The Proposal

by Jasmine Guillory

  “You forgot the most important part,” Angela said. “It said ‘Nicole, I love you, will you marry me?’ Nicole with a C!”

  Dana and Courtney gasped in unison. The appropriate response.

  “He spelled your name wrong in his proposal?” Courtney asked.

  “Yes!” Nik said. “But wait, think about that part later, let me get the whole story out first. So when I saw the thing up on the screen, I thought it was some sort of joke or that he was just showing me because that’s my name and it was someone else in the stadium, or something like that. He’d never even said I love you to me before—which, if he had, this whole nightmare today never would have happened, because I’d have cut that thing off in a heartbeat, but anyway. Wait, where was I?”

  “You saw it up on the screen . . . ?” Dana prompted her.

  “Oh, yeah. So I turned to him, and he was down on one knee. With a ring box in his hand!”

  “What did the ring look like?” Courtney asked.

  “The ring?” Nik paused. She’d been so freaked out at the time she hadn’t even looked at it. “I have no idea. I don’t think I even saw it. Hell, I don’t even remember what I said to him, something about how we should have talked about this before, and then he said something like, ‘Are you saying no?’ and I told him I wasn’t saying that out loud, and then he told me to just live a little. LIVE A LITTLE. Like deciding to get married on a whim is the thing all the cool girls are doing these days. And when I again refused, he got furious and stood up and left and his friends followed him.” She turned to Carlos. “Did I forget anything?”

  Carlos made a face. Oh shit, what had she forgotten?

  “Just that . . . just that there was a camera on you the whole time, so the entire thing was broadcast to the whole stadium. No one could hear what you were saying—I mean, we could, we were just a few rows behind you and your dude talked pretty loudly—but what was going on was probably pretty clear to everyone.”

  “Oh yeah, right. That part.” Nik put her head down on the table. “I think I need to just stay here for the next few days. Throw a blanket over me and just leave me here in the bar, and for the love of God, take my phone with you. Maybe by the time I resurface, everyone will forget that any of this ever happened.”

  Dana patted Nik on the back and Courtney took the phone that Nik had tossed on the table and tucked it away in her pocket.

  Someone pushed her drink against her hand. She grabbed it, lifted her head, took a sip, and put her head back down on the table. Thank God for bourbon.

  “Did I forget anything else?” Nik sat up and pushed her hair back.

  “I saw the ring,” Angela said.

  “WHAT?” the whole table said in unison.

  Angela looked at Carlos.

  “You didn’t see it? Oh yeah. He opened the ring box when he first got down on one knee, and the camera zeroed in on the ring. I can’t believe you didn’t notice.”

  She knew there was a reason she’d wanted Carlos and Angela to stay.

  “Well?” Nik asked. “Don’t keep me in suspense. What did it look like? Please tell me you remember.”

  Angela paused.

  “Okay, you know the Kate Middleton ring, right? The Princess Diana one? With the huge sapphire in the middle and diamonds all around it? It looked just like that. Except smaller.”

  Nik banged her drink down on the table. It sloshed everywhere, but she was past the point of caring.

  “Does he think he’s some kind of a prince?” She took a deep breath. “Wait, that sounded mean. That was mean, I guess. But . . .”

  “But you are not a princess ring kind of person,” Courtney finished.

  “But I am not a princess ring kind of person!” Nik said. “Nothing against princess rings, but IF I wanted an engagement ring from him—which I absolutely did not—it wouldn’t have been a replica of a princess ring. He obviously doesn’t know me that well; I’m not a baseball-game proposal kind of person, either. But seriously, a princess ring? For ME?”

  “You did get up at four a.m. to watch Harry and Meghan’s wedding though,” Dana said.

  “That was different,” Nik said. “Anyway, is there anything else I missed about the proposal?” she asked Carlos and Angela. “Am I remembering the forlorn look on Fisher’s face correctly?”

  Carlos shrugged. “He looked more outraged than forlorn, really. Like a kid having a tantrum.”

  Yeah . . . that sounded like Fisher, unfortunately. She mopped up her spilled drink with some of the extra napkins Pete had left on the table.

  “Carlos is right,” Angela said. “No offense, but he seemed like kind of a baby.”

  Nik shrugged and sighed. Fisher had been kind of a baby. A baby with beautiful blond hair he constantly admired in the mirror and great abs. So yeah, it made sense that he would yell and storm off when she’d publicly rejected his proposal.

  “None taken. He was kind of a baby. But babies can be pretty great sometimes—isn’t that why people like them?”

  Carlos cleared his throat.

  “As a professional baby expert: people like babies because they’re cute, they have big heads, and because they’re pretty helpless without us. They can scream really loudly, though.”

  Courtney nodded.

  “Yep, that sounds like Fisher. Down to the big—”

  “COURTNEY!”

  Dana and Courtney giggled and high-fived, and Nik tried and failed to suppress her laughter.

  “You two are the worst friends in the history of the world, do you know that?”

  They nodded, still laughing.

  “We know,” Dana said.

  * * *

  • • •

  Carlos coughed. Maybe they needed a reminder that there was a guy at the table with them?

  Nope, that just made all four women, his little sister included, glance his way and laugh harder. Excellent. He looked at Nik, who was looking back at him. She winked at him. He grinned and winked back.

  One of the friends’ phone buzzed. Dana, right? She was the black one who looked like a model. Courtney was the Korean one with pink lipstick on.

  “Pizza’s here!” she said. A few minutes later, a huge pizza box covered their table, and they all had big pieces of pizza in their hands, the pepperoni oil dripping onto more napkins that the bartender had thrown onto their table.

  “I didn’t even ask if anyone was a vegetarian or gluten-free or anything,” Dana said. He and Angela both shook their heads.

  “This is a Los Angeles rarity, to have five people at a table all dig into a cheese-covered, two-meat, gluten-filled pizza without hesitating.”

  Nik lifted her almost empty glass.

  “To new friends and gluten!”

  They all toasted and stuffed pizza into their mouths.

  “Wait.” Nik looked up at him and started to say something, but stopped to finish chewing her bite of pizza. “Did you say a few minutes ago that you’re a baby expert?”

  His sister just shook her head.

  “My brother. Always with the delusions of grandeur.”

  He had the opportunity to impress three attractive women with his degrees and knowledge—could his sister at least try to be a good wingman here?

  “I’m a pediatrician, but to be perfectly honest, I don’t see a lot of babies anymore. I’m the assistant director of the teen clinic at Eastside Medical Center.”

  “Oh.” Nik put her pizza down and reached for a napkin. “You’re a doctor.”

  Okay, he’d never had a woman with that look on her face when he’d said he was a doctor. Like she’d smelled something bad.

  “Oooh, you brought us a doctor?” Courtney poked Nik.

  Nik looked at Dana and rolled her eyes.

  “A doctor,” Courtney said, presumably to the table at large. “That’s a normal j
ob. I didn’t think people in L.A. had normal jobs anymore. All of the jobs here are, like, writer, magician, fit model, actor, cupcake baker, dog walker, social media manager, juice shop cashier, and nonsense like that.”

  “Well, what do you all do?” he asked Nik and her friends.

  “Writer,” Nik said.

  “Cupcake baker,” Courtney said.

  “Actor,” Dana said.

  He and Angela both laughed, but they didn’t.

  “Oh wait. You’re serious?”

  Nik nodded and sipped at the dregs of her drink.

  “It’s true. We’re a parody of L.A. sitting right here.” She turned to Angela. “What about you? You are also probably something normal, like a teacher or a social worker or an accountant.”

  “Marketing, for one of the studios,” Angie said. “I’m also a parody. Granted, I got my MBA first, so I could have done a normal job, but no, I went straight for the L.A. stereotype.”

  “What kind of stuff do you write?” Carlos asked Nik.

  “Lots of entertainment and celebrity-related stuff, and some more newsy journalism occasionally.”

  “What about Fisher?” Carlos couldn’t keep himself from asking. “Was he also an L.A. stereotype, or was he a lawyer or trader or something?”

  Nik shook her head. “Actor! I should have known! Never date an actor; you get proposed to in public with a fucking princess ring.” She took another bite of pizza and swallowed it. “Sorry, Dana. No offense.”

  “None taken,” Dana said.

  Nik sighed.

  “Speaking of Fisher . . . he sent me some texts after he left the game. I only saw a glimpse of one of them, but . . . it wasn’t so great. I guess I probably need to read the rest, right?”

  Ahh, that’s probably what she had been looking at when her face shuttered when they were in the car. She probably didn’t want to talk about this with strangers around. Carlos caught Angela’s eye, and she nodded.

  “Ladies, my sister and I should take off. We have a family event that we have to get to and we can’t be late.”

  “Oh!” Nik looked up. Was it just his imagination that her face fell? “If you have to go, I understand. But you guys, I can’t thank you enough for today; you two saved me on what was maybe one of the weirdest days of my life.”

  Angela stood up, and all of the women followed her out of the booth.

  “It was our pleasure,” she said. Nik threw her arms around Angie and whispered something in her ear that made her laugh. Then she moved over to Carlos.

  “Carlos, thank you so much.” She gave him a tight hug and a kiss on the cheek. He almost kissed her back, but stopped himself just in time. She’d probably had enough out of men today.

  “Glad we could help.”

  Dana and Courtney both hugged him, too.

  “Thanks for taking care of our girl until she could get back to us. You are the prince of the day,” Dana said.

  He and Angie left Nik and her friends to dissect the texts, something he knew women loved to do.

  * * *

  • • •

  “That was nice of him, to leave just then,” Dana said, after the three of them sat back down in their booth alone.

  “What do you mean?” Nik said as she reached for another piece of pizza. “They said they had a family thing.”

  Dana rolled her eyes.

  “Sure they did. He wanted to let you show us Fisher’s texts without him around, so he made up some reason to leave.” She took a sip of her drink. “I don’t often say this about men, but I liked him.”

  Courtney nodded.

  “I liked him, too. You know what I think?”

  Oh God. Whenever Courtney asked that question, either something great or something terrible was on its way. Sometimes it was a little bit of both.

  Nik rested her chin on her hand and closed her eyes.

  “What do you think?”

  “I think Carlos should be your rebound.”

  This time it was just terrible.

  “Dana, talk some sense into her, please.” Nik looked from Dana to Courtney. “Number one, Fisher and I broke up, like two hours ago. Number two, Carlos seems like a very nice guy, but he’s a doctor, come on.”

  Dana looked at her blankly.

  “And?”

  What was wrong with them?

  “And Justin was a doctor, remember?”

  Dana and Courtney looked at each other, then back at her.

  “Yes, Justin was a doctor,” Dana said, in her most patient voice. Nik hated that voice. “That doesn’t mean that all doctors are assholes.”

  That’s not what she meant and they knew it.

  Well, okay. That was kind of what she meant. But still.

  “Justin was a surgeon.” Courtney took a gulp of her drink and slammed the empty glass onto the table. “That’s different than a pediatrician.”

  Not that different. She hadn’t seen or talked to Justin in years, but she remembered him and his God complex all too well.

  “Plus,” Courtney said, “Carlos is hot. I would go for him myself, but he was staring at you all night.”

  Nik rolled her eyes and drained her glass.

  “That is not true.”

  “Oh, come on,” Dana said. “Even I think he was hot, and I’m a lesbian.”

  Nik shook her head.

  “I’m not arguing that point. Of course he’s hot, did you see those forearms? I meant it’s not true that he was staring at me all night.”

  Courtney and Dana looked at each other and laughed. There was no point in arguing with them about this. Especially since she wasn’t even sure if she was right.

  “You have a rebound with Carlos if you want,” she said to Courtney. “I’m taking a vow of celibacy. Men are clearly not for me at this point in my life.”

  Dana and Courtney dissolved into laughter.

  “No really, you guys. I mean it!”

  Their heads were down on the table. Courtney’s face was possibly buried in a slice of pizza? It apparently didn’t matter, they were still laughing.

  “I’m not joking! I need a break. Once you find yourself on the JumboTron with a guy kneeling at your feet with a princess ring in his hand, you start to reevaluate your life, okay?”

  Courtney sat up, a piece of pepperoni in her bangs. After that performance, Nik wasn’t going to tell her it was there.

  Dana gulped down the rest of her drink and waved Pete over for more drinks.

  “A pitcher of water, too, please,” Nik said to him. “I want to be able to at least somewhat function tomorrow.”

  As soon as he walked away, Dana turned to her.

  “If we say we believe you and your vow of celibacy, can we get back to Fisher’s texts?”

  “We believe you, we believe you,” Courtney said, the pepperoni bobbing up and down as she nodded her head.

  They did not actually believe her, she knew that, but there was no point in arguing with them right now. They’d see. She took her phone back from Courtney.

  “Here.” Nik unlocked the phone and pushed it across the table. “After the glimpse that I saw, I don’t know if I want to see the rest.”

  Dana picked up the phone and Courtney looked over her shoulder. Nik looked at their faces as they scrolled through the messages. After about two seconds, they both looked ready to kill.

  “That bad, huh?” she asked.

  Courtney’s eyes narrowed at the phone. Oh no, it was even worse than she’d thought.

  “Okay. What do they say?”

  Dana cleared her throat. Thank God neither of them offered to just delete them for her. Her friends knew her far too well for that.

  “‘You fucking bitch, I can’t believe you did that to me on my birthday.’ That was the first one,” Dana said.

 
“‘I can’t believe you would be that stupid. I was the best thing that ever happened to you.’” Dana looked up from the phone. Nik nodded for her to continue. “‘You’re such a’—I’m not saying that word—‘my friends always said so. I saw your potential when no one else did. You were lucky to be with me, you’re never going to get the chance again. No one else will ever love an unfeeling bitch like you.’”

  Well, at least she didn’t need to feel guilty about hurting him anymore.

  “I don’t want anyone else to ever love this unfeeling bitch. Something terrible always happens when a man says ‘I love you.’ First, Justin said it and then he tried to sabotage my career, then Fisher said it and I get put on a big screen and he texts insults to me. If that’s what love means, no thank you.”

  Dana took a sip of her drink and kept reading.

  “‘You’re going to die alone, and you could have been my princess.’ There are five exclamation points at the end of the word princess. FYI.”

  At least that made her laugh. Thank God for unnecessary exclamation points.

  “Okay, and here’s the pièce de résistance.” Dana pushed the phone over to her, and she looked at the picture that filled the screen: Fisher, Dodgers cap on backward, middle finger in the air, with the princess engagement ring on said finger.

  “OH MY GOD.”

  Dana and Courtney exploded with laughter. Courtney’s head shook so much that the pepperoni finally fell onto the table and she didn’t even notice. Nik laughed until tears streamed out of her eyes. They collapsed against the booth cushions, laughing so much and so loudly that even the too-cool-for-school dudes at the end of the bar turned and stared.

  “Are you KIDDING me? Is this some collective hallucination? What was IN those drinks that Pete brought us? Since when is Fisher Vanilla freaking Ice?”

  “Well.” Nik managed to stop laughing and reached for what was definitely her final drink. “I feel better already.”

  Chapter Three

  . . . . . . .

  On Monday morning, Nik stared at her laptop from the other side of the room. It wouldn’t stop pinging at her. She’d turned the sound off, she’d moved over to the couch, but she knew it was still happening. It had been almost forty-eight hours since the nightmare proposal, and she was getting hundreds of messages in a constant stream through every possible avenue. She’d had so many texts when she’d woken up the day before that she’d thought her phone had malfunctioned.