by M. J. Pullen
Jared leaned forward. “So maybe not a huge deal?”
Charlotte shrugged. She hated giving opinions on these things. It wasn’t her place. “Look. I see dozens of couples get engaged every year. Sometimes he asks the dad first, sometimes he doesn’t. Sometimes it’s the woman doing the proposing, or a guy asking another guy. Sometimes it’s an arranged marriage and they want to add a touch of romance and surprise to the engagement.
“From my view, proposals are always a reflection of who they are as a couple. And they mostly work out…at least the ones who keep me updated. I have hundreds of postcards and Christmas cards and baby announcements in a box in my office, and every one of them is perfect in its own way. I’ve never seen any evidence that a man asking permission to propose makes the slightest difference to the success of the marriage.”
“What you’re saying is, based on your evidence, that I’ll probably be okay either way?”
“Exactly. Oh, thank God. The food!”
Charlotte dived into her veggie burger as if she hadn’t eaten in days. She’d had no idea rollerblading would be such hard work, or that hot food and cold beer could taste so excellent. Jared seemed to relax, too, and she was glad her speech had comforted him.
“Let’s get the rest of the details handled,” she said, “while you figure out the whole question of family. Last-minute plane tickets will be expensive if you need them, but fortunately, you have my favorite kind of budget.”
He laughed. “Well-funded and unfocused?”
“Yep.”
As they ate, she went over a few details of the plan, making notes on her pad as she went, and creating a list of tasks for him to complete. Charlotte agreed to a second round of beers after lunch, stalling against the painful prospect of putting her rollerblades back on. She added Band-Aids and blister cream to her list of essentials to send with Jared the next day.
Once the details were ironed out, Charlotte texted Lily to confirm the time and place of the proposal.
Lily: “Found the perfect spot for your toughest client?”
Charlotte: “YES. Thanks for the push in the right direction.”
Lily: “So when are you going to tell him you’re in love with him and that he should marry you instead?”
Charlotte fumbled, nearly dropping the phone onto the table before she could grab it and shut it off.
“Okay, there? Anchor Steam going to your head?” Jared asked.
“I’m fine. Did you want one more?”
“I do, actually, but I think I’d rather have it after I’ve made the grueling trek back.”
“Speaking of that,” Charlotte said, slightly embarrassed. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to walk back. There’s no way I can put those things back on over these blisters.”
They walked slowly, rollerblades dangling. Charlotte’s legs and back felt like jelly, but a breeze had come up to dry her sweaty clothes and push away the clouds, leaving perfect afternoon sunshine.
Strange: normally with a mere two days to pull off a proposal, she’d be running around like a madwoman, barely eating, cruising on her cortisol high from all the stress. But just now, the casual stroll felt like the perfect pace. Whatever tension Jared had been feeling about the engagement seemed to have left him, at least for now.
Then again, Jared had never been much for worrying.
“So, I guess I haven’t asked yet…” he said after a while. “I mean, maybe I assumed, because…” He coughed.
“What’s up?”
“I mean, I assume you’re not seeing anyone now,” he said, “but what’s your story, since you moved to San Francisco? Have you been breaking all those hearts people keep leaving here?”
She laughed. “Why do you assume I’m not seeing anyone?”
“Because…” He went red, obviously thinking of their kiss the night before.
“I’m not,” she said, letting him off the hook. “Honestly, I don’t have much time to date these days. So many of my evenings are spent helping other people get engaged, the idea of romance at the other end feels exhausting. When I do get a night off, I’d rather just go out with friends to the Piano Bar or sit home on the couch and watch old movies.”
“You’re still into those black-and-white movies? You used to make us watch those for hours.”
“I never made you guys do anything. And yeah, I still love the classics.”
He looked thoughtful for a minute. “So, no big relationships for you? No heartbreaks?”
“Just Boyd,” she said. “That was enough to last me for a while.”
Jared was quiet, watching their shadows lengthen on the path in front of them. Before Charlotte knew it, they had reached the Little Blue Shack and the small trail to the parking lot. Grimacing, she slipped out of her flip-flops and into her sneakers while Jared laced up his boots. “I know this is probably a stupid idea,” he said. “But would you like to have dinner tonight?”
“Don’t you need to…do anything? For tomorrow? Make calls?”
He looked confused.
“Did you decide about the families?”
“Oh, that,” he said. “Yeah, I should’ve said that earlier. Sorry, I’m bad about making decisions in my head and not verbalizing them. Drives my team crazy. The families can wait. This is our moment. And, I mean, what if she says no?”
Charlotte had to stop herself from saying, “She won’t say no,” because it was against the Perfect Proposals’ rules to make promises on which they couldn’t deliver. In five years of doing this, there had been very few prospective spouses who had said no. Usually by the time someone got to the point of contracting for her services, they were pretty sure of the answer. But you never knew.
Still, she couldn’t imagine anyone turning down Jared. Objectively, he was rich and handsome and brilliant and funny. Plus, he was…Jared. Never in all her years of knowing him had she once been unhappy to see Jared. Who wouldn’t want to wake up to that every morning?
“Lotta? You okay?”
She was staring. Shit. “About dinner, I’d better not… I have to make sure there are batteries in all the string lights, call the staff and…everything.”
He gave her the same look he’d given her when she tried to bluff at Texas Hold’Em back in college. “Don’t you think we can handle that in the morning? I mean, far be it for me to tell you how to do your job.”
“I just…”
“Come on, Charlotte. It’s my last night as a single guy. I’d like to spend it with a friend.”
It was as if someone had taken every conversation from their college years and created this one from the same mold. Jared, I can’t—I have an early class. Jared, we all have finals. Please, Jared, we’ve hiked ten miles already today… None of those excuses had ever worked, and nothing she came up with tonight would either.
Besides, hanging out with him on his last night before proposing might be cool. Sort of the boy-girl version of a bachelor party. Except just dinner. No strippers. She was drawing the line at strippers no matter how damn persuasive he was.
“You have a pathological fear of being alone,” she said by way of answer.
“Only in cities.” He grinned. He knew he had her beat. “I’m never lonely in the wilderness, but cities are lonely places.”
He was right about that.
“Just dinner.” She pointed a finger at him and slid into the driver’s seat. “And then I really have to get home and prepare for the most important moment of your life.”
He did a victory fist pump before he slid in next to her. “You won’t be sorry. It’s my treat tonight, no company card.”
“You know we’re just going to expense all this to you anyway, right? It’s in your contract.”
He laughed. “Well then, tonight we’re going off contract. Where’s a place for good pizza?”
She drove him
to one of her favorite places near Union Square, a rustic place with a brick oven, chalkboard menu, and huge windows that opened to the sidewalk outside. It was crowded but there was a high-top table near the open window, where they squeezed in and ordered a pitcher of beer.
Charlotte rubbed her sore legs. “Does your app have some kind of drone mechanism that will rescue people who are too tired to keep walking?”
“Not a bad idea,” he said. “Maybe a few years off, though.”
“Too bad. I will need something like that tomorrow for sure, just to get to that clearing.”
“I thought you were using the restaurant access path?”
She swigged the beer. “I am. Still think I may need assistance. I try to stay somewhat fit, but rollerblading is my new nemesis.”
He opened his mouth to respond, but his phone lit up with a picture of a grinning Jared cheek-to-cheek with a blonde woman in a baseball cap. Charlotte only saw the image for a second, and it wasn’t the best picture, but something about it struck her as vaguely familiar.
“Bree. Sorry.” He picked up. “Hey babe! Found a spot in the woods that has decent reception?”
The woman on the other end was so loud Charlotte could hear her side of the conversation as well as Jared’s. She cut right to the chase. “I left you a message earlier. I thought you said you weren’t coming to town this weekend?”
Jared’s brow furrowed. “I wasn’t,” he said carefully. “Are you back already?”
Brianna’s voice was clipped. “I’m back, and I’m standing across the street from the pizza place where you appear to be having a pitcher of beer with another woman.”
Charlotte, whose seat faced the street, glanced over his shoulder and saw three women clustered together on the sidewalk across the street. They all carried pricey handbags and were dressed for a girls’ night out. One of them wore a long, colorful sundress and oversized sunglasses with her white-blonde hair in braids.
Shit. Shit. Double shit.
“The White Witch,” Charlotte said softly, just as Jared turned around to wave.
“Hey there babe!” he said cheerfully into the phone, sounding genuinely happy to see Charlotte’s horrible neighbor, whose real name she had not known until right this minute. “Come on over and say hello. I had some meetings come up today. I didn’t know you were back. I was going to surprise you at the airport in the morning.”
Across the street, Brianna covered the phone to say something to her two companions, who both turned to look at Jared and Charlotte. They conferred briefly and then turned as a group toward the crosswalk at the end of the block. “We’ll be right there,” Brianna said, and hung up.
“Wow, that’s—”
“What are we going to do?” Jared interrupted. “Do you have a plan for this?”
A plan. Sure. “I usually plan to say I’m a business associate, or an old friend, whichever is less suspicious. In this case, I guess both are technically true.”
“Does it work?” Jared was pale with agitation.
“It’s only happened once, to be honest. In that case, we were in a crowded museum so I just slipped away into the crowd.”
“Shit.”
“Jared, relax.” Charlotte tried to be reassuring. “Let’s just stick to the truth—I’m an old friend from college; we bumped into each other at the coffee shop.”
His brow furrowed; he was running calculations. She’d never seen him flustered like this. Where was the guy who’d crashed a super-exclusive sorority fundraiser on a whim? Who’d climbed onto the roof of the school coliseum in the wee hours of the morning, for a better view of the stars?
“Okay,” he agreed. “But you can’t be you. Your name can be…Lisa.”
“Why do I have to have a different name?” Charlotte kept a smile plastered to her face as she discreetly eyed the three women, who were starting across the street.
“Because if you say your name is Charlotte she’ll know immediately who you are, and won’t believe this is a random meeting.”
“She… you’ve told her about me?”
“Bree can be a little insecure about other women sometimes. She’d be really upset to find out I’m at dinner with a woman I used to be madly in love with. Please, Lotta?” A sheepish grin. “I mean, Lisa?”
“Madly…” she started, but saw the pleading look in his eyes. “Fine.”
“Thank you.”
His relief was so palpable, his desperation to keep Brianna happy so acute, that Charlotte felt it tug painfully in her own chest. She took a sip of beer, and within a few seconds, their time was up.
Brianna entered the restaurant in a swirl of tan shoulders and colorful cotton, her white-blonde hair draped in long braids over each shoulder. She was flanked by the other two women, who both wore jeans and tops designed to show off their cleavage. As she neared their table, Brianna’s pretty face screwed up as she tried to place Charlotte. Before recognition could fully dawn, Jared was on his feet, enveloping Brianna in a massive hug and full kiss that lasted a bit longer than you’d expect in a family restaurant.
Charlotte smiled nervously at the two women behind the couple, hoping to commiserate on the awkwardness of the moment, but they both glared at her with narrowed eyes. Sweat began to prickle the back of her neck.
When Jared released his future bride, Brianna had the stunned, hypnotized look of an angry bear hit with a tranquilizer dart.
“Brianna Tarkington,” Jared said, before she could recover. “This is Lisa…”
“Jones,” Charlotte finished for him, extending her hand. “Lisa Jones.” It occurred to her that Brianna might have heard Charlotte’s real name through their mutual neighbors.
“I know you…” Brianna said slowly, perhaps thinking the same thing. She didn’t reach for Charlotte’s extended hand, but examined her sweaty clothes and ponytail as if those might be clues to the mystery. “Don’t you live on Twenty-Seventh?”
“Yes, I believe we’re neighbors.” Charlotte let her unshaken hand drop. She felt a little sick, as though she and Jared had been caught in bed together, rather than having pizza and beer. “Nice to officially meet you.”
Jared’s eyes went wide. He shot Charlotte a “Why the hell didn’t you tell me that?” look, while she tried to keep her composure.
“Don’t you live with that crazy lesbian? With the short brown hair?” Brianna rolled her eyes toward her companions. “This woman screamed at me once for double-parking, like I’d murdered her only child. It went on for hours.”
Charlotte remembered the occasion vividly, when Brianna’s gas-guzzling white Hummer had been parked in front of their house for almost a week, taking up two of the already scarce street spots. Lily had been forced to lug her photography equipment four blocks in the rain from the nearest open space. It had been Charlotte herself who had suggested Lily politely confront the White Witch. It had not gone well and the Hummer was more frequently parked in front of their place after that.
“She’s not a lesbian,” Charlotte said quietly, but no one seemed to be listening.
“Remember that, babe?” Brianna turned to Jared, running a fingernail down his arm. “It was the first time you came to stay with me, and we didn’t leave the apartment for days…?”
“What a coincidence!” Jared went crimson; another thing Charlotte had never seen him do. “Speaking of coincidences, Lisa here is an old friend from college. We just ran into each other at a coffee shop. Isn’t that crazy? Just a random coffee shop. I had no idea she even lived in San Francisco.”
He was rambling; Charlotte kicked him lightly under the table.
Brianna pursed her lips. “But why are you here? I thought you weren’t coming until tomorrow?”
Maybe Charlotte was imagining it, but she thought Brianna’s friends exchanged a look, maybe worried that a boyfriend in town was going to ruin whatever they had
planned for the evening.
“I flew in early for a meeting,” Jared said. “Thought I’d surprise you at the airport tomorrow.”
“Oh, babe,” Brianna whined, encircling his neck with her thin, tanned arms. “You know I hate surprises.”
Well, that’s good news, Charlotte thought, since he’s planning to propose to you tomorrow while you’re rollerblading.
“Since when?” Jared sounded hurt. “Besides, you’re back early, too.”
“Hmmm? Oh. I finished up early and the girls texted about dinner.” Brianna released him and turned to gesture at her companions. “This is Madison and Keely. We were just headed out for sushi with some friends. I’d invite you and, um, Lisa, but…”
Brianna took in Charlotte’s sweaty athletic clothes with a wrinkled nose.
“Oh, that’s okay,” Charlotte said. “I have other plans, too. Later. Not with Jared. Just me. I mean, with other friends you don’t know. Plans to go out. Obviously, I’ll shower first.”
Now she was the one rambling, but Jared didn’t kick her; he just looked a bit stunned by the whole experience.
“Well, then. I’ll leave you two to catch up,” Brianna said, clearly satisfied that no one as verbally incontinent and badly dressed as Charlotte could be making a play for her man. She did, however, give Jared a thorough, intense kiss before she spun on her sandaled heel and led her friends out of the restaurant.
Charlotte watched them go, thinking Brianna looked very polished and purposeful for someone who had just returned unexpectedly from a kids’ summer camp.
The White Witch was Jared’s girlfriend. How was this possible? Not that she knew her or anything, but Brianna didn’t strike Charlotte as the serious relationship type. Didn’t Lily say Brianna had brought home the guy with the lip ring just last night? Maybe they were just friends. Coworkers. Out of town visitors were always looking for free places to stay in San Francisco. Maybe lip ring guy was Brianna’s brother from Omaha…
“You okay?” Jared asked. “Sorry to make you lie on the spot like that.”
“It’s fine.” Charlotte came back to the present as the waiter delivered their white pizza with buffalo chicken. “I hope she won’t be angry when she finds out the truth.”