“And who dictates fun, Ian? Getting hammered and embarrassing yourself and your host is fun?” She shook her head, calming herself. “This is ridiculous. This is just completely ridiculous. I hired you to do a job, and you failed to complete your duties in a satisfactory manner. You have no reason to be upset. I do. You just listen and learn.”
Her voice was now perfectly modulated, and there was no possible way Ian couldn’t recognize the sense behind her words.
“You’re right,” he said. See? To her pleasure, his tone had calmed considerably. “You’re right! You did hire me. And my mistake was thinking that I was ever anything besides an employee.”
If they weren’t in the middle of a disagreement, that might have made her chest flutter. The timing was unfortunate. Worse, she was the one left to define them outside of their working relationship when she hadn’t figured out what that was for herself.
She cleared her throat. “Of course you aren’t just an employee, Ian. We have a connection. We’re—” She searched for something safe. Something that didn’t limit or obligate. “We’re friends.” Yes. They could remain friends after this was all over. Hopefully even friends with benefits.
Apparently Ian felt differently.
“Friends? Hah!” He paced, like a caged tiger in her kitchen. “Friends don’t treat each other like idiots. Friends don’t complain about the hostess gifts the other one brings. And last I checked, sleeping with someone is not par for the course in a normal friendship.”
“This is hardly a normal friendship, Ian.” She wasn’t ready to take the benefits off the table.
“Don’t patronize me, Jane. Of course it isn’t. Because it’s never been a real friendship.”
“Of course it—” she started.
“No. It’s never been anything more than your Pygmalion fantasy. The poor little rich girl, molding the literally poor guy into her image. Do you have the slightest clue what this has felt like to me? How degrading it is, to be told that my clothes aren’t good enough, that the way I talk isn’t good enough, that I am not good enough?”
He was roaring again, and Jane took a step back.
“I’m sure who you are is fine in your regular life. But this was a job. You knew what it was when you took the position.”
“Do you think I ever forgot for a single second that this was a job?” His voice was lower but somehow filled with even more rage. “You made it so clear that you were paying me to behave in a certain way. And I didn’t do anything wrong, Jane, I dressed like you said, and I talked like you said, and I made sure all your friends had a great time at your party. You know what? Nothing will ever be good enough for you.
“I will never be good enough for you.”
And with that, he walked through the door and out of her life.
Jane opened her mouth. Then closed it. Opened it again, then closed it for good because there was no one there to talk to anymore anyway.
She did let out a final harrumph before turning away from the door. Just so she could have the last word.
Besides, this was just fine. Absolutely fine. The finest.
Ian had saved her the trouble of going through an it’s-not-you-it’s-me speech. All they would do now was the wedding, no kissing, and now that she thought about it, she’d never asked if he could dance, but she was fairly certain even a basic box step would be beyond him.
So that was another moment of intimacy they didn’t have to have. Her little inner voice said, you didn’t need the truly intimate intimacy, either, but at that thought, the lump in her throat grew bigger.
She had to go back to the initial plan.
This whole thing had been to show up Blake, not to become entangled with the guy she’d hired to do so. This was exactly how things went bad—by deviating from the course. She should have known that. Sticking with the original arrangement ensured a tidy outcome.
Well, it wasn’t too late to get back on track.
She checked into her Facebook group, the BBB ladies. Since hiring Ian, she’d barely graced it with her presence, but now she was interested. The wedding was days away. What was the chatter on the street, so to speak?
Fiona MacDougall: Anyone want to share a stretch Hummer?
Ella Chang: Count me in, plus my date: he’s also a count. ;)
Courtney Fick: We already hired a horse-drawn carriage, thx tho!
Ruby Hapstall: My date is uncomfortable with people he doesn’t know, paps everywhere lol! We’re helicoptering.
Good grief. Everyone, but everyone, was going all out. The modes of arrival were far too ostentatious for Jane’s taste, but it certainly looked like everyone had managed to collect dates that would show Blake they weren’t sitting around pining after him.
This was just not fair. She hadn’t pined either, but that was not going to be apparent when she showed up with a guy who would probably use the wrong silverware and was barely speaking to her anyway.
Then something else hit her—what if he didn’t go at all?
The thought made the lump in her throat sink like a rock to her stomach. Was it possible? Would Ian really back out on his obligation like that?
Actually.
She hadn’t paid him his final payment.
And after that fight they’d had…
Jane carefully reviewed what was said. His parting words had had an air of finality to them that may not have had anything to do with getting the parting shot in, as she’d initially assumed.
Her eyes suddenly pricked with tears. Because she was dateless for the wedding, of course. Not for any other reason.
Was she really back where she started?
No, actually, she was probably even farther back now, because not only was she flying solo again, but she’d also wasted hours of her time training Ian for nothing.
A memory came back to her of lying beneath him, close to the brink, as he paused in his motions for a second, just long enough to smile at her and brush a piece of hair back from her cheek.
Well. Maybe not for nothing.
And then she wanted to slam her hand down all over again. How dare he be so mean to her when they’d shared such a wonderful moment? All she’d wanted was for her dinner night to be wonderful too. She was not going to be made to feel guilty about sharing with him her disappointment.
And the more she thought about it, the more she felt resolved, even with the tears streaming down her cheeks. Maybe she’d just blow the whole thing off. She wasn’t going to Blake and Andy’s wedding—where guests and their rich, famous dates ‘coptered in—alone.
She really shouldn’t have played into this whole thing to begin with.
She shouldn’t have let her emotions run away and RSVP yes. She shouldn’t have formed a Facebook group. She shouldn’t have trolled the internet to find a date she could sculpt into what she needed. And she most certainly should not have developed feelings for him.
Friend feelings, nothing more. But feelings all the same.
No, the most reasonable course of action would have been to deny Blake Stupid Donovan the satisfaction of a response at all. Then this whole Ian fiasco would never have taken place.
So that settled it. She couldn’t erase what had happened, but she could fix the future. She simply would not go to the wedding. In the morning, first thing, she’d send the gift she’d bought them—a gaudy gravy boat from their wedding registry at Macy’s (Macy’s?! Must have been Andy’s idea)—along with a note of regret.
As for now, she was going to brew a nice cup of peppermint tea, polish off the last cookie, and go to bed with her head held high.
Jane felt amazing.
Nine
Jane felt terrible.
She’d had four hot chocolates today alone—two of them spiked—and even that hadn’t been enough to pull her from her stupor. What was wrong with the world?
She had a feeling her melancholy had to do with Ian and her party since it began to fester in her that night as she’d lain awake in bed. But she couldn�
�t understand exactly what about that was continuing to make her so miserable. She’d really thought she’d worked all of that out. She didn’t need him for the wedding now that she wasn’t going, so that wasn’t it. It was possible that she could be lamenting the fact that he’d given such a poor impression at her dinner, but, really, the Ladies and what they thought of her barely seemed of interest at the moment.
Besides, Tinsley had texted her twice to assure her the party had been a blast. Jane hadn’t realized the woman was such a kind friend before. No, it wasn’t the dinner.
Jane thought, instead, that her misery might have to do with Ian himself. With the words exchanged between the two of them, because every time she let her mind replay the events of their last encounter, something stabbed cruelly inside her—above her gut and under her upper ribs. Kind of in the general area of her heart.
Yet she still couldn’t figure out why.
Yes, she’d said some pretty harsh things to him. But it wasn’t as if they hadn’t been true things. She’d been on the right side of the argument, and it had been her general experience that being right usually tended to produce happier emotions.
Maybe she was coming down with something. The flu. Or mono. It was called the kissing disease for a reason, after all, and she and Ian had done an awful lot of kissing.
For some reason that thought made the stabbing more intense.
Was severe internal chest spasms a symptom of mono? Google said no, but there were those who always said not to believe everything you read on the internet, though it did sort of seem like the people who said that only bought into it when doing so was beneficial to their argument.
In this case, she had to concede that Google was probably correct.
Still, there had to be a reason she felt morose and despondent during her most favorite time of the year. Seasonal Affective Disorder? Surely that wouldn’t just come on one morning after years of winter joy.
She couldn’t believe there were only two more boxes to open on her Advent calendar. Two more sleeps until the glorious day itself. Usually she’d be beside herself with excitement, spending every last minute wrapped in Christmas festivity.
Maybe that was it! She wasn’t being festive enough!
She’d spent so much time prepping and priming Ian that she hadn’t had a chance to fully involve herself with the activities of the season. Sitting around moping the past several days had likely only made the situation worse. And if that was the problem, then the solution was obvious—she just needed to celebrate more. Needed to keep wrapping and baking and caroling and Christmas-ing. Needed to grab the holiday by its antlers and take it for a ride.
Since she was still in her pajamas—yes, it was four pm, but there was no one around to judge her for it—and since she was more than a little bit tipsy, she decided to attack the festivity-ing with a little less gusto. Like, maybe she could put on a movie.
Yes, that was an excellent idea!
A fun, happy, feel-good Christmas standard was bound to raise her spirits. And she knew just the one to watch, too.
She took another sip from her most recent cup of cocoa, wiping away the whipped cream mustache it left on her upper lip before getting up off her couch to find her DVD of It’s a Wonderful Life, her most favorite movie of the season.
Of any season, really; after a tough day in May she had been occasionally known to throw it on and pretend snow was on the way.
With the fire blazing, her hot chocolate topped off with bourbon and her grandmother’s Christmas shawl wrapped around her, Jane cozied up on the couch and got lost in the story. Even though she could practically quote the whole thing from heart, she viewed it this time with fresh eyes, dedicating herself fully to the world on the screen so she wouldn’t have to think anymore about Ian and the pain in her chest.
As she often did when she was alone, Jane provided her own commentary while she watched. She used to focus the conversation toward Fluffy. But since the passing of her dear cat, she hadn’t broken the habit.
“What’s with the way they talked in movies back then?” she asked the empty room, early on the show. Did people really talk like that? She’d remembered a documentary once where they explained that actors of that generation took on a mid-Atlantic accent. It had seemed silly to her. Why couldn’t people just talk the way they talked? Jimmy Stewart, the star of the movie, she noticed, didn’t assume any affectation. He spoke in his natural, rural-Pennsylvanian dialect, sounding the same both onscreen and in interviews she’d seen of him.
She liked it. Liked his unencumbered manner of speaking. “It makes him seem warmer. More personable. Kind of like Ian’s Southie accent,” she added, guiltily.
That was different, though. Wasn’t it?
His dialect had mattered. Because it informed people where he’d grown up, but maybe she’d been too hard on him about it. She actually liked the sound of his voice. The distinctive low vowels. The obvious dental stops. It was charming, actually. Very him. She could have let that go more than she had in her training sessions.
At least he didn’t speak crassly or with vulgarity, and certainly successful people came from the South side too.
And maybe that hadn’t been as big of a deal as she’d made it either, the successful bit. No one seemed to care that Blake Donovan was marrying a nobody. So would it really have been an issue if Jane Osborne had brought a nobody as her date?
Not that Ian was a nobody. He was definitely a somebody, a man she admired very much. He’d given up his own college dreams to come home and care for his family. Wasn’t that commendable?
“Just like George,” she remarked, seeing the parallel between Ian and the character on the screen. That was a good thing about George, sacrificing his own career for his brother’s happiness. It was a good thing about Ian too.
Perhaps she should have told him.
“It’s neither here nor there at this point,” she muttered, taking a full swallow of her cocoa. But even as she dismissed it, the thought pinched at her, making her uncomfortable no matter how she positioned herself. Like she had shingles, but on the inside.
Maybe she could send him a card? Something really nice. Or would that be rubbing it in? Perhaps just a simple Hallmark would be the thing. A quick apology, and she’d be feeling right as rain again. It could even include his final check, just as a gesture of good faith, even if he wasn’t going to attend the wedding.
Only, the plan didn’t give her the immediate sense of relief she’d thought it would.
As she always did, she blubbered when the movie reached the end. It had such a timeless theme that hit her deep in the chest. But this time it seemed even more poignant than usual. She thought about the meaning, thought about how George learned that his life couldn’t be measured by his standing in society, but by the people he’d loved.
Wasn’t that so perfectly beautiful?
Wait.
Oh, no.
She sat forward on the couch. “Oh, no, oh, no. Oh. No.”
She was such a hypocrite. Such a big fat whimpering hypocrite.
She’d embraced and loved this movie for as long as she could remember, and yet she had never thought about applying the message to her own life. There’d been no need. She’d been happy as she was, with her lifestyle and her class. She’d never had to examine whether she’d be happy with herself if those were missing. Her abundant trust fund ensured she’d never have to.
But now, because of Ian, she found herself at a crossroads. Either she believed that social status really didn’t matter, or she thought that It’s a Wonderful Life and its message was just a pile of reindeer doo-doo. The latter provided its own enigma, because no one with refined taste would ever equate the Capra classic to a bunch of crap.
Money and stature weren’t important. She knew that, deep in her heart. She also knew that her life didn’t reflect this fact.
Yep, she was a big fat hypocrite.
“Well, then,” she said. Because what else does a person
say when she’s made to face her greatest flaw? Now she had to decide whether she wanted to do anything about it.
She looked around her beautifully decorated home, then looked down at herself in PJs drinking alone on the eve of Christmas Eve. She was pathetic and miserable, and maybe that wouldn’t change much even if she shifted her priorities, but there was also a chance it would. As Ian had pointed out, Parker Winthrop had already said that this year’s party had been the best Jane had ever had. She must have meant it, too, because she repeated it on Facebook the next day. Jane had originally assumed it was sarcastic, but now. . .
She might win even more people’s favor if she tried less to obtain it.
Silly thing was, she didn’t care about winning anyone’s favor anymore except Ian’s. If she tried hard enough to make amends, maybe she could have him back. And, oh, wouldn’t that make a wonderful life?
Suddenly, she wanted that life more than anything. Wanted it now. She had to see him.
She bolted off the sofa and was halfway up the stairs to change her clothes when she realized the fatal flaw in her plan—in both her plans: she didn’t have his address.
Okay. That was fine. It probably was best she didn’t show up out of the blue anyway. He most likely would be hesitant to see her, and a face-to-face encounter, in front of his family, no less, could be really awkward.
She could call him.
But again, she wasn’t sure he’d even pick up, and she’d be beyond devastated if he sent her directly to voicemail.
So, still in her PJs, she sat at her computer and opened up her email. She clicked Compose, and, after filling in his address on the recipient’s line, she typed a message comprised of the three hardest words to say: I was wrong.
By the following afternoon, Jane still had no response from Ian. Not a call, not a text, not a simple reply to her email to say he’d received it.
The pain in her chest had moved to a pain all over.
No question about it—she was heartbroken. She missed the man. Terribly. She ached with how much she wanted to see him.
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