by Ellen Mint
Brandy caught her reflection in the hall mirror, her eyes glazed over and a smile straining her cheeks to the breaking point. It fell in an instant and she stomped into her bathroom. Squeezing a massive dollop of toothpaste onto the brush, she attacked her bicuspids.
So he took her to the river. Lots of people go to the river. He didn’t have to ditch me to do it. Ditch his job, not me. Not like we’re anything but friends. And there’s always other movies to catch together.
Her angry brushing transformed to vigilant pacing, Brandy circling around the table where her phone was charging. She kept glancing down at the black screen, then away. More tartar met its end, the harsh bristles clawing into her gums.
He saved her from a mugger. What woman wouldn’t fall for that? Man sweeps in from nowhere, out of the shadows, and chases away a villain about to hurt you.
It’d work on her.
Foaming at the mouth, Brandy yanked her phone up and searched through the feed. It didn’t take long for Ms. Willows’ carefully cultivated photos to arrive. There was Marty and the awkward cheek kiss. And more in a park with a picnic. Was that a record player?
Little over the top, Dashwood. Brandy was snickering to herself when a new photo refreshed and her heart sank to the floor.
Marty had cupped her jaw in his hand, a thumb caressing her chin, while the two kissed in front of the setting sun. His eyes were closed so tight, as if he was pouring his soul into that one touch. And below the image was the caption, We’re dating! It’d already racked up a hundred and fifty comments and was growing.
What did she care? He was just a friend. A coworker. A guy that sometimes came over for movies and brought her donuts. She didn’t have any claim to him…not that she’d want to.
After spitting in the sink and rinsing, Brandy wiped off her toothpaste-stained face. She vowed she wouldn’t look at Janeth’s Instagram feed ever again, and wandered off to bed to sleep away her old heartache.
Chapter Five
Her promise lasted all of three days, Brandy eventually subscribing to not only Janeth’s Instagram feed but her videos as well. It was all Marty’s fault. He couldn’t stop walking into work with the fattest grin on his face, and judging by the whistling that wouldn’t cease, his dates were going great.
And with each snoop, Brandy had to agree.
One night he took her to the museum and they painted portraits of each other in a room he’d rented. Surrounded by art from some of the greatest painters the world had ever seen, she did a little line doodle of Marty. Meanwhile, he made a finger-painting of her portrait complete with an angel halo.
But that was nothing compared to the date from the night before. Some little Italian restaurant for dinner, pretty typical until one saw the massive J and W hanging on the wall, made from roses. There were a good five pictures of Janeth posing in front of it, and one with Marty shrugging in pride with his hand wrapped around her waist.
Oh, Brandy noticed all right. She knew every picture where there was a sliver of Marty’s olive-tan hand, or a cheek, or even just his leg right out of frame. It became a demented game for her, scrutinizing each new image from Janeth to see if she could find any sign of cracks. But it was all angels and heaven, no demons allowed.
A loud jangle nearly sent her phone flying against the wall. She caught it in her palm, her heart racing as she banished the thing to her pocket. It wasn’t until she tried to convince herself she had no reason to feel guilty that she realized it was the bell.
In waltzed Marty, a bag slung over his hip with the strap across his chest. He dashed inside, grabbed one of the shelves and panted. Hard. “Made it!” he declared to Brandy and the one student winding around their philosophy section.
“Almost didn’t—alarm here seemed to think that when I told it to shut off, I wanted it to. Silly thing,” he said, waving his phone at her. “But I made it.”
“Um.” Brandy turned to look over her shoulder at the clock which showed it was fifteen minutes after nine.
“What? That thing’s wrong. See?” He wafted his wrist around as proof. “My watch says…” Marty paused and tapped the face. “Damn it, I forgot to wind it again. Old piece of…”
He cranked on the dial, revealing neon-colored bandages taped to nearly all his fingers. Pointing at them in concern, Brandy asked, “What happened to you?”
“Oh, that? Turns out when you buy roses wholesale, they come with the thorns still attached.” He laughed as if his appendage mutilation was hilarious, even waving his right hand’s fingers, which bore the brunt of the attack.
So he took all of that just for… Oh.
Marty remained face down in his old watch. “Had a bathtub full of ’em. Just me, a hot glue gun, a very unhelpful video tutorial which I swear skipped steps and so many angry roses.”
His bag struck the counter, the thud drawing Brandy’s eye. Were there more presents inside for her? Had he bought up every chocolate truffle in the city and planned to spell her name out with them? Or maybe he’d gotten a pile of oysters and was going to try to find a pearl just for her.
Keeping every thought off her face, Brandy poked at the register as a distraction. Her coworker finally got to the ‘work’ part.
“How am I already clocked in?” Marty asked.
Brandy shrugged. “I knew you’d get here eventually. No reason for the boss to know about your thorn battle.”
“Ha.” Marty laughed once, his shoulder barely grazing her in a bit of fun, before he stuffed a fist around his mouth. It couldn’t disguise the massive yawn rumbling past. “I just hope I got all the little buggers out of my tub before I take a shower. Gonna be a fun call to the plumber if I didn’t.”
For a brief moment, Brandy stared at Marty. Not a cursory glance to make certain he was standing there, or a polite watching his face while talking together. No, her eyes traversed up his forearms which were on display as he’d rolled the polo to his elbows. She stared across his chest and swerved down his stomach as the idea of him in the shower played about in her brain.
When her gaze was nearly at the swimsuit bit, she spun back to the register. Her cheeks burned hot, her fingers flexing against the cheap plastic as if they wanted to hammer out an epic novel across it.
“Welp, back to the back with me, the book mule. Which I hope doesn’t mean I ever have to carry any contraband books across the border.”
Brandy snickered at the thought. “That would be really uncomfortable.”
“And a tight squeeze,” he said with a laugh. She didn’t take the bait that time, keeping her gaze focused away from his sitting area. Marty lingered as if he expected a response, but when nothing came, he slipped out to find the newest stock to slot on shelves.
“I hope it was worth it,” Brandy said fast, catching him off guard. “The roses and thorns. I hope she liked them.”
She knew all about his dates thanks to her snooping, Marty never talked about them at work. He didn’t have to—his massive grins told novels. This was the first time she’d ever acknowledged the fact that he had someone in his life who wasn’t a nosy brother or a friendly coworker.
Marty squinted as if he couldn’t see her. Then the big smile loped across his face. “I’d say it was a rousing success.” He laughed and vanished to the back room.
* * * *
It wasn’t until after lunch that Brandy saw Marty again, thanks to the store getting swamped with an ‘impromptu’ book signing. They could have them, as long as there was no calendar and their boss didn’t know. She was busy folding up the card table that’d held the local writer’s books when Marty dashed through the stacks.
With a stage-magician flourish, he dropped a book into her just emptied hands. Brandy stared at it in confusion. Did he need her to shelve it or was it a request? “What—?”
“It’s Excerpt-O’clock,” he declared, causing her to groan.
“We haven’t done that in… I can’t even remember.”
He held his own book tight to his chest, h
is eyes blazing with a familiar mischief. “Exactly the reason to bring it back. Audience favorite, really play on the nostalgia vote.”
Brandy finally took in the cover. It was one of those airport novels written by a late-middle aged man who wanted to pretend he was a twenty-year-old who drove every woman wild. And he probably stopped the president from being exploded by bombs attached to pirates, or something like that. They had more important work to do.
Still… Marty danced back and forth in place, his shoulders doing most of the moving. She sighed. “Okay.”
“Yes!” Marty pumped his book in the air, which looked like it bore a fancy dress with the woman’s head cut off at her chin. Oh, boy. “Twenty-three,” he said, setting off the game.
Brandy grimaced at having to go first, but she flipped to the twenty-third page in the book and read the first full sentence. “‘Armed only with the M1 Garand I pulled from the mannequin’s cold, plastic fingers, I knew it was up to me to stop the terrorists from taking over the Smithsonian.’”
A snort erupted from Brandy at that perfect summation, and she stared at Marty. “Sixty-nine.”
“Nice,” he said, cracking open the book. “‘For today is not a day to be a…’ Wait. Sorry.” He coughed, raised his voice an octave and slipped on a ‘Southern belle’ accent. “‘For today is not a day to be a wilting flower. I shall become a vengeful desert rose.’”
So they were working with an armed vigilante about to protect the Smithsonian from Scarlett O’Hara. This should be fun. “Forty-seven,” Marty said, guiding her to the next page.
“Ooh, this one’s dialogue. ‘Tell the devil Clint Hardback sends his regards!’ Clint Hardback? Holy…okay, um, one hundred and five.”
“’He lingered near my bridal trousseau, his hand caressing the sanded wood as if it’d touched every woman in this town.’ This is getting juicy,” Marty said, and he kept reading further down the page.
“Hey, stick to the rules you made up,” Brandy said, slapping a hand over the book.
“Fine, next number.”
As they kept trading sentences, Clint Hardback sent numerous nameless goons to their gory deaths, and the Duchess of Cottonwood Cove lingered behind the scenes. In their jumbled retelling, it seemed as if the duchess wanted to take control of the Smithsonian in order to screw over her second cousin who had tried to marry her under false pretenses. Clint’s motivations were that he had a gun and that seemed to be it.
“…’And now the entire county knows your dark secret,’” Marty said, his voice cracking from the overuse of falsetto. “Well? Don’t leave the duchess hanging—she might chop off your finger to convince the priest you were consorting with witches.”
“I need a number, remember?” Brandy said.
“Oh, right, uh. Let’s skip to the end.”
With a smirk, Brandy flipped to the back. “‘Thank you, Mr. President, but I can’t accept your offer to become Secretary of Protecting the Homeland. I’m so dangerous it would only encourage more terrorists to try and take me down.’ Well, Clint is certainly confident. Okay, your turn.”
Smiling wide, Marty crushed open his book to the end. His bandages flew like a neon blur until he landed on the page. “‘However did…’” He coughed and rubbed his throat. “Sorry, gotta go back to regular me. I hope the duchess will forgive me.”
“After you take your lashings, of course.”
Marty laughed and dove in. “‘However did I miss you? Your genteel company, your hand forever by mine? Your golden eyes peering from across the parlor? It is as if a veil has been lifted and, by God’s graces, I can see what He laid before me.’ Well, that wasn’t what I was expecting…”
Silence, save for the tick of the clock, permeated the room. Brandy gouged at the back of her neck and glared at her book. She could feel Marty staring at her, only amplifying the confusing pit in her stomach. Say something. Tell him that…
“Marty, you should know,” she said, her voice soft. She kept flipping through the vast pages of machismo in her hand. When bright green and yellow bandages cupped over her fingers, she turned to focus on his eyes. Whatever hid in those deep brown depths, she had no idea.
With a snicker, she said, “I like my book better.”
“Yeah.” He reached over and took it back. Absently, he pressed both together as if the cover models were kissing, despite one not having a head. “The explosions get all the applause. I should go and…you know. Go. Do the going things.”
“Right.” Brandy nodded, turning away to focus on the door. For the first time, she prayed for a stream of customers to stampede through it. For the first time, she had no idea how to talk to the man hiding away in the back room.
At that moment, the front door opened, depositing another Dashwood before her. Eldon’s glasses fogged up in an instant, telling her how muggy it was away from their air conditioning. As he tried to buff off the condensation, he said, “Afternoon, Brandy.”
“Hi. Chocolate still clogged?”
“No, personal business. Where is my brother?”
Absently, she pointed at the back room. “Probably making a fort out of the boxes,” she said, as if she hadn’t helped him some late nights. As if it hadn’t been her idea to make a working drawbridge with leftover twine they found. Why did she act more like a kid at twenty-six than she had at nineteen?
Because you were married and working through school.
She clutched her ring and Eldon vanished behind the scenes to speak with his brother. Thinking about Kevin, or Marty, or how much the existence of Janeth kept bugging her, was out of the question. Needing anything to do but plunge into her weeping psyche, Brandy picked up a random puzzle book.
At first she thought it was one of those fancy newspaper crossword ones, but the page asked her to find things hidden in the image. The ice cream was easy, but the damn beachball was giving her a headache. She nearly had it all, including finding every Christmas tree, when Eldon emerged.
He wore Marty’s bag around his back. Was that not another date idea for Janeth? Before Brandy could ask, Eldon paused and turned around. “Now you’re certain you have it booked?”
“Yes,” Marty’s voice whined. She didn’t realize he’d followed, his shorter stature eclipsed by his lanky brother. He glanced once at Brandy before focusing on his brother. “It’s all ready to go. What about you?”
“What of me?”
“Maybe you’re failing to uphold your end of the bargain. The eldest son forgetting his poor mamá’s birthday. Truly, it is a heart-wrenching crime.”
Eldon rolled his eyes at Marty’s prodding and they landed on the poor woman dragged into his family bickering. “Will you be bringing anything, Brandy?”
“Hm? Am I supposed to?”
He shrugged. “No, but I’ve found that even when asked not to, food still appears.”
Crap, that was in two days. What could she make in time for Mrs. Dashwood?
“You are still coming, right?” Eldon pressed, throwing her baking calculations off.
Glancing first at Marty, then back to Eldon, she said, “I…I thought so. Had planned to, anyway. Did you not want me to?”
“What?” Marty spun on his heels. “Of course you’re wanted. Wouldn’t be a proper party without Brandy Benson there. Hollar!” He threw his hands up and wafted them around, causing both of them to smile. Only Eldon remained unmoved, his eyebrow in a permanent snit.
“Well, glad that’s all settled. Martin, do get dressed up, at least.” With that he walked out of the store, mystery bag in hand.
“Dressed up,” Marty mumbled to himself. “Show him. I’m wearing my gorilla costume with the tiny swim trunks. Ha!”
“How…?” Tiny are they? She meant it as a joke, a little light prodding back and forth. But as Marty turned to her, the awkwardness burned through her and she switched tactics. “How big will this party be?”
“Oh, don’t worry, homebody. It’ll be a small one. Mom insisted.”
Chapter S
ix
That’s a lot of people.
“Excuse me.” Brandy whipped around at the voice, and a mariachi band wheeled a massive amp up the plastic path placed on the grass.
She knew the Dashwoods weren’t hurting, but this backyard birthday party stretched up a hill and back down so far she couldn’t see the end. Proper banquet tables lined the stone walkway up near the porch. There was no food yet, but the chafing dishes prepared to keep it warm said enough. Climbing the hill behind the band, she caught where they’d be set up.
Not only was there a dance floor placed next to a koi pond, but a stage on wheels kept beaming lights across the party. As it was still seven, the spotlights didn’t get far against the sun. Chairs littered the grounds, placed in a haphazard fashion as if they intended to be there for a person to sit for a moment instead of the night.
No chance anyone paid that much money to not expect their guests to dance for hours on end.
And she’d come willingly to this. Clutching the plastic carrier tight to her chest, Brandy felt the urge to turn and run as fast as possible. It’d be another half hour until the next bus arrived, but she had a book on her phone. And it’s rare for anyone at a bus stop to expect you to dance.
“Hola,” a voice whispered behind her. She spun, nearly whacking into the man with her heavily shielded baked goods, when soft, warm eyes smiled at her.
“Glad to see you made it,” Marty said.
“Yes,” Brandy said, trying to act like she hadn’t planned to turn tail and run. Absently raking her fingers through her for-once-down hair, she took in Marty. The requisite green polo and dark khakis had been traded for a sea-blue shirt he’d abandoned buttoning to expose a dangerous level of chest. He must have something against cuffs, as they were rolled up to his elbows, exposing the forearms that in the golden light looked even more cut than usual.
His gaze drifted from the sudden burst of excitement on the hill back to her, specifically what was in her hands. “Did you bring something?” He reached for it, and on instinct Brandy swatted at his grubby fingers.