Best Staged Plans (19 page)

“Do you usually tell each other where you’re going?” I said.

“Yes. No. I don’t know. I mean, when we’re with each other we have these periods of intensity where we tell each other everything, and then we retreat into our separate worlds, and the whole thing falls apart. And then time passes, and it’s like it never happened, and then we do it all over again.”

“How does that make you feel?” I said.

“What are you, my shrink?”

“Sorry. Maybe he’s got a bit of a commitment phobia,” I said, understating the obvious, like a best friend should.

“Ya think?” Denise said. “I’m doing it again, right?”

“It’s a possibility,” I said. “How much do you like him?”

“I don’t know. How much do I like him?”

“Hard to say,” I said. “It might just be that he’s young, hot, and rich.”

“Ha. And then there are the superficial things.”

Since it was starting to look like we might be on the phone for a while, I began organizing my clothes for tomorrow. It had been a long day, and I was dying to crawl into bed. That way I could just turn out the light and go to sleep as soon as Denise finished talking. The only flaw in this plan was that even a best friend doesn’t put up with you brushing your teeth while she’s talking. So my best bet was to keep moving and get organized.

“I don’t know,” Denise said as I studied two taupe shirts with slightly different detailing, as if it mattered which one I picked. “When we’re together it’s good. We have so much in common, the sex is great, we laugh a lot.”

“Nothing against great sex, but can he dance? Can he clean? Can he get the house on the market?”

Denise blew a puff of air through the phone line. “Come on, you had your turn.”

“Sorry,” I said. “Okay, so what is it you actually want from your relationship with Josh?”

Denise’s voice exploded in my ear. “What do I want? What do I
want
? What kind of question is that? I want what everybody wants. I want someone who has my back. I want someone’s name to put in the blank space after In an Emergency Please Call. I want someone who’ll drink the other half of the bottle of wine so I don’t, and someone to make it worth sitting down at an actual table to eat. I want someone who’s dying to get home after a long day because I’m going to be there.”

I cleared my throat. “Is this a bad time to point out that you’ve had this a few times already?”

I braced myself for another explosion, but when Denise finally spoke it was almost a whisper. “I want someone I’ll still want eighteen months later.”

I heard myself sigh. “Some of that is a choice you make.”

“Well, maybe I’m finally ready to make it.”

A good friend knows when to suspend her disbelief, because a big part of the job is being a cheerleader.

“Okay,” I said, “if you want something more out of this relationship, you have to tell Josh. You can’t expect him to read your mind. I know it’s hard for you, but you have to put yourself out there.”

“Do you think he’s capable of something more?”

“Oh, puh-lease,” I said. “We’re all capable of exactly what we want to be capable of.”

Denise didn’t say anything. The low drone of the television coming from the living room ended abruptly, and I heard the creak of the stairs as Chance headed up to bed.

“Oh, God,” Denise said. “I’m going to end up all by myself. I might as well start buying cats now. Or those yappy little dogs. Or maybe I should hire a companion and overpay her so she’ll stay with me until I die, as long as I leave everything to her, which I might as well do, because who the hell else am I going to leave it to?”

I opened the door and started tiptoeing across to the bathroom. “You’re overdramatizing. He’s a nice guy. You’re perfect for each other. Have you noticed that he looks a little bit like Johnny Depp around the mouth?”

Denise laughed. “Keep your hands off him.”

“Ha.” I gave my imaginary pom-poms another shake. “Trust me, it’ll work out. I can feel it in my bones. I’ll even be your matron of honor. Again.”

CHAPTER 27

I
FULLY EXPECTED
the homeless woman to be sitting in the same place, just waiting for me to drop by with the other half of my spinach calzone. Then I’d ask her if she wore reading glasses, and if she did, I’d give her the root beer pair with the tortoiseshell highlights I’d tried to give Ponytail Guy. If my eyes turned out to be in worse shape than hers, she could just hang on to the glasses until hers caught up to mine.

And then,
presto change-o
, I’d be three-quarters of the way finished with my Denise-imposed penance, and I could go back to learning to be selfish again. I’d have given away a pair of reading glasses and fulfilled two of the three nice things I was supposed to do for someone. Just in case counting the glasses twice was cheating, I could even add another nice thing to be sure, which would mean I was only half done, not three-quarters. And who said I sucked at math.

But there was no sign of her. I even circled the block to be sure. Then I pulled into the little lot and tucked the GPS into my bag.

It was practically the crack of dawn when I’d left the house this morning, partly because I woke up early and figured I might as well get an early start, and partly to give Chance and me both a break. If you can possibly avoid it, never face an in-law before your coffee has kicked in.

It’s funny how something that didn’t bother you all that much when it was said can double back in the middle of the night and hit you like heartburn. Chance’s mother’s Coca-Cola chicken was pissing me off big-time. I mean, secret family recipe, give me a break. What does it take to pour a freakin’ can of Coke over a pair of chicken breasts?

It’s not like I
couldn’t
cook. I’d simply graduated from the cooking phase of my life and moved on. But I’d left a solid cooking legacy in my wake, with my own secret family recipes, thank you very much. I mean, Shannon had even served my own beef stew back to me the first night I’d arrived, so clearly my cooking days had made an impression. And honestly, that bottle of Guinness stout from Chance’s side of the family hadn’t added much.

The street was still relatively empty, with only a few eager beavers like me dashing down the sidewalks. It looked almost like the set of a musical. Any minute Martha and the Vandellas’ version of “Dancing in the Street” might start blasting from hidden speakers. If I had time I could choreograph a little dancing-to-work number for us.

Lines were forming at the coffee shops already, so I decided I’d delay my second cup and go straight to the hotel to check out the coffee-making possibilities there.

Just as I was fumbling for the key, the front door of the hotel swung out to greet me. I opened my mouth to say hi to Josh.

It was a woman. And it sure as hell looked like the same one Josh had been kissing between two Bradford pear trees.

Perhaps you’ve never spent an unplanned night with a man only to tiptoe out early the next morning. But if you have, you probably didn’t look so great the next morning either. The woman before me had messy hair, wrinkly clothes, a smear of mascara under her right eye. She looked past me, avoiding eye contact.

“Melissa?” I said.

For a minute I thought she might run. Just take off down the sidewalk like a bat out of Luke’s bat cave. Once, a long time ago, a friend told me that her starter marriage had ended when her ex-husband walked into a restaurant with some colleagues and saw her sitting across the room with another man. She denied it—to his face later that night, to their marriage counselor the following week.
You’re crazy
, she kept saying.
She must have just looked like me
.

This woman gave me the same kind of look, a look that said in a million years I am never going to admit to being named Melissa.

“How was your pizza the other night?” I asked sweetly. “Did your husband and three kids like it?”

She kept walking.

Apparently Josh didn’t even have the class to walk her to the door, since he was nowhere to be found. I stomped through the lobby and into the kitchen. I put my leftover calzone in the refrigerator and found a big bag of coffee beans in the freezer. Always keep your coffee in the freezer if you have room. It stays fresh longer.

I found a big stainless steel Bunn restaurant espresso grinder with a cracked plastic hopper. I ground some coffee beans, pretending they were Josh’s private parts. If there’d ever been an espresso maker to go with the grinder, it was long gone. Since I’d discovered where the keys were kept, I opened the first guest room I came to, borrowed the little coffeemaker, and set it up on the bar. I hated black coffee, and I hadn’t thought to buy milk, so I grabbed a tub of Cool Whip out of the freezer to tide me over.

The only way I’d be sharing any coffee with Josh would be if he ended up wearing it, so I brewed just enough for one person. The Cool Whip–topped coffee was surprisingly good, but I drank it down so quickly I only noticed that on my last sip. What had I been
thinking
? Why hadn’t I kept my mouth shut instead of cheering on Denise to pour her heart out to this clichéd creep?

The minute I got my hands on him, I’d make him call Denise and tell her. I’d hog-tie him if I had to. He was probably still upstairs in his room. Or maybe he’d slunk out the back door, lowlife that he was.

Then I’d quit. No, I wouldn’t. I’d stay here and make him miserable. That’s what I’d do. I’d finish the job, and then I’d bill him within an inch of his life. I could feel my hourly rate soaring already.

The second plumber I’d called actually showed up, or maybe he was the first and a day late. In any case, I got him to fix the rippled glass sinks in the lobby restrooms the old owners had tried unsuccessfully to take with them. Then I sent him to inspect each of the guest rooms for leaky faucets and running toilets, and any other potential plumbing problems.

The plumber must have flushed Josh out of his den of iniquity, because he came strolling into the bar. I’d set up my laptop on one of the round tables, and I was scrolling through Atlanta lighting stores, trying to decide where my best bet would be to find a chandelier for the entrance that was a perfect blend of funk and function.

I didn’t even look up. “I’ll need a check for the plumber,” I said.

“Good morning to you, too. Any more of that coffee around?”

I kept my eyes on my computer screen. “It’s your hotel. Look.”

“Can I make you a cup, too?”

I glanced up. Josh was wearing fresh clothes and looked like he’d just stepped out of the shower.

“No,” I said. “You can’t. But I think it might have been a nice gesture to make one for Melissa before you sent her home to her husband and kids.”

Josh walked away without answering. I couldn’t imagine why.

A minute later I heard the roar of the coffee grinder.

He strolled back into the bar area. I ignored him.

“What did you use for a coffee filter?” he asked.

“A cocktail napkin,” I said.

“Good thinking.”

I ignored him. The coffee bubbled and spat into the little coffeepot. I took out a pen and a notebook and made a list of addresses for the best lighting bets.

Josh poured himself a cup of coffee.

“Not,” he said, “that it’s any of your business, but Melissa and I met for breakfast, and then I gave her a tour of the hotel.”

“Right,” I said. “And then you had to jump in the shower after all that exertion.”

“Excuse me?”

I looked right at him. “There’s no excuse for you.”

Josh turned a chair around and sat so that the back was between us. “I didn’t take you for the kind of person who can’t understand friendships between men and women.”

“I didn’t take you for the kind of person who would mistake me for someone stupid.”

Josh’s eyes never left mine. “I’d have to be crazy to think I could get away with something like that.”

“Not necessarily,” I said. “But you’d certainly have to be a jerk.”

“Why would I cheat on Denise?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Why don’t you give her a call, and maybe the two of you can figure it out together.”

“Here’s the thing,” Josh said. “Nothing happened. Melissa had a big fight with her husband and needed someone to talk to. Period.”

His eye contact was amazing. He was facing me full on rather than half twisting away. His palms were open. Even his feet were pointing in my direction. Every aspect of his body language read like an open book.

And I didn’t believe him for a second.

CHAPTER 28

I
PULLED INTO TRADER JOE’S
on my way to Shannon and Chance’s house. I couldn’t help myself.

The GPS wasn’t happy about it. “Reverse direction at the earliest opportunity,” she pleaded.

I shook my head. “I know, I know. But I mean, come on, how would you like to be compared to a woman who cooks with
soda
? She probably thinks ketchup is a vegetable.”

“Recalculating,” the GPS said.

“Exactly,” I said.

I was on a mission. I even grabbed a full-size grocery cart instead of one of those little plastic baskets with the handles. My first thought was to take Chance’s mother’s stupid Coca-Cola breasts up a notch. After all, there was precedent, since she’d embellished my beef stew with her completely unnecessary bottle of Guinness stout. Dr Pepper thighs? Mountain Dew wings? Whole roast chicken bathed in Fresca?

Of course, since this was Trader Joe’s, I’d probably have to substitute Sparkling Clementine or maybe even Dry Rhubarb soda.

After some deliberation, I decided to play to my strengths instead. I knew I could assemble circles around that woman. And so I would.

I rolled my cart straight to the prepared food section. Everything looked great, but I was only here for inspiration. Buying a fully finished dish would be cheating. I had standards.

The tandoori chicken with butternut squash, spinach, and peppers in rice looked good, as did the mushroom tortellini with asparagus. But it was the pesto chicken that called out to me.