Charley’s phone pinged and she pulled it out. “Oh good—Marcia got a table at Miller’s. She says to hurry because it’s her against an army of passive-aggressive is-this-seat-really-taken, end-of-week corporate drones.”
This time I laughed in truth. Marcia might look sweet, but she has a fierce temper when crossed. Fortunately, Miller’s wasn’t far. We pushed through the crowd—loud with Friday jubilation with an extra frenetic level of holiday stress—and found Marcia in a corner booth, arguing with two bros holding beers. She had her coat, mittens, hat, and purse strategically strewn around the seats and table, and her face melted into relief when she spotted us.
“Excuse me, gents,” Charley declared in her Hello Dolly! voice, sashaying as she pushed past them. “Stop harassing my friend.”
“Hey, sweetheart—we were just being friendly,” one protested with a smile that reminded me of Brad. I wanted to punch him.
“Yeah, how ’bout we join you? Plenty of us to go around for you three,” said the other.
Charley looked him up and down, making it clear she found him lacking. “I don’t think so.”
“Aw, c’mon, baby, I—”
“Look,” I bit out. “Piss off or I’m informing management. They’ll have you blackballed from every establishment in Chicago. I’m not in the mood to be fucked with.”
With immediate apologies, they vanished themselves, Marcia giving me a considering wide-eyed look as we slid into the opposite bench and returned her possessions to her.
“I had no idea you could pull off that kind of attitude,” Marcia commented, while Charley waved down the harried waitress.
“Go to school with enough pompous pricks and you learn the manner born,” I replied grimly.
“Point taken,” Marcia replied, “What happened?”
“Here.” Charley spun her phone to Marcia and ordered five dirty vodka martinis. The opening chimes of Bruno Mars jangled out. “He did it on Facebook Live, too,” Charley explained to me on a note of apology. I watched it go down.”
“Oh. My. God.” Marcia breathed, transfixed.
“Hi! I’m late,” Ice panted, unwrapping her flowing scarf and hanging it up. “No, I’m not—Julie’s not here yet.”
“She thought it might take time to extract herself from the restaurant.” Charley pointed her at Marcia and the phone. “Save us trouble and just watch along.”
Ice half-kneeled on the seat next to Marcia, taking off her coat and looking at the screen Marcia obligingly angled toward her. “Oh. My. God,” Ice echoed, then flashed me a look, her dark eyes full of sympathy, and held out a hand to me. “Are you okay, honey?” She turned my hand over. “I don’t see a ring.”
“She’ll be fine. Keep watching,” Charley instructed.
They did in silence, Ice only letting go of my hand because the waitress arrived with a tray of martinis, expertly setting them down without sloshing a drop. “Is that the flash mob proposal where the gal turned him down flat?” she asked, nodding at the phone. “Someone was just playing it at the bar on YouTube—I guess they saw it go down. That gal is so my hero.”
She bustled off before anyone could say anything, Marcia and Ice exchanging looks, then returning to the phone. I put my face in my hands and Charley slid the martini under my nose. “Drink,” she advised.
Because it was easier, I just lowered my mouth like a horse to the watering trough and sucked in the salty absolution. My still half-full Starbucks cup sat next to it. A square meal, between the two.
“Wow.” Marcia commented, then sipped her martini. “Double wow. I’m only drinking, like, a third of this. One of you can have the rest.”
“I’m sure Amy will take it,” Ice observed. “Good for you, Amy, really. That took serious spine and I’m proud of you.”
“You are?” Surprised, I studied her face, looking for the lie. Marcia and Charley nodded, however, Charley lifting her glass in a toast.
“To Amy—our hero.”
“No, don’t toast yet!” Julie nearly shrieked. “I’m here, I’m here—don’t start without me.” She ripped off her parka, hanging it up. “What are we toasting? Is someone engaged—Charley, is it you?”
“Bite your tongue. And no, rather the opposite. Watch.” Charley pressed play and gave her phone to Julie, who wedged in beside Ice. A different version this time. Probably the one uploaded to YouTube, because it had multiple angles and continued into the aftermath. All of us watched it, even me.
“That’s the last play for the night,” I declared, taking another healthy swallow of the martini.
Charley patted my shoulder. “Of course, dear. But it is rather epic.”
“An epic disaster,” I muttered. “Like the Titanic or the Hindenburg.”
“Oh no, honey.” Ice grinned at me. “You went down much faster than those did.”
I regarded her steadily. “I hate you so much right now.”
They finished watching and I snatched up the phone, closing the app so it couldn’t be easily replayed, then handed it back to Charley who received it without comment. We sat there quietly a moment.
“Okay, I’ll bite,” Julie finally said. “Why did you say no?”
Ice snorted. “Because Brad is a putz.”
Marcia nodded. “He wasn’t The One.”
Julie leaned over Ice, making an incredulous face. “I thought you gave up on that The One nonsense.”
“Because he chose a cliché song,” Charley declared. “He could’ve at least been original.”
Julie frowned at me. “But you were expecting him to propose—you had that Christmas Eve dinner all planned.”
I gaped at her. “I never said that.”
“Not in so many words, no, but I could tell. And you were always looking at that one ring at Tiffany’s. You had to go in every time we walked past.”
“That’s it, then.” Marcia nodded. “It was the wrong ring and so you knew he didn’t really love you and pay attention to what you wanted.”
“It was the right ring,” I confessed glumly, staring into my empty martini glass. Marcia slid me the rest of hers and I took it.
“Really?” Charley exclaimed. Now she was horrified. “That was a fifty-thousand-dollar ring! You should have said yes, dumped his ass later, and kept the ring.”
“Charley!” Marcia was horrified, but Ice only laughed.
“What? There’s precedent,” Charley grumbled.
“Can we focus here?” Julie interrupted. “Amy—what’s the deal?”
“I don’t know, okay? It was a surprise and you know how I feel about surprises. Thank God you warned me,” I said to Charley. “I don’t know if I thanked you for that.”
“I’m glad it was the right call, but I wish you hadn’t fainted,” she replied.
“How are you feeling now?” Ice asked in her doctor voice. “If you fainted, alcohol might not be the best thing for you.”
“You’re not pregnant, are you?” Marcia gasped.
“No, I’m not pregnant, and you can pry this alcohol out of my cold, dead fingers. You know how I am—I just went a bit hypotensive. The latte took care of that.”
“Ooh, Holiday Spice,” Marcia noted, spinning the cup to see. “Can I have the rest—trade?”
“Be my guest.”
“Back to the point,” Julie inserted. “Why did you say no?”
“It was all wrong!” I burst out. “It was supposed to be him and me, and… intimate. Romantic. Not a fucking flash mob. I hate those things. The girls always stand there looking shocked, trying to be pleased, but really hating being put on the spot like that. He should’ve known that. It’s fucking obscene!”
A little silence greeted my rant. Ice raised her brows. “But tell us how you really feel.”
“I know I’m making no sense. I have no idea what happened. Now Brad is pissed at me—we’re over and I can’t get him back. I made a mistake, and now I’ll regret it for the rest of my life.”
“It wasn’t a mistake,” Charley sai
d, Ice and Marcia nodding.
“In a way it’s good he did it that way,” Ice pointed out. “If you’d been expecting it, had it all planned out the way you like to do, you might not have been shocked enough to blurt out the truth.”
“The truth?” I echoed, feeling a step behind.
“That you didn’t really want to marry him,” Marcia put in.
Even Julie nodded now. “It seems to me that if you really wanted to marry Brad, then it wouldn’t have mattered how he proposed.”
“If he’s the right guy, he could offer you a ring from a bubblegum machine in the pouring rain while you waited for a tow truck to get your broken-down car and you’d be over the moon,” Marcia added.
And we all looked at her.
“That’s remarkably specific,” Ice noted.
“What can I say—I have a rich fantasy life.”
“Rain is romantic,” Julie agreed.
“Elizabeth Bennett turned down Darcy’s proposal in the rain,” I pointed out. “And that was the wrong thing to do.”
“First of all.” Charley held up a finger. “That’s the Keira Knightly, Matthew Macfadyen version which, while fantastic, is not canon—so we strike the romantic rain. And second, it was the right thing for her to do, because she believed Darcy was a terrible person. Based on what she knew, of course she couldn’t marry him.”
“Brad isn’t a terrible person, though,” I said, and Charley snorted.
“It doesn’t matter,” Ice cut in firmly, sliding a quelling look at Charley. “You didn’t love him. Of course you said no.”
Do you love him? “Brad had all the right qualities,” I said. “I selected him specifically. I did the points, followed the Rules.”
“Did you recalculate recently?” Marcia asked. “Because you guys were rough at Thanksgiving.”
I brushed that off. “That was just him being annoyed by the chick drama, as he put it. We smoothed it out.”
“Uh-uh.” Marcia shook her head, her burnished brown hair swinging over her shoulders. “I’ll cop to the chick drama, because that was my fault—”
“And mine,” Charley inserted meaningfully.
“And Charley’s,” Marcia agreed with a smile. “But you were already all weepy when you got there. You said we’d talk later and we never did.”
“Oh, that. I don’t ever remember what that was about.” Though I did. Brad and I had had a fight in the car about something stupid. He had never really liked my friends and he’d said something cutting. Nothing I’d repeat to them, as it would only hurt their feelings.
“I know you guys don’t agree,” Julie said, “but I think the Rules should include an amendment for the long term. We can only accept a proposal of marriage from a solid 5.0.”
“What?” Charley gasped, choking on her martini. Ice put her head on the table.
“I stand by it,” Julie said, very seriously. “How can we be women of high standards if we’d consider marrying someone who’s less than a perfect score?”
“Because nobody is perfect,” Marcia said.
“They don’t have to be objectively perfect,” Julie argued, “just exactly right for you. Ring your bell on all five categories, solid score, no padding with extra credit. Be honest, Amy—was Brad really a perfect score on all five categories for you?”
I didn’t have to think about it. I’d known he wasn’t. “Not perfect,” I admitted, “but he made it through all the rounds. I followed the Rules.”
“That was according to your mind,” Ice said, raising her head. She looked tired. “Clearly, under all that thinking, you knew in your heart that he didn’t pass muster.”
“Then who would?” I demanded, as if she’d have the answer. They all made sympathetic grimaces.
“Maybe you’ll know when you find him,” Marcia offered. “You feel it. You just… know.”
Charley considered her thoughtfully, then slowly nodded. “Yeah, I’d agree with that.”
“That’s hardly objective,” I had to point out.
“I’d love to find it,” Julie said glumly, tossing back the rest of her martini.
Ice didn’t comment, just watched me, her eyes dark with compassion.
~ 7 ~
I moped around all weekend. With planning for all things Brad-related off my task list—hell, with my entire Romantic Christmas Plan in ruins—I had remarkably little to do. Which only depressed me more, discovering how much of my life I’d structured around Brad in a relatively short amount of time. No outfits to finish for New Year’s Eve. No intimate Christmas Eve for me. No glam Christmas Day open house.
The one thing I promised myself was that I wouldn’t go home. I’d rather hang out with Julie and eat Chinese food than subject myself to that particular torture. Positive self-care choice number one.
In the opposite direction from positive self-care, I also obsessively watched the various videos, which had been shared out widely on all social media, along with numerous versions from the passersby. Including the humiliating after-fight, which showed me looking panicked, needy, and devastated, reaching for Brad’s sleeve as he tore away from me.
And I read the comments. Which, of course and as always, was a hugely bad idea. Somehow though, it suited my self-flagellation to read about what an überbitch I was. The bros all had Brad’s back, telling him he was better off without the “ungrateful cunt,” who “looked like a fat feminist, anyway,” and far worse.
Of course I’d been tagged. As many times as I untagged myself or removed the thing from my timeline, it popped back up again. Finally I changed my settings so no one could post to my timeline or tag me. Then I turned off all the notifications on my phone and shut off the tablet entirely. Deciding it would be therapeutic, I started dismantling the tuxedo I had basted together on my sewing mannequin. But I got too depressed, each snip of the stitches feeling like it took me further from my dream of marriage to Brad. I had to walk away from it.
Going almost literally back to the drawing board, I spent the rest of the weekend drawing designs with pencil and paper, and using the big dining-room table to lay out paper for patterns and cut fabric. These were designs I’d been working on earlier in the fall, to show Adelina. Many of them predated my even meeting Brad, so that helped me escape the relentless associations.
Jon would, no doubt, be highly amused by my return to Ludditism. Maybe he’d indulge in a little schadenfreude at my expense. Maybe not. Hard to say what his take would be. One thing was for sure—he might be the only person in the known universe who hadn’t seen that video by now.
Monday morning I went in to work, wearing one of my power outfits to bolster my confidence. I thought I’d been braced for the reaction, for the jokes and remarks, but I wasn’t. I had a bit of time to sort through emails, doing triage to cull the spam at least, before the nine a.m. staff meeting. I’d overestimated my colleagues, however, because when I walked into the conference room, ready to talk actual business, the chiming notes of Bruno Mars kicked in.
A bit of unpleasant surprise knotted my stomach. Not enough to send me into a dead faint, fortunately, but sufficient to unsettle me, scatter my heart into uneven beats. I glanced at my Fitbit—right into cardio levels. Wonderful.
Though most everyone else sat at the conference table looking amused, several of the junior designers and other staff started doing the dance, grinning broadly. Flavio, who’d I’d thought was my friend, did a knee-slide to my feet, holding up a giant papier-mâché ring he’d appropriated from the June wedding photo shoot. The fact that he’d dressed as an elf in candy-cane stripes, complete with pointed ears and a jingle-bell hat, only added to the absurdity.
“Don’t say no, Amy, my only love!” he declared, thrusting a milk-bottle thermos at me, clearly labeled DANCING JUICE. “Drink more of the Kool-Aid and be my wifey forever!”
“Ha ha. You’re hysterical.” I raised my voice. “Can we kill the music?”
“Yes, for the sake of all that is holy,” Adelina drawled behind me
. “I’d rather have Christmas carols, and that’s saying something for me.”
Bruno stopped mid-note and everyone scrambled to compose themselves. Except Flavio, who only grinned unrepentantly and hung the ring around my neck, then seated himself, arranging the drape of the jingle-bell hat for maximum effect.
“Amanda, refill my coffee, would you?” Adelina gave me her hand-painted china mug, then briskly seated herself at the head of the table. The new junior assistant, who’d been poised to take it, flashed me a look and seated himself again in one of the chairs in the outer ring. “If you’re all ready to discuss what I pay you to do…”
She launched into asking for reports from the various department heads while I fetched her coffee—something she hadn’t asked me to do in over a year. Adelina was a demanding boss, and she assigned mundane tasks according to merit and seniority. Asking me to do it was an unspoken chastisement and everyone knew it. Even Flavio looked sympathetic.
“All right,” Adelina declared at the end of the hour. “I want all assignments complete by Friday COB, or before you leave on holiday vacation, whichever comes first. Our party, of course, is Friday night, so if you are leaving early, you’ll miss out. We’ve had such an excellent year that I’ve decided to host the event at the Upper Deck at Somerset. You’re welcome.”
Hoots of real joy broke out at the news, as Somerset should put on a serious spread. Adelina would have pulled strings to host it there on such late notice—unless she’d planned this long ago and kept it a secret, which was more likely—and she even smiled slightly, a subtle curve to the pristine burgundy line of her mouth.
“We’re closed all next week—you’re welcome, again—so the next staff meeting will be Tuesday the second. Please use your federal holiday on the first to purge yourselves of hangovers, whether from food, alcohol, or family drama. I want everyone sharp, alert, and full of ideas for the new year. I won’t tell you how to use your time off, but let me suggest that this sort of down time is excellent for refilling the well. I’m expecting to see a lot of creativity on the second of January.”
Missed Connections Box Set Page 29
