“My hands are tied here, Meg.” Harrison glanced back at Lacey again and gave her a little wave that made the creeping feeling of doom wrap its tentacles around my insides.
When he turned back to face me, I asked, “Are you sleeping with Lacey?” I couldn’t help myself. The question just jumped out of my mouth like a dramatic little skydiver.
Harrison’s eyes registered true surprise and instantly I felt like an ass. “Meg! No. What are you saying?”
What was I saying? I had even briefly considered asking Lacey the same question. I glanced over at Lady Red Suit and then at Harrison again. He was handsome, but not movie star handsome. I supposed it would be funny to Lacey Lewis if I even suggested such a thing.
“Look, Meg.” Harrison held up his hands in a calm, reassuring gesture as if he were trying to reason with an unpredictable monkey. The insane noise I’d made earlier was likely to blame. “I know how much you were looking forward to the festival. I think you should come with us. Be our consultant.” He cleared his throat and pulled at the lapels of his jacket like he did whenever he was anxious.
Be their consultant? I’d rather be boiled in donut oil. Besides, Harrison didn’t need me. He knew everything I knew. He was just trying to appease me. I closed my eyes. I’d only been gone for five days. Five lousy days, giving a series of lectures on nineteenth-century England’s social norms to the history faculty at Yale. In a mere five days, it felt like I’d lost my boyfriend to someone who better knew the ins-and-outs of shopping for a tight-fitting red suit than the first thing about Jane Austen’s brilliant characters.
“I’ll have to think about it,” I said, glaring at his tattersall shirtfront and considering how I could gracefully pull my suitcase up the multiple stone steps to my front door. Where was my deadbeat roommate brother when I needed him?
“Let me help you with that.” Harrison started forward to assist me. Always the gentleman.
“No. I’ll be fine.” No female with any self-respect and a Herstory bumper sticker allows a man who has just finished dumping her as his partner in Jane Austen fandom to carry her suitcase up ten stairs. Even if the stairs are ridiculously steep and she has a bunch of heavy books inside the suitcase. It’s bad form.
“Okay.” He knew I didn’t like things such as having my car door opened for me or help with my luggage. He jogged over to me and kissed me quickly, half on the lips and half on the cheek. He turned to leave, and I began to hoist the case up the stairs like I was going for the crown in the Miss Ignominious pageant—which would be a much more fun pageant to watch than your run-of-the-mill beauty pageant, if you ask me.
Harrison must have turned back and seen my slow, awkward plight, because the next thing I knew, he was at my side, trying to help me with the suitcase again.
“I’m fine,” I insisted, refusing to look at him. A short semi-slap fight ensued, which I won. I needed to get my suitcase into my house and not cry. I continued my assent, my eyes focused on the shiny black door above me. The suitcase bumped my leg on each step and pushed me forward a little. Apparently graceful was out of the question.
I pulled the luggage up the remaining three steps, hoping that when I turned back, Harrison and Lacey would be long gone. I pivoted on my heel.
No such luck.
Harrison was headed for the car, while Lacey’s shining eyes gazed at me from the side window. She actually had the audacity to make a frowny face. A freakin’ frowny face. Then she waved at me. An honest-to-goodness wave. Like, “See ya around. I didn’t just take your spot and run off with your boyfriend or anything.”
“Meg, I’ll call you later,” Harrison said as he climbed into the car. “We’ll finish our talk.”
“Fine,” I shouted over my shoulder, fumbling in my purse for the key to the front door. Why did I have so much crap in my purse? No one needs four different kinds of tiny hand sanitizers, even if they are ‘buy three get one free.’ I pushed aside the sanitizers, the empty orange and pink donut bag, my purple journal, and my ubiquitous dog-eared copy of Pride and Prejudice. By the way, purse-fumbling? Also not graceful.
Then it began to rain. Because A) it was poetic, and poetic things always happen to me, and B) because the only thing less graceful than standing in front of your door, fumbling for your key in your crap-filled purse in desperation to get away from your boyfriend and his hot, famous employer as they stare at your back...is fumbling for your key in your crap-filled purse, in front of them, in the rain. Which plasters the bangs you shouldn’t’ve let your hair stylist talk you into to your wet forehead and makes you look like you are crying. Which you are not doing...yet.
I finally found the bloody key, but in my haste to put it into the lock, I dropped it in front of my feet. When I leaned over to retrieve it, the unmistakable sound of fabric ripping met my disbelieving ears. I closed my eyes. Damn. Damn. Damn.
I scooped up the key and jammed it into the lock as quickly as possible, and twisted the knob open with a jerk. I was just about to pull in my suitcase behind me and slam the door with gratifying force when I heard Lacey’s mock-concerned voice drift up to me from below. “Dr. Knightley! I hate to be the one to tell you, but your skirt ripped and your panties are showing.”
Chapter 2
When one is confronted with the news that one’s granny panties are visible, there are clearly only two choices. Laugh and quickly tuck them out of sight, or pretend you didn’t hear such information and blithely continue about your self-righteous business.
Had Harrison not just tossed me over for Lacey Lewis on the night I had hoped we’d become engaged, I would have chosen the former. However, under the circumstances, I was left with only the latter as a viable option. Head held high, I pushed my recalcitrant suitcase inside with my foot. I let the door slam satisfyingly behind me, even though I knew Harrison and Lacey and the Audi had long since purred away.
I glanced around the tiny foyer of my townhouse. A print of Monet’s Houses of Parliament hung on the wall over a cherry wood side table that held a silver bowl where I dropped my keys. The table generally housed a silver vase with fresh flowers, too. This time of year, I preferred sunflowers, but the ones that greeted me were half-dead from not having been cared for all week by my brother, Luke.
Aside from the dead flowers, the first thing I noticed was the smell. The next was the mail scattered all over the dark wood floor from where the mail carrier had pushed it through the slot.
“Luke!” I yelled. “Luuuuke!”
“Whaa?” His voice came from the living room, not nearly as far away as it should have been if he wanted to avoid serious bodily harm...or at least a severe talking-to. I kicked off my sensible flats—Lacey had been wearing shiny red heels—and pulled my suitcase behind me into the living room on my fat little hobbit feet. The ones that kept me from ever wearing heels because they felt like medieval torture devices on such ungainly hooves.
The sight that greeted me in the living room was my older brother, lying on the sofa reading a book, wearing his usual garb: boxers and a T-shirt. Old pizza boxes and half-empty beer bottles were strewn everywhere.
“Luke, what the hell are you doing? This place smells like an armpit and it’s a bloody mess!” Leaving the suitcase to its own devices, I splayed my hands wide and swept them out to the sides to demonstrate said mess. I knew I was being a control freak, but I couldn’t take my frustration out on Harrison, and Luke was the only one available.