Page 11 of All's Fair in Love and Christmas
Jeremy lifted his hand to run his fingers through his hair but stopped himself, crossing his arms over his chest instead. He used to have untamed hair, wild and free, and he’d run his hands through it when he felt frustrated, even pulling the ends a bit when he was at his own end—of patience. But that was before he’d gotten organized and ordered. A place for everything andeverything in its place. Including his neatly trimmed, gelled-into-submission hair.
“What kind of deal?”
“We help you out with whatever you’ve got going on here this Friday night.” Lincoln waved his hand over the pomander ball supplies.
“And you help me out with something I have going on next Saturday night,” Alejandro finished.
The last time Alejandro had asked Jeremy for help, it had been to call out numbers for bingo night at Heritage Hills. Calling outB4andI17in a booming voice hadn’t been so bad, plus the residents had loved having Nate and Nat there to help them with their cards. Even if one little old lady had mistaken him for a younger version of her deceased husband and gotten a little frisky, Jeremy could risk a butt pinch for help with these pomander balls.
“Deal.”
“Plan, let me introduce you to wrench.” Jill’s face could barely contain her grin as she picked up a fruit and jabbed three cloves across the center in quick succession.
“What do you mean?” Jeremy asked, but Jill just grinned wider. He turned to the guys. “What does she mean?”
Lincoln and Alejandro shrugged.
Jill shoved in four more cloves. She seemed to be making an equator in the sphere. “Dating and marriage are not a part of your five-year plan.”
“Don’t listen to Jill,” Alejandro reasoned. “I’m not marrying you off next week.” He laughed, but it sounded choked. “How absurd.”
Jeremy stared him down.
Alejandro threw his hands in the air. “Fine. I need you to go on a double date with me.”
“No.”
“You already agreed. Plus, I really like this woman. She comes with her friend whose mom is a resident at Heritage Hills. We’vebeen flirting back and forth the last couple of weeks, and she agreed to a date—but only if I could bring a buddy for her friend.”
“Why don’t you both leave your friends alone and go out by yourselves?” Jeremy grumbled.
His pals might tease him about his many plans, but they were there for a reason. He’d thought long and hard as he’d ordered out his life. What was best for Nat and Nate. What goals were achievable and which were pipe dreams. Plans weren’t silly. They were essential to being a responsible adult, especially an adult raising two kids on his own.
“It’s one date, Jeremy,” Alejandro deadpanned. “It’s not like you’re going to fall in love with this woman.”
Nope. Because love wasn’t anywhere on the schedule until the twins turned eighteen and graduated high school. No matter what his friends said, there’d be no deviation on that point of his itinerary.
5
I mentally rehearse my presentation for the hundredth time, going over what I want to say, then Mr. Mitchell’s response, then my reply. I’ve done this for as long as I can remember—have whole conversations with other people in my head. The discussions usually happen when I’m angry or upset at someone. I’ll confront them in my thoughts with full dialogue on both sides.
I can’t believe you did such and such.
And then I’ll answer myself as if I were the other person.
You’re angry with me for such and such? What about you and this and that?
And back and forth I’ll go, lobbing dialogue like a tennis ball over the net until I’ve resolved the issue with the other person in my mind or I’ve worked myself into a state of exhaustion. Either way, it allows me to have the discussion without any real confrontation. Win, win.
Omitting, perhaps, the small likelihood that the words I imagine the other person saying aren’t what they’d actually say, my process works great.
Except now I can’t have the conversation only in my mindand be done with it. This time I physically have to walk into the conference room and verbalize the words I’ve been practicing.
My pulse beats like a timpani drum in my chest. Just thinking about standing in that room, all eyes on me, is enough to turn my circulatory system into the percussion section of a concert band.
It would be so much easier if Mr. Mitchell were like my freelance clients. Then I could email him my preliminary designs and converse about his account in the preferred manner of anyone born after the disco decade—with our fingers on a keyboard. But Sofiya insists on maintaining a personal touch with clients, so like it or not, I have to walk him through his options in person.
I put a hand to my sternum and will my heartbeat to slow down. What I need is a distraction. If I keep replaying the presentation in my mind like the FBI looking for evidence of a crime on a surveillance tape, I might make myself sick.
