Hissy Fit
Mary Kay Andrews
Dedicated with love to Jeanne M. Trocheck,
who is truly the world’s best sister-in-law.
“Thank God, Honey.”
Madison, Georgia, is a very real, and very charming, town, but this is a work of fiction, and all the characters, incidents, and dialogues in this novel are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Contents
1 If it had not been for my fiance’s alcoholic cousin…
2 Paige darted around to the far side of the table,…
3 I’d never seen this guy before. He certainly wasn’t from…
4 Gloria had a key to my apartment, and she never…
5 Eventually I stopped crying and went back upstairs and tried…
6 “Keeley!” Gloria exclaimed, sweeping past me.
7 In a perfect world, on what would have been my…
8 I clutched the door frame for support. “He took Nick?…
9 On Sunday I slept.
10 Daddy called at noon on Wednesday. “You’re coming tonight, aren’t…
11 I yanked the kitchen door closed behind me and then…
12 Will sipped his coffee slowly while Daddy lit into the…
13 Red clover carpeted the meadow, and fat fuzzy bumblebees hovered…
14 “Let’s get one thing straight,” I said, once we were…
15 I took a long sip of beer and considered this…
16 He calls himself Austin LeFleur, and he owns Fleur, the…
17 Thursday morning I got downstairs early, but my aunt was…
18 I heard the barking ten yards from her front door.…
19 Erwin’s nose quivered with anticipation. Stephanie’s eyelids fluttered.
20 It was getting late. I needed to get back to…
21 I stepped inside the shop and flicked on the lights,…
22 “Jeez-o Pete!” I cried, letting my weapon drop to the…
23 I was in a funny mood after Austin went home…
24 It was only ten o’clock in the morning, but by…
25 Will made a big show of locking the bathroom door.…
26 Gloria wrinkled her nose as I slathered lotion on my…
27 Austin jumped out of the Volvo before I’d even turned…
28 A faint breeze ruffled the leaves on the limb of…
29 “Next time I need help with an installation, I’ll hire…
30 I jounced the car back onto the tarmac and turned…
31 Wednesday morning I got up and brewed a pot of…
32 Supper at Daddy’s looked like it would be what it…
33 We sat in the dark at the picnic table, looking…
34 On Friday afternoon I had a pounding headache. This should…
35 Will’s face blushed so deeply it was hard to tell…
36 On Saturday morning I watched as a steady stream of…
37 Kathleen’s wasn’t one of those snooty antiques shops where you…
38 Austin waved at me from a booth tucked into the…
39 I stopped at the Minit Mart on the way out…
40 I took a deep breath of air and sank to…
41 Gloria glanced over at me from her drawing board and…
42 When I got back to the studio, I went directly…
43 It had been nearly a month since I’d seen my…
44 “Will! Stephanie!” My voice was registering just the eensiest bit…
45 In August Daddy had a surprise for me. Two surprises,…
46 Thursday morning Austin and I picked up an eighteen-foot panel…
47 At six A.M. I heard the click of the key…
48 Austin helped me wrap the console table in a mover’s…
49 “I’ll drive,” I told Austin. I needed to be in…
50 We found a motel just off the Interstate in Mobile,…
51 “A flea market in Metairie, when I could be wandering…
52 Austin and I were still arguing as we drove back…
53 Will had decided that the first big official event at…
54 I was upstairs in my apartment, finishing up the covered…
55 The kitchen was full of people. The caterers were bustling…
56 “Let me get you some aspirin,” A.J. said, looking concerned.…
57 I dreaded returning to Loving Cup on Tuesday, but there…
58 A week later, when I went back to Loving Cup…
59 Austin and I sat in my car outside Vince Bascomb’s…
60 “Your mother’s dead,” Vince Bascomb said. “So you can tell…
61 It was Wednesday night. Salmon loaf night. After I dropped…
62 I threw myself into my work. All the structural and…
63 “So far, so good,” I told myself as I drove…
64 A cold front moved in overnight. Saturday morning I woke…
65 Saturday night I threw a pity party for myself. The…
66 “All of this?” Will asked, peering into the open cargo…
67 On Wednesday Gloria came back from the post office with…
68 We held Mama’s memorial service on the Saturday after Thanksgiving.…
Grits n’ Greens Casserole
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by Mary Kay Andrews
Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher
1
If it had not been for my fiance’s alcoholic cousin Mookie I feel quite sure that my daddy would still be a member in good standing at the Oconee Hills Country Club. But Mookie can’t drink hard liquor. She can drink beer and wine all day and all night and not bat an eyelash, but give her a mai-tai or, God forbid, a margarita, and you are asking for trouble.
It was my rehearsal dinner, which the Jernigans were hosting, and I was the bride-to-be, so I don’t believe I should have been the one responsible for keeping a grown woman and mother of two away from the margarita machine, even if she was one of the bridesmaids.
Nonetheless, I was the one standing there when Mookie went spinning out of control across the dance floor, and I was the one who got sprayed with a good six ounces of strawberry margarita. And across the front of my blue raw silk Tahari dress too.
“For God’s sake,” snapped GiGi, my mother-in-law-to-be. She of course had neatly sidestepped Mookie, leaving her own pale pink beaded gown spotless. “I told you not to have her in the wedding. You know how she gets.”
“Keeley,” Mookie yelped, lunging at me with her half-empty glass. “I am sooooo sorry. Let me help you get cleaned up.”
She proceeded to dump the rest of her drink down my back.
“It’s fine,” I said, gritting my teeth. “Just a little spot.”
Mookie’s mother, who is used to this kind of behavior, snatched her up by the arm and started dragging her toward the door so she wouldn’t cause any more of a scene, and all the women closed ranks around me, dabbing and fussing until I wanted to scream.
Actually, I’d been wanting to scream for several weeks now.
Enough! Enough parties. Enough presents. Enough luncheons and teas, enough sappy wedding showers, enough family and friends oohing and aahing over the perfect couple.
A.J. had had enough too. “Can’t we just go somewhere and screw our brains out for a couple weeks, then come back and be normal?” he’d asked the night before the rehearsal dinner.
It had been a busy week. I’d already endured the “Sip ’n See Tea,” where everybody in the county came by my daddy’s house to paw over my wedding loot, and the bridesmaids’ luncheon where GiGi let it be known that she thought it was awful my mama hadn’t been invi
ted to the wedding. As if I even knew where Mama had been living for the past twenty-some years.
And that was just the solo stuff. That very night A.J. and I had suffered through the “His ’n Her Barbecue Shower” given by one of his former fraternity brothers.
At the time he asked this question, A.J. was modeling the Hot Stuff! barbecue apron and padded oven mitt, which had been a shower gift from his Aunt Norma. To be perfectly honest, A.J. was naked under the apron. And he wasn’t wearing the mitt where his Aunt Norma had intended.
I had A.J. backed into the corner with the barbecue tongs, and then one thing led to another, and pretty soon we were rolling around on the floor of his apartment, and my chef’s hat came off along with the rest of my clothes, and the next thing you know, A.J. was having one of his attacks.
“Hee-upp! Hee-upp.” His whole body arched backward. I pushed him away, not startled really. A.J. gets like that sometimes when he’s, uh, in the throes.
“Breathe, baby, breathe,” I instructed, slithering out from under him.
“No,” he managed, between hiccups. “Don’t stop, Keeley.” He tried to pull me back down. “Come on. I’ll be all right.”
“Hee-upp! Hee-upp! Hee-upp.” His body jerked violently with each hiccup. I was afraid he’d hurt himself. Hell, I was afraid he’d hurt me. Not to mention that I don’t find fits of uncontrollable hiccups much of a turn-on. Not even when the hiccupper is the love of my life.
I scrambled to my feet, ran to the sink, and filled a cup with water. “Come on, A.J.,” I said, helping him to his feet. “It’s better if you stand up. Come on, sugar, drink some water for Keeley.”
“I (hee) don’t (up) want any damn hee-uppp! water,” A.J. stuttered. But he took a sip anyway.
“Another one,” I urged, rubbing his bare back. He caught my free hand and slid it down his belly. The man never stops trying.
“No, now,” I said, giggling and moving away. He pulled me back toward him. I held out the cup. “Not until you drink all this water.”
He frowned but started sipping.
“Go slower,” I said. “You know it’s the only thing that works.”
“I know what works,” he said, getting that look in his eye again. “Come back over here and rub on me again.”
But I’d picked up my clothes and was already hurrying into the bedroom to get dressed.
“Hey!” he called after me. “That wasn’t the deal.”
I pushed the button on the doorknob. “I know,” I called through the locked door. “I tricked you.”
By the time he found the key to the bedroom door I was just zipping my skirt.
“Aw, Keeley,” he said, his lip thrust out in that adorable pout of his. “I wanted us to do it one more time tonight.”
I tried to kiss the pout away, but he wasn’t having it.
“A.J.,” I said, pushing his hands away from the button he was unfastening. “Now, really. The wedding’s just a few days away. I have an early morning meeting and a ton of stuff to do. I can’t be staying over here fooling around with you all night.”
“Come on, baby,” he whispered, sliding the zipper on my skirt down while pushing my skirt up toward my waist. “Once we’re married, it won’t be as much fun as this. We’ll be all legal and stuff.”
I pushed him away, my feelings hurt.
“You’re saying sex with me is gonna be boring? Just because we’re married? Thanks a hell of a lot.”
“You know what I mean,” A.J. said, grabbing for me again. I spun away from him, and got my shoes and my purse. My car was parked outside. I headed for the front door.
A.J. wrapped the apron around his waist and followed me out to the car. His cute white butt glowed in the June darkness. “I don’t mean we won’t have fun,” he said, glancing around the yard to see if anybody was watching. A.J.’s apartment was in the carriage house behind The Oaks, his parents’ antebellum mansion. I glanced up too, at the lit-up second-floor window I knew was his parents’ bedroom.
“I just mean it won’t be forbidden, like it is now,” A.J. said. He looked up at his mother’s window too, and now he had me backed up against the door of my car. He let the apron drop to the ground, and now he was honest-to-God naked as a jaybird. “Come on, admit it, it’s a turn-on, thinking we might get caught.”
It was obvious that he was turned on, all right.
“No,” I said firmly. “You may be an exhibitionist, but I’m not. Now be a good boy and say good night.”
He pressed up against me again. “I’ll be a good boy. A very good boy. In your car,” he whispered, kissing my neck. “We haven’t done it in your car in ages.”
“No.”
“My car.” He worked his knee between mine.
“Hell no.” His car was a BMW Z-3 roadster. After the last time we’d done it there I’d needed a chiropractor to get my spine back to normal.
He got a demonic grin then. “I know. Mama’s car. The back seat of that Escalade was made for love.”
That did it. I mean, there’s kinky, and then there’s KINKY.
I gave him a gentle push, and he stumbled and fell backward, planting his bare tush on the crushed oystershell of the drive.
“Oww,” he howled.
“Night, darlin’,” I said. I got in the car, locked the door, and drove off into the inky Georgia night.
Now it was a week later, and the longest damn party in the history of Madison was just a day away from being over. The wedding was tomorrow. One more day and I would be Mrs. Andrew Jackson Jernigan. Keeley Murdock Jernigan.
“One more day,” I muttered to myself, as I extricated myself from the clutches of the womenfolk.
“Here,” my Aunt Gloria said, thrusting a bottle of club soda at me. “Go in the ladies’ room, take the dress off, and dampen it with the soda. Otherwise you’ll never get that strawberry stain out of that silk.”
“Thanks,” I said, shooting her a grateful look.
I was hurrying down the hallway at the Oconee Hills Country Club when I heard it. A faint noise. Coming from a room on the right side of the hallway. It was the boardroom.
I paused outside the door.
“Hee-upp.”
“Shhh!” And then a faint giggle.
“Hee-upp. Oh God, do that again.”
I froze. A fist seemed to slam into my chest. I felt dizzy. Nauseous. I had to get to the ladies’ room. I took two stumbling steps.
“Keeley never does it like that.”
Another giggle.
Now I had my hand on the door.
“Hee-up, hee-up, hee-up!”
I flung the door open.
Andrew Jackson Jernigan, the man of my dreams, dressed only in his white tux shirt, black tie, and black socks, was standing, facing me. Facing him was Paige Plummer, my maid of honor, her perky little ass perched on the boardroom’s shiny mahogany table, her perky red chiffon cocktail dress hiked up to her waist, her legs wound around my fiance’s waist.
“Heeeee.” A.J.’s head snapped forward. His mouth slammed shut. “Oh God.” He said it differently this time. He backed away from Paige, reached down for his pants.
“What?” Paige turned her head around. Her perky little red lips formed an astonished O when she saw me standing there.
“Oh God,” Paige said, hopping down from the table. Paige was an advertising copywriter, but she’d never been a really original thinker. “Oh God, Keeley.”
Something came over me. One minute the bottle of club soda was in my hand. The next minute I was flinging it across the boardroom at A.J. He tried to duck, but since his pants were still at half-mast, his reaction time was off. Fortunately for him, the bottle was plastic. Unfortunately, it was full. It hit him right above the left eye, and he went down like a rock.
“Goddamn,” he roared.
“Keeley!” Paige cried out.
I was out of things to throw. But that was only a temporary situation.
2
Paige darted around to the far
side of the table, searching for her perky little red thong panties. I found them first.
“You bitch,” I screamed. “How could you? My best friend. How could you?”
“Now Keeley. We didn’t mean anything by it,” A.J. said, slowly standing up. His fingers fumbled with his belt buckle. “You know, we’ve all had a lot to drink tonight…you know how it is, baby. You know how I get a little frisky when I have a few drinks.” He had the nerve to wink at me.
I took the panties and slapped the wink off his face. “With my maid of honor?”
I wheeled around and faced Paige, who had her shoes in her hand and had been stealthily edging toward the door.
“You’re supposed to help me with my veil and hold my bouquet,” I screeched. “Not fuck the groom, you scum-sucking slut.”
“Hey!” Paige said sharply. “Who are you calling a slut? You’re the one who screwed him on your first date.”
“Shut up.” I hauled off and bitch-slapped her. Right there in the boardroom of the Oconee Hills Country Club, with the oil portraits of forty-some past club presidents, including A.J.’s granddaddy Chub Jernigan, glowering down at me.
“Ooooowwww,” Paige howled. She clutched the side of her face. I noticed with satisfaction that her cheek bore the imprint of my palm, and that my palm bore a smear of Paige’s CoverGirl foundation.
Seconds later Paige launched herself at me. At five-foot-eleven, I stand a good six inches taller than she does, but Paige had played forward on the state runner-up Morgan County High girls’ volleyball team. She was tiny, but I had forgotten about her sports prowess, and more importantly, that she came from a long line of what we in Madison like to call trailer trash.
“Bitch,” she shrieked. Her long red nails clawed at my face, and her stocking-clad size six feet kicked at my shins and knees with a force that took me by surprise.
I was trying to fend her off when A.J. stepped between us and clamped my right forearm tightly in his hand. He held Paige firmly by her shoulder.
“Girls!” he said. “Come on, y’all. Be nice, now. Calm down, both of you.”
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