by Terri Osburn
“Stupid tree,” I muttered, realizing I was going to have more than just the bruise on my head to show for this night. At least the first date was done. Three more to go and I had to believe the rest would go better than this one. I wasn’t looking for a love connection, but surviving the week without any further contusions didn’t seem like too much to ask.
Chapter Three
“Jesus, Becca, what did that jagoff do to you?”
Josie Danvers—my upstairs neighbor, friend since college, and the person responsible for my date from hell—slammed the door behind her, and a jolt of pain shot through my temples.
“Not so loud.” I held the makeshift ice pack to my forehead. “This isn’t Peter’s fault. I ran into a tree.”
“A tree?” she said, following me into the living room. “That doesn’t even make sense.”
No, it didn’t. I stopped before the sofa and checked the throbbing forehead bump in the giant round mirror on the wall, which I’d found at a yard sale the month before. A total steal at ten dollars. The tender skin was quickly turning purple, and the ice was doing little to take down the swelling.
“Why did you set me up with a man who’s in love with someone else?” I asked, taking a seat on the couch and curling my legs beneath me. Milo hopped up onto the back of the couch and stretched out beside my shoulder.
Josie took the other end and hugged my latest flea market find—an apricot-colored pillow—to her chest. Her blond hair was pulled up in a high ponytail that made her look twelve, while heavy, dark-rimmed glasses gave her a brainy hipster look. She would never be caught dead wearing the glasses in public. That’s what contacts were for.
“He’s in love with Evelyn? I thought they were just fuck buddies.”
“You thought wrong.”
She leaned forward to examine my injury. “I’m sorry, Becks.” Josie had been calling me that since we’d met freshman year of college. “I thought if he found the perfect girl he’d forget about Evelyn.”
“What made you think I was the perfect girl for Peter the Broker?”
“Peter the Broker?” she repeated.
“That’s how he introduced himself,” I explained, absently rubbing Milo’s chin. He purred in feline bliss.
Josie nodded. “Makes sense. I picked him for two reasons. First, you’re everything Evelyn is not. Kind. Caring. Laid-back. And this has nothing to do with anything, but she’s got this long dark hair that used to be blond, but she’s letting it grow out so the bottom four inches are still platinum. I have no idea why she doesn’t cut it off or color it to match the rest, and I don’t like her enough to ask.”
“Why don’t you like her?”
Josie narrowed her eyes and cut her gaze to the ceiling. “She has this air about her like she thinks she’s better than the rest of us. She only goes to lunch with the guys, and personally, I think she likes the attention. Come to think of it, I’m not sure she has any female friends at work.”
“Have you ever talked to her?” I asked.
“Barely. Small talk in the bathroom once.”
I pointed out the obvious. “Then you don’t really know her. Maybe she’s shy or insecure. Maybe she thinks you all hate her so she puts on airs to cover the hurt.”
Shoulders dropping, Josie leaned her head on the back of the couch. “You think so?”
“I do. Peter didn’t seem like the kind of guy who would get hung up on the woman you’re describing.” Not that he was feeling all that positive about Evelyn at the moment, but he must have seen something good to want to marry her.
“I’ll feel really bad if that’s the case.”
I had a hunch it was. “Invite her to lunch. It sounds like she could use a friend.”
Josie stayed quiet for several seconds as the possibilities settled in her mind. We’d been through this junior year when Megan Knox—another member of our small circle—had become my roommate. Megan and I had met in a marketing class sophomore year and if she hadn’t found a roommate for the next semester, she’d have been forced to drop out and move back home. Her family weren’t firm believers in education and saw her insistence on getting a degree as a waste of money.
Josie had gone with her first impression of Megan, which had been bumpy at best. A city girl through and through, she’d scared Megan half to death with her direct stare and boundless confidence. There was a reason that Josie had gone into finance while Megan became a librarian. Thankfully, the pair had learned to get along and nearly ten years later, Josie would fight anyone who messed with her quiet and sensitive friend.
“Anyway,” Josie continued, “Evelyn is the third woman Peter has dated at the firm and all have ended in disaster.”
“Did they all cheat on him?”
“Cheat?” Josie’s brown eyes went wide. “Evelyn cheated on him?”
“According to Peter, she did. He kept talking about her dating some snitch from HR.”
Bouncing onto her knees, she hugged the pillow tighter and got an evil look from Milo, who’d been jostled on his perch. “Evelyn is seeing Roger Mertens? No fucking way. That dude is a total narc.”
I had not invited her here to have a gossip session. “Could you take a little less pleasure in this story? Peter is so heartbroken that he got thoroughly trashed by the time the waiter cleared our plates, and I had to get him home. Which wasn’t easy. Now I have a grass stain on my pink tweed skirt and what looks like a dirty baseball growing out of my forehead.”
Her fingertip brushed the bruise and I winced. “I really am sorry. I also picked him because he’s a fun guy and I thought you could use a little more fun in your life. I’d never have set this up if I’d known how badly it would go. Maybe the guy Donna picked will be better.”
I hoped so. My friends believed I’d agreed to these dates because I legitimately wanted to find a man. Surely they’d put some thought into who they were fixing me up with. Even if Peter hadn’t been nursing a broken heart, he hadn’t seemed like my type. Not that I knew exactly what my type might be. My only dating experience had been with one person, and he’d been the love of my life. What were the chances of having two loves like that? Not very high.
Thanks to our respective jobs—mine as an event planner and Donna’s as a wedding photographer—the two of us spent a lot of time together. That meant she should have a reasonable insight into what kind of guy I might like. Sadly, based solely on the little I’d heard about her choice, I had to wonder what she was thinking.
“I’m not sure about that.”
“What has she told you about him?” Josie asked.
“Not much.” Since I wasn’t going out with any of these guys to actually make a connection, I made the mistake of not asking a lot of questions during the setup process. “He’s her neighbor, a fitness trainer, and supposedly hot.” Three qualities that would never even make my list should I actually go looking for a new life partner.
For one, no matter how this went, him living in Donna’s building meant there was a high chance for a future encounter. Likely an awkward one since no matter what happened I would not be seeking a second date. Two, I was one of those women who owned a drawer full of yoga pants yet had never actually partaken in the activity. Or any other that required physical exertion for that matter.
Lastly, the hot thing simply meant he was most likely out of my league. Not to say that my former fiancé wasn’t attractive. To me he was beautiful, inside and out. But Brian fell more into the nerdy, sweet, lanky category. He’d also have preferred a root canal with no anesthetic over doing any type of exercise.
As for me, I was cute in the she looks like she’s still in high school way, but I would never fall into the hot category.
Josie uncurled off the couch and strolled into the kitchen. “That sounds promising,” she said, snagging a can of pop from the fridge. “What’s his name?”
“Adam.”
“Very first man of him.”
“I’m hoping he’s more evolved than that. Can you do
me a favor?” I held up the wet tea towel. “My ice melted.”
“Of course.”
Once she retrieved the towel and returned to the kitchen, I leaned my head against Milo to rest my eyes. What could have been seconds or minutes later, she shook me awake.
“You aren’t supposed to go to sleep when you have a head injury,” she informed me.
I’d already received this warning once.
“That’s the other reason I called you down here. I need someone to keep me awake.”
“Oh, right.” With pursed lips, she glanced around my tiny living room. “How about a game of rummy?”
The child of a card-loving family, Josie coerced the rest of us into playing at every opportunity. Her years of experience meant she beat us more times than not, which drove Donna and Megan crazy. I lacked the competitive gene and didn’t mind losing. All that mattered tonight was that the game would keep me from dying in my sleep. She grabbed the cards from the kitchen drawer, and we relocated to the floor so we would have space to play.
Halfway through the first hand, Josie said, “I really am sorry. I thought you and Peter would make a good pair. But don’t worry,” she continued, “we’ll find your Mr. Right yet.”
I’d already found my Mr. Right. His leaving didn’t change that. Unfortunately, my friends turned into angry fairy godmothers when I said things like that so I kept the thought to myself and pointed to my forehead. “Or you’ll kill me trying.”
Probably not smart to tempt fate, but after this dismal first date, I couldn’t imagine the rest being any worse.
“You’re making me feel bad,” she whined, snagging an ace off the pile and setting down a six-card run. “How did you run into a tree anyway?”
“I was trying to catch the driver who took us to Peter’s place.” I shifted so Milo could curl up in my lap. “He had my purse and phone in his car, and I was too busy screaming like a crazy woman to see the branch in time to duck.”
Josie cringed. “That sounds painful.” A second later, she said, “Wait. You sent me a text from your phone. Does that mean you caught him?”
Drawing a card off the deck, I laid down my three twos. As always, she was going to cream me in this game. “Not exactly. He saw me hit the tree and came back to see if I was okay.”
“That was nice of him.”
It was nice of him. And though I’d found him annoying during the drive home, sparring with him had been kind of fun. If I ever did decide to try the dating thing again, that would be something I’d look for. Brian and I had spent hours having random debates about everything and nothing, and I missed those impassioned conversations.
“Yeah, he was a nice guy,” I agreed. And gorgeous. And strong. And if I ignored the judgy bits, he was charming in his own way. Good thing he’d been the driver and not the date or I might have had to rethink my not taking these seriously stance.
“I’m out,” Josie said, snapping the rest of her hand onto the rug while discarding a jack.
“Shocker,” I said and lifted the ice pack back to my head while she gathered the cards together. “The rest of the week can only get better, right?”
Shuffling the deck like a pro in Vegas, she nodded. “Absolutely. This was just one bad night.”
I hoped she was right.
The next morning on my walk to the office—an older building five blocks from my apartment and the reason I lived on Mount Washington—I received a text from Donna saying the DeStefano’s engagement pictures were ready for review. I sent a reply that I’d stop by in the afternoon, though I’d have to check my calendar for an exact time once I got to my desk. This was the perfect opportunity to press for more details about the next date. This time I would be more prepared.
“What the hell happened to you?” my boss asked as I entered the office.
Amanda Crawford was blunt like that. At forty-eight years old, she’d dedicated the last twenty years of her life to building Three Rivers Events into a small but successful party planning company. She never married or had children, though one late night after a particularly harrowing wedding reception, she’d downed a bottle of wine and mentioned a former fiancé. When I’d asked about him the next day, she claimed to have no idea what I was talking about.
To clients, she was kindness incarnate—an approach she’d adopted out of necessity. Amanda was a large woman. Not obese, but rather she looked as if she could snap a person in two with her bare hands. At just over six feet tall, she towered above the average human and, as if that wasn’t enough, she’d been cursed with a terrible case of resting bitch face.
We’d worked together for the last eight years yet she knew little about my life and I knew nothing about hers. Did she have a hobby? Did she read books? Did she like long walks on the beach at sunset?
I had no idea.
“A sycamore tree,” I replied.
I dropped my purse and trench coat onto my desk and carried my City of Champions coffee mug to the kitchenette in the corner. After three rounds of gin rummy and another two hours of Josie scaring me awake every fifteen minutes, I’d need at least three cups of caffeine before my brain kicked into gear.
On the plus side, I didn’t die.
“How was the meeting with the DeStefanos?” she asked, not the least bit interested in how a sycamore had caused my contusion. “Did you convince them to cancel the ice sculpture?”
“I’m afraid not.” The single cup brewer sputtered to life as I leaned my hip on the counter to wait. “I did get them to switch from a luge to a standard design.”
“Thank God. Those things are so unsanitary. Send the design order to Samuel to make sure we’re on his schedule.”
Here’s where I had to give the bad news. “Unfortunately, the bride and groom are not in agreement as to what the new design should be. She wants a giant ice bouquet to match her own, and he wants the Steelers logo.”
Amanda looked up from her computer screen. “Seriously?”
“I’m sure she’ll convince him the flowers are the way to go.” Or call off the wedding entirely. The couple had fought throughout every meeting we’d had so far. I was used to soon-to-be newlyweds having disagreements before the nuptials, but in cases like the DeStefanos, I had to wonder why they were marrying at all. “How are things coming along with the Jankowski anniversary party?”
“About that.” Amanda slid her reading glasses onto the top of her head. “I need you to handle the meeting tomorrow.”
Not what I wanted to hear. “I’m not sure I’ll have time. Can you move it to fit your schedule?”
Tossing the glasses onto her desk, she rolled her chair back and crossed her arms. “I have something to tell you.”
Certain I wasn’t going to like what came next, I said, “Let me get my coffee first.” The last of the dark liquid flowed into the mug and I dumped in enough powdered creamer to change the color from black to light brown. Returning to my desk, I sat down and said, “Okay, now I’m ready.”
I assumed she was about to tell me that we were taking on a new client who needed a wedding planned in a month. We preferred a year and rarely signed on less than six months out.
“I have cancer,” she said.
Stunned speechless, a million questions ran through my brain. The only one I managed to pin down was, “Are you serious?” Not my proudest or most sensitive moment. Quickly regrouping, I added, “I mean, are you okay?”
Again, not the best response, but what the hell was a right response to such an announcement?
“I start chemo on Friday,” she replied, ignoring both of my missteps. “We’re going with an aggressive treatment plan, so I’ll need you to take on the brunt of the work for the next couple of months. Maybe longer.”
My first thought was how? I already had a full slate of clients I was struggling to keep up with. Taking on any more would require cloning myself. At the same time, I owed her. When my life fell apart two years ago, Amanda had given me all the time I’d needed to recover, no questions
asked. The woman had cancer, for heaven’s sake. I couldn’t exactly tell her to find someone else. Not that there was anyone else. Other than Marquette, who worked part-time as our administrative assistant, we were a two-woman team.
“Of course,” I said. “I’ll do whatever you need. How long have you—”
“That’s settled then,” she said, cutting me off and turning once again to her computer.
I stared at my own dark monitor, unsure what had just happened. Did my boss really just tell me that she has cancer and then refused to share a single detail more?
What kind of cancer? How far progressed was it? Was there going to be a surgery and what was the prognosis?
I considered airing these queries but the look on her face, along with the sudden chill coming from her side of the room, kept me quiet. I hoped she at least had someone to go through this with her. As far as I knew, Amanda had no family other than two cousins she couldn’t stand, and a grandfather who lived in a home near Harrisburg. She never talked about spending time with friends, nor had she ever brought a visitor into the office.
The last thing she’d want was my pity so I followed her lead and pretended the giant cancer elephant wasn’t hanging out in the corner of the room. If nothing else, this put my blind date situation into perspective. Enduring a few more awkward encounters would be nothing compared to what Amanda was facing.
“Do you know where Marquette put the folder for the Davenport vow renewal?” Amanda asked, sifting through a pile of manila folders in her inbox.
Crossing to the assistant’s desk, I did a quick search and found the folder in question. “Here you go.”
As I handed it over, her eyes locked with mine and for a split second I saw fear in their blue depths. “Don’t worry about the business,” I said, attempting to put her at ease in any way that I could. “I’ll handle everything here.”
With a casual tilt of her head, she flipped the folder open. “I’m not worried.” After a brief pause, she added, “About anything.”