Hissy Fit (11 page)

It was getting late.
I needed to get back to Madison, Erwin apparently wanted to go for a walk, and Stephanie was getting bored with talking about interior design and restoration.

In the end, I talked her into giving me a guided tour of her inner soul—meaning, her closet.

She opened the door carefully and turned on the light switch.

“Damn” was all I could say.

It wasn’t a closet at all, but a full-sized guest bedroom. The wall opposite the door was wall-to-wall mirror. Hanging racks—the kind you see in department stores—filled the perimeter of the room. In fact, it reminded me of a designer salon in an upscale department store.

Everything was sorted by color and style, long dresses at one end, all the way to itty-bitty miniskirts at another end. Wooden cubbies held maybe sixty or seventy pairs of shoes.

“All of this is yours?” I asked, turning to Stephanie, who was lovingly running her hands down a black satin cocktail dress.

“Well, the winter stuff is actually in storage,” she said, a trace of apology in her voice. “And I keep the boots in the small closet in my bedroom.”

Erwin jumped down out of her arms and raced frantically toward the open door.

“Listen, I’ve got to take him for a walk before he piddles on the carpet,” Stephanie said. “Have you seen enough?”

“Not really,” I said. “Can’t I look around in here while you take him for a walk? I won’t touch anything.”

Her furrowed forehead told me she didn’t quite trust me in here—despite the fact that her size two clothing wouldn’t have fit on my big toe.

“I’ll be back in five minutes,” she said. “And then you really will have to leave. I’ve got somebody coming over for drinks at seven, and I haven’t even showered yet.”

I nodded agreement, and she trotted down the stairs after her dog.

Stephanie’s taste in clothing was, luckily, consistent. She liked the big name designers. She liked cool colors—the only exception being red. She liked leather, she liked lush, expensive fabrics, and she liked classic with a touch of hip.

I jotted notes as I flipped through the clothes. Her business suits were fairly conservative, but each one showed a little dressmaker detail. This was good. I could use this. When I was done making notes, I stepped out into the hallway.

“Stephanie?” I called loudly. No answer.

I tiptoed over to the next door off the hallway and turned the knob slowly.

“All done?” Her voice echoed in the tile-floored foyer.

I must have jumped a foot. I snatched my hand away from the doorknob and skittered over to the stairwell. She stood at the base of it, holding Erwin in her arms, looking up at me expectantly.

“Yeah. Great. Wonderful,” I babbled, taking a stair with each word.

She held out a hand. “Nice to have met you.”

I shook. “Thanks. Listen…I know you’re supposed to have dinner with Will, Wednesday night at Bones. So it might be better if you don’t mention to him that we’ve met. Or that we discussed Mulberry Hill.”

“Why not?”

“Why not?” I couldn’t tell her why not, because I didn’t really know. Except that he’d made up the rules for this ludicrous mission of mine, and I’d already intentionally broken them.

I cocked one eyebrow in a way that I hoped made me look sophisticated and worldly wise.

“It’s never a good idea to tell a man everything you know, is it?”

She beamed. “No. Definitely not. You’re right. We’ll keep this just between us girls.”

The hot bright sky started to cloud up just as I turned the Volvo onto the Interstate and headed east to Madison. Within five minutes it was raining so hard I could barely see a few feet in front of me.

I had to struggle to keep my eyes and my mind on the road. I kept thinking back to that closet, to the neat rows of skirts and jackets and dresses and blouses. I liked clothes myself. I liked how they expressed my outlook, how they could emphasize my good points and hide the bad. But Stephanie Scofield clearly had a fashion fixation. If I could somehow translate that into a design for Will Mahoney’s house, success would be mine.

A thought occurred to me that made me giggle. A long time ago, at another famous Georgia plantation house, a woman with a dilemma turned to interior design. Scarlett O’Hara needed a gown, so she’d turned to Tara’s green velvet portieres. Now I needed portieres, and then some. So maybe the solution was to literally ransack Stephanie’s closet to come up with portieres for Mulberry Hill.

I’d been listening to a politically correct jazz station when I left Atlanta, but the combination of mellow instrumentals and the steady rhythm of the windshield wipers nearly lulled me right to sleep.

When I found myself veering dangerously close to the center line of my lane, I finally resorted to rolling down the windows of the Volvo, allowing cold wet air to blow in on my face. Then I tuned the radio to a country music station, turned the volume up, and sang along with Garth Brooks, and then George Strait, with some Shania Twain thrown in for good measure.

This was much better. As I took the Madison exit off the Interstate, the radio started playing my favorite song of Tricia Yearwood’s, another good Georgia gal like me.

The rain sprayed in on me and I bellowed along with the song.
Tricia and I sounded so fabulous together that I hated to hear the song end. I coasted to a stop in front of Glorious Interiors, and home, in the midst of the last chorus of “She’s In Love with the Boy.”

I glanced over at the doorway of the shop. What I saw there stopped me in mid-warble. There stood A.J., huddled under the black and white awning, his chin tucked down into the collar of an old blue windbreaker. His hair was damp and matted to his head, his skin was sallow, and he had large dark circles under his eyes. He didn’t look nearly as miserable as he deserved to be.

Any other time I would have had to circle the block two or three times to find a parking spot. Any other time I could have sailed right past and kept on going. But it was past business hours. Most of the downtown businesses had closed up shop for the night, and the only car parked on the street was A.J.’s Z-3, still sporting my misspelled handiwork.

Slowly I backed my car into the spot right behind his. I caught sight of myself in the rearview mirror. My damp hair was a wild, windblown tangle of knots, and the rain had streaked what was left of my makeup. A.J. was watching me intently.

Fine, I thought grimly. He looked like shit. I looked like shit. At least we were on even ground.

I got out of the car and locked it.

“Hey,” he called softly.

“Hey,” I said right back, my rapier wit somehow failing me at that exact moment. I wanted to turn and run away, but my legs kept walking me right toward that doorway.

I was hoping that Gloria might come out and rescue me, that she might clobber A.J. with something heavy and blunt, or at least call him some very bad names. But the lights inside the shop had been turned off. Gloria had gone home. I was trapped.

“What are you doing here?” I asked, trying to edge past him to the door. “Aren’t you supposed to still be in France?”

He shrugged, and a river of rain ran down his pants leg. “France blows,” he said. “We need to talk.”

I took my key and put it in the front door lock, deliberately turning my back to A.J. “Send me an e-mail,” I suggested, thrusting my hip against the door, which tends to stick in wet weather. “Send it to getthefuckouttamylife.com.”

I stepped inside
the shop and flicked on the lights, and held the door between us. “Actions speak louder than words, A.J. What you and Paige did, at our rehearsal dinner, that said it all for me.”

He shoved his foot inside the door. “We were both drunk,” he said, his voice pleading. “We were just fooling around. It got out of hand, I’ll admit. But I never meant for it to go that far. I swear to God.”

I rested my cheek against the cool glass of the door, which was beaded up with evaporation from our air conditioner. “Not that it matters now, but what about all the other times?” I said, my face getting flushed again, thinking of the two of them, naked, in GiGi’s car.

“There
was
no other time,” A.J. said fiercely, slamming his fist against the door frame for emphasis. “Fuckin’ Paige made it all up.”

“I don’t want to hear this,” I said, pushing on the door.

“Just let me come in, please?” he said, pushing back, his voice low. “Don’t make me stand out here on the street and beg like a damn dog.”

“What’s wrong, A.J.? Afraid you’ll make a spectacle of yourself?” I asked, laughing at the irony of it. “Like I did? Make a big fool out of yourself in front of the whole town? Listen,” I said. “It’s over between us. There’s nothing you can say, out there or in here, that could possibly change the way I feel.”

He closed his eyes and sighed. “Keeley, please just listen to me. I love you, baby. I know you don’t believe it now, but I do. And I don’t want it to end this way. I don’t want you to think that’s who I am.”

“I know who you are,” I said.

“Give me five minutes,” A.J. said. “That’s all I ask.”

This was getting tiresome. I swung the door wide. “Okay. Come
on in. Sit down. I’ll give you your five minutes. Five minutes for you to tell me how misunderstood you are.”

I sat down at my desk, folded my arms across my chest. All business. That was me. Keeley Rae Murdock. Tough chick. Take no prisoners. Kick ass and take names, that was me.

He pulled Gloria’s chair over from behind her drawing board and rolled it so that his knees were within a few inches of mine. I rolled my chair back, away from him. No physical contact. Not with A. J. Jernigan. I knew from experience that once he touched me, the tough chick would go whimpering away like a whipped pup.

I narrowed my eyes so he’d know who he was dealing with. “I gotta tell you, A.J., this is gonna be a hard sell. Especially after you and all the other misunderstood Jernigans over there at the bank have been trying to put us out of business.”

“Christ,” he muttered. “I had nothing to do with that. It was Dad and Kyle. They were pissed, you know, about the wedding. As soon as I got back from France and found out what they’d been up to, I told them to cut it out. I called your carpet installer, and he’s gonna lay the carpet at the bank tomorrow. And I’ll try to straighten out the other stuff too.”

“Annabelle Waites and the Chins?” I asked. “You’re gonna call them and tell them that all is forgiven, and it’s perfectly fine to do business with Glorious Interiors?”

“Either Dad or Kyle will,” A.J. said, nodding seriously.

“No telling who else they trash-talked about us to,” I said.

“They’re done trashing you,” A.J. said, raising his hand as if to swear an oath. “I promise.”

“Fine,” I said. “Then we’re done here.” I started to stand up, but he put his hand on my knee.

“Wait. That’s not what I wanted to talk to you about.”

I brushed his hand aside. “It’s your time. Keep talking if you want.”

“Don’t be like that,” he said, grabbing my hand. “You’re telling me that because of five minutes—five minutes out of our relationship,
when I was shit-faced, it’s over? Just like that? You don’t love me anymore? You can tell me that with a straight face?”

His blue-green eyes were pleading. I thought I saw tears welling up in them. His fingers squeezed mine until I was numb. “Think about what we have together. All the stuff we were gonna do. All our plans. Our whole life is right there ahead of us. And I don’t want a life that doesn’t include you. I figured that out in France. Provence? It was the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen in my life. Better than the travel brochures, and the books you made me read. And it sucked. Totally sucked. I got drunk on red wine every night, and Nick whined about how the French women had B.O. and never shaved their legs. And all I could think about was how much you would have loved everything, and how much better it would have been if you’d been there. Married to me. But because of those five lousy minutes, you’re saying it’s all over. Done.”

Now I was blinking back hot tears of my own. My throat seemed to close up, clogged with the acid bile of the ache that had been festering beneath the surface for days. “It wasn’t just those five minutes,” I finally managed. “You betrayed me. Don’t you get that? The night before our wedding. And with my best friend.”

“Paige started it,” he said. “She was flirting with me, and she kept getting me drinks from the bar…I was slammed, and I didn’t even realize it.”

I wrenched my hand away from his and held both my hands to my ears. “Don’t! I can’t stand it. It’s so nasty. And it’s like the world’s tackiest porn movie, and it keeps playing over and over in my head. At night I dream it. When I’m driving down the road, or trying to work, or just watching television, it just keeps playing. And the worst thing is—I’m in the movie. I keep seeing myself, standing out in that hallway, hearing you hiccupping. And I
know who it is, and I know why he’s hiccupping
but my hand’s on the doorknob, and I hear the two of you talking, whispering…”

“I was drunk,” he pleaded.

“And I hear you saying, ‘Keeley never did it like that…’ And in the porn movie, I can hear Paige giggling. I can hear the audience sniggering. And everybody’s laughing at me. Poor, stupid Keeley. Too dumb to know the punchline. And then I open the door, and there’s the punchline. There’s the joke. My fiance, A. J. Jernigan, banging my best friend on the boardroom table at the Oconee Hills Country Club.”

“That was the only time,” A.J. said. “Ever.”

“Doesn’t matter,” I said. “Once was enough. Even if you’re telling the truth, and it was just once, I can’t stand it. If you’d loved me, really loved me, it wouldn’t have mattered how much you drank that night. It wouldn’t have mattered if Paige was coming on to you. Because drunk or drugged or whatever, it wouldn’t have occurred to you to do that. Not with her.”

“Oh, come on,” he said sharply. “Are you telling me you’ve never been so drunk that you did something totally out of character? Something you totally regretted the next day? Come on, Keeley, I know you better than that. You’re thirty-two years old. You’ve been with other men before. And I never cared. Never gave it a thought. So why can’t you cut me a break?”

I stood up fast, and the chair went spinning against the wall. In a minute I was at the door holding it open again.

“No breaks,” I said simply. “But I do have a question for you. Just one.”

His shoulders slumped, he walked to the door. “What?”

“If that night at the country club was the first and only time with Paige, how did she know?”

“Know what?” he said, his voice sharp.

“About GiGi’s car,” I said, my tone matching his. “How’d she know you wanted to do it in the backseat of your mama’s Escalade?

His face turned beet red.

“Liar,” I screamed. I gave him a hard shove, then I slammed the door shut and locked it. I could hear the rain beating hard against
the sidewalk outside, and thunder rolled in the distance. A.J.’s car screeched away from the curb and peeled off down the deserted street. I turned off the studio lights and went stomping up the stairs.

I was in the bathroom, washing my face when I heard soft footsteps on the stairs. Hadn’t I just locked that door? Startled, I darted into the kitchenette and grabbed the first thing at hand, a pair of kitchen tongs. The footsteps were coming closer, and my intruder was at the head of the stairs.

Adrenaline-pumped, I leaped out from the kitchenette and into the stair hall, brandishing the tongs like a matador’s sword.

“Stop!” Austin screeched, shielding himself with a grease-spattered take-out pizza box from Guido’s, the joint across the square.

I lowered the tongs and took a deep breath. “You scared the hell out of me.”

“Me?” Austin said. “I’m not the one who just verbally castrated the most gorgeous man in Madison.” He leaned over and kissed me on the cheek, and he smelled like garlic and anchovies and roses. “And then you jump me with a pair of kitchen tongs? Honest, Keeley, I think I mighta wet myself.”