Jasmine Guillory - The Proposal

Nik glanced over the menu and grinned.

“Luckily, I heard from you at just the right time before I dove into the box of cupcakes. And I’m glad you wanted to go to this place. I haven’t been here in far too long; Fisher didn’t like spicy food, so . . .”

He looked up at her with his eyebrows raised.

“Fisher didn’t like spicy food, and you went out with him for more than one date? How did that happen?”

She sighed.

“Excellent question, really.”

The waitress brought their beers, and she took a sip.

“Never again, though,” she said. “I’m swearing off actors. You think you’re just casually dating, and then bam, they spring a public proposal on you.”

Carlos shook his head.

“Is he a real actor or a wannabe one?”

She laughed.

“You always have to ask that question in L.A., right? A real one, but a terrible one. And that’s not even my rage talking; I thought that even while we were dating.”

Oof. This woman did not mince her words.

“How did you even meet him?” He shook his head. “You don’t have to answer that. You’re probably sick of even thinking about this. We can talk about work, or our last vacations, or baseball, or whatever.”

She widened her eyes in horror.

“Good God, not baseball, anything but baseball.” They both laughed. “As for not talking about this, honestly, I wish I could stop thinking about this. I’ve probably thought about Fisher more in the past two days than I did in the entire five months that we were dating, that’s the wild part. But wait, you probably don’t want to hear more about my disastrous love life; you heard plenty on Saturday.”

Actually, he’d left right when they’d gotten to the good stuff. And honestly, he was dying to know the details.

“If it helps you to talk about it, I’m happy to listen,” he said. Did that sound magnanimous enough? “I talk to teenagers all day; hearing a story about an adult disastrous love life will be refreshing after their stories, I promise.”

She pushed her hair out of her face and smiled.

“Okay, but you’re going to have to tell me at least one good work story afterward, so I don’t feel like such an idiot. You see teenagers; you must have some great ones.” She glanced down at the menu. “Wait, let’s order first. You already said you were starving.”

The waitress stopped at their table, and they ordered far too much food for two people.

“What did you ask?” she said when the waitress walked away. “Oh right, how I met Fisher.” She sighed. “Last year, I did a profile of Anna Gardiner for Vogue . She only really got big, like, last summer. Right before she got the role that led to the Oscar nomination and Vogue cover and everything else, she was in a terrible and short-lived TV show. Fisher was her co-star.”

He held up his hand to stop her.

“I’m sorry, but you got to meet Anna Gardiner? Most famous people are no big deal, a dime a dozen in L.A., blah blah, but Anna Gardiner? What was she like? Don’t tell me she was terrible; I loved that movie.”

He was so thankful none of his friends were here to witness him babbling about a movie star—they would make fun of him from here to eternity.

“She was honestly great! Which is the whole reason I met Fisher, actually. Anna and I got along really well, and she ended up inviting me to her birthday party, and that’s where I met Fisher. When he asked me out, I was positive that he just wanted to go out with me because he wanted me to write a puff piece about him for something. I sort of never stopped thinking that, actually.”

She shook her head and laughed.

“The funny thing is that whenever I went to industry parties with him, when people I knew through my work saw us together, they would look so confused. A few times, when he was on the other side of the room, they even said to me, ‘You’re here with that guy?’ I was never sure if that was an insult to me, or to him.”

The waitress set their spicy and sweet wings down on the table, and they both grabbed one.

“Anyway, going out with Fisher was very low-stress, until two days ago. I’ve had such a busy few months of work and Fisher was just a fun guy I hung out with when I had time. I even felt guilty about saying no to his proposal, because I didn’t want to hurt his feelings! That was, until . . . well, apparently, I’m not as good at reading people as I thought I was.”

He looked closer at her. He was pretty good at reading people, and she looked really stressed about this whole situation.

“Have you heard from him again? Since his bad texts on Saturday?”

She looked up at him.

“How did you know they were bad?”

He gestured to her face.

“That same worried look that’s on your face right now was on your face on Saturday night when you told your friends he’d texted you. I figured there was something in there that bothered you, and since you’d just rejected him in front of thousands of people, I assumed it was something pretty nasty.” He held up his hand when she started to protest. “I’m not blaming you for rejecting him in front of thousands of people. As a matter of fact, I was pretty impressed that you were honest with him, instead of being nice to him just to make him feel better. But when I saw that look on your face, I figured he wanted to lash out at you.”

She nodded.

“He sure did. Which . . . I like revenge as much as the next person, so I get that, but he didn’t have to keep going.”

He dropped his chicken and sat up straight.

“Is he still texting you?”

She shrugged.

“I’m not sure. The last text I got from him before I blocked him was ‘Watch your back.’ I’m sure he’s just trying to freak me out. I don’t really think Fisher is the violent-revenge-for-rejecting-him type.” She shook her head. “But I should know better than to say that there’s no such thing as one violent-revenge type; anyone can be like that. I didn’t tell Courtney and Dana about that text. They would have freaked out, moved in with me, firebombed his house, and reported him to the police, probably in that order. Unfortunately, he succeeded in freaking me out, if that was his motive.”

He sympathized with Courtney and Dana. He would want to do the same if anyone texted stuff like that to Angela.

He reached across the table and touched Nik’s hand.

“I’m sorry that happened to you. Are you . . . do you live alone?” He shook his head. “Wow, did that sound creepy. What I meant was, are you okay? Are you worried that he’ll come to your house if you don’t respond to him?”

She started to shake her head and stopped.

“I wasn’t at first. I do live alone—I probably shouldn’t tell you that; you’re still a stranger, but hey, you have a good sister, you can’t be too terrible—and I wasn’t worried at all yesterday. But then today, after Fisher’s texts, and then all of the tweets and emails from strangers that were way worse than what he said . . . when I walked into my apartment, well. That was another reason I was glad to leave to go to dinner tonight; it was good to get out of there and have some company.”

He wanted to ask her what was in those messages from strangers that were way worse than Fisher’s texts, but he wasn’t sure if she wanted to talk about it. And he wasn’t sure if he was ready to hear the response.

Two more platters of food landed on their table. He scooped papaya salad and pork belly onto both of their plates.

“I’m glad I could help, but it sucks that he’s made you so anxious about this.”

She took a bite of the pork belly and grinned.

“This is delicious, but also it’s hot as hell.” She squeezed his hand, and he smiled at her. They looked at each other for a long time, their hands still linked across the table. Finally, she broke the eye contact and dropped his hand.