How to Look Happy

by Stacey Wiedower

  I glance in the direction where their eyes are all trained, and Chick is right. The art wall looks absolutely fabulous. The wall behind the brightly colored canvases is a pale, ethereal yellow that glows against the mint stripe in the floor and makes the art pop off the wall. I imagine Annalise will have a hard time keeping up with the demand this installation is sure to put on her studio.

  Speaking of Annalise, I glance over and see her gazing up at Todd, her left arm laced through his. “This is so beautiful,” she says. “You’re an artist too.”

  Never mind that I did the layout and gave the orders, I think bitterly. And then I feel bad for taking anything away from Todd, who really did do a nice job with the installation.

  To my horror, the next thing she says is, “Ready for lunch?”

  Todd nods and then glances over at me. “Are we all wrapped up, boss?”

  I shake my head numbly. “Yeah, looks like we’re good to go. Thanks for your hard work today. This room really looks amazing.”

  He smiles and looks like he’s about to say something else. Then he seems to change his mind. “Well, have a nice weekend,” he says. A veiled reference to my date tomorrow night?

  “Thanks. Have fun at lunch.” Ooh, I couldn’t stop myself on that one.

  And on that note, Annalise pulls at the arm she’s still attached to, and together they leave the room.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Summer Haze

  By the time three o’clock rolls around on Friday, I’m wiped. I spent all morning troubleshooting at the Santiagos’ house. The painters brought the wrong colors for the master suite—they didn’t get the change order after Nestor decided to go back to the original palette I suggested instead of copying a tone-on-tone, color-blocked scheme he’d found on Houzz.com. I swear if I could install a firewall on that man’s computer that blocked him from all DIY or home-related websites, I’d do it.

  Before I got there the painters already had a first coat on two walls in the bedroom, so I had to stop them midstream and send them back to the paint store, which is setting us back another day, minimum. Not to mention what all these errors and changes are doing to the project budget…

  After leaving the Santiagos’ McMansion, I drove to the bakery for a fluff and a final walk-through before Saturday’s soft opening. And then I headed back downtown to meet with Amelia at her office. She’s in town for a few days for meetings, and she emailed me about getting together to start talking ideas. She and Noah close on the house in a little over three weeks.

  After spending all day with the Santiagos, I’m so thankful to be working with Amelia—who’s decisive, with great taste—that I could cry. We’re doing the nursery first, and I can’t wait to get started. Plus, while Amelia’s aesthetic leans to rustic and homey, Noah’s is minimal and modern, meaning it’ll be fun to find a bridge between the two. With the house’s Craftsman bones, I’m envisioning crisp millwork and clean lines with a rustic-industrial edge.

  “Yes!” Amelia says when I frame it that way. “That is exactly what I have in mind.”

  I figure that’s a good note to end the week on, so once I’ve closed my project files and we’ve finished talking, I ask Amelia if she wants to join Carrie and me for a drink. She laughs and pats her stomach. “I think that’d give everybody something new to gossip about.”

  I smile. “A nice glass of water, then, while we all sit at the bar?”

  Amelia and Noah have been back in the tabloids lately thanks to the release of the latest movie based on Amelia’s books. She’s had to appear at press conferences and red carpet events around the country with Colin Marks, her ex-boyfriend, and the media’s been having a field day with her engorged stomach and Colin’s plastic smiles—reading into every expression on the actor’s face and describing him in terms like “woeful” and “brave.”

  Meanwhile, Amelia confided, Colin has moved an Argentinean model into his sprawling home in the Hollywood Hills, and she thinks they’re serious. Privately, she said, he isn’t hung up on her at all. But he’s not above milking it for the publicity. Even her own publicist has said the tension between them, invented or not, makes for good press for the movie franchise.

  “Ready to go?” asks Carrie, poking her head around the door frame of Amelia’s office, her purse dangling from her right shoulder.

  “You two go on,” Amelia says. “I’ve got a few things to wrap up on this Kimballs deal before I can get out of here.”

  With Amelia’s involvement, Katie’s firm is bringing in all sorts of new business, and that’s been evident in recent weeks from Carrie’s mood. She no longer seems as stressed or exhausted, which is a relief.

  I glance at Amelia. “I’ll get in there to measure as soon as you take possession,” I say. “In the meantime, I’ll work from pictures. And I’ll get the furniture and fabrics for the nursery on order right away.”

  She smiles. “That sounds absolutely perfect.”

  I shake my head and smile back. She looks serene and healthy and radiant, the picture of the pregnancy ideal. Between Amelia and Ellie Kate, my own neuroses about my ticking time bomb of a biological clock are getting harder to suppress. And Brianna. I can hardly forget about Brianna. I wonder briefly how Jeremy is holding up.

  Jeremy. Thinking about him and Brianna makes me think about Brandon, which makes the muscles at the base of my stomach tighten with nervousness. Now that the night is here, I can’t believe I’ve agreed to go out with him again.

  That’s one reason for this emergency happy-hour session with Carrie—I need moral support and girl time to face this night, at least with any dignity.

  She and I head out, and ten minutes later we’re seated along the short edge of the bar at South of Beale. The place is quiet and still relatively empty, since technically the workweek hasn’t ended yet. Nathaniel isn’t tending bar today, which is kind of disappointing—there’s a new bartender we’ve never met before, and though he seems nice, the “Cheers” vibe we usually feel in this place is lacking. Nobody knows our names.

  But that’s okay today, since the pep talk I need isn’t one I want overheard.

  With hardly anybody in here, the music seems louder than usual. It’s a Death Cab for Cutie song I haven’t heard in, like, two years. I sip at my sangria as I listen to the lyrics, then say, “I think I’m not going to shave my legs. Then there’s no way I’ll be tempted to sleep with him again.”

  Carrie half-laughs, half-chokes on her Pimm’s Cup cocktail. “Again?” she says when she can speak. “You didn’t sleep with him the last time.”

  “Yeah, but it would’ve happened. It’s not my fault that he couldn’t get it up.” I glare at her. “You’d better agree with me on that, at least.”

  She falls into another fit of giggles. “That definitely could not have been your fault,” she says. “You looked hot. He’s an idiot.” She takes another sip of her cocktail. “I bet he’s been kicking the hell out of himself.”

  “That’s sort of what I’m afraid of,” I admit. “That tonight is some kind of heroic do-over for him. We’ve had so many starts and stops, I don’t think I can take another one. I definitely should not have agreed to go out with him again.”

  I’m thinking about Todd and how it could have been him that I was out with tonight instead of Brandon. Now who’s the idiot? I’m picturing Todd—his messy hair and his beat-up jeans, his laid back drawl and his aimless odd jobs.

  The mental images leave me feeling confused. Todd is entirely wrong for me, and yet I can’t help but think that if I were meeting him tonight, I’d be at home shaving my legs, feeling the opposite of how I feel right now. I ponder that for a few seconds as Ben Gibbard’s high, melancholy voice wraps itself around me, fitting the moment.

  Todd doesn’t gel with the image of my life that’s always been painted so clearly in my head. I can’t imagine him taking root in one spot, staking himself to a career and investing in a white picket fence while I set up house and decorate my own sweet nursery.
>
  I doubt he wants to settle down, and I especially doubt he wants kids. Nothing about my life and his life are a fit. And yet, here I am sitting in this bar, on fire at the thought of him while a man who does fit every image I’ve ever pictured of success—designer suits, weighty title, nice car, golf on the weekends, and a lake house or beachfront condo down the road—is picking me up in a little more than two hours, presumably wanting me to want him.

  “Did you hear me?”

  “What?” I shake my head, zoning back in to the happenings in the bar around me. The place has started filling up without me even noticing, and now the seats beside us are occupied by two guys in jeans, untucked shirts, and fashion glasses—advertising, or maybe architecture.

  I’m wondering if they’re gay when the one closest to me notices me looking and winks.

  “What’s up?”

  I nod at him and say, “Not much,” and then turn back to Carrie. Apparently not.

  She’s watching my exchange with Pseudo-Hipster Boy in amusement. “I said, Why are you going out with him then?”

  I think about that, drawing in a deep sip of my blueberry-lemon white sangria. I love SOB’s late-summer bar menu. I love this time of year, period. Everything in the world seems on the brink of change. Whatever bloomed in the spring is closing up, reseeding, and preparing for the season ahead. I feel like I’m entering a new season, too, though I’m not sure why—or why I’m resisting it so hard.

  “I don’t know,” I say finally, setting down my nearly empty drink and looking into Carrie’s eyes. They’re narrowed and filled with something like worry as she studies me. “I don’t know why I accepted his friend request in the first place. He was a dick to me in high school.” I grasp the stem of my glass between my thumb and index finger and start spinning it around on the glossy bar top. “I’ve never, for one single second, wished I had him back,” I say after a long moment. “But I’ve never wished for revenge either.” I pause again, my eyes trained on the new bartender as he shakes up a drink with one hand and garnishes a glass with the other. He’s good. I glance back at Carrie. “So really, nothing positive can come of this thing with Brandon.”

  I feel as if I’ve just had a major revelation, but for the life of me, I don’t know what it is.

  “I think you’ve gotten lost,” Carrie says.

  I look up at her, my eyes wide and miserable. “How has this happened? A few months ago everything was so mapped out. If only Jeremy hadn’t screwed everything up, we’d be talking about my catering menu and scheduling the fittings for your bridesmaid’s dr—”

  “I don’t mean Jeremy,” she says, interrupting me. “You were lost before Jeremy broke up with you. In fact, I think Jeremy breaking up with you might be the best thing that could possibly have happened. It woke you up.”

  My mouth opens and then closes again. There’s a part of me that wants to be offended, but another, bigger part of me that knows she loves me, and she’s right. And that part of me is pissed.

  “I don’t think I’m there yet.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean I’m not ready for any more ‘This is for the best’ speeches. Because right now, it all just sucks. Not having my fiancé anymore or my wedding to plan—it sucks. Having to worry about who likes me or not or who’s going to marry me or not or whether any of this will happen before I’m too old to have kids or not—it all sucks.”

  I can feel Pseudo-Hipster Boy watching me, and that pisses me off too. I feel like turning around and telling him to keep his eyes to himself, but instead I put my left elbow on the bar as a shield and continue spinning my glass in my right hand. I hate the way I just talked to Carrie. None of this is her fault—not even her knowing what’s best for me when I can’t seem to figure it out for myself.

  Neither of us says anything for a couple of minutes. Finally, I say, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to snap at you.”

  Carrie shrugs. “I know. And you’re right. It does suck.” She pushes her cocktail away with her fingertips, leaving a watery streak on the bar top. “Getting older sucks. Being in your thirties and still not having the answers you thought you’d have by now, it sucks. I’m with you one hundred percent.”

  There’s enough feeling in her voice for me to look for the underlying meaning. “Is everything okay with you and David?” I ask.

  “Yes, everything’s fine,” she says. “With me and David.”

  I stare at her. “What’s not fine?”

  She sighs and then nods when the bartender walks over and asks if we’d like another. I shake my head no—I need to pay my tab soon and get out of here if I am, in fact, going to make my date with Brandon tonight. I just received a text from him that says I should wear another dress. I’m not sure what that means we’re doing or if I even want to know.

  What I do know is that I’m sick of being a pushover when it comes to men. I tuck my phone under the napkin in my lap to keep from distracting myself or Carrie.

  “I’m just feeling a little bit burnt out,” she says.

  “What, at work?”

  “Yes, at work.” She’s looking down. “Please don’t say anything to Katie or to Mel.” She glances back up again, into my eyes.

  “Of course I wouldn’t,” I say. I’m surprised—I thought she’d been blissful with her job ever since she got her promotion. I remember the tired look in her eyes a few weeks back, though, and wonder how long she’s been feeling this way.

  “Katie’s not going to be happy with me,” she murmurs as the as-yet-nameless bartender places a second Pimm’s Cup in front of her and whisks the empty glass away.

  “What, are you actually planning to quit?” Venting over a little burnout is one thing, but quitting is another entirely. I feel a deep responsibility to talk her off of the ledge. Carrie’s like me in that she’s always had a plan of action in place. As long as I’ve known her, she’s had clear-cut goals, and as far as I know, she’s met every single one of them. “What does David say about this?”

  “David is encouraging me to do it,” she says, rendering me speechless.

  “Do you two have plans in the works that you haven’t told me about?” I glance down at her ringless left hand.

  “No, nothing like that.” She flushes, making me wonder if she’d keep something as big as an engagement from me to spare my feelings, since the end of my own engagement is still fresh and ragged. I peer more closely at her.

  “Seriously,” she says, and I believe her. “Besides, I’m not going to quit working the second I have a ring on my finger. You know me better than that.”

  I’m nodding. I do.

  “But I’ve been thinking about…” She stops, seeming unsure. “I mean, I’ve always wanted to…”

  “What?” I ask, flummoxed.

  “Well, you know how I was talking about that café and bakery idea a while back?”

  My mouth drops open slightly. “Carrie, I think that is a fab idea.”

  “Really?” She stares at me for a couple of seconds. “I thought you’d tell me I was crazy. You know, start quoting all those stats about how most indie businesses close within the first two years and all that.”

  Her voice trails off.

  “No, silly. That’s just for me.” I laugh. “Because I don’t have the balls to strike out on my own. If anybody has the cojones to make it work, it’s you.”

  “You’re selling yourself short,” she says. She laughs, looking as if a world of weight’s been lifted off her shoulders. I wonder how long she’s been carrying around this fear of disapproval. I also can’t believe how much we’ve been keeping from each other.

  “Well, aren’t we just full of surprises?” I say.

  She searches my face. “I don’t think you’ve finished surprising me yet.”

  * * *

  As soon as I open the door, Brandon answers with one of those long, low catcall whistles I’ve never understood how people do.

  I glance down at myself. Really? I went as demure
as possible—agonized over it—to be sure I don’t send the wrong message. I’m wearing a simple black cotton shift dress with a scoop neck…no curve-hugging, clingy fabrics tonight.

  Underneath I have on white cotton panties from Victoria’s Secret and a matching bra, nothing to write home about—though I did shave my legs. I couldn’t not do it.

  “Hi, Brandon.”

  “Well, don’t sound quite so excited to see me.” He gives me half a smile, but I can’t seem to find the other half.

  “Oh, don’t be silly,” I say, but I spin out of his reach. “Let me grab my bag.” Seeing him here, at my house, brings back a mental picture of last Saturday night. In fact, it’s all I can see when I look at him—his careful pressed and gelled façade stripped off along with his designer clothes, his hands hot and damp as they moved against my skin, frantic to revive his sagging erection.

  “Where are we going anyway?” I ask, practically pushing him over the threshold as I try to erase the mental image. He’s just barely stepped inside.

  Once he turns, I walk out behind him and lock the door as he starts down my porch steps toward his BMW. It’s jutting over the sidewalk, parked at a jaunty angle behind my car in my narrow driveway. The street spaces are all full—somebody must be having a party. I glance around, wishing I was invited.

  “It’s a surprise,” he calls over his shoulder.

  I raise my eyebrows, suddenly more worried. And in no small part I’m worried because I’m afraid I’m leading him on. Which, considering our history, is just ironic.

  He opens the passenger-side door for me, and I climb in. “A surprise?”

  He looks over at me with a mysterious smile. “Oh, yeah,” he says. He’s started the car and has begun backing out of my driveway, but he stops and shifts the car back into park. He picks up his phone from the center console and flicks it on. “Come closer.”