Shopping for a CEO's Fiancee

by Julia Kent

  “But he’s a professional. It’s his job. I guess Shannon needs help.”

  We shrug.

  Declan twists in his seat and shakes his head, obviously enjoying my predicament. “What happened back there? Were you about to propose?”

  I jolt. “How’d you guess?”

  “Andrew, why the hell else would you be dressed like something out of a Masterpiece Theatre presentation?”

  “Fine. Yes.”

  “And?”

  Damn. Better to get it out now while the women aren’t here.

  “Don’t say anything to Amanda.”

  “She said no?”

  “I couldn’t ask her.”

  “Lost your nerve?”

  “No. Lost the ring and my key fob.”

  “You what?” His eyes comb over me. “Holy shit. You re-created the pond scene from Pride and Prejudice? Complete with the Mr. Darcy swimming scene?”

  “How do you know that?”

  “You’re getting my backseat all wet, and because I’ve seen that stupid miniseries about ten times since Shannon and I got together. It’s on the Top 10 Period Weekend movie list.” He snorts. “You lost the ring? Lost it? Thank God you didn’t have Mom’s engagement ring after all.”

  “Dec, you set the bar for proposals in this family pretty damn low. I have to thank you for that. I may have lost my car keys and my engagement ring in Walden Pond, but my woman didn’t end up in the Emergency Room.”

  “Yet.”

  “You’re such an optimist.”

  “Realist.”

  “Pessimist.”

  “CEO.”

  “So am I.”

  He looks at my crotch and frowns. “Is something bad going on in your pants?”

  “You’re stooping to penis jokes?” But he has a point. Walking has become increasingly painful. Sitting in this backseat is even worse. Professor Kensley-Wentingham’s warning dings in the back of my mind. Something about the pants being made in such a way that they should never, ever get wet.

  Tears fill my eyes and I flinch as some short and curlies get caught in a seam while I try to get comfortable in this shitmobile.

  “Dealing with some shrinkage?”

  I give him a sharp look.

  “I meant the fabric. It looks like it’s molding to your body. You’re a human papier-mâché.”

  “Let me borrow your phone.” I don’t give him a choice, snatching it off the dash. “What’s Gina’s number?” I snap.

  “How the hell would I know your admin’s—”

  “Never mind.” One tap and Grace answers.

  “Grace! Can you connect me to Gina?”

  “Mr. McCormick? This is Denesh, from the temp agency. I am sorry, but Grace has left me with firm instructions that I am never to contact her for any reason, even if you offer me five-figure bribes.”

  “Connect me to Gina San Giotti. She’s Andrew McCormick’s admin.” I’m talking about myself in the third person. Desperate times call for desperate measures.

  “Yes, sir.”

  One minute later.

  “Yes?”

  “Gina, it’s Andrew.”

  “Yes, Mr. McCormick?”

  “Get the theater professor on the phone for me.”

  “Professor Kensley-Wentingham?”

  “Yes.”

  “May I ask the reason?”

  “He’s about to lose reproductive abilities,” Declan calls out.

  If I could stretch forward, I’d hit him, but self-preservation is a stronger instinct than anger.

  So far.

  “I’m experiencing a wardrobe malfunction,” I explain.

  “Wardrobe malfunction? Like Janet Jackson at the Super Bowl?” Gina gasps.

  “Exactly like that.”

  “Are you with Justin Timberlake?” she squeals. “Can you get me his autograph? You meet lots of famous people, don’t you? Could you get him to sign my *NSYNC poster from when I was a kid?”

  Gina can be a touch too literal.

  “No. Get the professor on the phone.”

  “Yes, sir?” She sounds like she’s about to cry.

  Silence, then:

  “Andrew!” Professor Kensley-Wentingham chirps. “How is your marriage proposal?”

  “I have a problem. The pants got wet.”

  She clears her throat softly, twice, in rapid-fire succession, like a ’57 Chevy revving the engine. “Oh, dear. Well, it happens to every man some time. Don’t believe the ones who say it doesn’t. You get overly excited, and when sexually aroused, the cannon can fire a bit early—”

  “Not that!” I shout in horror. “Water. I went swimming in the costume. In a pond.”

  “WHAT? Why on earth would you ruin my beautiful costume with such an atrocious, impulsive act?”

  “My costume. I paid for it. And I can’t feel my legs. The button holes have shrunk to the point where I cannot unbutton the front flap. I am trapped in my own breeches.”

  “Circulation will be an issue,” she says tersely. “You need to take the breeches off.”

  “Take them off?”

  Declan’s booming laugh is so close to Terry’s that I jump.

  “Immediately. As the fibers shrink, you will find yourself in an increasingly uncomfortable situation.”

  I look at the car. “Already happened.”

  “If you are able, remove the breeches. Where are you? I am happy to come to your location and help.”

  I’ll bet you are.

  “No, thank you. I’m perfectly capable of taking my own pants off, Professor.”

  Amanda climbs in the car and whirls on me. “Who are you talking to?”

  “The costumer.”

  “But Andrew, you have been sewn into the pants, remember? You wanted authenticity,” Professor Kensley-Wentingham declares.

  Sniff.

  “At this point, screw authenticity. I’d like to hold onto some surviving sperm. I want children someday.”

  I hang up on her.

  And with that, I reach behind me and rip the seam.

  “Thank God,” Amanda and I say in unison, for completely different reasons. The seam in the back was a long one, so the pants are completely useless. The cold feel of cheap vinyl is a relief as I peel the front panel of the breeches off me, wincing.

  “It’s like you’re getting a free waxing,” Amanda marvels.

  Dec won’t stop laughing.

  Tap tap tap.

  I look up and out my window to see a uniformed police officer looking right back at me.

  Then at my hands in my undressed lap. I scurry to pull my shirttails over my open pants.

  “This just gets better and better,” Declan gasps.

  “Excuse me, sir? Please roll down the window slowly.” The cop is wearing a hat and I can’t see his eyes.

  “Officer? Is there a problem?”

  “Your junk is resting on my backseat, Andrew. Of course there’s a problem,” Declan hisses. “You’re paying to steam clean the car when this is over.”

  “Shut up, Declan!”

  “I need you to roll down the window, sir. We had a series of reports about a man and woman in period costume harassing people at Walden Pond, and you fit the description. Did you throw a rock at a red convertible on Route 126?”

  “Oh, God.”

  “I’m going to have to ask you to step out of the car, sir.”

  Amanda’s mouth is open, eyes the size of globes, and she lets out a shaky breath.

  “Dec?” I ask, pinching the bridge of my nose as I prepare for the inevitable.

  “Yeah?”

  “Get Grace to call the family lawyer.”

  “Will do.”

  “Sir.” The cop’s voice has gone firm. “You need to step out here.”

  “I can’t.”

  “You can’t?” I can hear the felony charge in his voice.

  “I’m not wearing any pants.”

  He frowns. “You realize I could charge you with public indecency if t
hat’s true.”

  Dec is holding back laughter so hard he’s crying.

  “Technically, I have pants on. But I had to rip them off.”

  “Rip them off?”

  “I was losing circulation to my stones.” When confronted with possible arrest, my Scottish roots emerge.

  “Stones?”

  Amanda leans over my lap, looks up, and says, “Al?”

  “Amanda?”

  “You set this up?” I sit up in shock so fast my head bangs against the car ceiling.

  “No! This is a true coincidence!” she says to me. “Hey, Al! Sorry to cause trouble. We were just doing a re-enactment of parts of Pride and Prejudice. You know, Jane Austen?”

  “You two are into that?”

  Amanda gives him a sweet smile that goes all the way to double dimples. “You know.”

  His eyes go to my lap, then her face. “Right. But the pants...?”

  “These old costumes.” She plants a possessive hand on my thigh, moving the cloth just enough that I really am in danger of public indecency. Her hand right there is like pouring Miracle-Gro on a tomato plant. “They tear. Andrew was in the middle of a sword battle when they split.”

  “Sword battle!” Al’s estimation of me goes up while his eyes remain glued to her hand. “Good for you.”

  “I learned from the best,” I say. “My brother’s really good at digging in the knife.”

  Al slaps the car once. “Well, then, if it’s just you two playing around, you’re good to go. I’d recommend a spare set of pants, though, for you there, uh...”

  “Andrew.”

  “Right. Andrew.”

  Dec turns on the car.

  “Are we free to go?” Shannon asks nicely.

  “Sure.”

  Amanda waves to Al as Declan pulls back onto the road and follows the GPS.

  “That did not happen,” I grunt. “You tell Dad, I will kill you.”

  “I won’t tell Dad.”

  “I mean it, Dec.”

  “Jessica Coffin already has pictures of you two on her Twitter stream,” Shannon says sadly. She holds up her phone and hands it to Amanda.

  “‘Andrew McCormick takes his zombies seriously,’” she reads. “What does that even mean?”

  “See?” I grumble, holding my junk carefully. The shocks on this piece-of-shit car are terrible, and my boys are pretty blue. “She’s losing her touch.”

  “Wait a minute,” Amanda says, tapping the screen. “Her account—just now! Where’d it go?”

  “Where’d it go?” Shannon repeats. “What do you mean? It’s right there.”

  “I hit refresh. It’s gone.”

  “Gone?” Shannon’s face lifts with a triumphant smile. “Good riddance to bad rubbish.”

  My project has been fulfilled. I just unplugged Jessica Coffin’s influence.

  At least something went right today.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Saturdays like this are rare in Massachusetts. The wide, open sky is a shade of blue you only find in a jeweler’s shop, and the light wind is a relief from the sweltering late-summer air. After a string of muggy days where breathing feels like drowning, the change is welcome.

  And today is a day for nothing but change.

  The path away from the giant patch of grass where the town has carved out fifteen regulation-sized soccer fields is well marked, but my eyes can’t seem to find it. The sign is right there: “Honeysuckle Path,” with the piece of wood carved into the shape of an arrow, the words burned into the wood in a quaint, quasi-colonial font designed to add prestige to the town, one of the oldest in the state. I read the words, but my brain doesn’t process them, and then—like a bird of prey with telescopic sight—it all clicks.

  I take my first step on the bare-dirt line in the center of wild weeds. This park land was set aside for families and school children to use as a nature preserve, for sports, for picnics and hikes.

  And this is where my mother died.

  Her grave is not here. Elena Montgomery McCormick’s final resting place is in a cemetery a few towns away. But this is where she took her last breath.

  A breath I never saw.

  I come here when I want to torture myself. Always at night, and always in the cooler seasons. Cross-country skiers burrow tracks in the winter and I follow them, head down, always pausing right by the bridge where she died.

  Where I almost died.

  Where, for years, I wished I’d died.

  Declan’s never been back here, as far as I know, and I can’t blame him.

  Knowing what I know now from Terry about Dad’s treatment of Declan, I need to come here. After she died, Grace set up therapists for Declan and me, but the sessions were short. We were fine. Trauma? What trauma? It was a freak accident.

  I was the freak.

  My skin itches, the bright sun pouring down on me, my body uncovered, a short-sleeved polo, shorts, and sneakers all I chose to wear. Vince is right: I take greater risks every day just driving to work.

  But living a life hidden in darkness and cold was never about logical risk assessment and playing the odds.

  I almost invited Amanda to join me here, today. Almost.

  As I walk, I hear the rumble of car engines behind me, a flurry of activity, then shouts and screams of kids unbound. Music from an ice cream truck jingles in the background, blending with the muted cacophony of childhood fun. That day, thirteen years ago, when I was a forward on my team and taking a break between games to go for a hike with Dec and Mom, I remember Dec asking if we could grab an ice cream bar.

  And I said, “Coach doesn’t want us loading our stomachs with junk.”

  Those were some of the last words my mother ever heard from me.

  What if I’d said yes? What if we’d gone to the parking lot instead and had Mom chide us for eating too much sugar, had Dec buy us each two chocolate-coated bars, had shoveled them in like the growing teens we were? What if I’d paused and what if, what if, what if?

  Thirteen years of what ifs.

  Except none of those comes even close to the what if Declan carries inside him.

  It’s the question I can’t ask him.

  It’s the question he asks himself every day.

  As I reach the split in the path, another what if assaults me, the Y in the road a dimension splicer, my dead mother down one path, my living mother down the other. We picked the right-hand path out of sheer randomness, a decision that meant nothing in the moment, yet everything three minutes later.

  When Amanda jumped in the water to rescue the animals at Dec and Shannon’s wedding, she made one of those instinctual decisions, the kind that makes sense at the time.

  Everything makes sense at the time.

  Until it doesn’t.

  Fresh air assaults my lungs, the scent of freshly-mowed grass nauseating. It takes me back thirteen years ago, my legs shorter, tighter, body all elbows and knees, getting used to my newfound height. It was the very end of sophomore year and I just got my driver’s license. Mom let me drive. Declan mocked me endlessly from the backseat, calling me “Grandma” at every intersection.

  But I drove, proudly.

  I’m here as an exercise in futility, an attempt to inoculate myself against memories of evil in quarter-ounce doses. The dose makes the poison, right? That’s the saying.

  What if Mom had only been stung once?

  What if I’d been stung before and we’d known about my allergy?

  What if. That’s what I want on my grave.

  What if.

  I don’t want to put Amanda through a life of what if. Our fight that day, two months ago, at the wedding fittings wasn’t about fear. Not the kind of fear everyone thinks.

  It was about love.

  The kind of love so strong you’ll push it aside for the sake of preserving the other.

  A chipmunk chatters at me as it leaps over a cluster of rocks, pausing to stand on hind legs and stare. Deeming me too inconsequential for more of its
precious time, it skitters off into the woods, the rustling of leaves my only way to track it. Concentrating on minutiae like that is easier than thinking about the fact that I tried. I tried to push Amanda away, and I tried to save her from all the what ifs that come in the baggage I carry with me.

  The god-damned ocean liner I pull through life via a yoke around my neck.

  But I failed to account for an important variable.

  Turns out, she loves me enough to push back. To stay. To accept the what ifs as part of the equation that says if—and only if—love can be so profound that a mother would sacrifice herself for her son, then maybe he should find someone to love that much.

  To pass on the legacy.

  To live out my mother’s greatest wish.

  That I live.

  “What am I supposed to do, Mom?” I say, as if she can hear me. As if she’s here, right now, with that intense look of listening that you only got out of her when you changed the timbre of your voice to cut through the busyness of being James McCormick’s wife. Mom did that. Stopped everything for us when we needed her most.

  Nothing else was more important.

  This is the part where I stop at that damned spot by the bridge and exorcise my demons. Talk to Mom and tell her how great Amanda is and how I wish she were alive to know her. That’s all a given. I don’t do that.

  Instead, I pick up a handful of rocks and start throwing them, one by one, in rhythm to slow, deep breaths.

  This is where I should have died.

  This is where I didn’t die.

  And this is where a single wasp could kill me.

  “Fuck wasps,” I whisper, using Vince’s mantra. “Fuck wasps.” I bend down and pull out the hem of my shirt, turning it into a holding place for more rocks, mindless and stupid, just a guy gathering rocks to throw in the water.

  And then I throw.

  Each stretch of my arm takes about ten seconds, and as I calculate the value of my time spent collecting and throwing rocks, I say, Vince’s mantra over and over.

  Vince is right.

  It’s surprisingly cathartic.

  Until a little voice behind me chimes in and echoes me.

  “Fuck wasps. Auntie Shannon, what does ‘fuck wasps’ mean?”

  I whip around, dropping the end of my shirt, the rocks spilling down my shins, the plunk plunk plunk of a hundred stones the backdrop for a wholly unexpected sight.