The Proposal

by Jasmine Guillory

  Apparently, her JumboTron moment had been on SportsCenter on Saturday night. And then again on Sunday. She’d had no idea that she knew so many people who regularly watched SportsCenter.

  To make things even worse, some enterprising person had tagged her on Twitter with the video of the proposal, so she was getting thousands of tweets about it. The bulk of them ranged from insulting to abusive, with a lot of just plain mean thrown in for kicks. A lot of men out there seemed personally insulted that she, a black woman, had rejected a white man. Most of their messages to her used either her least favorite insult for women or her least favorite insult for black people and, in many cases, both.

  Until she’d blocked Fisher’s number, he’d also kept sending her messages, and most of them weren’t as unintentionally funny as the Vanilla Ice picture. The last few had been kind of scary, and she didn’t scare easily.

  The whole time she had to keep tweeting her way through it, because she used Twitter professionally, and she refused to let on that any of these assholes were upsetting her. Plus, that was her “brand” and all—that kind of sarcastic, witty, tough-skinned woman who nothing could bother. She had to pretend to be laughing with the rest of the world about what a bitch she was, retweet a few stupid memes with her face on them, and make a joke on Facebook about her relationship status changing, when she felt overwhelmed and outnumbered the whole time.

  At least she hadn’t seen any footage of Carlos and Angela posted anywhere. They’d probably jumped in before that camera crew had gotten anything worth posting. Whatever it was, she was grateful for it. She wouldn’t have wanted them to get dragged into this chaos or to get punished by the whole world for their good deed.

  Good deeds—plural. Not only had they pulled her away from the camera crew, gotten her away from the stadium of doom, and delivered her to her friends, but as she’d discovered on Saturday night after winning the fight with Dana and Courtney to pay their bar tab, Carlos had already paid for it. And she didn’t even know his last name, or how to get in touch with him to thank him.

  “Wait a minute, Nikole,” she said out loud. She talked to herself a lot when she was alone in her apartment, which was frequently. “You are a journalist. You should be able to find this man in less than five minutes.”

  It took her about a minute and a half. There he was, Carlos Ibarra, picture and all, on the website of his hospital. Thank God the bourbon on Saturday hadn’t dulled her memory. There was no email address listed, but she clicked around the hospital website to see what the other email addresses at his hospital looked like. She jumped over to her email account, opened the “compose” pane, and tried to ignore the dozens of new emails that had come in since she’d last looked.

  To: Carlos_Ibarra@eastsidemedicalcenter.com

  From: Nikole@NikoleDPaterson.com

  Subject: Thanks again

  Hi! It’s me, your friendly non-princess from Saturday. I just wanted to a) thank you again for everything you did, and b) yell at you for not letting me buy you the drink I owed you afterward. I don’t know if you saw, but the whole proposal has kind of gone viral, which . . . is an experience, that’s for sure. Anyway, I hope you’re well, and thank your sister for me, too!

  Nik

  She typed the email in a hurry and pressed send before she could reconsider. Her friends would be so triumphant if they knew she’d emailed him. They would think she bought into their stupid rebound idea, when that wasn’t at all the case. Obviously she found him attractive—she wasn’t made of stone—but just as obviously, it was the wrong time to get involved with anyone. She just wanted to thank him again for saving her, that was all.

  Of course it wasn’t until after she’d hit send that she thought about the major downside of actually sending an email right now—she’d have to look at her incoming messages to see if he responded.

  She couldn’t even get any work done. The story she’d been working on at the baseball game was still stuck in the same place it had been when Fisher had told her to look at the JumboTron screen. She’d been halfway through a sentence, and now she had no idea how the sentence was supposed to end. She probably had important work-related emails, but she’d have to wade through the hundreds of other messages to find them. She threw her arms in the air, went into her bedroom, put on the first real clothes she found, and left to go for a walk. Without her phone.

  By the time she’d walked the thirty minutes to Courtney’s cupcake shop, she felt a little better. Despite herself, the fresh air and the blue sky made her relax, and the physical activity even cheered her up a little. When she walked into Cupcake Park, she didn’t quite have a smile on her face, but at least she could tell the scowl had gone away.

  “Hey!” Courtney was alone in the shop when she came in, wearing her trademark pink lipstick and a pink polka-dot apron. “You haven’t been answering your phone. Dana and I have both been trying to call. How are you doing?”

  She groaned and leaned against the counter. Courtney’s brightly colored cupcakes, all decorated with frosting flowers or trees, stared back up at her from the other side.

  “Coffee, please?” She shouldn’t have even bothered to ask. Courtney had already poured cups full for both of them and set one of each of her favorite cupcake flavors in front of her. “You’re the best, thanks.”

  “We both know that,” Courtney said. The bell rang, and Nik stepped aside so that the three teenage girls who came in could see and debate their cupcake choices. By the time they left five minutes later, Nik had finished her lemon cupcake and most of her coffee. Courtney poured her a new cup.

  “How did business go today?”

  Courtney had opened her cupcake shop just under a year ago, and there had been a number of touch-and-go moments with it, but lately business looked like it was picking up.

  “It was great. There was a line out the door for like half the day, and I just got two big orders, including one for a wedding.” Courtney looked hard at Nik. “But I know you didn’t walk all the way over here to find out how my business is going. How are you? How bad is it?”

  Nik groaned.

  “It’s so bad.” She took a sip of coffee and reconsidered. “I mean, I’m not dying or anything, and this should all fade away within a few days. But God, it doesn’t feel like that right now. I’m not answering my phone because I had to turn the sound and the vibrate off, and then put it in my refrigerator to chill out, because it feels like the whole world is calling me or texting me. I needed a break.”

  She could not tell Courtney that she’d emailed Carlos. She would do her “I told you so” dance around the whole cupcake shop. Had Carlos replied to her email yet? Ugh, she wished she’d brought her phone, just so she’d know.

  Courtney checked the time and walked over to flip the sign on the door from OPEN to CLOSED.

  “Do you think all of the proposal brouhaha will blow over?”

  Nik grabbed a broom to help Courtney do her end-of-the-day cleaning of the shop.

  “I’m sure it will. I just hope it blows over soon. The only email I responded to so far today was from the TODAY show, telling them no, I would not come on the show to talk about the proposal. I’m kind of worried that Fisher will say yes to them or someone like them, but there’s nothing I can do to stop that, and I feel like reaching out to him at this point is a very bad idea.”

  “Have you heard anything more from him?” Courtney tossed Nik a cloth to wipe down the countertops while she packed away the rest of the cupcakes.

  “Unfortunately, yes. I’ve blocked him everywhere, which probably means he’s saying all sorts of shit about me that I can’t see, but at this point, that’s better than the alternative.”

  Courtney turned on Missy Elliott to keep them company as they cleaned up.

  “Oh, I’ll find out what he’s saying about you, don’t worry about that.” Courtney had an evil grin on her face that Nik decided not to ask
about. It was probably better that she be ignorant of whatever Courtney was planning to do to Fisher.

  “Want a ride home?” Courtney asked her. “Dinner? Leftover cupcakes?”

  “No, no, and yes. Or rather, no, yes, and yes. Have I ever said no to leftover cupcakes? But I can walk home. I need to work up my appetite for these.”

  Courtney filled up a box of cupcakes and put it in one of her pink and white bags.

  “Let me know if you need anything else. And if you need company tonight, I can be there at the snap of your fingers; you know that, right?”

  Nik walked around the counter to give Courtney a hug.

  “I know. Thanks.”

  Of course, once Nik walked home, she’d started to regret not getting a ride from Courtney. Not because the walk tired her out, but because she wished she wasn’t alone. As she approached her building she was on high alert for Fisher’s silver sports car in the area.

  “You’re being stupid,” she said to herself on her doorstep. “Also, you’re talking to yourself in public this time; you should really save that for inside the house, Nikole.”

  She unlocked her front door, and then hesitated on the threshold. Finally, she grabbed a cast-iron pan from her kitchen and, feeling like an idiot the entire time, looked in every hiding place in her apartment. After finding nothing other than a lot more dirty laundry than she thought she’d had, she tried to relax and sat back down at her laptop to check her email.

  Fifty-seven more people had emailed her in the two hours that she’d been gone. And not a single one of the fifty-seven was named Carlos Ibarra.

  * * *

  • • •

  “It was like this, Dr. Ibarra,” Luke, his newest patient said. “There was this girl, right?”

  Carlos laughed.

  “How did I know that that’s how this story was going to start? But keep going, all of the best stories start that way.”

  Carlos listened to the kid’s story, took notes, gave him both medical advice—for the sprained ankle that he got from running down the street with the girl (rest, ice, elevation, lots of ibuprofen) and the rash he’d gotten from hiding in the poison-oak-laced bushes behind her house (a prescription cream)—and general life advice (girls who make you go through dangerous situations to prove your worth to them are always exciting at first and then you regret it).

  That, of course, made him think about how he’d shoved that cameraman out of the way in order to get Nik safely out of Dodger Stadium. The difference, though, was that was his idea, not hers. But he understood where his patient was coming from—he still felt a rush when he thought about swooping down on Nik and getting her out of the stadium. It was probably just because he didn’t do anything dangerous these days other than driving too fast.

  He’d had SportsCenter in the background on Sunday morning and was engrossed in the Sunday L.A. Times movie section, when he’d heard the announcer say “Can you believe what happened to this poor guy?” He’d looked up at the screen, just in time to see Nik’s wide-open mouth and Man Bun drop down onto one knee. He’d been wondering all day how Nik was doing. He wished he’d figured out a way to smoothly get her phone number before he and Angie had left the bar. Maybe sometime he would go back to see if he could accidentally run into her there. She said she and her friends went to that bar a lot, right?

  He went back to his office after that appointment, hopefully his last one of the day, unless there was an emergency in the next hour and a half. He typed his notes from his appointments into the online system, making sure to only note the parent-friendly details from the stories that the teens had told him since their parents all had access to their information. With just half an hour to go until his Monday was over, he clicked over to his work email, to see what stupid administrative tasks people had sent him this time.

  Nikole Paterson? He clicked on the screen so fast that he accidentally clicked on the email below it first, and had to skim through a message about vaccinations before he realized what was happening and went back.

  “I don’t know if you saw, but the whole proposal has kind of gone viral.” He had, in fact, noticed that the whole proposal had gone viral. She must have heard from everyone she knew, and then some. He had no idea how she’d found his email address, but he was glad she had.

  To: Nikole@NikoleDPaterson.com

  From: Carlos_Ibarra@eastsidemedicalcenter.com

  Hey! Good to hear from you. I figured you’d want to yell at me about the drinks, but I also figured you and your friends already had too much bourbon to figure out a bill. And yeah, I saw you on SportsCenter. Have you gotten emails and texts from literally everyone you know?

  Carlos

  He got an email back right before he was about to leave the office.

  To: Carlos_Ibarra@eastsidemedicalcenter.com

  From: Nikole@NikoleDPaterson.com

  To answer your question, every single other email in my inbox has the subject line “Was that you?” or “OMG that was you!” and I can’t bear to look at any of them. So yes, I’ve gotten texts and emails (and Facebook messages, and tweets, and LinkedIn messages, for the love of God) from literally everyone I know. I have ignored all of them so far and have been hiding in my apartment almost all day, with a brief excursion to pick up cupcakes from Courtney’s shop, but I’m going a little stir-crazy.

  Nik

  Was that a hint? She didn’t seem like a hinting kind of person, but maybe?

  To: Nikole@NikoleDPaterson.com

  From: Carlos_Ibarra@eastsidemedicalcenter.com

  If you’re in the mood for a friendly face tonight, let me know. About to leave work, want to grab dinner? Text me, I’m at 310-555-4827. I promise I won’t say “OMG that was you!”

  Carlos

  He double-checked his phone all the way to the parking garage, but nothing. Okay, maybe it wasn’t a hint. Damn it. It had been a long time since he’d met someone who could laugh at herself the way Nik could, even in the middle of a crisis.

  Also, he’d really liked the way she’d looked in that snug baseball T-shirt and those jeans, he wasn’t going to lie.

  He’d seen way too many accidents in his stint working in the ER to check his phone while he was driving, but he had to fight himself more than once from reaching for it on the way home. But when he pulled up to his apartment and grabbed it out of his pocket, there was nothing other than five group texts about his basketball league.

  Just as he walked in the door, his phone chimed.

  Going to take you up on that offer for dinner, but this time it’s my treat. What time and where? Not a bar, though, I’m still recovering from Saturday.

  He was so busy grinning down at his phone that he almost tripped over the Amazon box in his entryway. Worth it.

  7:30? Thai? There’s a fun place on Sunset, do you know it? Night+Market?

  She did know it. He changed into jeans and his favorite T-shirt, killed some time by replying to all of the basketball messages with trash talk, and walked back out the door.

  He put his name on the list and hung out by the door and pretended to be absorbed in his phone. She walked in the door at 7:33, not that he was checking. She stood at the door and peered around the restaurant, a guarded look on her face, her sunglasses again tucked into her dark curly hair.

  “Hey!” He waved at her. Her face relaxed into a grin when she saw him. She was wearing jeans and a black shirt that looked better on her than any plain black shirt had a right to look.

  “Hey yourself. Thank you for rescuing me yet again. If you hadn’t suggested dinner, I would have had a half-dozen cupcakes for dinner, hated myself for it, and then had another half dozen for dessert.”

  He laughed.

  “Thai food is definitely a much better idea. Where’d all the cupcakes come from?”

  She leaned against the wall next to him.

  “I forced myself out of the
house today and walked to Courtney’s shop. I hung around until closing and she gave me the leftovers.”

  “That’s convenient to have a friend with a cupcake store.” Now that he was looking at her closely, he could see a spot of white frosting standing out against her warm brown cheek and fought his impulse to wipe it off.

  “You’re telling me. She usually gives any leftovers to the employees at the other shops nearby, as a sort of goodwill/‘we’re all in this together’ kind of thing, but I guess today she thought my need was more important. I certainly wasn’t going to argue with her.”

  They made small talk as they waited for their table, too surrounded by other people to talk about anything important. After longer a wait than he’d hoped, the host finally called his name.

  As Carlos walked behind Nik on the way to a table, he admired her shape in her snug jeans. He was pretty sure this woman hated all men at the moment, but he could look, couldn’t he?

  They both ordered beer before they opened their menus.

  “You’re going to have to keep me from ordering everything on the menu, I’m starving,” he said.

  Nik glanced over the menu and grinned.

  “Luckily, I heard from you at just the right time before I dove into the box of cupcakes. And I’m glad you wanted to go to this place. I haven’t been here in far too long; Fisher didn’t like spicy food, so . . .”

  He looked up at her with his eyebrows raised.

  “Fisher didn’t like spicy food, and you went out with him for more than one date? How did that happen?”

  She sighed.

  “Excellent question, really.”

  The waitress brought their beers, and she took a sip.