Daring Chloe

by Walker, Laura Jensen

  As if.

  “Mother?” Julia’s voice wafted out to us from the direction of the kitchen. “Where are you?”

  That’s all I need. Julia the Perfect with her flashing two-carat, emerald-cut engagement ring. Although my wedding had derailed, nothing would get my organized sister’s off the tracks. Her wedding — with my domestic queen mother’s help — would be a smooth ride from start to finish. I rubbed my finger where up until last week, my tiny diamond had occupied a place of honor. It was lying in a saucer upstairs on the guest room dresser where I’d left it. I still hadn’t decided what to do with the symbol of my broken dreams.

  Give it back, I guess. That is, if the engagement was still off. Maybe Chris had had a change of heart while I was gone. They say absence makes the heart grow fonder. My fingers itched to open his letter.

  “Just a minute,” Mom called in to my sister. She gave my knee an awkward pat as she moved past. “Take your time, dear. If you need me, I’ll be right inside.” The door shut behind her, and I could hear her and Julia’s muted voices in the kitchen. Discussing Julia’s wedding, no doubt.

  I rushed over to the box and snatched the letter from the top, ripping it open with shaking hands.

  He’s giving me the cappuccino machine? The machine I bought? Big of him. I tore the letter in half and in half again and threw it in the trash.

  My family was right about my fiancé. Ex-fiancé. He was an immature, irresponsible jerk. Guess that’s what I get for falling for a younger guy — Chris always said our age difference didn’t matter, that it was just a number. And I believed that. Or tried to. A five-year age gap in your thirties, forties, or even fifties is no big deal.

  I’m sure there are some mature twenty-three-year-olds out there.

  He just wasn’t one of them. I thought back to the myriad burping and loogie contests he’d have with his old high school buddies on a regular basis, the all-night Game Boy marathons, and how he always unscrewed the lids on the salt and pepper shakers when we left Johnny Rockets, leaving a mess for the waitress.

  And don’t even get me started on his financial irresponsibility.

  I’d ignored all those juvenile things because when I was with Chris, he made me feel like the most beautiful woman in the world. And when you grow up in the shadow of the gorgeous Julia, that’s pretty heady stuff.

  There were times, however, when I felt more like Chris’s mom than his girlfriend. Which is why from now on, I’m only dating guys over thirty. When I start dating again, that is. Which probably won’t be for a long, long time.

  I opened the box. Inside was my Chronicles of Narnia I’d loaned him when I discovered he’d never read it. He still hadn’t. The red ribbon I’d used to tie them together bore the same taut bow I’d made when I handed it to him. Rustling through a stack of CDs, I was happy to see my fave Rosemary Clooney and Sandi Patty. Chris never could get into my music. He preferred hard rock and the blues. I pulled out several relationship books I’d left at the duplex he rented with Ryan in hopes that he’d read them sometime, including Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus, and The Five Love Languages.

  In my dreams.

  I’d tried to explain to Chris how these books would help us understand each other better and learn how to communicate successfully, but he wasn’t feelin’ it.

  Guess I should have seen that little red flag.

  Of course Julia and Justin, her perfect intended, read the books together and discussed them afterward. Justin even filled out all the answers in his workbook.

  I thumbed through Chris’s copy of the premarital workbook our pastor had suggested we fill out independently. Not one pen or pencil mark on any of the pages. He’d clearly checked out of the relationship ages ago. I’d been a little annoyed and embarrassed when he showed up for our counseling meetings with no answers or comments in the workbook, but now the blank space seemed so much more significant. And sinister.

  Call me clueless.

  At least I had a few of my favorite things back. Just no raindrops on roses. A couple of weekends before the wedding that wasn’t, I’d had a garage sale and gotten rid of a lot of “extra” stuff since Chris and I would be combining households and he preferred a spare, less-is-more, casual look. My tastes leaned more toward the cozy and cottagey — some would say cluttered — with antiques, knick-knacks, floral quilts, and books. Tons of books. Everywhere.

  I should have seen the writing on the wall. But I wanted to make my husband — soon-to-be-husband — happy. So I did a clean sweep of my apartment and got rid of lots and lots of stuff before I moved into our new condo. Chris said he was allergic to dust, so he was particularly keen that I lose most of my books — especially the old ones. “What do you need all these books for, anyway?” he’d grumbled. “You read too much. You need to actually get out and live life more instead of just reading about it.”

  How do you explain to a nonreader that books aren’t just things but treasured friends? Companions?

  I tried hard to purge my library and did manage to get rid of a couple dozen paperbacks that I’d already read and didn’t plan to read again. But others, like the complete boxed set of Little House on the Prairie and my whole Babysitters Club collection, I just couldn’t part with.

  They wouldn’t go in my pared-down marriage condo, yet I couldn’t say good-bye to them either. I figured when we had kids in a couple years, clutter would become a part of our daily lives and Chris wouldn’t mind as much. So I separated all my books into stacks: best friends, old friends, classic friends, new friends, and casual acquaintances I hadn’t had the time to get to know yet. Then I packed them all in boxes that I stored in my parents’ attic. I kept out a few novels I hadn’t read yet and some oversized hardbacks and art books that would look good placed here and there amidst Chris’s rocks, driftwood, and sports stuff on our new bookcases.

  Aside from all my books, the hardest thing for me to let go of had been my Grandma Chloe’s antique cherry wood secretary desk with the drop-down top, where I’d spent many happy little-girl hours reading and writing. She left me the beautiful desk when she died. Chris hated it.

  “It’s so old-fashioned,” he said.

  I couldn’t bring myself to sell Grandma’s secretary though. It was a family heirloom. Instead, I gave it to Julia, who had coveted it forever. It had been a real wrench to watch her and Justin carry it out of my old apartment and down the stairs to his waiting pick-up.

  “Are you sure you want to part with this, Chloe?” Julia had asked, a worried frown puckering her porcelain forehead. “I know how much you’ve always loved it.”

  “We’re making a fresh start, aren’t we, babe?” Chris hugged me to him. “Out with the old and in with the new.”

  “I have always loved it, Jules, but Chris is right. We’re making a new start together, and we want everything to be fresh and new. Besides, we’re going for a more contemporary look.”

  “Well, if you’re sure . . .”

  I had been sure. Sure of Chris and sure of our love and our new life together.

  How could I have gotten it so wrong?

  I knew we had some communication issues — which is why I wanted him to read those relationship books — but all couples do, right? It’s that whole male/female differences thing. Wasn’t it?

  Those differences extended to the more contemporary look that Chris liked and I was trying to, which was evident in our new high-rise apartment downtown that I’d moved into the week before the almost wedding.

  At Chris’s urging, I’d given up my old, much-loved one-bedroom apartment in midtown and signed a one-year lease with an option to buy on a new two-bedroom condominium downtown that would give us more room. Chris’s credit wasn’t good, so it had to be my name on the lease. Our eleventh-floor condo was located in the heart of downtown, just three blocks from my work and less than a mile from Chris’s.

  “We can walk or bike to work every day and spare the environment,” he said when we first checked out the h
igh-rise condo. He slapped me playfully on the rear. “And it will be good exercise too.”

  The week before the wedding, we moved most of our combined possessions into our new place, which had a fabulous view of the Sacramento River and the mustard-colored Tower Bridge that was a Sacramento landmark. Chris had tried to coax me into letting him move in with me before the wedding. “Aw, c’mon,” he wheedled. “We’re getting married in less than a week.”

  But on this issue I held firm. I may have given in to him in a lot of other areas, but not this. “It will be worth the wait,” I promised.

  “I’m counting on it.”

  Yeah, right. I’d been counting on it too. Counting down the weeks, days, hours even, until we’d be one. It had been really hard to wait, and I’d taken ribbing from some of my friends about holding out until the wedding night. Call me old-fashioned — everyone does — but my wedding gift to my husband was going to be my virginity. But that was the last thing I wanted to think about now. I kept repeating to myself Philippians 4:8: “whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable . . . think about such things.”

  I wonder if Chris might have stayed if we’d made love.

  Whatever is true . . .

  Yanking the rubberband off my too-tight ponytail, I turned my mind to more practical matters. Like our — correction, my — new condo, where I’d only spent one night so far. There were so many last-minute things to do before the wedding, and the condo was so far from my parents’ house in the suburbs, that I’d stayed with them the last couple of nights before the ceremony.

  At least, that’s what I told myself.

  Truth is, the condo felt a little too cold and hard to me in all its shiny newness. But once Chris moved in, I knew we’d warm it up. And though the rent was nearly double what I’d paid for my cute one-bedroom, with my upcoming raise and Chris’s new job, we could swing it.

  Except now there was no Chris.

  No new job.

  And a one-year signed lease.

  I groaned and laid my head in my hands, my set-free-from-its-ponytail-prison hair doing its standard static electricity thing. How would I ever be able to afford the high rent on the high-rise I hated?

  It’s not like I didn’t earn a good salary at my analyst job with the State of California. I did. Much better, in fact, than a lot of friends my age who were still working at entry-level jobs while they tried to find themselves.

  I’d found myself in the fifth grade.

  Even way back then I knew that I wanted to get a good, steady job with benefits, including a great retirement and a healthy savings account. Grandma Chloe always told me it was good for a woman to be able to make her own way in the world and not to have to be financially dependent on a man. She’d seen too many instances of women whose husbands had died or divorced them and they’d been left helpless and totally unprepared to take care of themselves, not even knowing how to balance a checkbook.

  Not me. I wasn’t my Grandma’s namesake for nothing.

  That’s why I had an automatic deposit from my paycheck into my savings account for a down payment on a house. Grandma Chloe had also taught me that real estate was the best investment a girl could make. And like Virginia Woolf, I wanted a room of my own.

  Only not just a room. A whole house. Preferably a cute little bungalow in an older part of town. And if I kept saving the way I had been, before the year was out, I’d have enough for a substantial down payment — provided of course that I didn’t dip into savings to make my new rent payment.

  I groaned again.

  Then I recalled what Becca had said on the cruise about needing to find a new place to live.

  Could I handle a roommate though? I’ve lived on my own for the past five years, and I liked my solitude. I blew out a wistful sigh as I thought back to the darling midtown apartment I’d given up for Chris. I’d been willing to trade in my solitude and the cozy apartment for happily-ever-after bliss with Chris.

  Don’t go there. Focus on the here and now and the immediate need: a roommate.

  My college roommate had been such a bad experience — she liked to ingest all kinds of strange and unusual substances, including oregano — and not in spaghetti — that I’d sworn never to have a roommate again unless it was my husband. And Becca can be a little irresponsible, a little wild and crazy.

  Like that whole shark thing.

  Pushing the underwater incident out of my mind, I took a deep breath. Desperate times call for desperate measures. I punched in her number.

  “Becca, have I got a deal for you.”

  4

  “It’s so dreadful to be poor!” sighed Meg, looking down at her old dress.

  “I don’t think it’s fair for some girls to have plenty of pretty things, and other girls nothing at all,” added Amy, with an injured sniff.

  “We’ve got father and mother and each other,” said Beth contentedly, from her corner.

  Little Women

  Two hours later, with Becca by my side and a basket of clean laundry in my hands, I turned the key in the lock to my new home.

  “Whoa. Can you say industrial?”

  “I know.”

  As Becca checked out the fresh-from-the-factory condo, I saw the living space through her eyes: the gray stamped concrete floor, new black leather sectional that took up much of the great room, glass coffee table, narrow black bookcases — with very few books — and my wedding present to my groom — the huge flat-screen TV dominating one wall.

  She whistled. “That sucker’s huge.”

  “Uh-huh. Chris loved to watch sports on the big screen. I’m sure he hated leaving my gift behind, but since it was mounted to the wall, he couldn’t really take it with him.” I looked around. “Of course, that didn’t stop him from taking the rest of his stuff.”

  Chris had cut a wide swath through the place. The empty dining area had indentations in the black area rug where his exercise bike and portable basketball hoop had stood, and the new black bookcases we’d — I’d — bought from Ikea had been emptied of all his rocks, sports paraphernalia, and video games. All that remained on the shelves were my oversized art books and a few hardbacks.

  “Love the bookcases; although, they’re pretty empty.” Becca flipped through a Grisham.

  Sure they’re empty. I was trying to accommodate my almost husband. In fact, most of the place was an accommodation to Chris. The big-screen TV that required some installation guy to bust into the wall, which turned it into a “permanent fixture” according to my homeowners’ association and kept me from tearing it down on the spot and returning it to the store. The empty bookshelves, the glass coffee table, the gigantic couch . . .

  I wondered if I could return or sell off anything. Maybe I could rent the condo out for big sports events. But that would fill the place with smelly jocks, salsa stains, and Dorito crumbs.

  Totally not worth it.

  Becca looked askance at the silver flat-screen monster ruling the living room. “Not exactly Picasso, is it?”

  “What if you cover it with something?” she suggested. “I know where you can pick up a velvet Elvis cheap.”

  “No thanks.”

  And then I remembered. I shot into the master bedroom, bypassing the king-size bed with its black-and-white plaid comforter Chris had wanted. Inside the walk-in closet, I pulled down a bulky, oversized package from the top shelf and carried it back into the living room, where I began to undo the plastic covering it.

  “What’s that?” Becca asked as a jumble of jewel-tones hove into view.

  “An antique quilt I fell in love with at a thrift shop. I wanted it on our bed, but Chris didn’t like the idea of sleeping under something so old.”

  “Ooh, let me see.” Becca helped me unfold the crazy quilt. When I bought it, the store owner told me that the scraps of velvet and satin it was made of had come from her ex-husband’s great-grandmother’s baby clothes. “It’s beautiful.” />
  “Isn’t it? Help me lift it up. How do you think it would look hanging on the wall — covering the boob tube?”

  “Sweet. It would add some color to this place.”

  “That’s what I thought.” I adjusted my glasses and examined the back of the ancient pieced-together fabric. “I’ll ask my mom if she’ll sew a sleeve at the top, and we could install a quilt rack thingy above the TV. Then when it’s time to watch TV, we’ll just slide the quilt over to one side, like a curtain.”

  “Perfect.” Becca cast a dubious eye at the leather sectional. “You didn’t pick this out, did you?”

  “In what universe? No, Chris wanted it because it’s a ‘man couch.’ ”

  “Well, since neither of us are men, what say we take it back and exchange it for something a little more comfortable?” She pointed at the glass coffee table. “And maybe trade that in for something wood while we’re at it?”

  Who knew Becca and I had similar furniture tastes? No glass and leather for us. “No prob. I still have the receipts, and these pieces haven’t even been used, so it shouldn’t be any problem exchanging them.” I scuffed my foot on the contemporary concrete floor that had been a bone of contention between my beloved — ex-beloved — and me. “And I’m also going to raid my parents’ attic to see if they have any old rugs they’re not using.”

  “Just call us Ty Pennington & Company.” Becca nodded to the galley kitchen with its stainless steel appliances and black granite countertops. “At least we don’t have to do anything there. That kitchen rocks.”

  “Ya think?”

  “Oh yeah.”

  “I don’t know.” I worried a hangnail on my little finger. “Seems a little stark and institutional to me.”

  “And you didn’t think that before you signed the lease?”

  “Well, yeah, but Chris really liked it.”

  Becca’s eyes flashed. “New rule: Stop being a doormat and never suppress your own thoughts and opinions for a man again. Deal?”