The Proposal

by Jasmine Guillory

  Natalie looked up and smiled at her.

  “Nik! Of course. Hi!” How was Natalie’s hair always so perfect? This woman worked out for a living, and yet she had a perfect swinging blond ponytail.

  “Hi. I wanted to ask you if you were open to me writing a story about you and your gym.”

  Natalie’s smile faded. She stared blankly at her and didn’t say anything. So Nik kept talking.

  “I’ve written for the L.A. and New York Times, Variety, GQ, the New Yorker, and a lot more. You can look me up to check out my work to make sure I’m legit. This isn’t why I started coming to your gym—I started for very different reasons—but it’s pretty rare to find a place that promotes feminism, actually practices being inclusive, and is accessible to women of so many different backgrounds and socioeconomic classes. So I want to write about it.”

  Natalie still didn’t say anything. Uh-oh. Nik didn’t really want to write this story without Natalie’s cooperation and permission.

  “Yes.” Natalie nodded, but still wasn’t smiling. “Okay. Email me and we can schedule a time to talk in the next few weeks. Does that work for you?”

  Nik took the card Natalie handed to her and gave her one of her own.

  “Absolutely. Thanks so much, and I’ll be in touch. See you in there.”

  Natalie nodded and turned back to her computer.

  Nik left Natalie’s office and walked into the locker room to change for class. Natalie hadn’t seemed happy about the idea of Nik writing about the gym, even though this was only a good thing for her business. This piece was either going to be a disaster or more interesting than she thought.

  At the bar after class, as soon as they got their drinks, Courtney zeroed in on Dana.

  “Okay, spill it.”

  Dana’s eyes widened.

  “Spill what? What are you talking about?”

  Nik was equally confused.

  “Yeah, spill what?” she asked Courtney.

  Courtney glared at Nik.

  “Not you too. Are you too busy with your new man to see what’s right in front of your face?”

  She gestured at Dana.

  “This one is over here smiling like there’s no tomorrow, beaming at her phone when she thinks we don’t see her, AND when I stopped by her house the other day to drop off cupcakes, she had a huge vase of gorgeous peonies in her bedroom and she said she had to go for a run as soon as I looked at them.”

  Oooh. Nik looked at Dana, who had a very happy, and very guilty, look on her face.

  Courtney banged her hand on the table.

  “Who.” BANG. “Is.” BANG. “The New Woman?” BANG. BANG. BANG.

  By this time the whole bar was looking at them, and Dana, shaking with laughter, had her face in her hands. Finally she sat up.

  “Okay. Courtney’s right. I didn’t tell you guys because . . .” She sighed. “I didn’t tell you guys because The New Woman is Natalie. And since we’re still all in the class with her for another week, I thought—”

  Nik was glad her glass wasn’t in her hand, or she would have dropped it.

  “Natalie, our Natalie? Natalie from the gym? Tall? Blond? HOT? That Natalie?” she asked.

  Courtney was still staring dumbfounded at Dana.

  “That Natalie,” Dana said. “Anyway, it’s still pretty new—I asked her a question after class a few weeks ago, and one thing led to another and we became running partners.”

  That’s not how “one thing led to another” was supposed to end.

  “And then?” Nik asked.

  “And one day, we got back to my place after a run, and I invited her inside for some vitamin water, and then . . .”

  Courtney leapt across the table to throw her arms around Dana.

  “I’m so mad at you for keeping this a secret from us,” she said, while hugging her tightly.

  Nik shook her head. “Now I’m going to have to put a long disclaimer on my story about the gym—I can’t even believe this.” She tried to frown, but Dana was grinning so hard it was impossible not to grin back at her.

  “Don’t get too excited, you guys,” Dana said. “Again, it’s only been a few weeks, but things are good so far.”

  Nik sat back and smiled.

  “Now who’s mad at me for signing all of us up for self-defense classes, huh? You two will never be able to argue with me ever again.”

  They both threw ice at her.

  Chapter Sixteen

  . . . . . . .

  Nik pulled up to Carlos’s house late Saturday afternoon, with a six-pack of beer in her hand and her old Stanford T-shirt on. She had a feeling that enchilada making was a messy endeavor.

  “Hey! Come on in.” Carlos wrapped his arms around her and held on tight.

  “Everything okay?” she asked.

  He nodded and kissed her hair.

  “It’s been a kind of emotional week, that’s all. Glad you’re here.”

  She pulled his head down to her and kissed him.

  “I’m glad to be here.”

  They stood like that for a while, until he kissed the top of her head and pulled away.

  “Okay. Let’s get cooking.”

  They walked together into the kitchen, which looked prepared for battle. There were packs of tortillas stacked in one corner, bags of dried chilies in another, aluminum baking pans all over the kitchen table, and many other ingredients that she didn’t recognize lined up on the counter. Her eyes widened.

  “You ready for this?” Carlos surveyed the kitchen and rubbed his hands together.

  She wasn’t totally sure, but she nodded anyway.

  “The first thing we have to do is to make the sauces,” he said.

  Sauces, plural. This dude didn’t play around. She handed him the six-pack, and he took two beers out of it and put the rest in the fridge.

  “Excellent. Let me get you started and I can pull out some snacks for us.”

  Soon, she was standing over the sink, pulling the papery skins off what seemed like hundreds of tomatillos. He was standing next to her, quartering onions, and lining them up on a big cookie sheet with garlic and a variety of green peppers.

  It felt peaceful, standing there and cooking with him. Some game was on the TV, but on low, so it was perfect background noise. They weren’t talking, but the silence between them felt easy. She could feel him smiling next to her.

  When she was done, she washed and dried the weirdly shaped little fruits and lined them up in even rows on the cookie sheet.

  “Perfect.” He’d moved on to shredding the pot full of beef. It smelled amazing. She opened her mouth and he slid a piece between her lips.

  “Oh my God, that’s good,” she said.

  “Now I know that you are sincere when you say that in bed, because you say it just like that.”

  She smirked at him.

  “Or I could be lying both times.”

  He shook his head.

  “Impossible. I know how good that meat is. If I’m cocky about anything, it’s my enchiladas.”

  She shook her head as she washed her hands.

  “‘If he’s cocky about anything,’ he says.”

  He laughed and picked up the two cookie sheets full of vegetables.

  “Open the oven so I can get these inside?”

  Once the vegetables were broiling, she turned to him.

  “What’s next?”

  He nodded at the other side of the stove.

  “We need to get the chilies stemmed and seeded, and then soak them long enough so they soften. Put those on, and pull the chilies apart over the garbage can so the seeds come out, pull the stems off, then drop the pieces in that big pot.”

  She opened the bags of chilies as he carefully transferred all of the shredded beef from the cutting board to a big bowl. Onc
e the bags were all open, she ripped each dried chili open with her fingers, and let the dry seeds rain out into the garbage can. Some of the seeds kind of stuck to the inside of the chilies, so she scraped them out with a fingernail before tossing the chili pieces into the pot on the stove.

  “Beef enchiladas and chicken enchiladas . . . there are no vegetarians in your family, I take it?”

  Carlos opened the oven again and took the sheet pans of vegetables out.

  “God, no. They would probably all flip out if I brought over vegetarian enchiladas. Which is a shame, because I make some really good ones with cheese and onions in the same kind of red chile sauce we’re making now. I just save those for parties with my friends instead of my family; even my carnivore friends happily eat them.”

  She rubbed her fingernail against a stubborn seed to loosen it from the pepper.

  “That sounds delicious. I’d eat those in a second.”

  Carlos tipped all of the vegetables into a big pitcher.

  “Excellent, you might just get the opportunity some time.”

  He stuck a bunch of cilantro leaves and a handheld blender inside the pitcher, and in about thirty seconds the roasted vegetables had become a fragrant olive-green sauce.

  “See?” He turned to her for the first time in a while. “Now the tomatillo sauce is all . . . oh my God, what are you doing?”

  She stopped, just as she’d pulled the stem off another dried chili.

  “What? Isn’t this what you told me to do?”

  She had no idea why he was looking at her with that appalled look on his face.

  He crossed the kitchen and picked up a box that had been sitting next to the bags of chilies.

  “Gloves! Nik! Holy shit, you’ve been touching all of those chilies with your bare hands. Did I forget to tell you to put gloves on? Oh no.”

  She had no idea what he was talking about.

  “What do gloves have to do with anything?”

  He took her by the waist and pulled her over to the sink.

  “You were touching dried hot chilies—and their seeds—with your bare hands. Your fingers are going to be on fire soon.” He turned on the water and handed her the bottle of dish soap.

  Oh.

  Oooooh.

  She poured the soap over her hands and scrubbed them with his sponge.

  “I’m going to say something I don’t normally say out loud, and especially not to men. I am an idiot.”

  He laughed but still looked concerned.

  “I refuse to agree with that statement on the grounds that it may cause you to murder me.”

  She laughed.

  “No, it’s not your fault.” She felt really stupid. “The box was sitting right there. I should have paid attention.” She wiggled her nose. “It’s okay. You don’t have to stand over me and supervise my hand washing. Move on to your next task.”

  He picked up the box of surgical gloves and pulled a pair on.

  “Okay, just keep washing your hands for a few more minutes while I work on these chilies.”

  She nodded. She reached up to scratch her nose, but caught herself just in time.

  For the next few minutes he pulled the chilies open—taking a lot less care to remove all of the seeds than she had—while she scrubbed her hands. Finally, she turned off the water and turned to him.

  “I think my hands are all right. But the thing is that my nose . . .”

  He dropped a dried chili into the pot, with his latex-encased hands, and picked up another.

  “Okay great, we must have caught it in time. Pull some gloves on and let’s go.”

  She couldn’t stand it anymore.

  “I will in one second, but the thing is that my nose is on fire.”

  He dropped the chili and turned to her.

  “What did you say?”

  She grabbed his hand. It was getting worse by the second.

  “My nose is on fire! My face! My face is on fire!”

  He slowly looked up at her. Her face felt like it was bright red. How had it gotten so hot so fast? She wanted to submerge her head in a cold bathtub. Or a lake. Or maybe the ocean would help. No, too much salt.

  “Your face. Oh shit. You touched your face, didn’t you?”

  She threw her hands in the air.

  “Who cares, what does it matter? I mean, I guess I did, but I don’t remember doing it, but also it’s kind of moot right now because my face is on fire! What do we do to make this stop?”

  She knew she wasn’t being rational, but she didn’t care. Because her face was on fire and getting hotter by the second.

  Carlos opened the fridge and muttered to himself as he looked through it.

  “Milk is good for capsaicin burns, but it’s not like you can sit there with your nose in a bowl of milk, hmmmm.”

  He was being altogether too calm about this. What the fuck was he talking about, “capsaicin.” This was not the time for fancy medical words. Had he not noticed that her FACE WAS ON FIRE?

  “Carlos!”

  “Sorry, sorry. What about this?” He took a tub of sour cream out of the fridge.

  She took it from him.

  “What do you mean ‘what about this?’ What’s this going to do?” Why the hell was she even asking questions? She would literally do anything right now to make this stop.

  He took the lid off of the tub of sour cream.

  “Put it all over your face.”

  She narrowed her eyes at him, but scooped a big dollop out of the tub with her fingers anyway.

  “Are you sure about this?”

  He nodded.

  “Of course I’m sure; I’m a doctor, aren’t I? Smear a big layer of sour cream everywhere it hurts.”

  How the hell had she gotten herself here? This morning, she was waking up in her nice, normal bed in her nice, normal apartment in Silver Lake, and just a few hours later, a man was standing in front of her ordering her to smear sour cream all over her face. And the worst part was, she was going to do it.

  “Fine, but if this doesn’t work, I’m going to kill you and bury your body far, far away.”

  He nodded.

  “You have my permission.”

  She patted the sour cream all over her nostrils, cheeks, and upper lip. It felt so soothing that she immediately applied more.

  “There,” he said. “Does that feel better?”

  She dug her fingers back into the tub for more.

  “God, yes. I’m not sure if it feels better because it’s cold or if there’s more to it, but I don’t care right now—all that matters is that it feels better. Put the rest back in the fridge so that if it’s the cold, I can put more on when this stuff warms up.” She took a deep breath as the heat finally started to recede. “Please. I meant to say please, right there.”

  He grinned and put the tub back in the fridge. She turned to the sink and washed her hands to get the sour cream off, and then immediately took two surgical gloves from the box and put them on. After this experience, she wanted to wear them everywhere. She could be like one of those never nudes, except just for her hands. Who knew when hot chilies could attack you? Better to be prepared. People might think she was a lunatic, but those would just be uninformed people who had never experienced what she’d just experienced.

  Carlos put his arm around her.

  “Are you feeling better?” he asked. “It seems like the sour cream is helping?”

  She turned to face him.

  “Yeah, I think so. I feel like I’m cooling—”

  Carlos burst out laughing.

  “You . . . oh my god . . . the . . . your face!”

  He was laughing so hard he bent over. She put her gloved hands on her hips while she waited for him to calm down from laughing at, not with, her. It wasn’t her fault that his fucking chili
es set her face on fire.

  “It’s just . . . you just . . .” He was laughing too hard to talk. Finally, he grabbed her by the hand and pulled her out of the kitchen and into the hallway that led to his bedroom.

  “Where are you taking me? Are you trying to take me to bed?” She gestured to her face, which she knew from experience was set in a death glare. “Does this look like my ‘I want to have sex’ face?”

  He stopped in the hallway and doubled over again, before he pulled himself together and dragged her into the bathroom.

  “That! Look at that!” He pushed her in front of the mirror.

  She’d been so distracted by gratitude for her face feeling better, that she’d sort of forgotten that she had smeared sour cream all over her face.

  “Oh my God.”

  Carlos was shaking with laughter behind her.

  “I know!”

  “I look . . . I look like a drunken clown.”

  Carlos pointed at her. “You said it! I didn’t! I did not say that! Remember, I did not say that!”

  “Oh my God.” She turned to Carlos, who started laughing again as soon as she turned around. She grinned, felt the drying sour cream crack as her face moved, and giggled at the ridiculous sensation. Soon, she was laughing so hard she could barely breathe.

  She held up her gloved hands and laughed even harder.

  “I’m sorry for laughing at you!” Carlos said, while still laughing at her. But she couldn’t really blame him. “Does it still hurt? Do you need more sour cream?”

  She shook her head, unable to talk. Eventually, she took a deep breath to answer him.

  “More sour cream for my face, you mean? What do you think I am, a baked potato? Are you going to give me some butter and salt next?”

  That destroyed both of them. Soon, they were both sitting on his bathroom floor, shaking with laughter and holding each other upright. Tears were streaming down her face, driving paths through the tacky sour cream, and that made her laugh even harder.

  Finally, her laughter subsided.

  “I’m sorry I yelled at you for laughing at me. And, you know, just in general.”

  He rested his arm around her shoulders.

  “That’s okay. Your face was on fire. I feel like you’re allowed to yell when your face is on fire.”