Me and the Cute Catastrophe (Sweet, Small Town Romantic Comedy in Good Grief, Idaho Book 1)

by Jessie Gussman

  I took mine off when he served me the divorce papers. I guess after getting those, you don’t need to know it’s final in order to know it’s over.

  Still, I didn’t pawn them, even though there is a pawnshop in Good Grief.

  They are still upstairs in my top dresser drawer, left-hand side, under the fancy underwear that I never wore. Not even when I was married. Definitely not before I was married. I’m not that kind of girl.

  I guess the underwear just represents the hope that someday I might be.

  I suppose I should have burned them in the backyard the day I hit forty. But I was kinda busy, raising two kids, working a job, and trying to figure out how in the Sam Hill did a person coach a basketball team, that I didn’t even think about it.

  Someday.

  Someday, I’ll have a bonfire in the backyard. Burn the underwear that represents youth, and sexiness, and attraction, and seduction, and all those things that I never was and am definitely never going to be.

  Maybe, once I do that, I’ll get on the Internet long enough to find out if there is underwear for klutzy people. It stands to reason that there should be. Surely there are just as many klutzy people in the world as there are beautiful people.

  Surely they need underwear too. Underwear that makes a statement. Look at me. I’m klutzy.

  Just like the lacy underwear in my drawer says look at me, I’m sexy. Except when I put them on, I look stupid.

  At least that’s what my ex said.

  And yeah, by now you’re probably wondering why in the world I stayed with him.

  I wonder that too sometimes.

  When you live in Idaho, though, it’s dangerous to wander too far; it’s pretty easy to get lost.

  At my admission, Tammy smiles a little as though wanting to blurt out that she was sure I more than just “remember” him, but she doesn’t, and I keep the mature and slightly superior look on my face. At least I hope that’s the way it looks.

  I say, “It’s been such a long time. High school was so long ago.”

  He nods. “It was. Although in ways, it feels like yesterday.”

  “True. Lots of life happened between now and then.” I suppose my voice must hold bitterness because his face scrunches minutely.

  “I heard you got divorced.”

  I nod. Then, because that’s something I really don’t want to talk about, I say, “I heard you got married. Is your wife here with you?” I kind of tilt my head.

  I’m pretty sure he’s divorced. Two days ago, when the moving van arrived and we didn’t know what was happening, Kori, my youngest sister and the one that actually did date him in high school, happened to be here with all of her smiles and energy and endless optimism, and she called Mrs. Thompson who lives on the other side of Trey and his dad and knows everything that goes on in Good Grief.

  Kori had the scoop within 10 minutes, and she dished it all to Leah and my mom at the kitchen table while I made cookies with Melody and Tammy pretended to grade papers, but she was listening too.

  She’s eight years older than Trey, but he’s that good.

  So yeah, I asked about his wife, but I already am pretty sure she’s not with him. She left him, taking their two boys with her.

  I find that interesting. When Cody left, he wasn’t the slightest bit interested in taking our girls with him.

  He hasn’t been the slightest bit interested in spending much time with them since he’s been gone either.

  Expensive Boobs takes up all his time, I guess.

  Not that I call her Expensive Boobs in front of the kids. Well, once I slipped up. The first Christmas after he left when he didn’t even call. I try hard not to say anything unkind about the ex in front of the kids, but how can you not when they’re crying and asking where he was, and they’re already upset because it was their first family Christmas where their family wasn’t together?

  Maybe I’m the only person in the world whose heart feels like a dumpster fire in her chest when her children cry and hurt and I can’t do anything about it.

  I’m kind of thinking not.

  Anyway, I’m so over him.

  I was also over Trey before I married Cody. And I’m still over Trey.

  This whole magnet, crazy-waves-in-my-chest thing is just weird.

  Although, I’m still staring into his eyes.

  Did I mention they were blue?

  Blue the way mountains are blue in the distance on a hot summer day. Like the sky right after the sun goes down. Blue like the kind of blue that I’m still trying to figure out exactly what shade they are, and that must be why I can’t look away from him.

  I don’t even remember what I was saying.

  Although, the bookbag I’m holding is really heavy. What does Melody have in here, rocks?

  Even as I ask myself that, I know it’s quite possible. She’s a science nerd just like I am, only I love biology, not necessarily organic biology but human biology, which is my jam.

  If I thought I could actually get a job and raise my kids in Good Grief, I would have been a biology major in college.

  But biology majors typically would go on to get postgraduate degrees, and that wasn’t something that was happening for me.

  I didn’t mind at all. I didn’t really want any kind of postgraduate degree; I wanted to live in Good Grief far more. I just love biology.

  My daughter is much more about inorganic science, hence the rocks.

  Regardless, those things get heavy.

  Still, I can’t figure out where I was in the conversation, and Tammy isn’t helping. Trey isn’t either, since either he’s watching to see what stupid thing I do next, or he’s having the same problem with his eyes that I am.

  It’s probably the first.

  You’d think, at this point, things couldn’t get any worse.

  I’m relatively young, but one thing I have learned in my four decades on this earth. Things can always get worse.

  I haven’t had time yet to introduce you to my dog, Midget.

  I say mine, but Midget was one of those things that, when I was still married, my husband took our two girls one afternoon while I was working, and while normally I was always pretty happy when he decided to take some time with them, this time it was a little more difficult for me to be happy, since I got home and was cooking supper when he walked in with two excited little girls and what I thought was a full-grown dog but turned out to be a Great Dane puppy.

  The puppy was a surprise to me. The girls I’d been expecting, obviously.

  Apparently, Expensive Boobs loved Great Danes—she loved looking at them, since when he left me, he left the dog too—and he was trying to impress her with what a wonderful family man he was by getting the girls a puppy.

  If I sound bitter about that, I’m really not. I love Midget. I just don’t love the fact that I have her because Cody was trying to impress another woman.

  Something I think any normal human would be annoyed about, but I could be wrong.

  Anyway, Midget is now the size of a small pony, and she weighs more than I do.

  She’s also rather standoffish toward men. I kinda think she holds it against my ex that he left her too. Anyway, she loves me. And my girls. And Tammy, which is quite a feat.

  I’m kidding about that. I love my sister too. Just sometimes, she’s annoying. Like now.

  Anyway, Midget is like a typical Great Dane, and she’s mostly a couch ornament, except she must have decided after listening to us out on the porch that it was finally time for her to get up and see if there were any intruders she could love to death.

  Now, I don’t know how much experience you have with Great Danes, but when they get excited, they’re kind of like a locomotive. Hard to stop.

  Tammy spends so much time at my house she practically lives here. She’s been alone for three years since her ex left her, and I think it’s easier for her to face her life at my loud and crazy house.

  Anyway, as much time as she’s here, she should be used to Mid
get, but maybe she was just too busy watching Trey and I stare at each other.

  Whatever it is, she just isn’t prepared when Midget comes barreling to the door. Tammy hardly offers any resistance at all since the door pops open, and Midget rumbles out, straight toward me.

  I’m not sure if I mentioned this or not, but I’m not very athletic.

  I guess this is as good a time as any to mention I’m also the girls’ basketball coach at the Good Grief High School as well. It’s a long story, and I’ll tell that some other time.

  Anyway, I know I am going to end up going backward down the three steps because I don’t have any hands to ward Midget off.

  Most of the time, she doesn’t jump up, but when she gets really excited, sometimes she forgets her manners.

  She and I are the same that way. I can’t hold it against her.

  Just like that time at Christmas when I called Cody’s new fling Expensive Boobs in front of the kids.

  Anyway, maybe coaching basketball has been a little bit good for me, because I do manage to get out of Midget’s way before she barrels into me. Unfortunately, as I do, I swing my body around, and Melody’s backpack, which I think I might have mentioned is extremely heavy, swings with me.

  Now, maybe in a perfect world, that would somehow have thrown me off balance and I would have landed in Trey’s arms, and we would realize we are perfect for each other, and all of our problems would vanish, and he would kiss me there in front of my sister and God and everybody, and I’d be planning a wedding right now instead of cringing.

  Because that’s not what happened at all.

  That kind of stuff is for romance novels. Not for real life.

  Let me tell you what happens in real life.

  Melody’s bookbag comes up and slams into my sister, who screams and throws her arms up, losing her balance, taking two large steps forward and crashes into Trey.

  Unfortunately, an object in motion tends to stay in motion unless acted upon by an outside force.

  Trey is quite a force to crash into, but maybe since he isn’t expecting it, he doesn’t really stop her forward momentum. In fact, she pushes him backward, right over the railing, and they both flip heels over head and land on their heads and shoulders in the flower bed.

  So, most of the time, I try to believe that it’s a good idea to be thankful for little things, even in the midst of large catastrophes.

  When you get to know my sister a little better, you’ll realize that this definitely qualifies as a large catastrophe.

  So, I take a nanosecond, and not a hair longer, and am thankful that at least the door is shut, and our cats can’t escape.

  We have three. One for each daughter and one for my husband. He left it, too, when he walked out.

  Anyway, I look over the railing, all traces of any kind of superiority wiped off my face. There’s nothing that makes anyone more upset than to be laughed at when something terrible happens to them.

  I have a lot of faults. A lot. But one of my faults is not that I laugh at people when bad things happen.

  Even though I’ve never seen my proper, serious sister in quite that position before. Her feet are only about two feet from my nose, and her shoulder is in the dirt, with her head in the mulch beside it right next to Trey’s rear end.

  I have no idea how they ended up like that, but if I ever laugh at anyone in a catastrophe, that would be it.

  I button my lips down tight, and when I’m sure I’m not even going to have a lip twitch, let alone a smile, I say, “Are you guys okay?” I admit I say it kind of short and fast, because while Midget is a great dog, she’s never learned to come.

  She loves to be outside. But we can’t ever let her out without being on a leash, other than in our fenced-in backyard, because she runs away.

  So, as much as there are definitely times in my life where I wish I didn’t have a giant dog named Midget running around my house, my girls would be devastated if anything happened to her.

  Truth be told, I am fond of her too and would probably be more broken up than the girls.

  “We’re fine. Go get your dog,” Tammy says, knowing exactly how Midget is, having had to chase her a time or two herself.

  Tammy might be a stickler for details, and she definitely doesn’t wear her emotions on her sleeve or her face or anywhere else, but I know she loves that dog. Almost every bit as much as I do.

  Trey, having no idea what the big rush is, is slower to respond. But I hear him grunt, and then he says, “I’m upside down in the mulch in your flower bed, and you’re asking me if I’m okay?”

  “That means he’s fine,” Tammy says, having had a little experience with men, being that she was married for years and did have two boys.

  Now that I’m certain they’re both all right, my mind is already racing after my dog. I should check Mrs. Thompson’s house first, since when we go for walks, she often feeds Midget scraps. She actually keeps treats in her house for our dog, since she doesn’t have a dog of her own, and when Midget gets the opportunity to roam, she typically goes there first.

  Since Midget is the only Great Dane in Good Grief, she is a favorite of the residents, because she does stand out. We even hitch her to an old pony cart and let her walk in the parades—there are seven or eight of them every year—and people love it. Anyway, she is super popular, and she has a lot of stops to make, and she knows she has to make them fast before I catch up to her.

  I also have a thought in the back of my head that my daughter is cooking and I need to make sure that my house doesn’t burn down. I am hoping to catch Midget sooner than later, and without saying anything more to either one of the two adults who are now adjusting their bodies in the flower bed trying to avoid the rose thorns, I set out.

  Chapter 3

  Trey

  I’M GOING TO ADMIT first thing I’ve never done anything like that before.

  No one who knows me would call me clumsy.

  Not even close.

  Claire has always done that to me.

  Growing up, she’d always been older, and probably like for most teenage boys, she was that beautiful, untouchable, drop-dead gorgeous older woman who was completely off limits to me. Which of course meant that I was absolutely head over heels in love with her from the time I was about six.

  I never saw her in school. From what I heard from other people, she was studious and bookish, but I never saw her there.

  She was that much older. Not even kidding.

  I’d see her in the backyard dancing to her boombox.

  Once in a while, I saw her in their hall window, walking past and flinging her hair around, or a couple of times, she had her arms set like she was waltzing with someone invisible.

  She just seemed so mysterious and yet at the same time so approachable. She always had a sweet smile and a word or two for me.

  I know she was just being nice, but those kind words and smiles fueled all my teenage daydreams.

  So, since she was so much older than I was and completely out of my league, when I got to high school, I did the next best thing. I dated her sister.

  Her sister wasn’t anything like her, and that relationship didn’t last long. It lasted longer than maybe it would have if I hadn’t put so much effort into keeping it, because I saw Claire more while I was dating Kori than I did at any other time in my life.

  I even ate supper with her family a few times. Saw her at holidays.

  She graduated from college the same year I graduated from high school, and then I left and never came back. Not for more than a couple weekend visits in the summer maybe.

  Eventually, her parents moved out, and she and her husband bought her childhood home and started a family.

  I guess when she got married, it should have killed my daydreams. It did mostly. I don’t believe in coveting another man’s wife, except in my head, she wasn’t another man’s wife.

  Still, once she was married, that meant she’d never be mine, and so by the time I graduated from col
lege, I had a girl, one who is as different from Claire as she could be, and I married her.

  Everybody makes mistakes. That was a big one for me.

  Now she’s got my boys in Florida. Long story.

  I’m here in Idaho because my dad had a stroke. He’s pretty young for a stroke, mid-50s, but exercise and nutrition are things I’ve always been interested in, and I thought I could probably help him.

  Okay. I’d also heard that Claire lived beside him again. That’s a long story too.

  Regardless, I don’t forget my manners as I manage to get myself up out of the dirt, and instead of chasing after Claire like I want to, I turn around and hold my hand out for Tammy.

  Tammy is also older than I am, but she was never interesting to me like Claire.

  She grasps it, her fingers long and slender, her eyes—which I admit are a pretty shade of green—don’t captivate me the way Claire’s do, but I meet them anyway.

  “Thank you,” she says with more dignity than most women who’d just been lying facedown in the dirt would. One of her feet is still leaning up against the porch wall. She grabs my hand, rights her feet, and stands up.

  I was a pretty good ballplayer in high school, like a lot of kids. Partly because I was six feet tall at a young age. Tammy isn’t that much shorter than I am, and I don’t have to bend my neck to look down at her.

  As I recall, Claire is about the same height.

  My ex is short.

  I guess right there you know that I’m not the smartest dude in the world and certainly not the first one who married a woman who was all wrong for him.

  I would have made it work, if only for the kids’ sake, but she didn’t want to. Or I guess she just found a guy she could love more than me. Or love instead of me.

  Whatever. I’m over it.

  “You okay?” I ask, dropping my hand. There is no reason to keep a hold of hers. I have a feeling, if it were Claire’s hand in mine, I would have tried to find an excuse to hold on.

  “I am.” Her brows raise as her eyes skim over my face. Has my nose grown? Or can she tell that the high school crush she’d been talking about was actually me? I don’t say that, of course. I just wait.