He turned around, attempting a fierce glare which was comically de-emphasized by his pudgy cheeks.
“But the interests of the company come before my own,” he continued. “And the company itself will benefit immensely with you at the helm in our new office. We’re going global, Rhona, and we’re going to need you to blaze this trail.”
“I’ve never been much of a trailblazer,” I said weakly. “I’m more of a trail-follower.”
“You don’t give yourself enough credit,” he dismissed with a wave of his hand. “I have seen you think up creative, original, never-before-seen techniques. I’ve seen you take a tired, old style and revitalize it in exciting, inspiring ways. You’ve taught your coworkers new skills, even those who have been in the business for decades.”
He took a few steps toward me, exuding a somber sort of earnestness. “You’re a creative genius, Rhona, and we need you out there.”
I swallowed hard, feeling cornered. It somehow felt like a marriage proposal I couldn’t refuse, but the sheer weight of the responsibility he was giving me, the weight of the labels he assigned me, was making my knees buckle.
Seeing this, Charlie backed up, raising his hands in a truce. “But as I said before, take your time deciding. You wouldn’t necessarily have to learn the language, if that’s what’s bothering you. Icelandic is a notoriously difficult language to learn, but nearly everyone there speaks English. The campaigns will be global as well as local, and there are translators on staff for every language we require, just as there are here.”
“That does help,” I confessed, only slightly less apprehensive. “And the apartments are beautiful, I just…”
“In a new relationship? Engaged?” he asked suddenly.
“W-well, no…”
“Sick mother? New puppy?”
“No, nothing like that…”
“Just signed a lease? We’ll buy you out of it if that’s the case.”
I shook my head, and he raised his hands helplessly. “Then what’s the problem? Not enough money? I could negotiate for more.”
“No, the money’s great.”
“Tell me what’s wrong, and I’ll get all hands on deck to fix it. You can see how important this is, Rhona.”
I could. Charlie never went out on a limb like this for anybody unless it was vital to his own success or the success of the company as a whole.
“I just…” I’m terrified, I thought. Freaking out. Not ready to give up on San Bravado. Afraid to be alone in a strange country. “I just need more time,” I finished pathetically.
Charlie nodded, his lips pressed into a thin line. “I can give you more time. But I still need your opinion on those apartments. If you don’t take the job, somebody like you will, and it’s not a stretch to say that your tastes will be similar. I would like your top three by this afternoon.”
“Yes, sir.” I turned to leave, feeling chagrined and guilty as a child caught shoplifting candy. I felt like I was letting Charlie and the company down, and myself by extension. But for some reason I just could not bear to commit to something so life-altering.
I sat down at my desk with a miserable sigh, then groaned internally. “And she comes to check on me in three…two…”
“Coffee break!” Nina sang from behind me. “Come on, you look like you need the caffeine.”
“I blame you for my coffee addiction.”
“Blame me, don’t blame me, no skin off my nose either way, come on.”
As I followed her down the hall, it occurred to me that this very thing is what I was so afraid to lose if I moved away. Who would tell me to go get coffee any time I had something weighing on me? Who else would be that invested in my inner life? I would be alone, every decision would be my own, and at least at first, I would have only myself for company. I was not confident in my ability to make new friends, especially as a foreigner.
“You have that look again,” Nina told me as she poured two cups of coffee.
“What look?”
“The same look you had when Jeanne announced her engagement. Did someone else hit a milestone?”
“Only potentially, and in the wrong direction,” I said with a sigh.
“What does that mean?”
“It means that Charlie is literally throwing this job at me, and I can’t seem to bring myself to be okay about it. It’s a crazy good opportunity, but every time he brings it up, my feet turn to ice and a volcano grows in my belly and my brain turns to cold oatmeal.”
“That’s one heck of a curse,” she said, her eyes twinkling in amusement as she sipped her coffee.
“You know what I mean.”
“I do, and that’s exactly the point. You’ve got a magical way of picking metaphors, allegories, and similes out of a clear blue sky and putting them together in ways that are evocative and inspiring, even when you don’t mean to. It’s why you’re so good at this. If you’re afraid that you won’t be good enough, put that fear to bed right now. You’ve got this in the bag.”
“I’m…okay, I’m a little bit worried about that, but it’s not the biggest problem.”
“Is it your blind date?”
I hadn’t even thought about that, but now that she had verbalized it, I could feel my hands begin to sweat.
“A 95% success rate is ridiculously good,” I told her as I chewed my lip. “What if I meet my Prince Charming and then immediately leave the country? That’s like the most epic ghosting ever. What if I move away and then I never find anybody ever again and I’m cursed to do nothing but work until the end of time?”
Nina laughed. “Don’t worry about that. For one thing, you won’t be around until the end of time, so you couldn’t possibly work that long. For another, you’re very pretty and if you go to Iceland, you’ll be the exotic foreigner. It would be impossible for you to stay lonely for very long.”
“I hadn’t thought about that,” I confessed pensively. “I will be, won’t I?”
“Oh, yes. You’ll be the striking high-powered career woman with the adorable accent—guys will be flocking to you.”
I chuckled, but worry soon displaced the humor. “What if none of them are the person I’m meant to be with, though? What if it is this guy I’m going to go out with, and I mess it all up?”
Nina took my hand and gazed deep into my eyes. “Listen to me, Rhona. I’m going to tell you something that no romantic movie or princess cartoon ever told me, and I had to figure it out for myself before I managed to find love. It’s the best kept secret in the Western world. Are you ready?”
“Uh…I guess?”
“There is no one true love. There are no soulmates. Life doesn’t work that way, because how could it? There are seven billion people on this world, and people fall in love with people who happen to be in the same general area that they happen to live in whenever they happen to be ready for love.”
“That’s depressing.”
She shook her head adamantly. “It’s not, though. Really. It just means that there will always be somebody else who gets you, somebody else who will love you and who you will love. It also means that no matter who you end up with, it’s not going to be a perfect happily-ever-after forever, it’s going to be a balance of work and fun, just like everything else in life.”
She paused for a moment, playing with her engagement ring. “Your life partner is the family you choose. Families aren’t perfect. But they feel like home.”
Chapter 6
Rhona
Between Nina’s gentle but insistent analysis of my mind and Charlie’s not-so-gentle pressure to take the promotion, I didn’t have a moment to spare obsessing about my upcoming date all week. But the second I left work on Friday, the nerves hit.
By the time I reached my car, I was imagining every possible scenario from the mundane to the ridiculous, and managed to make a mess of the simplest of things. I turned my key in the ignition, and…nothing happened.
“Oh come on, don’t do this to me today,” I whimpered. “Star
t, start, start…” I turned the key again, with the same results. Frustrated and panicking, I pumped the gas and tried again and again, only to realize that I had accidentally put the car in gear before turning the key. Sighing at myself, I jammed the shifter back into park and tried once more. It started immediately, and I rolled my eyes.
“Okay, step one, relax,” I told myself firmly. My nerves refused to listen to me, and I nearly T-boned a funeral procession on my way home. Shaking and almost hyperventilating, I pulled into my parking space only to discover that the building handyman was perched twenty feet in the air on the top of a ladder, changing the lightbulb over the lobby door.
“It’s okay,” he said when I hesitated. “Walk on under, just don’t bump it.”
“I’d rather wait,” I told him nervously.
“Gonna be a while, chica. These bolts are rusted tight.”
A downstairs neighbor walked through without a second thought as I stood debating, and shook her head at me with a little laugh. Embarrassed, I followed her through, telling myself that superstitions weren’t worth the brain space.
As I stepped into the lobby, the building manager waved me down with a package.
“Ms. Campbell, this arrived for you today, C.O.D. I paid for you and gave the man a little tip.” He held out the package and the receipt, and I jolted with shock. The total came to $66.60.
“666 is good luck,” he told me with a grin.
“Is it?” I asked weakly.
He nodded happily as I pulled out my checkbook. “Do I make this out to you or the building?” I asked.
“To me, if you please.”
“How do you spell it?”
“D-E-Q-U-A-N, Y-A-N.”
I filled in the check and briefly contemplated adding a dollar until I realized that he had tipped the delivery person exactly enough to get those exact numbers on purpose, as a gesture intended to spread luck around. Silently cursing cultural differences, I filled it in properly.
“Thank you, Ms. Campbell. Enjoy your evening!”
“I’ll try,” I told him.
The elevator was crowded, but I was so desperate to get into the safety of my own apartment for that I didn’t bother waiting for the next one. Of course, the moment the doors closed, somebody pushed the button for the thirteenth floor.
“Hey, floor thirteen, thirteen people in the car. Which one of you has a death wish?” a large man behind me joked.
I could feel the blood drain from my face as my fingers turned to ice. It’s a coincidence, I told myself firmly. Not an omen.
Even so, I hurried out of the elevator as soon as it stopped a floor short of my apartment, anxious to take the stairs instead. In my haste, I didn’t see the movers until it was too late, and I ran elbow-first into a mirrored headboard. To my dismay, the mirror cracked on impact and fell to the floor, shattering.
“Watch out!” a mover snapped belatedly.
“Jeez, are you okay?” the other one asked, setting his end of the headboard down.
“I’m fine, I’m sorry, I’ll pay for it,” I said in a rush as I brushed past them. “I’m in 42C, send me a bill.”
My voice quivered and cracked, and I pressed my lips together so I wouldn’t have to hear it. I burst through my apartment door breathlessly, tossing my purse on the table as I always did, but my anxiety shot nervous energy into the movement and my purse knocked the salt shaker over as it skidded across the table and landed on the floor.
“Are you kidding me?!” I didn’t even know who I was shouting at, but whoever it was, they deserved it. Picking my phone up off the floor, I dialed Sara.
“Tell me you aren’t backing out.”
“That’s a terrible way to answer the phone,” I snapped.
“Oh, gosh, you’re right, I’m sorry. Thank you for calling Sara’s Advice Line, you fail we bail. How can I help you?”
“Your customer service voice is creepy and your sarcasm is terrible. I’m not going on the date.”
“Yes you are.”
“No, I’m not.”
“Dang it, Rhona!”
“I can’t! You don’t understand, Sara, I can’t, I really really can’t, everything is telling me not to.”
“Everything?”
I sighed, pinching the bridge of my nose. “Funeral procession, ladder, 666, 13 twice, broken mirror, purse on the floor, spilled salt; do you know what those things have in common?”
“They’re all the premise of a cruddy teen horror movie?”
“They’re signs! Omens!”
“Okay, if you believe in that sort of thing…”
“And they all happened to me on my way home!”
“Come on, Rhona, if you weren’t already stressed out about the date, would you even have noticed? Honestly.”
“I…!” I paused, considering. “I don’t know. But it doesn’t matter, the whole universe is trying to tell me that this is a terrible idea and I’m not going.”
“Oh come on, Rhona, you have to! You haven’t been out on a date this whole year, and I swear if you don’t show up I will. What’s the restaurant?”
“El Gato Negro,” I groaned.
There was a beat of silence from the other end, then Sara nearly split my eardrum with a shriek of laughter.
“It’s not funny!”
“Oh my God, Rhona, it’s hilarious. Lighten up, everything is going to be fine. Just relax. If the date goes terribly, you can leave. You’ll be in public, so he’s not going to murder you or anything. If it makes you feel better, I’ll hang out stalker-like in the parking lot or give you an emergency phone call or whatever you want, but you have got to go to this thing.”
“Why?” I demanded.
“For one thing, you can’t really cancel on him without his phone number,” she said wryly. “Your only other option is to ghost him, and do you really want to do that to someone?”
My heart sank. Sara had a point, and I resented her for it. “No,” I admitted finally. “Fine, I’ll go, but you need to call me at eight twenty sharp with a big emergency and wait in the parking lot.”
“You got it,” Sara said gleefully. “I’ll get my stalker hoodie and make like a jealous ex.”
“You don’t have to enjoy it so much.”
“I don’t have to, but I’m going to. Now get dressed! Coral wrap with the pearls, no excuses, exchanges, or refunds, go go go.”
“Yes, mother,” I sighed.
I hung up the phone and took a shower, willing the hot water to rinse the tension out of my muscles. It didn’t quite work, but I did feel a little better about everything afterwards.
“You can always leave if he’s terrible,” I reminded myself, parroting Sara. “You can always tell the algorithm it was wrong, and make it try again. At the very least, you’ll get a fine meal out of it at the best place in town, right? Right.”
I second-guessed the pearl earrings even as I slid them into place. Nina, Sara and I had rummaged through my jewelry for hours to find the right accessories, and I had been utterly confident in the ensemble while they were here, but now, alone, the coral wrap dress and pearl accessories looked too vintage, too stuffy, like I was trying too hard to be someone else.
“But he won’t know that,” I told myself firmly. “This is a complete stranger, and he won’t have any idea about my usual style. This is my look because I’m wearing it, I feel fabulous in it, and I own it.” I struck a pose, shaking my hair back over my shoulders, then twisted my unruly curls into a swirling knot on the top of my head.
“Perfect,” I decided. “Ready to knock the socks off of Mr. Mystery Date.”
I tried to tell myself that this wouldn’t be a life-changing moment, it couldn’t possibly be; mostly because I had almost decided to take the promotion, but also because I knew I would get cold feet if I really let myself think that this was the first step to forever. I ruefully admitted to myself on the drive over that I may very well have grown too comfortable with my dateless, sexless existence. The realizatio
n bolstered my courage, and I didn’t hesitate for even a moment when I arrived at the restaurant, and strode in like I owned the place.
“Hello… I’m not sure what name my reservation is under; it’s a Matchmakr date?”
“Ah, yes! Ms. Campbell?”
“That’s right.”
“Your date has arrived, my dear. If you’ll follow me?”
The host led me to a table near the back of the restaurant, where a man sat alone, patiently waiting.
“Thank you,” I said absently as I studied my date. He looked stunning from the back; hair just the right shade of brown, thick and wavy. Broad shoulders draped in an expensive suit jacket, and just enough of a tan. He looked perfect…and strangely familiar.
As the host led me nearer, I realized why. That face had followed my self-loathing through every failed date and heartache. It was the face that showed up in my mind’s eye every time I sat down and tried to pinpoint the moment when everything went wrong. Blake the snake.
Nope. Not happening. Six years might be enough for a lot of things, but it wasn’t enough to convince me that a date with Blake was a good idea. I turned around, leaving a confused host behind me, my full attention focused on the door.
“Whoa! Rhona?”
Too late. He’d spotted me. Pasting an icy smile on my face, I turned to greet him.
“Blake,” I said, my voice dripping with every ounce of resentment I had allowed to build up. Unfortunately, he looked better than I remembered. Maturity had etched laugh lines around his eyes and deepened his voice just a touch. Just enough to vibrate through my core and make me question my decision to run far and fast away from him.
“Rhona! I haven’t seen you in, what…?”
“Six years,” I filled in for him, reclaiming my cold anger with the words.
“Six years! And to run into you here… Wait a second. You aren’t my Matchmakr date?”
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