Shopping for a CEO's Fiancee

by Julia Kent

  Shannon and her nephews, Jeffrey and Tyler.

  “Why do you want to fuck wasps?” Jeffrey asks.

  “Jeffrey!” Shannon scolds him. “Don’t say that word.”

  “What word? ‘Wasps’? What’s wrong with the word ‘wasps’?”

  “Jeffrey,” she says in a low voice of warning.

  Tyler peers up at me, shielding his eyes from the blazing sun. “How do you fuck a wasp?”

  “Very carefully,” Jeffrey whispers, laughing at his own joke.

  Tyler doesn’t get it.

  He damn well shouldn’t. The kid’s what—seven? Eight?

  “You say that word again and no ice cream,” Shannon threatens.

  Jeffrey’s smart. He shuts up instantly.

  “Andrew?’ Shannon asks, her tone changing. “What are you doing here?”

  “Reliving old times.”

  She frowns, then beneath her furrowed brow, her eyes fly open. Taking in the bridge, the water, the soccer fields far off in the distance, she morphs, the realization of where we are sinking in layer by layer.

  “Here?” she gasps, then shakes her head very slowly. “I guess I always knew, but didn’t think about it when I brought the boys here.”

  I shrug. My ability to speak is rapidly fading.

  “Is Amanda with you?”

  I shake my head.

  “We’re here because of Tyler’s soccer game.” The soft melody of an ice cream truck grows louder in the distance.

  I look down. The kid’s wearing shin guards and tall soccer socks, with a sports team shirt for a team sponsored by a local plumbing company. Team colors are the same as mine from thirteen years ago, green and white.

  My stomach feels like it’s been mowed.

  By a flamethrower.

  I reach in my back pocket and pull out my wallet, peeling off a twenty. “Here,” I say, handing it to Jeffrey. “You and Tyler go get yourselves some ice cream.”

  He takes the bill but waits, giving Shannon a look of deference that I would find admirable if I weren’t half out of my mind right now.

  “Can we?”

  Her smile is shaky, body language tight and on guard. She can tell I’m upset and she’s frantically trying to read the situation. Meanwhile, every inch of my skin is on fire and I’m trapped in tenth grade.

  “Sure. Just stay close to Tyler.”

  The boys run off with hoots and shouts of “thanks!”

  “What is wrong?” Shannon’s on me in under a second, her face twisted with fear. Small, breathy gasps come out of her. Fresh-faced, no make-up, and with her hair in a messy ponytail, she looks ten years younger, especially in a softball shirt and yoga pants.

  “Are you following me?” I joke, only to say something that will override the sound of a hurricane between my ears.

  “Andrew.” Compassion radiates off her, the fear dissolving like a swarm of emotion broken by some force no one has yet discovered. “What’s going on? Did you and Amanda have a fight?”

  “Hah. No. The opposite.”

  “The opposite?”

  Two opposing forces square off inside my chest while my mind plays the role of whirling dervish, complete with turban and nausea, but minus the poverty. Declan’s groused about the whole “talk about your feelings” bullshit that Shannon and her family engage in.

  Maybe there’s something to it.

  “She doesn’t believe me,” I confess. Someone is using a jackhammer in my solar plexus.

  “Believe you?”

  “That I want to marry her.”

  Shannon cranes her neck forward in disbelief. “You do?”

  “I want to marry her. Really marry her. Propose and the whole bit.” I kick the haphazard pile of rocks at my feet off the edge of the bridge.

  “Why haven’t you?”

  “Because I lost the ring in Walden Pond,” I mutter under my breath.

  “Come again?”

  “Because she really doesn’t believe me.”

  “It’s a lot of believe.”

  “I know.”

  She gives me a sad smile. “Congratulations.”

  “That is the weakest version of congratulations I have ever experienced.”

  “Not for realizing you love Amanda and want to be her husband, Andrew. Congratulations for sitting outside with me and joining the human race.”

  “The vampire thing got old.”

  She studies me. “Why?”

  “Even immortality has its limits.”

  She punches my shoulder. “C’mon.”

  I look around, my head tipped up to take in the bright blue sky. Some flying insect buzzes by, high near the leaves of the big oak trees at the edge of the path, and I freeze.

  “Because thirteen years is long enough for me to torture myself. It’s time to live the life my mother saved.” I look at her, catching her eyes, and she’s blurry. She needs to work on that. How can the edges of her body become so diffuse? “The life Declan saved. Mom paid the ultimate price—with her life. But he paid the biggest price of all of us.”

  Her hand is warm and smooth as she covers the back of mine. “You all paid the biggest price. No one’s suffering is more or less than anyone else.”

  “Dec had to choose, though. I was out cold. Mom gave him an impossible choice.”

  “No. She didn’t.”

  “Right. I know. Mom made him pick me.” I huff. “But he didn’t have to, and Dad eviscerated him for it.”

  “James can be a hard man.”

  “There’s more to it, Shannon.”

  She quickens, eyes darting to the field where the boys went. “More?”

  “Do you know why Terry stepped down from Anterdec?”

  She blinks hard. “No.”

  “But you know something.”

  “Only Declan’s comment that Terry and James had a standoff after your mom died, and he and James didn’t speak for over a year.”

  I swallow, as if the bile can ever go down. “That’s about all I know, too. My dad is at the center of so much anger. So many secrets. When Mom died, she took all the glue that held us together with her and we just turned into a pile of loose, splintered sticks.”

  “Your mother raised good sons. Good men.”

  “So did my father.” Defending Dad is reflexive. I’ve done it for years without thinking, because Terry faded out and Dec and Dad have such a contentious relationship. At some point, I named myself peacekeeper.

  No one asked me to do that.

  “Yes,” she says softly. “He did.” She bends down and picks up a handful of rocks, tossing them one by one into the water, staring at the ripples. “When did life become so complex? I thought once I was an adult, it would all be easier.”

  “Really?” It dawns on me that I’ve never been alone with Shannon. We’ve worked together and been at family events together, but a conversation like this is new.

  “You know how when you’re a little kid, you think that life is one big series of rules you don’t know exist? And you come across them whenever you’re trying to do something really exciting and neat?”

  “No. We always knew the rules in advance.”

  “How did you learn to take risks? Break the rules sometimes?”

  “In school. Work. But not in life. And after the wasp sting, risk was unacceptable. Another rule of Dad’s.”

  “Is that why it’s been so easy for you to be outside again?”

  “What do you mean?” If this is easy, I’d hate to see hard.

  “Once you realized you were living out a rule you didn’t make for yourself, you could drop it.”

  A slim, green leaf flutters onto the surface of the water, right at the edge near the bank, and floats on one of the ripples caused by the rocks Shannon tosses into the stream. It catches in an eddy, twirling in a circle over and over until the current is so fast in that little whirlpool that it becomes a solid green circle, all the edges blurred into something new.

  “You’re saying I’ve been living
life as a vampire not because I’m afraid to die, but because I’m afraid I’ll disappoint my dad.”

  She just shrugs and tosses another rock in the water.

  It lands right on the leaf, which breaks free from the eddy and wanders downstream, swept away by forces bigger than it can fathom.

  “Disappoint him by being the victim of some random wasp, a one in a billion chance, but one with dire consequences.” And the consequences aren’t death. Look at Declan. Look at what he’s had to bear because of that randomness.

  And Terry.

  And me.

  “See? Complex.” She gives me a sad smile, her eyes open and searching.

  I see why Declan loves her so much.

  “Why doesn’t Amanda believe me?”

  “I think she does.”

  “Then, when I told her I knew she was the only one for me—when I said I wished we had turned out to be married in Las Vegas—and she dismissed the idea...why?”

  “Have you asked her to marry you?”

  “No. Not yet.”

  “Why not?”

  An image of the velvet jeweler’s box being eaten by a beaver at the bottom of Walden Pond clutters my mind.

  “I meant to. Long story.”

  “The Pride and Prejudice stunt?”

  “Right.”

  “Did you say earlier that you lost the ring in Walden Pond?” Her eyes crinkle in amusement.

  I nod.

  “At least she didn’t swallow it.” Shannon’s hand goes to her throat, fingers fluttering at the hollow.

  I laugh.

  “That’s cute—the Pride and Prejudice thing—but did she want that?”

  “Did she want what?”

  “All that? The pageantry, the silliness, the finery?”

  “She wanted to be courted.” My voice lifts on the last word, like a sarcasm breeze blew it into the clouds.

  “Did you ask her what she meant by that? What she was really asking for?”

  My shoulders drop and I look up at a lone cloud in the sky, a white puff against the bright blue.

  “No.”

  “Why don’t you find out what she really wants?”

  “And then what?”

  “Then give it to her.”

  I sigh. “When did being an adult become so complex?”

  Just as Shannon laughs, Jeffrey and Tyler come running down the path, Jeffrey’s shirt pulled out and turned into a holding case for a pile of ice cream bars.

  “What’s this?” Shannon demands. “Where did you get all this?”

  “Andrew gave me a twenty,” Jeffrey explains. “So?” He shrugs, as if he’s not responsible for the sudden appearance of three bomb pops, two SpongeBob Squarepants ice cream bars, and three Reese’s Cup ice cream bars.

  “So you bring back change!” she sputters.

  Jeffrey gives me an even stare that reminds me of Declan as a kid. “Andrew didn’t say to bring back the change. You and Mom and Aunt Amy and Grandpa and Grandma always say it.”

  “JEFFREY!” Shannon explodes, taking in a deep breath, clearly ready to unleash a parental lecture.

  “It’s fine.”

  I subvert her.

  Jeffrey looks at me like I am a god. Declan told me that little boys are easy—just joke about poop with them. I’ve got him one-upped.

  Buying them lots of ice cream is even better.

  “What?” Shannon gasps, all that energy in her lungs ready to do indignant damage.

  “It’s fine. He’s right, even if he’s being cunning and using semantics to test out the world.”

  Jeffrey’s eyes narrow. I narrow mine right back as we stare at each other.

  That’s right, kid. I’ve got your number.

  And in ten years, come work for me.

  “But—”

  Jeffrey reveals his wares to me, like a dog rolling over and showing his belly in submission. “Pick your poison, Andrew.” He glances at Shannon, turns back to me, and says in a very pronounced, stilted voice, “Thank you very much for the treat.”

  “Thank you!” Tyler says to himself, staring at the googly eyes of his Spongebob popsicle.

  Then he eats them, cackling.

  “How are we going to eat eight ice creams!” Shannon bursts out.

  “Two each,” Tyler says.

  “Good math.” I ruffle his hair and give them each a look I can’t quite describe, just as a bee makes a lazy path toward Tyler’s ice cream. It’s not a wasp, but still...

  Shannon starts herding her nephews off the path and back to the relative safety of the asphalted parking lot. There’s no panic in her movements. Just a calm, centered aversion to risk. She moves quietly, but with purpose.

  I grab an ice cream bar from Jeffrey and rip it open, sinking my teeth through the hard chocolate outer shell, tasting peanut butter and ice as we walk away from the bee.

  And walk toward my future.

  Chapter Twenty

  I didn’t have to ask Amanda what she wanted. I just knew. It’s been a month since the Walden Pond fiasco, and we’ve both been busy. I was gone for nine days, then she was gone for four, and in between has been glorious.

  Divine.

  And I want so much more.

  Arranging dinner tonight, here at Consuela’s, is perfect. The exclusive rooftop-garden restaurant owned by my dad’s celebrity-chef friend was the site of my first date with Amanda. This place holds meaning for us. Aside from being beautiful and intimate, the expansive view of the ocean gives it a carefree feeling of potential, as if the world were limitless.

  I now know that love certainly is.

  First, we’ll have dinner by candlelight. Then, a special dessert (not tiramisu) and go straight to the proposal. Finally, Dad and Pam and all our family and friends will show up for a big surprise party.

  See? Perfect.

  And I didn’t delegate one bit of it to Gina.

  It’s seven p.m. and I’ve cleared the entire restaurant, paid for the night, and Consuela’s brought me a fine bottle of red wine, which is airing nicely as I wait for Amanda.

  The ring is in my front pants pocket, safe and deep in modern, bespoke trousers. Fool me once, shame on Walden Pond.

  Fool me twice, shame on me.

  Ten minutes pass and my mind races through all the ways I’ll ask her. Imagining her face lighting up the minute the words are out of my mouth has become an endless movie reel in my mind, the flickering images like watching your life pass before your eyes.

  Except instead of preceding death, it precedes pure joy.

  A lifetime of it.

  Now Amanda is twenty minutes late and the server pours my glass of wine. Might as well have a drink to loosen up. I’m sure she’s late, caught up with some last-minute task at work.

  Nothing to worry about.

  By seven thirty I break down and text her.

  Five minutes of staring at the screen does not magically result in a reply.

  “Andrew?” It’s Consuela, looking at me with an expression only older European women can manage, a mix between So delighted to spend time with you and I am so sorry your cat got run over.

  “She’s running a bit late. Just texted her,” I say with confidence.

  Feigned confidence.

  Consuela bends and pours me another glass, smiling. “You have the ring?”

  I pat my pocket for the umpteenth time. “Yes.”

  “I knew when you brought her here for that first date, you know. That you would marry her.”

  “You did?”

  “Any woman you brought here who also likes cilantro had to be a good match.”

  I groan.

  “And I could tell by the way you looked at her.”

  I’m halfway through this second glass of wine and I halt, our eyes locked. I set the glass down. “You could.”

  “I could. And I was so relieved!” Her voice picks up volume and she sits in Amanda’s chair, pouring a mouthful of wine for herself, swallowing it. Animated eyes look back at me
. “My God, child, you of all people need a wife!”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Andrew, you are the kind of man who cannot be alone.”

  I frown. “What?”

  “Most men are children, content to play with toy after toy, never happy with one that they can use their imagination to turn into a million different playthings.”

  “But I’m not that guy.”

  “No. You need one toy to open you to the richness of your inner world.”

  “One toy.”

  “One woman.”

  “Amanda.”

  “Yes?” The word comes from behind me, low and pleasant, curious and amused.

  I jump in my seat, the hand holding the wine glass almost tipping, as Consuela looks up and gives Amanda a grin, standing with her arms open, welcoming my future wife with the kind of gentle openness and sophisticated grace that my mother would have extended to Amanda.

  My shirt collar suddenly got tight.

  “And now we can start dinner!” Consuela says, giving me a pointed look. “Something other than grapes.” She pours the rest of the bottle of wine into my glass and a fresh one for Amanda, and quietly leaves.

  I stand and wrap my arms around Amanda, pulling her in to my chest, inhaling the sweet smell of her hair. She’s wearing a tight cream-colored dress and a lilac jacket, pearls and high heels, and she’s sweet and soft and warm and everything.

  “I like this welcome,” she says to my chest. “I thought you’d be angry I’m so late. I had a work meeting with one of those people who wouldn’t stop asking questions that were just about them, and that the other forty of us on the call didn’t need to hear, and—”

  I cut her off with a kiss. We kiss until she’s moaning in my arms, pressing against me to the point where I have to pivot so she can’t feel the very hard thing in my pants.

  No. Not that.

  The ring.

  “I really like this welcome!’ she gasps, looking up at me with smiling eyes. “And this is nostalgic. Our first real date.”

  “But not our first real kiss.”

  “No,” she says, looking out at the cityscape. “That came more than two years ago.”

  “Too much time wasted.”

  A server delivers a breadbasket and oil, explaining the lavender and sage infusion origins as if I care. A strange chatter fills my mind, as if I’m simultaneously listening to an announcer do a play-by-play of every second of my life while living it.