by Lisa Plumley
“Ha, ha.” With a sigh Holly wrapped one arm around her upraised knees and reached for her cup of cappuccino—courtesy of the espresso machine Brad had left behind. She’d need to drink a gallon of the stuff to feel awake after what she’d been through. Maybe two gallons. In fact, maybe she should just skip a step and gnaw on the coffee beans. The wine she’d drunk last night had been a mistake, especially when followed by a can of Brad’s orphaned beer and a vodka chaser. She didn’t know what she’d been thinking.
“I feel like such an idiot. I didn’t even see it coming. How could I have been so blind?”
“You weren’t blind, he was stupid,” Clarissa replied loyally. “What kind of cheesy line is that anyway?” She flipped her long pale hair over her shoulders and pantomimed a Brad-like stance, both hands on her hips with her chest thrust forward. “‘Babe, I need my space.’ Didn’t that line go out about the same time lava lamps did?”
Holly managed a brief smile. Clarissa was right. Brad’s reasons for ending their relationship were weak, but the fact of the matter was, he didn’t really need an excuse. He only needed to be gone for it to be over, and he was.
She was alone. All alone. Completely, utterly alone. The holidays were on their way, and she’d be alone then, too. Thanksgiving for one. A solo Christmas. A blue Christmas. A blue, blue, blue, blue Christmas.
Lord, she sounded pathetic. Poor me. Pity party. Get a grip already, Holly commanded herself. You’ve got a good job, good friends, a good life. Where’s your self-respect?
“Anyway, I have a plan,” she announced.
Clarissa grinned. “Somehow, I thought you would.”
“What’s funny? In case you haven’t noticed, this could be considered a tragic moment in my life, here.” She picked up a pen and opened her day planner, trying to ignore her friend’s skeptical expression. “Okay. Brad and I have been together for a little over a year now. No problems until last night.”
“Really? That’s amazing.”
“You’re turning into a cynic.”
Clarissa carried both coffee cups to the sink. Prompted by Holly’s meaningful glance at the brown-ringed mugs, she turned on the tap and gave each one a cursory swish. “No, really. Didn’t the two of you ever argue? About anything?”
“Nope.”
“Hmmph.” Clarissa grabbed a cinnamon-raisin bagel from the basket on the kitchen table and settled back on the other banquette, picking out the raisins with her long red manicured fingernails. She popped a raisin in her mouth, then another. “I’ve got to be honest here, Holly Berry. That’s abnormal.”
“It’s true,” Holly insisted, printing one last note in her day planner. “Maybe we didn’t argue because we were so well-suited for each other.”
“Well-suited? Did we warp back into the dark ages when I wasn’t looking? What are you talking about, well-suited? I don’t think arranged marriages are happening anymore.”
“Very funny.” Ticking off each similarity on her fingers, Holly said, “Brad and I are the same age. We went to the same schools. Both of us grew up here. We’ve got the same goals—”
“Career, career, and…career?” Clarissa suggested.
“No, I mean life goals. Like we both want a family.” Or at least Brad hadn’t actively discouraged her on those few occasions when she’d talked about having children together someday. Holly tilted her head sideways, thinking. There had to be more things they had in common. “We’re even the same height,” she announced triumphantly.
Twirling the remains of her bagel on one finger, Clarissa asked, “Really? I always thought Brad was taller than you.”
“I slouched,” Holly admitted. They both grinned. Meanly. “But all the right elements were there, and I’m not just going to let this pass me by. I’m practically thirty—”
“Nearly dead,” Clarissa broke in, nodding and grinning.
“—and it’s time I settled down.”
Clarissa shook her head. “You’ve got to be the most settled down person I know. You’ve got a retirement plan. You’ve got coordinated bath towels, for crying out loud. Even my mother doesn’t have towels that match.”
Holly’s towels did match. Down to the washcloths, they were all a suitably masculine burgundy color, the only one she and Brad had both liked.
“There’s more to life than decorating,” Holly said, ignoring Clarissa’s raised eyebrows. “Besides, Brad and I had a good relationship. Maybe we were taking each other for granted, maybe some of the spark went out of things, but I think we had something worth saving.”
Clarissa looked doubtful. Well, let her, Holly thought rebelliously. It wasn’t Clarissa’s love life that had taken a nose dive. Clarissa had been happily married for three years now. She could afford to take the high moral ground.
Squinting at the notes she’d penned neatly in her day planner, Holly went on. “Anyway, my theory is what we’ve got here is a fear of commitment. I think Brad and I just got so close it scared him.”
“I guess so. Maybe.”
“Your enthusiasm is too much for me,” Holly muttered wryly. She gathered her convictions again. “It’s like I said. Maybe Brad and I were taking each other for granted and got caught in a rut, or something.”
She hoped her reasoning sounded more convincing to Clarissa than it suddenly did to her. Last night, lying in bed alone, it had all made perfect sense. Unfortunately, Holly hadn’t come up with any better interpretations since then.
Her feelings, her love life, her pride were at stake. Her life didn’t feel like it was supposed to anymore, and she couldn’t bear to sit back and do nothing at all about it.
“I mean, Brad didn’t actually say we were through,” she said, “not in so many words…”
Clarissa gaped at her. “Oh, geez, tell me you don’t mean what I think you mean—”
Holly nodded, smiling with renewed hope at the notes she’d made. Her plan. Just looking at it made her feel a little better.
“You guessed it. I’m going to win Brad back. I’ve already got it all planned out. And I’ll need your help to do it.”
Clarissa smacked her palm against her forehead. “Lord help us. That’s just what I was afraid of.”
Sam McKenzie had always loved the last day of school. His final act as a student each year had been to haul everything out of his locker and cram it in a backpack for the trip home—where it would sit, untouched, until September. Now, as the college English professor he’d become, things weren’t much different.
Sure, these days it was his desk he emptied out, and his things were going in a battered old box instead of a backpack. But as he wedged the last file folder beneath his weighty American Literature text, Sam doubted he’d crack a book again before January rolled around.
For much of the semester, he’d been filling in for Professor Alvarez, who—until this week—had been on maternity leave. Now that she was back, Sam had cut his own semester short to turn her students over to her again.
The decision left him at loose ends, with no classes to teach until winter term—not that he minded very much. Somebody had needed to fill in for Lupe, so Sam had volunteered. They were friends, and he’d never been on the tenure track, anyway. He didn’t much care about impressing the faculty. All he cared about was teaching.
Okay, teaching and his family. Which explained why Sam was leaving Tucson for a couple of months, headed back to his hometown of Saguaro Vista, where a temporary job with his dad’s construction company waited.
Working for McKenzie & Sons was something Sam tried to do on a regular basis, especially now that his father’s arthritis was kicking up more often. He liked working with his hands, liked mixing it up with the carpenters and roofers and bricklayers. They reminded him of where he’d come from and what was real…as did the inevitable get-a-haircut-and-get-a-real-man’s-job lecture from his father that was the price of admission. Until after the holidays, Sam would belong to that world again. Just as soon as he said goodbye to this one.
He hefted the box in his arms. “Okay, I’m outta here.”
Malcolm Jeffries, campus advisor for returning students and Sam’s officemate for the past semester, sniffed vaguely but didn’t bother to look up. He’d made his disapproval of what he called Sam’s “unorthodox teaching methods” plain from the start, and Malcolm was nothing if not unvarying in his opinions. It had made for a bumpy partnership.
Today, not even Malcolm’s standardized-test-approach to life could get to Sam. “Hey, have a good rest of the semester,” he told Malcolm with a grin. “See you next year.”
The grunt he received in response could have meant anything. Optimistically decoding the sound as, “You, too,” Sam turned toward the door and all but ran into one of his students, Jillian Hall.
Affectionately known to the student body as Jiggly Jillie, Jillie lived up to her nickname and then some. Even when standing still, Jillie’s blond froth of permed curls, combined with the twirl of her short skirt and the sway of her breasts beneath her T-shirt, somehow gave the impression of perpetual motion. It was quite a phenomenon.
“Professor McKenzie, I’m so glad you’re still here,” she said breathlessly. “I wanted to talk to you about my research paper.”
She watched him so earnestly, it looked as if her wide blue eyes might cross at any second. Sam shoved all jiggly thoughts aside and assumed a more professorial demeanor.
“Sure, Jillie. What’s on your mind?”
“Well, there must have been some kinda mistake on my research paper. I can’t have gotten a D,” she wailed, holding up a stack of typed pages for him to see. “If I don’t do better than that in this class, my financial aid is history!”
Sam took the papers she waved at him. He recognized them all right—it had taken him four aspirin and several cups of coffee to finish reading and grading those few pages of freshman composition.
“What happened to your paper on the use of lab animals in cosmetics testing—the one you outlined for me?” he asked gently. “You had some very good ideas for that. It could have been a good position paper, like we discussed in class.”
Jillie ducked her head and thrust her lower lip forward. The gesture would have looked more at home on a four-year-old than the twenty-four-year-old single mother of two toddlers Sam knew her to be.
“I thought you’d like this better.” She fiddled uncomfortably with her pink-polished fingernails. “It’s more serious. I thought you’d be impressed.”
“Hearing your own ideas would impress me the most. The best papers come when you really care about your subject, Jillie. Maybe I’m wrong, but I’m not sure global warming is something near and dear to your heart.”
Sam glanced meaningfully at her paper. Touching her shoulder, he added, “Environmentalism is a worthy subject, but I don’t think you had time to research this properly, and—”
Her eyes filled with tears. “You’re just like Mr. Jeffries!” she accused, darting a narrow-eyed glance at Sam’s officemate. “He doesn’t think I belong in college. Him and all those tests he does say I was meant to be a cosmetologist and that’s what I ought to stay.” Her tearful gaze swung around to Sam again. “You’re no better, are you? You two don’t want people like me here at all.”
Temporarily setting down his box, Sam shook his head. Hell, he was ‘people like Jillie,’ a guy who’d spent high school screwing around and the years afterward getting in one scrape after another. He was twenty-three before he finally worked up the guts to walk into the college admissions office. Even then he’d half expected to get laughed out of the place. He remembered what it was like to sweat over the placement tests, the first few papers, the exams.
Besides, he’d rather die than be lumped in the same tight-assed category as Malcolm Jeffries.
“Tell you what.” Sam nodded toward his box of books and files. “My grade sheets are still in there. I’ve got to drop them off to Professor Alvarez by five o’clock, but I think I could see my way clear to writing in a C for your research paper—”
“Really?” Jillie interrupted, sniffling.
Sam nodded.
“Oh, professor—you don’t know what this means to me!” She hugged herself, bobbing in a happy jig.
“Hold on,” he said sternly, one hand upraised. “There’s a catch. I want you to rewrite your paper. You can redo global warming—and put some hard research into it this time—but it would be a shame to waste all the work you’ve already put into your cosmetics testing idea.”
Jillie stopped jiggling. She glanced sideways, biting her lower lip. “Oh, I guess you’re right. Okay.”
“I know I’m right.” Shuffling through his files, Sam tore off a slip of paper and wrote his address on it. “You’ve got my phone number. Call me if you get stuck.” He handed Jillie the paper. “Otherwise, you can drop off your paper to me no later than Friday. I’m leaving town after that.”
She clutched the scrap of paper like a lifeline. “Thanks, thank you so much. You’ll have it by Friday, I promise.”
Her smile widened as she turned to go. Sam picked up his box again, watching her. Halfway down the hall, Jillie paused.
“You won’t regret this, professor! Thanks!”
Sam wanted to believe she was right. Something warned him otherwise. Some niggling doubt in the back of his mind told him he might regret his decision very much. Then he realized it wasn’t intuition at all. It was the sight of Malcolm Jeffries’ gloating face peering at him through his open office door.
“I’ll have your butt in a sling for this, McKenzie,” his officemate said with a sneer. “I always knew you were a lousy teacher, and now I’ve got proof. You just wait. Your little arrangement with Jiggly is going to blow up in your face like your worst nightmare.”
Sam glanced at him, making a little tsk-tsk sound. “Gotta watch those mixed metaphors, Malcolm,” he said.
Then he was off to enjoy the next few months, academia-free—and, more importantly, Malcolm-free.
Two days after the romantic dinner that wasn’t, Holly’s conviction that she and Brad belonged together hadn’t wavered. This was despite a minor setback that occurred when she came home to find Brad sneaking out of the house, his arms laden with the cappuccino maker and both stereo speakers.
“Hey, those are mine!” She hurried up the front walk as fast as her two-inch heels and double burden of briefcase and gym bag would allow, meeting Brad just outside the front door.
“Huh?”
He craned his neck sideways and peered at her through his glasses in that adorably owlish way he had. His eyes looked greener than ever, Holly noticed before steeling her resolve.
However appealing Brad might look, she wasn’t about to let him demolish their stereo system, even for the short time they were going to be apart.
“Oh, it’s just you, Holly.” He looked surprised. “I, uh…didn’t think you’d be home yet.”
She tapped the nearest speaker. Her new manicure—one of Clarissa’s contributions to The Plan—gleamed richly in the sunlight. Brad hated sloppy-looking women. “These are mine, remember?”
“The stereo is yours, Holly. These speakers belong to me,” he reminded her as he headed down the sidewalk toward his car.
Holly pivoted on the welcome mat and followed him, kicking aside dried bougainvillea leaves with every step. She could always tell when Thanksgiving was on its way, because the first serious cold snap wreaked havoc on her yard. Soon, she’d camouflage the bougainvillea’s crispy vines with a few cheerful strings of Christmas lights, but in the meantime she had a boyfriend to reclaim.
Prompted by that reminder, Holly pursued Brad to his car. She needed to move things along before she found herself stringing lights, roasting chestnuts, and trimming the tree all alone.
“I’m pretty sure those speakers are mine, too,” she said.
He sighed. “You blew your tinny little speakers the day after we moved in together. Remember?”
“Oh, yeah.” Some passing spiteful impulse m
ade her lean against the door of his red BMW while she watched him load up his things. He slammed the trunk shut, noticed she was still there, and yanked her away from the car. He even looked cute when he scowled.
“Christ, Holly. I just waxed it.”
I’ll bet. “Ooops,” she said. The damn car got more stroking than she ever had, it occurred to her.
“What are you doing here, anyway?” he asked accusingly, glancing at his watch. “It’s only…oh. You’re right on time, I guess. I didn’t realize it had gotten so late already.”
Holly propped her hands on her hips. She turned her body toward him in a friendly way so the neighbors wouldn’t guess they were anything less than blissfully happy together. Temporarily. “What are you talking about?”
“Well, it’s 6:30, isn’t it?” Brad rummaged around in his pants pocket and came up with his car keys a few seconds later.
Holly could tell from his expression this cryptic explanation was supposed to mean something to her, but for the life of her she couldn’t figure out what. “So what?”
To his credit, he looked almost sorry to have brought up the whole subject. “So you’re a little predictable, that’s what. You leave work at 5:15 every weekday. Afterward you go to the gym for an hour—if it’s Monday, Wednesday, or Friday—then home. They could set clocks by you, you’re so unspontaneous.”
“I am not!” Holly protested, but he was warming to his subject now, she could tell.
He nodded at the neatly folded paper bag sticking out of her gym bag. “Your lunch, right? I’ll bet it was a turkey sandwich on wheat—”
“This is dumb.”
“—with brown mustard and lettuce on the side. Tomato juice to drink, with a bendy straw. And a green apple.”
“It was a red apple,” Holly shot back.
“I’m leaving.” He opened the car door, slid inside, and revved the engine. She rapped on the window.
He pressed the button that rolled it down. “Let’s not make this any harder than it has to be,” he said. “I’m not trying to hurt you, you know. I just can’t deal with all this right now. I told you—I need some space.”
