Snow Falling on Bluegrass Page 17

  “You know, I kept trying to find the right time to do this.” Josh sighed, tugging a small parcel out of his pocket. “I wanted to find some perfect romantic moment and they kept getting ruined by Scrabble fights and trying not to freeze to death and people being locked in closets. And now, I realize that’s what our life together is always going to be, Sadie. These loud, insane moments of panic and mayhem, occasionally interrupted by you doing something awesome. So I guess there’s no better time for me to do this.”

  Josh got down on one knee and opened the small black velvet box. The ring inside, a small square solitaire flanked by tiny sapphires, was my personal pick after Josh had narrowed the search to a mere dozen possibilities. “Sadie, I love you. I don’t think I really understood how much fun, frustration, and absolute insanity loving someone could be until I met you. Would you please marry me?”

  “Now? You’re choosing to propose now?” Sadie exclaimed, jerking her head toward the pile of luggage and dirty linens. “Now?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  A happy smile quirked Sadie’s trembling lips as she lifted the ring box to eye level. “I noticed you slipped some UK blue into the setting.”

  “It’s your birthstone,” Josh said brightly. “The connection to my beloved and far superior alma mater has almost nothing to do with my choice.”

  “Well, despite your misplaced loyalty, I love you,” she told him. “So I will marry you.”

  “Yeah?” He sprang to his feet and threw his arms around her. She laughed, kissing him deeply while he tried—and failed—to slip the ring on her finger. “Fantastic. Also, I quit.”

  “What?!” she exclaimed.

  Our collective jaws dropped, and Theresa’s eyes grew wide and frightened. “Nobody move,” she whispered. “If she sees you move, she might attack, like a velociraptor.”

  I turned to Charlie. “Did Josh bring that up when he was brainstorming proposal scenarios?”

  Charlie shook his head, and Theresa whispered, “Stop moving!”

  Josh bobbed on his feet and gave Sadie his best “bad news” face. “As my spouse, you would not be allowed to supervise me. It’s against department policy.”

  “No! Josh, you can’t leave; we’ve talked about this!” she exclaimed. “I don’t deal well with change! And that would be a big change!”

  “A bigger change than getting married?” Will whispered. I shrugged.

  “That is why you are looking at the latest marketing director for the state department of agriculture,” Josh finished.

  “That’s in our building.” Sadie said, relaxing in Josh’s arms.

  “So we’ll still see each other every day,” he said. “And I’ll still be around to help you if you get stuck on an idea or in a panic cycle. I’ll even come and help at the state fair if you want.”

  “But I’ll miss you,” she protested. “And I’m whining right now, which is probably ruining the whole proposal thing. But still, I don’t know what I’m going to do without you.”

  “It’s for the best, honey. It’ll be great. And I won’t have to call you ‘boss’ anymore, which will do wonders for my pride.”

  “I love you, you insane person.” And with that, Sadie gave him a lingering kiss.

  “You know what?” Gina exclaimed. “I can’t take any more of this. Y’all are just a bunch of drama junkies, setting up these bizarre scenarios so you can act out some plot from a soap opera and pretend like you have lives! It’s ridiculous and sad and I’m not going to have anything to do with it anymore!”

  “Drama.” I snorted. “You mean like breaking into someone’s phone and deleting texts and then baiting another coworker into looking at them so she’ll draw some inappropriate conclusions?”

  The color drained out of Gina’s face, and for just a second her mouth flopped open like a guppy’s. I heard Sadie whisper, “Quick, grab Kelsey’s arms.” But I just stared at Gina with a perfectly pleasant, if slightly enigmatic, smile on my face.

  Gina cleared her throat delicately. “I’m sure I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Oh, I’m sure you wouldn’t,” I said, giving her even more of the scary smile.

  “When everybody is done feeding into Sadie’s irrational need for attention, I’ll be in the van!” Gina yelled, dragging her suitcase out the front entrance, smacking it against her legs as she rushed.

  “It’s nice that everything is getting back to normal,” Sadie said, kissing Josh. She turned to me. “And you, that was unusually restrained for you. I appreciate you not going with the nuclear option of beating the tar out of her the minute the closet door opened. It saves me a lot of paperwork.”

  “Oh, Charlie and I talked about it and agreed that route was too obvious and potentially prosecutable,” I said as the others followed Gina’s lead and lugged their bags out of the lobby. “So we’re going the subtle route. I made a few phone calls last night and I don’t think Gina is going to be our problem for very much longer.”

  Josh pursed his lips. “I know I shouldn’t ask, for the sake of plausible deniability, but what do you mean?”

  “Well, for instance, did you know that Gina doesn’t know how to use mail merge? Theresa does it for her every time she has to send out a mass mailing from the commissioner. Also, Gina doesn’t know that you can’t click on those ‘You have won a free iPad!’ pop-ups every time you see one, and Tom is getting really sick of clearing all of those viruses off her hard drive. And the caterer that we use for department events? Refuses to deal with Gina after she called him a ‘useless waste of space whose crab puffs taste like crap,’ so Carol over in hospitality services has to handle that for her. And the florist who remembers to send bouquets to the commissioner’s wife on her birthday and anniversary without Gina reminding him? He’s never really liked Gina. So all I had to do was call these people up, ask how they were doing, and remind them of all the little ways Gina has screwed them over the years, and mysteriously they don’t want to do her little favors anymore. I predict her professional implosion within three weeks.”

  Also, I may or may not have arranged for my boys to put Gina on no-fly lists for several federal agencies. But the less Sadie knew about that, the better.

  “That sounds a lot like Protocol: Icarus,” Charlie noted.

  “Augh, I keep forgetting to call that off!” I groaned. “Too late now.”

  “Well, on that note.” Sadie threw her arm toward the door and announced, “Okay, everybody, let’s get out of here!”

  Stretching my sore back muscles, I stepped away from the ice-blue wall of my apartment and considered my almost-completed paint job. The coat of “Scottish Mist” had dried over the past few days. Charlie and I were now painting the silhouettes of tall, thin birch trees in shades of gray and white. It was simple, comfortable, and it reminded me of those days trapped in the snowy woods with my friends. And Gina.

  “That looks really nice,” I told Charlie as he finished a particularly fractal branch. “I never thought I’d say this, but I sort of miss the lodge.”

  “Yes, I too miss the sounds of Bonnie’s snoring and the threat of death by canned beans,” Charlie quipped, ducking when I tossed a paint rag at him. I laughed and he pulled me close, kissing the tip of my nose, then my forehead, landing on my mouth with an urgency that still startled me, even after weeks of those kisses. “I don’t miss the setting, but the company more than made up for it.”

  “I will admit, the setting had its drawbacks. But it built our character, right?” I still had the marks of our ordeal on me. I still tried to use the bathroom without the lights on. I occasionally caught myself trying to return the milk carton to my balcony instead of my fridge. And I still based my prediction of how my day was going to go on whether I had fuzzy socks available.

  “Trust me, Kelsey, you have enough character.” He gave me one last peck on the lips before returnin
g to his tree.

  I had stood my ground about not moving out of the Mayfair. But my apartment was going through a major post-Darrell overhaul, thanks to the extra cash I’d made from my ice storm photos. My work had been posted to several state agency Web sites, from the forestry department to human resources, demonstrating the ice buildup, the tree damage, and the effects of long-term confinement on employees. Because I was one of the few state reps to have the presence of mind to document the ice storm “up close and personal,” Sadie negotiated a healthy rate of compensation by other agencies that wanted to use my work. I was even getting offers to do freelance shots for the various state departments, and a 4-H agent from the Marshall County Cooperative Extension office asked me to shoot her wedding. So far, I’d made enough to pay for my apartment makeover and undo several of Darrell’s less scrupulous dings to my credit.

  The worst of those dings had been ironed out by the time we returned from captivity. Once again, my beloved Lost Boys had stepped in to save my behind. It turned out that one of the companies they developed software for sold vendor payment systems, giving the boys contacts at several different credit card companies. They didn’t even have to break any laws to clear my name from the accounts Darrell signed up for without my knowledge. They just had to provide the right people with affidavits stating that the accounts were opened without my consent. Membership in the nerd herd had its privileges.

  I’d spent the first week after the Retreat from Hell, as Josh was officially calling it, turning my apartment inside out. Sadie and Bonnie helped, in that they came over with booze and candy bars to do this breakup cleansing ritual right, something I’d never bothered with before because I never felt like the breakup was permanent. But now I knew with absolute certainty: I never wanted to see Darrell again . . . unless he ended up on the news for developing a rare strain of flesh-eating bacteria or falling in a sinkhole or something.

  I had not heard from him since our return. Probably because I changed my phone number the day after we got home. Of course, this meant my mother wasn’t able to contact me either . . . and I was okay with that. After our phone conversation at the lodge, she had sent me an e-mail saying she wouldn’t speak to me until I’d kissed and made up with Darrell and apologized for treating her so rudely. I was perfectly at ease with letting her wait. Both of them had been specters poisoning my psyche for too long. My mother had held her disapproval and silence like a hammer over my head for as long as I could remember. She could deal with me not speaking to her for a change.

  My boys heartily approved of the Mom Embargo and were happy to present me with the checkpoints they’d met on the Protocol: Icarus list, including signing Darrell up for membership in the Justin Bieber fan club, closing all of Darrell’s online accounts, posting Darrell’s picture on the “banned customer” Web page for every Gamer’s Paradise store across the country, and arranging for him to receive every incarnation of the Oriental Trading Company catalogue. They were particularly proud of their pièce de résistance, which was remotely accessing his phone and installing a virus that would dial his mother’s number at random times at least once every twelve hours. So even if he didn’t get drawn into awkward “But I didn’t mean to call you, Mom” conversations with his mother—who wouldn’t appreciate being told that attention paid to her was accidental—she would pick up his inadvertent calls without his knowledge and get an earful of Darrell’s unfiltered conversations, most of which would radically change her view of him as her sweet little boy. Considering how often he threatened to call my mother with upsetting news, I preferred to think of this as sweet, well-executed justice. And reminded myself never to get on the boys’ collective bad side.

  The boys also held a council meeting to determine whether Charlie was worthy or whether they would have to chase him off with a mix of cyber-harassment and threats with cosplay weapons. But then Charlie started talking about mixed-integer nonlinear programming and they practically wanted to date him. I had a hard time keeping them out of the apartment so I could get some alone time with him.

  I did gripe about the interference, but in truth, my friends’ enthusiasm helped us take things slow. Neither of us was ready for the relationship we wanted together. We were working our way up to it with subtle not-quite-dates and nonpermanent renovations to my apartment that would make it look dramatically different from the one I’d shared with Darrell. Between the frozen forest motif on the walls, the new glass-and-chrome coffee table, and the minimalist but comfy white couch cover I planned to get, my new living room was going to be downright trendy.

  And while I was recovering from the massive sugar high/hangover fueled by my friends’ generosity, Bonnie had sorted through my closet, thrown out any remaining Darrell debris, and then installed an organizer rack thing that allowed me to actually see all my shoes at once. I had way more shoes than I realized, but still not nearly enough. It was the catch-22 of shoe worship.

  “Have I mentioned I have some ideas for your bedroom?” Charlie asked casually.

  “I’m all ears.”

  “I was thinking of a pillow-fort-slash-sultan theme, lots of pillows and blankets on the floor under a big dining room table. Maybe a little gas fireplace.”

  “Oh, you’re funny, you are.”

  He wiggled his eyebrows naughtily. “It’s only funny if you’re not willing to do it, in which case, yes, I am totally joking.”

  “You’re putting an awful lot of thought into a room that you won’t see for another . . .” I glanced at the KCT calendar on the fridge, as if I wasn’t acutely aware of exactly how much time was left before the sex embargo was lifted. “Five months and two weeks.”

  He groaned. “Don’t remind me. I’m in a state of sexual denial.”

  “That’s a slogan we haven’t tried yet. ‘Kentucky—a State of Sexual Denial.’ ”

  A bold knock at the door sounded and I reached for my purse to grab cash for our planned takeout feast. “That would be the deliveryman from Jasmine Garden with our dinner, which, clearly, I slaved over the phone ordering. Prepare for katsu don so good it will make you write God a thank-you note for creating pork.”

  “I’m offended that you think I haven’t already,” said Charlie, who had taken out his wallet and counted out the total, plus a healthy tip.

  “I’m not letting you pay for dinner when you’re being used as manual labor,” I told him.

  “You bought lunch,” he reminded me. “That means it’s my turn. And while we’re standing here arguing, poor Tony is standing outside, holding our rapidly cooling katsu don.”

  I huffed out a breath, but I wasn’t sure if it was based in annoyance at being outmaneuvered or at being so awkward about Charlie’s behaving like a reasonable adult over issues like money and work. I had to stop calling attention to the fact that I was not used to dating a grown-up. I was a work in progress. “We’ll talk about this when imperiled pork isn’t an issue.”

  “I’m sure we will,” Charlie said, packing up the painting supplies for the night.

  With a smile on my face, I whipped the door open, prepared to greet Tony, my favorite delivery guy. “I hope you remembered the extra wasabi this time, To— Shit.”

  There was Darrell, making the stupid doe eyes at me. He was disheveled, with big bags under the baby browns and a shirt that looked like it hadn’t even seen the inside of a hamper, much less an iron, in weeks. He leaned against the doorjamb, one foot already past the threshold, and gave me what I’m sure he thought was his best lazy-sexy smile. “Baby. Did you miss me? I missed you.”

  I was proud that instead of beaning him over the head with the heavy decorative metal tree on my entryway table, my first instinct was to slam the door in his face. I didn’t want to insult him. I didn’t want to attack him. I just wanted him gone. I considered that a step in the right direction, emotional-maturity-wise. I heard Charlie rinsing out the paint brushes in the kitchen. Please, please,
I prayed, just let him stay in there while I get rid of Darrell. Seeing another “bull in the pen” would only make Darrell’s stupid caveman brain go into overdrive and the situation would escalate so quickly that cold katsu don would be the least of our problems.

  Instead of whacking him with the big metal tree, I grabbed the doorknob and tried to shut the door in his face. “No. I have not missed you. Go away.”

  Darrell slammed his hand against the door with a lot more force than I expected from him. I stepped back. “Aw, come on, don’t be like that. We need to talk, baby.”

  “Shouldn’t you be calling Shelley ‘baby’?” I asked brightly. “Or did that not work out for you?”

  I would admit that was a cheap shot. Thanks to my network of building spies, I already knew that Shelley had tossed Darrell’s delinquent ass out of her apartment just before we returned from the lodge. She apparently had a much lower tolerance for unpaid bills and unwashed dishes than I did.

  Darrell eyed me with exasperation, like he couldn’t believe I was putting up a fuss. “Kelsey, just let me in and we’ll work things out like we always do. Look, you win, okay? We’ll get married . . . in a year or so. I’ll get you a ring and everything.”

  “Well, be still my beating freaking heart, Darrell. You know how to sweep a girl off her feet.”

  “Why do you always have to be such a bitch?” he growled. “I’m just trying to give you what you want!”

  “What I want is definitely not you. It took nearly freezing to death in the middle of nowhere to get me to realize that my life is so much better without you in it. Now, go find somebody else to annoy.”

  This unexpected show of spine seemed to shock Darrell. I never talked to him this way. I placated and I cajoled. But I had never used that tone with him. And he clearly didn’t appreciate the new Kelsey. The wounded-puppy expression dropped like a stone. His eyes narrowed and his lip curled back into a sneer. “You’re lucky I’m willing to take you back after all the crap I have to put up with from you. It’s not like you’re some kind of prize.”