Friends & Fortune Cookies: A Sudden Falls Romance (2 page)

“I only need one.”

“How familiar are you with
Rehab-a-rama
?”

“I worked for my uncle, Tommy Baker, on a couple of projects in high school,” I said.

“This year, the city has bought up twenty-two houses on the west side of town. Next year, we’re expecting to buy even more than that. Most of the houses were unoccupied. The rest were rental properties with motivated sellers. Between the lousy economy and some pretty vicious predatory lending practices, a third of the properties in that neighborhood were already for sale. Used to be a rough part of town. Hell, still is. However, in two years, we’ll have forty to fifty houses worth a quarter to a half a million dollars. It will be
the
area to live. Like I said, there’s only one house left. You’re coming into the game late. The rest of the houses were bought six weeks ago. This house though...” He shook his head grimly.

Something in the pit of my stomach told me to beware. I shushed the voice and tuned back in.

“It’s no prize. And you’ll have six weeks less than anyone else.”

I had built a reasonable little nest-egg over the last seven years, and shoring up Uncle Tommy’s legacy seemed the best possible thing to do with it. I handed him a cashier’s check for ten thousand dollars, the amount the city was selling each of the houses for.

“We can do it.”

Jack’s left eyebrow climbed toward his hairline. “That’s a hell of a cocky statement for having not even seen the house.”

“Jack, I’ve got to be honest with you. My uncle’s company has fallen on hard times since his death. I’ve come back to turn things around. This is a Hail Mary pass to begin with, and I remember enough from my football days to know you don’t attempt those unless you’re very, very desperate and have enough balls to believe you can pull it off.”

Jack threw back his head and barked a laugh. “Best of luck to you.”

Chapter 3 — Grace

“The problem with quick comebacks: It takes so long to come up with them.”
~ Luddite in Love: A Cautionary Tale of Dating in the Modern Age,
Grace Mendoza

I was standing in the middle of the Sudden Falls’ annual Apple Day Festival, racking my brain for some sort of idea for either next week’s column or tomorrow’s blog (preferably both), when the thing I’d been dreading for twelve months finally happened.

As small as Sudden Falls was, it was bound to sooner or later, but I really would have preferred later.
Much
later, in fact. I was so wrapped up in my own little world that I didn’t notice—until I’d almost mowed them over—that my ex-fiancé and the woman for whom he’d left me were right there in line for the funnel cakes. And, of course, they saw me, too. Would it be more awkward to pretend I hadn’t seen them—and since they were five feet from me, that would be a heck of a lot of pretending—or to say a casual ‘hi’ before making my escape?

Where was a big hole in the ground when I needed one? I’d even welcome a natural disaster at this point. Sadly, the sky was blue and free of clouds, so a tornado was out, and earthquakes in Ohio were exceedingly rare and mild.

She
took the choice away when she gave a tentative wave. I couldn’t even bear to say her name.
Destiny
. It fit her porn-star body. And made Mike believe that it was meant to be.

“Grace. Hey...” Mike looked nervous.

Destiny looked pissy. And like she needed that funnel cake less than I did. I wasn’t yet feeling good enough about this situation to gloat over her too-tight pants creating an unfortunate muffin-top over her waistband. However, when I retold this story to my sisters, I’m sure I would be. Thank God for my recent bouts with the bike path. I’d lost all of the binge-weight I’d gained after the big breakup.

“How have you been?” This is a question I normally don’t ask unless I really want to know the answer, but desperate times call for desperate measures. And I believed myself too clever to resort to “So how ‘bout this weather?”

Destiny started blathering about her job as a manager at the local Payless shoe store, and I kind of tuned her out while still trying to wrap my mind around how Mike could end up with someone like her. He wasn’t a guy you’d call strong-willed, at least not with a straight face. One of the things he’d always said he loved about me was that I let him be who he was, rather than trying to mold him into something else.

Destiny, on the other hand, had always been a force of nature. Much like a Category 5 hurricane. And she’d long been claiming she was—and I quote—”looking for a nerd she could mold into what she wanted.”

And mold him, it appeared she had. New clothes, which if I were feeling nicer, I’d have to admit were an improvement. The haircut... was
not
. His new spiked ‘do and lack of facial hair only emphasized his slightly buggy eyes and weak chin. And it looked like Destiny wasn’t the only one packing on the pounds. He looked like he was about four-and-a-half-months pregnant. That I
did
take a moment to gloat about.

I wasn’t proud of myself.

The line moved forward, and it was their turn at the window. I thought about suggesting they ought to take better care of their waistlines, but then thought better of it. “Well, it was good talking to you.” I lied without regret. “Enjoy the festival.”

It wasn’t until I rounded the corner and sagged against a wall out of sight that the adrenaline flooded out of my bloodstream and I realized how much the run-in had taken out of me.

“Isn’t that your
husband
?!”

Joe.
This day kept getting better and better.

I couldn’t believe he didn’t know the whole sordid story. “Haven’t you heard? You were right. Mike was a jerk. He left me several days after you did.”

Joe’s mouth opened and closed several times–not unlike a beached fish—as he tried to come up with some response. I’m pretty sure that in the nearly twenty years I’d known him, I’d never seen him at such a loss for words.

“He left you for
that
?!”

“What? You weren’t stupefied by her giant knockers?”

“Couldn’t get past that nose. Is she part pug?”

I snorted, clutching desperately to a mad I no longer felt as strongly. “Dammit, Joe. You can’t make a crack at Destiny’s expense and have the last year just disappear.”

“Oh. My. God. Her name is
Destiny?”

“I’ve taken to calling her Dystopia when I’m feeling charitable,” I said. “Or ‘Dirty Knees’ when I’m not,” I couldn’t help but add the last bit even though I’d never called her that out loud to anyone but Katie or Inky.

“That explains the attraction, then.”

I narrowed my eyes at him. “I’m not without my talents in that area.” I felt the need to defend myself.

He raised an eyebrow, and something hot sparked to life in those electric blue eyes. “Do I have to take your word for that?” he asked with the kind of grin that had had the girls dropping in his path since puberty.

Okay. Bringing sex into this conversation was definitely a stupid idea. “In your dreams.”

He mumbled something that might have been “Don’t remind me,” or perhaps “Only until I’m ninety”. I didn’t ask for clarification. I didn’t really want to know, to be honest.

I wasn’t stupid or naïve. There had always been...
something
—call it chemistry, call it an attraction, who knew?—between Joe and me. We’d acted on it exactly once, on our high school prom night, and that had nearly been the end of our friendship. I wasn’t willing to risk it after that.

Not that the experience itself had been bad. Far from it. Especially since it was the first time for both of us and we’d only had a rudimentary idea of what to put where.

It had, in fact, been one of the better sexual experiences of my life, sadly. Unlike many of my girlfriends and, for that matter, my sister Katie, I’d never once thought to myself, “That’s it?!” More like, “Oooh. I get it now.”

Which didn’t mean I’d ever repeat the experience unless Joe were the last man on earth and it was necessary for the survival of the species.

And no. That wasn’t me wishing for some sort of catastrophe that knocked out all of the men on the planet. (Except one.)

Chapter 4 — Joe

I had no idea what Gracie was thinking. That little Mona Lisa smile tipped the very corners of her mouth up, and I could see her work to suppress it as she met my gaze.

I thought about asking, but knew she’d reveal nothing.

It didn’t matter anyway. My entire brain was consumed with the thought that I’d put myself through agony for an entire year imagining her married to that schmuck, and it had never happened.

“How’s Zen sound for dinner?” I asked as if it were a given that we’d eat together when nothing could be further from the truth. Hopefully, if I could get her to sit down across from me, maybe we could start to rebuild what we’d lost. Or, more accurately, what
I’d
lost by taking off last year. As pissed as I knew she’d been by that crack I’d made about her spineless little weasel of an ex, she would have forgiven me pretty quickly if I’d stayed in contact.

Truth of the matter was, I couldn’t stomach the idea of her getting married. To
anyone.
Spineless or otherwise.

I felt the need to kick my own ass. Hard.

“I’m not hungry,” she said. Unfortunately—for her, at least—her stomach took that moment to growl like a bear at the first spring thaw.

I found myself with a grin on my face, happier than I’d been in a year. Hell, I was practically giddy, and I wasn’t the kind of guy who did
giddy.

“What if I don’t want to eat with you?” she asked.

Bingo.
“Then you would have said, ‘I don’t want to eat with you, Joe’.”

“Fine,” she said, sighing an overly dramatic whoosh of dismay. The corners of my mouth twitched, but I worked not to let the grin rematerialize. Just because I’d won didn’t mean I should gloat about it.

Zen is this little place on Main Street. Kind of a hole in the wall on first glance. Dark and mysterious, the décor isn’t anything to get excited about. The service, on the other hand, is amazing
.
And, the food is heaven. They serve Asian fusion tapas and have these sesame noodles that are so good Gracie has said on a number of occasions that she wishes for an entire vat of them so she can swim through it.

We didn’t have to wait for a table because it was early when we walked in. The hostess welcomed us. Ling was a charmer with a silky fall of blue-black hair and a big smile. She’d worked there for as long I could remember.

“I haven’t seen you in such a long time!” she exclaimed.

“It has been a while,” I acknowledged.

Gracie remained suspiciously silent.

Ling sat us in a quiet booth in the back corner and promised to send our waiter.

“So how hungry are you? Is this a three- or four-course meal?” I asked. Since the dishes were small and served family-style, we always got three to four plates and shared. In the past, we’d conned friends into joining us so we could try even more dishes without gorging ourselves to the point of explosion, which we’d also done a couple of times.

Gracie shrugged.

The waiter brought a carafe of cucumber water and two glasses with ice. He introduced himself as FiFi—yeah, someone’s mother didn’t like him much—and asked for our drink orders.

Gracie perused the menu as she did every time despite the fact she always ordered exactly the same thing. I liked that about her. She was more or less predictable. “Pear Martini for the lady, and I’ll have an
Ichiban Shibori
.”

FiFi dashed off to do our bidding.

While I had ordered drinks, Gracie had plopped a pair of glasses on the end of her nose over which she now gave me a look. I suspected it was the “I can order for myself, Joe” look, but it could have been any one of a hundred other things she was irritated at me about.

“Those are new,” I remarked.

She sighed. “Get it out of your system.”

“What?”

“Ha, ha,” she deadpanned. “Gracie has four eyes.”

So that may have been what I was going to say or something like it, but she’d never know that for certain. “They’re cute.”

She rolled her eyes. She knew me too well. Though, for the record, they
were
cute.

“How did you know I wasn’t going to order something else?” she asked.

“You always think you’re going to, but then you always order the same thing. Wherever we go, you have a favorite drink and a favorite meal and you always—
always
—order exactly the same thing.”

“But I haven’t been here in more than a year. Maybe my tastes have changed.”

I instantly lost interest in the predictable ordering argument. “We know why
I
haven’t been here in a year, but why haven’t
you
?”

She bit her lip. Whatever it was, she was hesitant to admit it. I raised an eyebrow and waited. Gracie was predictable in more ways than what she ordered at a given restaurant. Giving her
The Look
and saying nothing would eventually inspire her to let go of whatever she was holding back.

Finally, she shrugged. “This was always kind of...
our
place. I don’t think I’ve ever come here without you.”

Something about that got me in the throat.

FiFi came back about then and gave us the specials. I looked over at Gracie. “The usual?” I said, throat tight enough that my voice cracked.

Her eyes went a little squinty as she studied me a bit harder than was strictly necessary, even given the mood lighting. “Sure.”

“We want the Bo Luc Lac, Szechuan Chicken Lettuce Cups, the sesame noodles, and the dumplings.”

Gracie smiled softly in the flickering candlelight. My heart started to pound. I hadn’t been the recipient of one of her smiles in so long. I was completely at a loss for something to say. Our eyes locked, and for one beautiful, shining second, I thought we might have made it through this low point.

But I was wrong.

“So tell me why you’re back all of the sudden.” Gracie broke eye contact to sip her cucumber water.