The Proposal

by Jasmine Guillory

  “Never again, though,” she said. “I’m swearing off actors. You think you’re just casually dating, and then bam, they spring a public proposal on you.”

  Carlos shook his head.

  “Is he a real actor or a wannabe one?”

  She laughed.

  “You always have to ask that question in L.A., right? A real one, but a terrible one. And that’s not even my rage talking; I thought that even while we were dating.”

  Oof. This woman did not mince her words.

  “How did you even meet him?” He shook his head. “You don’t have to answer that. You’re probably sick of even thinking about this. We can talk about work, or our last vacations, or baseball, or whatever.”

  She widened her eyes in horror.

  “Good God, not baseball, anything but baseball.” They both laughed. “As for not talking about this, honestly, I wish I could stop thinking about this. I’ve probably thought about Fisher more in the past two days than I did in the entire five months that we were dating, that’s the wild part. But wait, you probably don’t want to hear more about my disastrous love life; you heard plenty on Saturday.”

  Actually, he’d left right when they’d gotten to the good stuff. And honestly, he was dying to know the details.

  “If it helps you to talk about it, I’m happy to listen,” he said. Did that sound magnanimous enough? “I talk to teenagers all day; hearing a story about an adult disastrous love life will be refreshing after their stories, I promise.”

  She pushed her hair out of her face and smiled.

  “Okay, but you’re going to have to tell me at least one good work story afterward, so I don’t feel like such an idiot. You see teenagers; you must have some great ones.” She glanced down at the menu. “Wait, let’s order first. You already said you were starving.”

  The waitress stopped at their table, and they ordered far too much food for two people.

  “What did you ask?” she said when the waitress walked away. “Oh right, how I met Fisher.” She sighed. “Last year, I did a profile of Anna Gardiner for Vogue. She only really got big, like, last summer. Right before she got the role that led to the Oscar nomination and Vogue cover and everything else, she was in a terrible and short-lived TV show. Fisher was her co-star.”

  He held up his hand to stop her.

  “I’m sorry, but you got to meet Anna Gardiner? Most famous people are no big deal, a dime a dozen in L.A., blah blah, but Anna Gardiner? What was she like? Don’t tell me she was terrible; I loved that movie.”

  He was so thankful none of his friends were here to witness him babbling about a movie star—they would make fun of him from here to eternity.

  “She was honestly great! Which is the whole reason I met Fisher, actually. Anna and I got along really well, and she ended up inviting me to her birthday party, and that’s where I met Fisher. When he asked me out, I was positive that he just wanted to go out with me because he wanted me to write a puff piece about him for something. I sort of never stopped thinking that, actually.”

  She shook her head and laughed.

  “The funny thing is that whenever I went to industry parties with him, when people I knew through my work saw us together, they would look so confused. A few times, when he was on the other side of the room, they even said to me, ‘You’re here with that guy?’ I was never sure if that was an insult to me, or to him.”

  The waitress set their spicy and sweet wings down on the table, and they both grabbed one.

  “Anyway, going out with Fisher was very low-stress, until two days ago. I’ve had such a busy few months of work and Fisher was just a fun guy I hung out with when I had time. I even felt guilty about saying no to his proposal, because I didn’t want to hurt his feelings! That was, until . . . well, apparently, I’m not as good at reading people as I thought I was.”

  He looked closer at her. He was pretty good at reading people, and she looked really stressed about this whole situation.

  “Have you heard from him again? Since his bad texts on Saturday?”

  She looked up at him.

  “How did you know they were bad?”

  He gestured to her face.

  “That same worried look that’s on your face right now was on your face on Saturday night when you told your friends he’d texted you. I figured there was something in there that bothered you, and since you’d just rejected him in front of thousands of people, I assumed it was something pretty nasty.” He held up his hand when she started to protest. “I’m not blaming you for rejecting him in front of thousands of people. As a matter of fact, I was pretty impressed that you were honest with him, instead of being nice to him just to make him feel better. But when I saw that look on your face, I figured he wanted to lash out at you.”

  She nodded.

  “He sure did. Which . . . I like revenge as much as the next person, so I get that, but he didn’t have to keep going.”

  He dropped his chicken and sat up straight.

  “Is he still texting you?”

  She shrugged.

  “I’m not sure. The last text I got from him before I blocked him was ‘Watch your back.’ I’m sure he’s just trying to freak me out. I don’t really think Fisher is the violent-revenge-for-rejecting-him type.” She shook her head. “But I should know better than to say that there’s no such thing as one violent-revenge type; anyone can be like that. I didn’t tell Courtney and Dana about that text. They would have freaked out, moved in with me, firebombed his house, and reported him to the police, probably in that order. Unfortunately, he succeeded in freaking me out, if that was his motive.”

  He sympathized with Courtney and Dana. He would want to do the same if anyone texted stuff like that to Angela.

  He reached across the table and touched Nik’s hand.

  “I’m sorry that happened to you. Are you . . . do you live alone?” He shook his head. “Wow, did that sound creepy. What I meant was, are you okay? Are you worried that he’ll come to your house if you don’t respond to him?”

  She started to shake her head and stopped.

  “I wasn’t at first. I do live alone—I probably shouldn’t tell you that; you’re still a stranger, but hey, you have a good sister, you can’t be too terrible—and I wasn’t worried at all yesterday. But then today, after Fisher’s texts, and then all of the tweets and emails from strangers that were way worse than what he said . . . when I walked into my apartment, well. That was another reason I was glad to leave to go to dinner tonight; it was good to get out of there and have some company.”

  He wanted to ask her what was in those messages from strangers that were way worse than Fisher’s texts, but he wasn’t sure if she wanted to talk about it. And he wasn’t sure if he was ready to hear the response.

  Two more platters of food landed on their table. He scooped papaya salad and pork belly onto both of their plates.

  “I’m glad I could help, but it sucks that he’s made you so anxious about this.”

  She took a bite of the pork belly and grinned.

  “This is delicious, but also it’s hot as hell.” She squeezed his hand, and he smiled at her. They looked at each other for a long time, their hands still linked across the table. Finally, she broke the eye contact and dropped his hand.

  “Okay, please, let’s talk about something that isn’t me. I deserve your best teen-client story, after that.”

  He grinned.

  “I have a lot of good ones, but my favorite is the kid we nicknamed Santa, because he and his girlfriend tried to hide up the chimney.”

  She rubbed her hands together.

  “Tell me everything.”

  Chapter Four

  . . . . . . .

  When the waitress brought the check to the table, Nik handed the waitress her credit card.

  “This one is on me. I’m still mad at yo
u for paying for our drinks from Saturday. I owed you.”

  He pursed his mouth and considered.

  “Okay, fine, but you get all of the leftovers. Deal?”

  He said that like it was a punishment. Which, considering how spicy some of their leftovers were . . . he might be correct about that.

  “Deal. I can have them for lunch tomorrow, in between all of the cupcakes.”

  As they walked to her car, he elbowed her.

  “Yes?” she said, in answer to his look.

  “I know you’re pretty nervous about all of the Fisher stuff. Do you want me to follow you home just to make sure everything is okay? I mean, I’m sure everything is fine, I just thought I’d—”

  “Yeah,” she said. “That would be great.”

  Why had she agreed to this so quickly, she wondered on the short drive to her house. She usually hated it when men got all protective about her safety, like she was some delicate flower who didn’t know how to protect herself.

  But that hadn’t been what Carlos had done, and she’d appreciated it. After her panic from this afternoon, it would be nice to have backup for those thirty seconds it took for her to walk through her apartment. Plus, not to be shallow, but the way Carlos’s T-shirt clung to his biceps . . . she was pretty sure Carlos could take Fisher down easily.

  But wait a second. Was she really going to get some dude she hardly knew to do a walk-through of her apartment just because she got a few nasty text messages? That was ridiculous. She was a grown woman; she’d lived on her own for years; she could take care of herself. She should text him right now and tell him that she was fine and didn’t need his help.

  Yeah, she’d do that. She reached in her pocket for her phone. When she got home, she’d text her girlfriends and tell them how stupid she’d almost been.

  Well, she’d text her girlfriends if she was still around to text them.

  She could hear Courtney’s voice in her head.

  What do you have to lose here? Are you really worried about looking silly in front of a man you barely know? Who cares?

  She cared, damn it.

  But her friends would kill her if she sent Carlos away and anything happened to her.

  Okay, fine. She put her phone back in her pocket.

  She parked in the lot behind her apartment building and met Carlos on the front steps.

  “Thanks for coming inside with me. I feel like an idiot,” she said as she unlocked the door.

  “Don’t worry about it,” he said. “I’m a pretty impressive dude; people feel like idiots around me all the time. I’m used to it.”

  Despite her rising anxiety, she laughed as they walked up the stairs to her second-floor apartment.

  “Did he have a key?” Carlos asked in a low voice.

  Nik sighed and stopped on the stairs.

  “I never gave him one, but I left my keys around all the time, and it’s easy to get keys copied. And there was one time when I forgot my keys at his house for a whole weekend and had to get my set of extra keys back from Dana. I didn’t think anything of it at the time, but . . . I’m paranoid now, I guess.”

  Carlos put his hand on her shoulder, and she relaxed against it.

  “Are you ready to go inside? Or do you need a minute?”

  She pulled away from him. She never should have done this, but she had no choice now.

  “No, no, I’m fine. Let’s go in.”

  He took the key out of her hand and unlocked the door. She could have done that herself, but okay. He pushed it open slowly. Why had she turned off all of the lights before she left her house? Energy-saving nonsense. Now she felt like one of those women in horror movies. One of the ones who got killed in the first fifteen minutes.

  Wait, no. Those women never had the sense to get someone else to come with them when they had a bad feeling.

  Carlos pushed the door wide open and stepped through it in front of her.

  “If the demon gets me, tell my mother I loved her.”

  Apparently they watched the same kind of movies.

  She followed close at his heels as he walked into the living room and flicked on the lights. Everything looked the same as when she’d left it two hours before: her laptop on the desk against her big bay window, her remote on the floor by her coffee table, her T-shirt and—oops—bra on the top of the couch where she’d thrown them off after getting Carlos’s text. She saw a smile around his eyes when he turned in that direction, but he didn’t let it reach his mouth.

  “Is there anywhere to hide in this room?” he asked her under his breath. She shook her head.

  She started to walk down the hallway that led to her bedroom, but he put his hand on her shoulder to stop her.

  “Let me go first.”

  He didn’t wait for an answer. She stared daggers into his back as she followed him down the hallway. Just because she’d accepted his offer to make sure Fisher wasn’t around didn’t mean she was okay with him ordering her around in her own apartment. This had been a terrible idea.

  When she walked into her bedroom, he’d already flung open the closet doors and was running his hands through the crowded coat side of her closet. He turned around well after she was satisfied that there was no one hiding among them.

  “Are all of these coats . . . yours?” he asked her. “You do realize you live in Los Angeles, right?”

  “Shut up. It gets cold here sometimes. And I go to New York at least once or twice a year.”

  He shook his head, with a smile in his eyes.

  “Mmm, yeah, that totally means you need twenty coats, absolutely.”

  She tried not to grin back at him and failed.

  He stepped around to the far side of her bed, then went into the hallway and threw open the hall closet. She supposed that Fisher could have hidden in there, if he’d been hiding his contortionist talents from her. He glanced at the shelves full of extra bedding, towels, and boxes of sparkling water, and closed the door without a word. He stepped into the bathroom, and she heard the shower curtain swish across the rod.

  “All clear in the bathroom, too. Anywhere else?”

  She walked down the hall to the kitchen, simultaneously so relieved she was ready to collapse and feeling so stupid she wanted to hide among all the coats in her closet.

  “I mean, I suppose if someone was really trying, they could hide in the refrigerator, or under the couch, but I somehow doubt that. I think we’re all clear.” She opened the refrigerator and pulled out a bottle of wine. “I’m sorry for dragging you along on this wild goose chase. I don’t know what got into me. Wine?” She glanced over at him, standing in her living room, and saw him peer under the couch. She smiled and poured two glasses.

  “Here.” She handed him a glass and sat down on the couch. “Thank you. I’m not usually . . .” She shook her head. “Anyway, thank you. I hope you’re not too much of a man’s man to drink rosé.”

  He sat down next to her and picked up the wineglass.

  “No such thing.” He took a sip of the wine and glanced over at her. “You should get your locks changed.”

  Okay, that was enough telling her what to do.

  “I know I should get my locks changed; I’m not an idiot,” she said.

  He put his glass down.

  “Hey, I’m sorry. Of course you aren’t. I didn’t mean to suggest that.” He looked at her, then looked away. “I’m used to taking care of all of the women in my family, so I have the tendency to go overboard sometimes. I didn’t mean to tell you what to do.”

  She picked up his wineglass and handed it to him.

  “It’s okay, really. I didn’t mean to snap at you.” She closed her eyes. “I don’t usually give in to fits of paranoia like this, and I hate it. Sorry for taking it out on you.”

  He smiled at her and patted her thigh. She hated herself for
wanting his hand to linger there a lot longer than it did.

  “You have nothing to be ashamed of. Every woman needs a big strong man to come and protect her; that’s not your fault. It’s just because you’re naturally weak and helpless, just by virtue of, you know, being a woman and all. You needed a man like me to do the hard work of looking under your bed. I understand that you aren’t capable of stuff like that.”

  She smacked his arm.

  “You asshole.” She was laughing so hard she had to put her wineglass down. “You had me going for at least five or six seconds there! You were so close to me throwing this wine in your face and literally kicking you out of my apartment.”

  * * *

  • • •

  Carlos laughed and relaxed against the couch cushions. He’d been a little worried that she’d get furious at him for that, but he also thought it might break some of the tension. One of the things that he already liked so much about Nik was how independent she was; he should have known that telling her what to do would piss her off. Angela had gotten mad at him just a few weeks ago for taking her car in to get serviced; she’d said she was fully capable of doing it for herself. He’d told her it wasn’t that he didn’t think she was capable of it, it’s just that he’d felt like it was his job to do it. That hadn’t made her less mad.

  She waved at his wineglass.

  “Drink, drink, I promise I won’t knock the glass all over you.”

  He took another sip. He usually made fun of Angela for drinking rosé. She could definitely never find out that he drank it with Nik and liked it.

  “But really, don’t feel bad,” he said. “It’s totally normal to freak out about stuff like this. And my stint in the ER during my residency really opened my eyes to how often this stuff happens to women. I mean, fine, he wasn’t here and you felt silly that you had me come up, no big deal. But too many women ignore those feelings or don’t want to feel silly, and I’ve seen some of the aftermaths. Feeling silly is definitely better.”

  She took another sip of her wine and leaned back. When she’d sat down on the couch, she’d sat down right in the middle, so he’d had no choice but to sit right next to her. They were so close they were almost touching.