

  “Can I get in on this?” Flora demands. “I’m not a cousin.”

  “Do you want to hang with the parents?” Owens asks.

  “I kind of feel like we should be in there,” Dean says nervously.

  “Don’t. They’re having more fun talking about us. I can guarantee you are a hot topic of conversation in the Shaughnessy households.” Flora laughs as she shuffles the cards.

  “I’d go so far to say the whole of Niagara-on-the-Lake,” Patrick corrects.

  “Naw, you’ve got the arrival of Clay and Theo, remember? Mama Donnelly is going to be electric about that,” Flora says with a cackle. “How long has she been working on M.K.?”

  “Since birth,” I cut in. “But we’re talking about me, not about how important you and M.K. are to the gossip mill that is Niagara wineries. What do I do about that?” I tap the ring with a Christmas-green painted nail.

  “I think the question is, what are you going to do about Colton, because that’s not much of a ring to worry about.” The kitchen falls silent at Dean’s words. “What’d I say?”

  “I’ve never heard you say anything that was even remotely petty before,” Flora says with amazement.

  “Well, it’s not. It’s plastic. He couldn’t have been serious.” Dean turns to me. “Did he seriously propose, because that’s not something you should joke around about. Not when it’s real.”

  “Now, that sounds serious,” Patrick says, gaze caught between Dean and Flora. “Is there something we should know about?”

  Flora reaches across the table and squeezes Dean’s hand with a soft smile. “We’re talking about Ruthie right now.”

  I shake my head with a wave towards the kitchen. “If you have something to say, take the floor, by all means.”

  “Nothing to say,” Dean says quickly, reaching for the bottle of wine. “This is empty.”

  “You drank it all!” I smack Liam’s shoulder and he lurches forward into the table.

  “You drank more than me.”

  “Did not. You finish it, you go find more,” I instruct.

  “That’s the rule,” Patrick chimes in.

  “Where am I supposed to find more champagne?” Liam whines.

  “Don’t let anyone around here hear you call it champagne,” his brother says. “It’s sparkling wine, and Uncle Archie has a whole cellar full of sparkling bottles.”

  “I can’t go in the basement.” Liam’s eyes are wide and terrified. I burst into laughter when I see the smug expression on Patrick’s face. Years ago, he punished his little brother with a game of hide and go seek in the basement, which took us several hours to find Liam.

  “You have to,” I say, relenting only when Liam’s eyes grow even wider. “Or check in the fridge. I’m sure there’s another one in there.”

  “Or get the leftover wine,” Flora suggests. “That was good wine.”

  “Is there any cheese?” Dean asks as Liam pokes his head into the fridge.

  “We should make popcorn,” I cry.

  Being with my cousins is one of my favourite things. Patrick and I grew up as close as siblings and I treat Liam and Owen as younger brothers. For years they were all I had, until this Christmas when Uncle Harrison returned to the fold with his third wife and two daughters.

  The daughters, five and seven, are already asleep upstairs in one of the guest rooms. I made a point to mention the number of rooms available for guests when Annette suggested Harrison let them sleep instead of taking them back to the main house.

  As Liam pulls out bottles and snacks, Owen picks up the ring. “Why would anyone give you this?”

  “He thought it was cute. Plus, I think it was a last-minute decision to propose. A word from the wise.” I tap Owen on the forehead with a fingernail. “Get a good ring for your girl.”

  “How do you know I have a girl?” Owen’s cheeks flush.

  “You’re a Shaughnessy,” I tell him. “They always have girls. Or boys,” I add with a grin at Patrick.

  “I always thought boys were less work, but then I met Adam,” Patrick says with chagrin.

  “But Adam is…Adam,” Flora says wrestling with the cork in the sparkling wine. Liam takes it from her with a chauvinistic smile.

  “He’s going to put it through the window.” Patrick reaches across the table to adjust the angle of the bottle just as the cork flies out, zooming across the room with warp speed, and careening off Annette’s prized violet beside the window.

  Instead of sharing the bottle, Flora gathers the remaining cider cups from beside the Crock Pot and fills them with wine.

  “So the ring.” I stare at it, feeling the relaxation caused by alcohol ebb through my limbs. It’s a fine line between too little and too much.

  I take another mouthful. Too much is always better.

  It’s the story of my life, except when it comes to my deceased sister.

  Being at home is always stressful for me, and it’s always worse when Amelia’s name comes up. The guilt, the weight of disappointment and regret is suffocating.

  And then I start thinking, what would it be like if Amelia was here with us? She’d only be a couple of years younger than Flora. Would they be friends? Would Flora like Amelia better than me?

  “What’s the matter?” Flora scrunches her face at me. “You’re staring. You look like you’re going to cry.”

  “I never cry.”

  “No, you really don’t,” Patrick muses. “I cry more than you.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with that,” Dean says.

  “He cries. He cried the other night when we were watching a movie,” Flora points out.

  “It was Love, Actually, and it was the father-son bit,” Dean says defensively.

  “Oo, that’s a good bit,” Patrick agrees.

  “You’re not helping me,” I say loudly. I pick up the ring and shake it. “Colton Pruitt cheated on me. What am I supposed to do about it?”

  “Uh…break up with him.” Flora frowns. “What else would you do?”

  “Isn’t he that baseball player?” Liam is not a fan of the sport and Dean rolls his eyes. “Don’t complain, I knew who you were, thanks to Auntie Flora.”

  “Does that make me Uncle Dean?” he asks. “Because that doesn’t sound cool.”

  “You only get to be uncle if you marry her,” Patrick says lazily, taking the ring from my fist. Then he stops, his hand gripping my finger. “Are you going to marry her?”

  All eyes at the table turn to Dean. I think he might have stopped breathing.

  “I…uh…we…I don’t know…” he stammers.

  Flora reaches over and takes his hand. “We have lots of time for that,” she says softly. Dean smiles at her. They exist in their own happy little bubble, and the rest of us are nowhere in sight.

  I want that.

  I want what Flora and Dean have—trust and respect and love. Honesty and caring. I want a guy who would push me out of the way of a bus rather than take a picture of me getting hit.

  Colton would watch me get hit.

  I take the ring back from Patrick and stick it on my middle finger. “What are you doing?” Patrick asks as I take out my phone and snap a picture of my finger.

  “Hold this.” I pull off the red plastic ring and hand i
t to him. “Or throw it out if you want.”

  With the whole table watching, I rest my hand on my leg with my middle finger extended, making sure my bare ring finger is visible. Then I snap a picture of it.

  Happy Christmas, I caption the pictures on Instagram, tagging Colton. Here’s your freedom as a prezzie. Enjoy—but I guess you already have been.

  I press share and show Patrick. “I guess that’s what I’m going to do. Think he’ll get the picture?”

  “I think he got two of them.” Patrick grins.

  Trev

  I stop by the hospital on Boxing Day.

  Not that it makes a difference; the doctors all say that it’s almost impossible that Annabelle will ever wake up.

  For the first month, I visited her every day. Sitting beside her bed, I’d tell her about my day, how much I missed her, how I wished she’d wake up. I did this until I got sick from the exhaustion and stress of begging a comatose woman to wake up.

  Her mother made me promise to cut it down to once a week. Even then, I could tell she was giving up hope. For the next six months, I dutifully showed up on Friday nights to sit with Annabelle.

  Then it slowed to every other week, as I started dating again. I didn’t want to, but my mother and Annabelle’s mother tag teamed me, insisting on how it wasn’t fair to me to give up my life waiting for something that might never happen.

  “It’s not fair what happened to her either,” I had shot back.

  “It was her choice,” my mother had said, her eyes filled with sadness. “You didn’t ask for this.”

  I listened, because I’m that son who always listens to his mother. Instead of dutiful Friday visits, it dwindled to every couple of weeks, maybe once a month.

  I haven’t been here since the summer.

  I walk down the hall to Annabelle’s room, smiling at the nurses at the station, admiring the Christmas decorations. I know the nurses talk about me. I know the family talks about me. I don’t know what they said—or say— about me. They don’t know what to do with me. I’m the fiancé of the comatose girl, who might be the ex-fiancé, but will never know unless she wakes up.

  “Hey,” I say softly as I push open the door to the semi-private room. There’s no one in the other bed so it’s like Annabelle has her own room. “It’s been a while, but I came. Merry Christmas.”

  As I stand by the bed, I press her hand, her tiny, cool hand which is a disturbing bluish shade. Annabelle used to be golden—her skin tone as well as her personality, but now she’s faded. Even her dark hair has lost any luster and hangs limp to her shoulders.

  I wait for a moment, staring at her, as if I’m waiting for her to reply. I look past the tubes and machines breathing for her and try to remember the girl she used to be.

  It’s hard.

  “I brought you some flowers,” I say, moving across the room where there is a vase with a bouquet that’s as limp as her hair. “I thought maybe a poinsettia, but I figured there’d be enough of them around here.” I scan the room, noting the lack of flowers, of other personal effects. Annabelle’s mother has really cleared things out. “Guess not.”

  I busy myself with throwing out the dead flowers and rinsing out the vase before filling it with my bouquet.

  “That brightens things up,” I say heartily as I pull the chair closer to the bed with a loud scraping of legs on the linoleum. I wince at the sound. “Sorry, that was loud.”

  It’s not like she notices.

  The doctors say there’s no brain activity, and Annabelle’s mother has almost come to terms with that, but last time I spoke to her, she hadn’t been able to comprehend what comes next. It’s sad—she knows her daughter is gone, but can’t bring herself to truly let her go. So Annabelle is left lying on the bed in the hospital, trapped in her own body. Legally, the doctors can’t do anything; emotionally, her mother can’t or won’t.

  I rack my brain for something to say. Anything to break the foreboding quiet of the room, with only the slow beeps of the machine to cut the silence.

  “I met a girl,” I say finally. “Well, she’s a woman, but she’s so much younger she feels like a girl. Not that I’ve felt her,” I quickly add. “She just seems—I don’t know why I’m telling you this.”

  I come to the hospital to talk to Annabelle, but in all our one-sided conversations, I’ve never told her about anyone I dated. And I have no idea why I mention Ruthie.

  Despite how I left things with her before Christmas—letting her storm off in a huff—it feels like things are unresolved between us. If I’m being honest, I have to admit I had a lot of fun watching the movies with her. The shopping was different, and going for wings…

  I liked talking to her. I liked making her smile. And I liked how she made me smile.

  “I think I like her,” I continue. “When she’s not driving me crazy. And that’s the problem, because there’s no way this would work. I don’t even know if I’d want it to. She’s different from anyone else. Different from you.”

  I stare at Annabelle’s sleeping form, watching for the rise and fall of her chest. I used to be full of so many emotions when I came in, but today, the sympathy and sadness has been shoved aside by regret.

  And a bit of resentment.

  “I’ve been looking for someone like you,” I say quietly. “I’m not going to lie. I’ve been dating. A lot. Nothing has worked out, because I’ve been looking for a replacement you. I thought everything was great between us—we were in love, we were planning the wedding. And then—this.”

  This is Annabelle lying in a hospital bed. This is a phone call that I got late one night, but never answered because I was asleep. Annabelle had been out with friends that night, and it’s always been assumed she called me because she needed a ride home.

  But since I never answered, she ended up in a car with a guy named Ben. The two of them were in an accident that killed the driver and left Annabelle in a coma.

  I’d never heard of Ben, or the friends she claimed to be meeting that night. There had been so many questions; timelines that didn’t add up. I never pushed for answers because I really didn’t want to know. Annabelle and I had been together for years but after that one night, I’d been left wondering if I had known her at all.

  In the years since the accident, I’ve never once expressed any of my doubts out loud. I pushed aside the questions. Why was she in a car with a guy named Ben? Who was he? What did he mean to her?

  “Why were you with him?” I ask sharply. “I really want to know. Was he a friend, or more than that? Was something going on between the two of you? Did you really call me for a ride first, like everyone assumes, or were you going to end the engagement?”

  After pushing aside the questions for years, they are suddenly front and centre.

  But there aren’t answers. There will never be.

  I gently squeeze Annabelle’s hand, but of course, there’s no response. “I’ve ruined quite a few relationships because I’ve been looking for a replacement for you. And there’s only one you. But even if I could find someone like you, I don’t think it would work. Things weren’t working with us, I realize that now. I really think you were going to end things.”

  I hold my breath, waiting and watching for any response. Wondering if her eyes will pop open, for Annabelle to tell me, no, she hadn’t wanted to end it. I want an explanation that will fill the hollowness inside me.

  But there isn’t one. There can’t be. Because even if she woke up, whatever she told me wouldn’t make me happy.

  “You’re not answering, so I’m going to take that as a yes. Yes, that’s what you wanted. To break up.” I take a deep breath, blinking away the wetness in my eyes. “It’s okay. I’m okay. I need to move on, I know that. And you…” I squeeze her hand one final time. “I don’t know what you need. Maybe to let go. Maybe to see what’s out there, on the other side for you. I know that sounds hokey, but I’ve only ever wanted the best for you, Annabelle. I’m sad that it wasn’t me. And I’m so s
ad that if this Ben, or whoever his name was, if he was it for you, I’m sorry that it worked out the way it did.”

  I lean over to kiss her forehead, feeling the coolness of her skin. I have a vivid memory of what kissing her had been like and my throat chokes. “I’m going to go now,” I whisper. “And I don’t think I’ll be back.”

  It takes a lot for me to walk out the door, but I feel better once I do.

  ~

  I spend the next two days debating whether to call Ruthie.

  Maybe it’s because I have too much time on my hands being off school, but I find myself thinking about her.

  A lot.

  At first, it’s the wings I order when I get home from the hospital, debating to get hot or my regular medium. And then it’s because I come across a romantic movie on TV that I think she’d like. I find a very old package of microwave popcorn in the cupboard and eat it as I sit through the movie.

  But it’s mainly because of the colours.

  Everything seems brighter because of the holidays. The reds and greens of the inflatable Santas and snowmen on every other lawn pop, as do the colourful wrappings and ornaments. The sky is a brilliant blue and I need my sunglasses to walk Drogo around the block.

  It’s like Ruthie did something to my eyes. Which is strange to think, and just impossible.

  I think about spending more time with her. And then I think about her spending time with Colton Pruitt, and that makes me so miserable that I have to go for a run to shake it off.

  But I still can’t get her out of my head.

  In the end, I don’t call her, because… I don’t know why. I really can’t put my finger on it. The possibility of a me and Ruthie, with her colourful clothes and her vibrant personality, is as distant for me as the Milky Way. It would never happen. Would never work.

  How could I make her happy? Even if Colton Pruitt wasn’t in the picture, how could she go from the fun and excitement she’s used to, to me—a teacher/wannabe screenwriter.

  It would never work.

  Once I decide that, I try to push Ruthie out of my thoughts for good.