The Proposal

by Jasmine Guillory

  “Oh my God, no, are you kidding me? I’m way too full to even think about dessert. I can’t remember the last time I said that.”

  They waved good-bye to the staff as they walked out and got in his car. A few blocks down the road, she cleared her throat.

  “I might be accused of being bougie by asking this, but I’m going to do it anyway: do you ever worry about your car, parking it in neighborhoods like this?”

  He nodded.

  “Nah, that’s just common sense. At first I barely drove it anywhere but to work and home. I was so paranoid about break-ins, or accidents, or other cars parking too close to me. I never did valet, which in L.A., as you know, made everything more difficult.”

  He flicked his blinker on to turn onto the freeway, and thought about those first months after. A lot of it he barely even remembered. He only knew certain things had happened because friends had mentioned them later. Sometimes he’d searched through his emails for something unrelated and come across emails he’d sent friends, thanking them for their card or the food they’d sent or for coming to the funeral, and he had no memory not only of sending the emails but of receiving their card or food or seeing them at the funeral. It had been such a terrible time; he was glad that there was a fog over his memory of a lot of it. The car probably wasn’t the only reason he’d barely gone anywhere but to work and his mom’s house for months.

  “What made you change?” she asked.

  He shrugged and started to give her a bullshit answer. But the only answer he could think of was the truth.

  “My friends, really. Especially my friend Drew. Some of it . . . a lot of it, probably, wasn’t about the car at all, but was about my dad.” He’d tried not to let anyone figure out what a hard time he was having with his dad’s death. He especially didn’t want his family to know. He knew he had to be there for his mom and for Angie, to be the rock they needed.

  “One day at work, we were talking about a new case that had come in the day before. It was a middle-aged man who died suddenly of a heart attack, the same as my dad. When they described what happened and started asking questions for us to answer, I had to leave the room. I didn’t think anyone noticed me leave. But that night, Drew asked if I wanted to get a beer when we both got off. We didn’t talk about it, at all, but . . . it helped. And then the following week, he convinced me to join a basketball rec league. I knew he was doing it to force me out of the house for something other than work, but I did it anyway. And it helped.”

  He didn’t look at her, but he could feel her watching him, listening to every word he said. She didn’t touch him, but the softness in her voice felt like a caress.

  “A sudden heart attack. That’s terrible. I’m so sorry.”

  He nodded, very glad that they were in a car in the dark and she couldn’t see the tears in his eyes.

  “Thanks. Anyway, the car. I think I mostly realized I couldn’t live in fear anymore. I mean, sure it could get broken into outside the taqueria, or I could have an accident any day to or from work. Plus, I bought the car in honor of my dad—how did it honor him for me to be afraid to go anywhere in it? Good God, I can’t imagine how ashamed he would have been if I didn’t want to go to a taqueria because I was scared of what might happen to my car, you know?”

  Why the hell was he talking to her about his dad? He never talked about him, not even to Angela or his mom. He’d decided to stop talking—or even thinking, for the most part—about his dad almost six months after he’d died. It had been too hard for him to deal with otherwise.

  Fucking journalists, they knew just the questions to get you going.

  “I’m glad you had good friends.” She put her hand on his, and he thought she was going to say something else warm and sympathetic, which might be more than he could take right now. “I’m also glad you discovered that taqueria, because oh my God was that food good.”

  He laughed, relieved she’d changed the subject.

  “So am I. I love that place. I try not to go there too often. I always eat too much when I’m there.”

  They talked about tacos the rest of the way to her apartment.

  “I know this is insanely bougie of me, but so be it,” she said as she opened her apartment door. “Do you want some sparkling water? It always makes me feel better after I eat an enormous meal. I have like four different flavors, minimum.”

  She kicked her shoes off by the door, so he followed suit.

  “Hmmm, that depends. What flavors?”

  She threw off her leather jacket, walked into the kitchen and opened the fridge, while he sat on the couch.

  “Grapefruit, lemon, berry, and mango.”

  He sighed dramatically.

  “Lime is my favorite, but I guess I can settle for grapefruit.”

  She grabbed the water out of the fridge and brought it over to the couch.

  He drank some water, put his glass down on the coffee table, and put his arm around her.

  “Sparkling water is good at settling your stomach after a big meal, but do you want to know something else that works for that?”

  She rose her eyebrows.

  “Hmmm, what?”

  He ran his hand up and down her bare arm.

  “Some good, healthy physical activity.”

  She took another sip of her water and set it down.

  “Oh wow. I’m so glad you told me that. I’d always read the opposite, that you shouldn’t eat before any strenuous activity.”

  He shook his head vigorously.

  “Oh no, no, that’s outdated advice. I’m a doctor, see, so I know all of the new and up-to-date research on this.” He reached up and tugged on one of her curls, released it, tugged on another one.

  “Mmmm. I’m so grateful that I have you, a fancy doctor, to tell little old me about this.” She pulled him against her.

  “I’m so glad you appreciate me.” He kissed her neck and then trailed kisses down to the hollow between her breasts.

  “I definitely do.” His thumbs were on her nipples, hard peaks beneath the thin fabric of her shirt. She closed her eyes.

  “The more strenuous, the better for your digestion, really.” He pushed her back against the couch and lifted her shirt.

  “Wow, that’s so good to know. What . . .” She sucked in her breath and paused before she could continue. “What should we do? We could go for a nice walk.”

  He pulled her shirt off and tossed it to the side. Her breasts were full and luscious inside her sheer black bra. He couldn’t stop looking at her. And touching her.

  “A walk is a good idea. From what I remember from last time, the walk to your bedroom is really long. It took us a long time to get there. That seems like the perfect length for a walk to me.”

  She smiled up at him.

  “Whatever you say, doctor.”

  He stood and took her hands to pull her up off the couch.

  Chapter Twelve

  . . . . . . .

  “You should be honored. My friends were very nice to you tonight,” Nik said.

  Carlos and Nik were walking to his car the following Friday night. He’d texted her before leaving the hospital to see if she wanted to go out, and she’d texted him back that she was out with her friends, and he should come join them. He’d really wanted to see her, so he went. But that had made him nervous that this was more than a casual hookup thing to her.

  Maybe he should talk to her about it, even though he hated bringing up stuff like that. But they’d been seeing kind of a lot of each other, and he didn’t want her to get the wrong idea. After the taqueria last Friday night, he’d hung out at her house well into Saturday afternoon. And then they’d met up for burgers on Tuesday night and gone back to her place for some healthy adult exercise. And they’d been texting a lot this week. Were they spending too much time together?

  Granted, she did
n’t act like the women he’d gone out with in the past who had wanted to be his girlfriend: she hadn’t insisted on weekend plans far in advance or pushed him to invite her over to his house or told him he was the kind of guy who would be a great father. But making him spend an hour with her and her friends when she knew all he wanted was to be taking her clothes off was getting close.

  “That was them being nice?” he asked. He was sort of kidding, but . . . only sort of.

  She laughed.

  “They only quizzed you for like five minutes.”

  It had felt like far longer.

  Sure, he’d met her friends right after the baseball game, but that was before they’d started sleeping together. Did this whole “come meet me and my friends” thing mean she was getting the wrong idea about what he wanted here?

  If he had to end things with her, he was going to be so mad. He hadn’t had sex this good, with someone he actually enjoyed spending time with in . . . shit, since he could remember.

  “Courtney gave you more than one compliment. That’s basically a declaration of lifelong devotion coming from her.”

  When he’d told her how much he’d liked her spicy cupcake, she had told him that said something good about his character.

  “Well, I’m glad, I guess, but please don’t kill me if I say I’m glad they both had to get up early tomorrow morning so I could get you alone.”

  She looked at him out of the corner of her eye and smiled.

  “That sounds promising. What did you have in mind?”

  He grinned as they approached his car.

  “Well, you know me. Before I do anything strenuous, I need a good dinner. What are you in the mood for?”

  “Do you want to go out? Or get takeout?”

  He put his arm around her.

  “I can do either, but the idea of takeout on your couch sounds pretty great right now. It’s been a long week.”

  She put her arms around his waist, and he pulled her close.

  “How’s your cousin doing? Everything okay there?”

  He nodded.

  “Thanks for asking. She’s hanging in there, but I’m always on edge about it. Every time I get a call from anyone in my family, I jump. I would say that I can’t wait for this to be over, except that the best outcome is for it to be like this for another nine or ten weeks, which seems unbearable right now.”

  He sighed and opened the passenger door for her.

  “Thanks for listening to me ramble about my family, I appreciate it. I can’t really talk to them about it, because then they all flip out.”

  She leaned over to kiss him when he got in the car. The kiss lasted for a long time.

  “Ramble all you want,” she said. “You just held up very well under cross-examination from my two best friends, so I owe you a night of lots of listening, something fun on the TV, and . . .”

  He cocked his head to the side.

  “And?”

  “And whatever else you ask for,” she said.

  He grinned. He would worry about the other stuff later.

  * * *

  • • •

  Nik woke up early the next morning, with Carlos sound asleep against her. Good God, this guy was fun. He had certainly taken her “whatever else you ask for” to heart, with very good results.

  She turned back toward him and he nuzzled against her neck.

  “Mmm, so you are awake,” she said.

  “I’m not awake. I’m having the most fantastic dream.”

  He had such a scratchy voice first thing in the morning. Just hearing it gave her goose bumps.

  “What kind of dream?”

  He ran his hand from her knee up her leg to her hip and rested his whole palm against her butt.

  “I’m in bed with this incredibly sexy woman, for starters.”

  God, she liked it when he touched her.

  “Mmm, tell me about her.”

  His hands kept moving up and down her body. They stopped to linger at her breasts, and she closed her eyes and sighed.

  “Oh, she’s something else. She’s smart, she’s funny, she surprises me at every turn, and her body . . . I just can’t get enough of it.”

  That was definitely an excellent thing to hear from a man who woke up in your bed.

  “She sounds incredible. Tell me more about the dream.”

  He pushed her onto her back and knelt above her.

  “In my dream, we had amazing sex last night . . . multiple times, actually. God, what a great dream this has already been. And now . . .” He leaned down to kiss her mouth. “And now, if I’m lucky, we might get to do it again. Oh wow, I hope I don’t wake up.”

  She played with his hair and relaxed at his touch.

  “I hope you don’t, either.”

  Now his mouth was on her breasts, and she sighed.

  “Mmmmm. This is a great way to not wake up; I’ve got to say.”

  “Mmmmm?” He lifted his head. “Oh, you like that? I think there’s an even better way to not wake up. Let me see if you agree.”

  He threw the covers to the foot of the bed and pushed her legs apart. She looked down at his head between her legs and grinned.

  “Oh, I think I like this dream of yours a whole lot. Do you think you’ll—OH MY GOD.”

  Those were the last discernable words she said for a long time.

  When they both finally caught their breath, he kissed her cheek.

  “Okay, you’re going to think I’m crazy saying this after all of that food we ate last night, but . . . I’m starving.”

  She laughed into his chest.

  “Well, you did have lots of good, healthy physical activity. It makes sense that that would make you hungry.”

  He rolled on top of her and tickled her.

  “Oh, you’re making fun of me now? Just for that, I’m going to make you breakfast.” He sat up. “That is, if you have anything I can cook?”

  She nodded.

  “I went to the store the other day. There should be stuff in there. I’ll make the coffee.”

  He pulled on boxers and went to investigate her kitchen. She grabbed a robe out of her closet and went to the bathroom before joining him. By the time she got there, he had a pile of food on her counter.

  “Are you going to make all of that?” She opened the coffee maker and pulled out yesterday’s filter and tossed it in the garbage.

  “I’m deciding what to cook. A true artist takes time at his work.”

  She turned on her coffee grinder and scooped grounds into the fresh filter.

  “Okay, Picasso. I make coffee strong; that okay with you?”

  He laughed while he pulled bowls out of her cabinet.

  “That’s fine, but if I had said no, what were you going to do? I already know you wouldn’t have made weaker coffee for me.”

  She poured water in the machine and turned it on.

  “No, I would have just made sure you didn’t use all the milk in whatever you’re cooking in case you needed a lot of it for your cup.”

  He opened another cabinet.

  “Good point, because I was thinking about making pancakes since I see you have syrup here. Any objections? Also, where’s your flour?”

  She reached for two mugs from the cabinet above the coffee maker and took the opportunity while his back was to her to admire his ass in his gray boxer briefs.

  “No objections at all to pancakes, as long as you make bacon, too. And the dry goods are all under there.”

  He added a lot of sugar to his coffee, but she tried not to judge him for that. Some of her best friends added a lot of sugar to their coffee.

  Once he was all set with ingredients and pans, she sat at the kitchen counter with her mug of coffee and watched him cook. Just as he flipped the first pancake with a flouris
h, she heard Courtney’s voice in her head: serious couples don’t go to brunch; they stay home and cook for each other.

  Oh shit. Was this a sign that he wanted to be serious? She’d assumed it was clear that that wasn’t what she was looking for right now, given the whole “dramatic breakup that he and thousands of other people witnessed just three weeks ago” thing, but maybe her state of mind wasn’t clear to him?

  Did she need to have an actual conversation about this with him? She hated having conversations like that.

  But then . . . she’d avoided having an actual define-the-relationship talk with Fisher, and that didn’t work out all that well.

  Come to think about it, Carlos did seem like a serious relationship kind of guy. He was kind and considerate; he was close to his family; he’d just bought a house, for the love of God. Men don’t buy houses if they don’t want to get married soon after that. Damn it.

  Carlos set a plate of golden brown pancakes and crisp bacon in front of her with a smile. She tried to smile back at him.

  “Wow. What service.”

  He half bowed.

  “I try. Syrup?”

  She took a bite just as he sat down next to her. Oh, this was terrible. Not the pancakes—the pancakes were fantastic, that was the terrible part. If she never had these pancakes again because she’d accidentally found the one man in Los Angeles who wanted a serious relationship, she was going to be so mad.

  “So, uh. The only problem is that . . .” She took a sip of coffee and tried the beginning of that sentence again. “I just wanted to . . . right now, I’m not sure if I’m . . .”

  He looked at her like she had three heads.

  “Nik. What are you trying to say?”

  She shook her head out of frustration with herself.

  “I’m sorry, I’m not making any sense. It’s just that after the whole Fisher thing, and with work being so busy right now, I’m not in a good place for any sort of relationship. But like, this whole thing . . .” She gestured toward him, the kitchen, the couch, the bedroom. “This whole thing is great. And I like spending time with you a lot. I feel like we’re becoming good friends. Just with”—she waved her hand in the direction of the bedroom—“that stuff going on, too. So I just wanted to see where you were with everything.”