A Fine Romance

by Christi Barth

  The smart thing would be to go inside, get out of the surprise cold snap. Except that she’d already walked around the block three times to avoid going inside. Specifically, to go inside Aisle Bound and apologize to Ivy. Not for trying to push the matchmaking idea. That was pure gold. But neither one of them handled the discussion—and the ensuing argument—well. As much as she hated to admit it, Sam had been right. After sleeping for an amazing nine hours and carbo-loading on pasta, Mira was ready to either run a marathon or deal with Ivy. An apology for her behavior seemed in order to salvage their friendship.

  Lights blazed from the floor-to-ceiling windows of Aisle Bound. The display showcased Daphne’s amazing talent, in the form of a multitiered arrangement of pumpkins carved with a happy couple’s name, dates and location. Orange gerbera daisies and sunflowers twined their way between the levels. Wheat sheaves fanned out in a sunburst behind. Inside, Mira could see Ben lounging on the white sofa, feet on the glass coffee table. His concession to the weather was to add a Cubs hoodie to his preferred uniform of cargo shorts. She’d waited until after dark, hoping Ivy’s staff would be gone for the day. Having Ben as a witness didn’t bother her enough to give her an excuse to stomp around the block again. Squaring her shoulders, she pushed through the door.

  Ben dragged his eyes up for a split second, then resumed thumbing the keyboard of his phone faster than a thirteen-year-old girl at a boy-band concert. “Hey, Mira. You nervous about tomorrow night’s big opening?”

  “Do you want me to go into detail about the nine distinct bullet points of anxiety currently haunting me? Or will a simple ohmygodyes be enough for you?”

  Her rushed and slurred delivery teased out a snicker, and he tossed his phone onto the lavender throw pillow beside him. “Sounds like you need a glass of wine and a foot rub. Why isn’t Sam taking care of you? Doesn’t he know the rules to being a good boyfriend?”

  “Whatever you think the rules are, I guarantee the women of the world have a very different list.” Mira eased down the hall toward Ivy’s office. “I’m too wound up to be around Sam. I’d probably bite his head off.”

  “Like the female praying mantis does to her mate after having sex? Or the way you and Ivy went at each other yesterday?”

  “She told you?”

  “Of course. I know that one’s in the rulebook. Tell each other everything.” He winged up a sandy eyebrow. “Didn’t you tell Sam?”

  “Of course,” she mimicked, with a twist of her lips. “I just wish nobody knew how poorly we dealt with each other.”

  Ben leaned forward, resting his forearms on his tanned thighs. “Between you and me, I think your dating service idea’s a winner. Full to the brim with potential.”

  A flush of validation spread through her. Or a stress-induced early onset menopause hot flash. “Thanks.”

  “Don’t mention it. Seriously.” He pointed his thumb and finger at her like a gun. “I didn’t share my opinion with Ivy, and for the sake of our super-fancy upcoming wedding, I’d like to keep it that way.”

  “I understand.” Mira mimed zipping her lips and throwing away the key.

  “You two going to kiss and make up?”

  “That’s my plan.”

  His face lit up, hope etched in every inch of his raised brow. “Really? Because if you promise there’s going to be actual girl-on-girl action, I’ll need to break out my camera and record this.”

  “You’re such a pervert, Westcott,” she said, not bothering to hide her grin.

  “Package deal. That is, it comes with my package, if you know what I mean.” Ben gave her an exaggerated, lecherous wink.

  The over-the-top sexist teasing steadied her. Gave her a couple of minutes of normalcy and peace before heading into the eye of the hurricane. “If you hear shouting, call for backup and run like hell.” Mira walked the last few feet to stop in front of Ivy’s closed door. She didn’t want to give Ivy the chance to put her off for another few days. So she knocked with her right hand and simultaneously opened the door with her left.

  “Hi.”

  Ivy’s head popped up faster than a Whac-A-Mole. She spread her hands across the piles of fat bridal magazines covering every inch of her desk. “Oh, it’s only you.”

  Great beginning. Annoyance flared. Mira tamped it down, remembering her mission. Her apology could only stem from cool, professional detachment. Not heated-up pissiness. She smoothed the front of her deep yellow sweater. “Sorry to interrupt.”

  “Don’t be an idiot.” Ivy beckoned her with a frantic wave. A wild glint in her hazel eyes looked out of place in her pristine office. “Come in and shut the door. Fast.”

  Curiosity erased the last vestiges of her sputtering temper. “What’s going on?”

  Ivy leaned back in her chair. She wore a dark purple cardigan over a lighter camisole that matched the bow around her ponytail. Kind of the way Purple Honker would look dressed up as a cheerleader. “Ben made me promise not to start looking at wedding dresses until after the store opens. He says that I only have a finite attention span. Apparently dress shopping is going to turn into a giant black hole, rendering me incapable of any extra tasks.”

  “Well, we both know he’s right.” Cautiously, Mira eased down into the white brocade armchair. The epic fight that probably started her down the road to her first ulcer seemed not to have fazed Ivy one bit. Mira didn’t want to dredge up all that ugliness again. But she also didn’t want to sweep the incident under the rug as if it never happened at all.

  “Of course he’s right,” Ivy hissed. “But yesterday I cracked. I pulled every magazine from the last two years off the bookcase. Told Ben I had a late phone consult with a nervous bride.”

  Devious, underhanded wedding planning. Classic Ivy. Mira bit back a grin. “And tonight’s excuse?”

  “Supposedly I’m working up a proposal for a small March commitment ceremony. Two gay men, both of their dachshunds to be included in the ceremony, and they want it held at that crazy Mexican restaurant with the cliff divers.”

  “Huh?” What on earth was Ivy talking about? No restaurant had cliff divers. Mira wasn’t sure she was following the zigs and zigs of this overly intricate fib.

  “Casa Fiesta. They run commercials every eight seconds on television. You haven’t seen one yet?”

  “Daphne and I watch lots of movies. And so far, Sam and I don’t watch anything but each other.”

  “Nice.” Ivy gave an approving nod. “The Casa’s sort of an entertainment complex more than a restaurant. Big waterfall, mariachis, flame jugglers and a puppet show. Seats close to five hundred people. They had their first date there.”

  “Your imaginary gay couple?”

  “Yes. Chauncy and Rick.”

  Mira wished for a glass of water, and the chance to go back in time by about three seconds. If anything in the world ever demanded a spit take, it was those two names joined in pretend couplehood. “Those are the worst fake names ever. They sound like porn stars.”

  “What do you want me to do? Go buy a baby name book to come up with something more appropriate for my wholly fake clients?” Ivy closed the magazines one by one and stacked them neatly in two piles. “I’m desperate. I can’t bring these magazines home. Planning fake weddings is my only way to look for my dream dress.”

  Mira mentally drew thick black lines across her entire prepared apology. She and Ivy had a bigger-picture issue to hash out. “You and I love Mexican food. How many gallons of guacamole do you think we’ve eaten together?”

  “Not enough?”

  “Exactly. Why haven’t you taken me to this spectacularly tacky Mexican restaurant yet? It sounds like it’s the perfect place for us to do a girls’ night.”

  “You’re right—you’d love it.” Ivy marked a page with a purple stickie and closed the last magazine. “I want to take you there. We
just haven’t gotten around to it yet. We’ve both been busy.”

  Technically a valid excuse. However, true friends didn’t make excuses to each other. They carved out time for one another, no matter what. Until Mira moved out here, they’d been the truest of friends. This friendship apathy was as insidious and miserable as a cold virus.

  Mira drove her point home with the sharpness of a syringe full of antibiotics. “Why are you using the most elaborate lie I’ve ever heard to hide from your fiancé and drool over dresses? Why not just tell him you’re going out to lunch with me? Don’t you see the bigger problem here? You work with me, but you don’t play with me anymore. I can’t wait to go dress shopping with you.”

  “Really?” Ivy stopped lining up the magazine stacks to stare at Mira.

  “Of course.” The thought of arguing over bridesmaid dresses filled her with icy dread. And argue they would, because she and Daphne would fight to the death to prevent being crammed into Ivy’s favorite shade of cotton-candy pink. The wedding dress shopping, however, would be wonderful. Worthy of at least two purse-packs of tissue. “I’m sure the allure will tarnish after the first fifty you try on and discard, but for now, I can’t wait.”

  “I like that idea.”

  Mira reached across the desk to grab Ivy’s hand. “It’s only been one day, but it feels like we’ve been fighting for an entire month.”

  “I know. I hated it. The whole thing had me so upset I turned down sex with Ben,” Ivy confessed, her voice dropping to a whisper. “And he’s fantastic in bed.”

  “He looks as though he’s got some moves,” Mira conceded. His body looked lanky under clothes, but in his running gear, his lean muscles bunched with purposeful grace. Ivy lucked out. Finding a guy with such a great sense of humor, buckets of charm and those California surfer good look? Now that was a Triple Crown winner. “But my guy’s full of his own talents. He not only knows how to make chocolate sauce, he knows how to use it.”

  Ivy gasped. “Sam got you to eat chocolate again?”

  “Yes. Well, his chocolate. I haven’t branched out yet beyond Lyons Bakery. I don’t want to be put off by inferior cocoa products.”

  A smile bloomed across Ivy’s face. “I’ve missed talking to you like this.”

  “Me, too. That’s my point. We let our friendship fade once I moved here. We’ve managed to stay tight while living thousands of miles apart. Then once I move literally into your neighborhood, we both dropped the ball. Do you realize we haven’t done one thing together?”

  “No. Wait.” Ivy scrabbled through the pages of her desk calendar. “You came to the viewing party for Planning for Love.”

  “True. But I wouldn’t categorize you throwing up for three hours straight and then passing out exactly quality time.”

  Guilt had Ivy chewing on her bottom lip. “I threw up on your shoe, didn’t I?”

  “A little bit.”

  “Forgive me if I don’t offer to let you return the gesture.”

  “I can let it slide.” Mira straightened in her chair. “I can’t let our friendship slide. The minute I got here, our dynamic changed. We didn’t know how to integrate being friends and being colleagues. So we didn’t. We’re both Type As. Without consciously choosing, we knew the store opening had to be prioritized. To make it work, we back-burnered our friendship.”

  Ivy rounded her lips into a circle of dismay. “No. No, I can’t believe it.” She folded her hands and closed her eyes.

  Great. Yet another idea of Mira’s that Ivy dismissed out of hand. So much for their five-minute détente. Funny, she’d been so sure she’d figured out where it all went wrong. Instead, maybe they’d passed the point of no return. Well, if the friendship was dead, she might as well try to salvage her job. “Sorry.” After one cold, quick nod Mira braced her hands on the armrest to rise.

  “No, I’m sorry.” Ivy jumped up and rushed around the desk. She crouched beside Mira, pulled her back down and enveloped her in a hug. “I really did turn into bridezilla. I’ve been so caught up with Ben that I didn’t carve out any space for you. We’ve wished for years that we lived in the same city again. I can’t believe I’ve been wasting this opportunity.”

  Well, that was the thoughtful, loyal Ivy she remembered. Hopefully she wouldn’t disappear again. Relieved beyond measure, Mira hugged back. And felt truly at home for the first time since moving to Chicago.

  “You’re pissing me off, you know.” Ivy sniffled and sank back onto her heels.

  This time, Mira didn’t jump at the bait. “Really? I apologize, we hug for a minute and you decide to go at me again?”

  “That’s the thing. You apologized. I was supposed to be the bigger person and apologize first. You stole my moment. With a one-word apology. Bigger is better sometimes, you know.”

  “Don’t try to take credit now. That’s like claiming you know the answer to a Jeopardy! question, without screaming it out loud before they say the answer. You’ve got no proof.”

  “Wanna bet?” Ivy grabbed her bag from around the corner of the desk and pulled out a box. “To help officially smooth things over.”

  “You mean after apologizing for having your head in the sand?”

  Ivy rolled her eyes. “Yes, after that. I had a whole, elaborate groveling scene worked out. We were going to meet at the Nature Museum, in the Butterfly Haven. Oh, Mira, you’ll love it there. It’s this beautiful greenhouse filled with one thousand butterflies. Every single day you can watch a butterfly emerge from its cocoon into a tropical paradise.”

  Her voice had slipped into a hushed, describing-their-dream-wedding-to-a-client tone. Mira had to nip it in the bud. Otherwise, Ivy would spend the next ten minutes effusing over each color of butterfly, their wingspan and probably far too much scientific trivia. “Okay, but what happened to the groveling?”

  “I was going to bring you this present tomorrow.” She passed it over, then dropped her hands in her lap.

  Mira plucked at one end of the deep purple ribbon. “I’m sorry too, you know. Truly. Blindsided you, and then bickered with you. Not my proudest moment.”

  “And I’m sorry I aimed below the belt. Which puts us back on even footing. So open your present.”

  Swiftly she pulled off the ribbon and opened the box. Even in the dim light from Ivy’s desk lamp, the pendant in front of her glimmered. Mira lifted the chain to let the silver-and-red enamel butterfly dangle freely.

  “Ivy, it is gorgeous.”

  “Yes, but also meaningful.” She rolled off her heels to her feet. When Ivy began to pace across the small space, Mira was shocked. Her black pencil skirt narrowed down to a fashionable but tiny tube at her ankles. It was a wonder Ivy could even totter, let alone walk. Especially in those platform pumps.

  “When I came up with the idea for a romance store, I worked on it for a few years, every chance I got. If I somehow, miraculously, came up with the seed money, I still couldn’t come up with a way to run the store and still devote myself to my Aisle Bound clients. How could I let a total stranger, no matter how qualified, be entrusted with shaping my dream into reality? And then I thought of you.”

  Mira executed a half bow.

  “You took this larvae of an idea. Through backbreaking work and sweat and tears, you worked a metamorphosis. You turned my pages of plans into a beautiful, sparkling jewel box of a store. This necklace is to thank you.”

  The sentiment was even more beautiful than the necklace. Hence the cotton-ball-sized lump of emotion clogging her throat. Reluctantly, Mira returned the necklace to the box and handed it back. “I can’t accept this.”

  Ivy began a sort of reverse tug-of-war with the box. “Of course you can.”

  “No. Not yet. We’ve already had some negative press. For a boutique store like this, word of mouth can make or break us.” Which is what woke her up in a cold sweat
every single night. “There’s as much a chance of our success as of our failure.”

  Ivy perched on the edge of the desk, jaw agape. “You don’t really believe that. God, even casinos have better odds than fifty percent. Channel the power of positive thinking.”

  Could she truly be that naïve, even after running her own business for years? This wasn’t an uplifting episode of Oprah. A fancy vision board couldn’t turn the tide of bad publicity. “Ivy, don’t patronize me. Slapping a smile on my face won’t change the facts. If we go under in a month, it would be entirely my fault.”

  “Bullshit.”

  Neck stiff from staring up at her friend, Mira moved to the chair. “Don’t swear at me, either.”

  Ivy kicked back into pacing mode. “What do I excel at? Planning. I planned eight ways from Sunday for this store. I ran projections, I modeled, I spreadsheeted, I made tiny shoebox dioramas of the inside, I researched similar stores around the country. I left no stone unturned. Then I hired you. You, who can keep up with me in the list-making department, and can probably lap me when it comes to organizing. Plus, you have an artistic eye for display. There is every reason in the world for A Fine Romance to succeed.”

  In Ivy’s world view, whatever love didn’t conquer, planning could. Hearing the facts laid out like that really did reassure Mira. She’d gotten so caught up in imagining the worst-case scenario that she’d ignored all the reasons she initially accepted the job. Why Ivy had been able to convince her with a single phone call that the concept behind A Fine Romance was brilliant and eminently doable. “Wow. I feel like that was a locker-room speech. Either you should pat me on the ass or I should pour Gatorade over your head.”

  “No more apologies. No more moping.” Ivy wiped the back of her hand across her forehead and collapsed into her chair. “In fact, no more business talk at all. Let’s get to the fun stuff.”