Jasmine Guillory - The Proposal

“To get us back on topic: we were talking about how Monday night I asked a man who I barely knew to come to my apartment with me because I was feeling helpless. And if there’s one thing I hate, it’s feeling helpless.”

“You also hate raw peaches,” Dana said.

“That fuzz against your teeth!”

“And those five-finger running shoes,” Courtney said.

Nik shuddered.

“They make your feet look like hobbit feet!”

“Filled doughnuts,” Dana said.

“They ooze!” Nik said. “Especially the ones with red stuff inside—it’s like there’s blood in there.”

“When people have the keyboard sound up on their phone,” Dana said.

“Okay, but doesn’t everyone hate that?” Nik asked them.

“Beaches,” Courtney said.

“So much sand,” Nik said. “It gets everywhere. And I mean everywhere . I don’t know why people love them.”

“Rompers.”

“Carrot cake.”

“Mashed potatoes.”

“People who don’t use the Oxford comma!”

“Don’t forget Chardonnay!”

“Okay, okay, fine, you guys can stop now,” Nik said. They would have gone on forever if she hadn’t interrupted them. “You’re both correct. I hate many things, okay? But feeling helpless is high up there. You happy now?”

It was amazing that two women who were so different in both looks and personality could have the exact same smug smile.

“Yes,” they said in unison.

“After all that, now you know you have to go with me to a self-defense class, right?” Nik said.

“Oh.” Dana looked at Courtney, and they both looked back at Nik. “We were always going to go with you. We just had to make fun of you first. When’s the first class?”

Nik grinned.

“Tomorrow.”

• • •

Carlos sat down on the corner of his couch with his dinner late on Wednesday night. He hadn’t heard from Nik since Tuesday morning—he’d texted her to check in and see how she was doing, and she’d texted back that she was much better and thanked him again. He’d assumed that was a brush-off and he shouldn’t text her again, but now he was reconsidering that. Nik’s brush-offs didn’t seem that subtle, for one thing. He’d seen that at Dodger Stadium. Maybe he’d text her one more time.

Did those Thai leftovers kill you? I hope you ate them yesterday. They get spicier over time.

A few seconds after he pressed send, his phone rang. My God, was it that easy?

He looked at his phone. Angela. Nope, not that easy.

“Hey,” she said. “I just got off the phone with Jessie.”

His cousin Jessica had just been diagnosed with preeclampsia, and he’d been fielding calls from his mom and aunt about it all day. He’d finally gotten to talk to Jessie right before he left the hospital that evening.

“I talked to her, too,” he said to Angela. “Don’t freak out. It’s still early, but it’s a good sign that her doctors sent her home and had her go on bed rest instead of admitting her.”

Part of him wished her doctors had admitted her to the hospital—that way she and the baby would be safe and monitored every day in case of any problems. The thing no one told you about being a doctor was how much you would panic when people you loved had anything wrong with them. Doctors knew way too much about the worst-case scenarios.

“You’re telling me not to freak out? From what Jessie said, you freaked her out! She said her doctors made her feel less stressed about this, and when she left her doctor’s appointment, she wasn’t too worried, but after she talked to you, she’s all anxious again.”

His phone buzzed.

Oh wow, really? Thanks for the news bulletin. That would have been a nice thing to tell me on Monday night, not well after I ate them for lunch on Tuesday and had my tongue on fire for 12 full hours. Now I know why you let me have them.

He tried not to laugh. He didn’t want to have to explain his laughter to Angela.

“I’m sorry I freaked Jessie out, but she needs to know when she should go back to the hospital. If her blood pressure gets too high, it can be dangerous.”

He texted back.

I don’t know what you’re talking about. I was just being a gentleman.

“She knows all of that; that’s what her doctor is for! We all know all of that now. We have Google, too.”

He rolled his eyes at his bowl of lentil soup. It was like Angela wasn’t even listening to him.

“I didn’t know that because of Google. I know because I’m a doctor!”

They all remembered he was a doctor when they needed him, but ignored it whenever they felt like it.

“I know you’re a doctor, but stop making her more anxious about everything! She needs your support right now, not you trying to drive her blood pressure up.”

Of course Jessie had his support. Jessie was his younger cousin, but only by a year. She had teased him and played with him and laughed at him and encouraged him and been proud of him his whole life. One of the framed pictures he had in his house was of him at three and Jessie at two, both looking dubiously at baby Angela.

Ohhhhhh, is that what being a gentleman is? Letting the woman absorb all of the pain while you take the glory? Now I understand what all of those men who told me they were such gentlemen were saying.

He had to mute his call so he could laugh at that.

“Look,” Angela continued. “I know you’re stressed right now, coming up on the five-year anniversary of Dad, but—”

He stopped laughing.

“It’s not that,” he said. He’d been trying to ignore that the anniversary of his father’s death was coming up. “I’m just trying to take care of this family, that’s all.”

Ever since his father’s death, Carlos had sort of considered himself head of his family. He’d never say that out loud to his mother or to Tia Eva, but he assumed they thought the same thing. Jessie’s dad had never been around, so his dad had always done all of the car maintenance, yard work, and home repairs for all of them. When his dad died, Carlos had taken over all of that. But it was more than just the physical work: he thought of his family as his responsibility. He wasn’t going to have anything happen to Jessie on his watch.

“Look, I don’t want to fight about this,” he said to Angela. “I’m just trying to take care of Jessie the best I know how. I have to work late tomorrow, but I’m going to stop by to see her on Friday.”

Don’t tell anyone I told you the gentleman code. The other gentlemen out there will murder me.

“Oh great, I have an idea: before you stop by to see Jessie, why don’t you go to the doctor? She would love that, and so would I.”

He sighed. Not this again.

“Next topic, Angela.”

She laughed.

“Fine, but remember what I said. By the way, did you see the video of that proposal pop up everywhere? Wild, right? Poor Nik. I wonder how she’s holding up.”

My lips are sealed. I mean, until I write the big exposé about this.

“She’s hanging in there,” he said, without thinking.

Oh shit.

“Oh, is she ? How do you know that, may I ask?”

Well he definitely could not say it was because he and Nik had been texting throughout this conversation. Anytime he even hinted that he enjoyed a woman’s company, Angela was convinced they’d live happily ever after. And while he still didn’t know what was going to happen between him and Nik, he knew that wasn’t in the cards.

“We had dinner on Monday night. She emailed me to say thanks for Saturday—she wanted me to say thanks to you, too, by the way—and we ended up grabbing Thai food.”