So Much for My Happy Ending (18 page)

“I'm sure.” I wasn't even able to fake enthusiasm. It was clear that Gigi wasn't going to ask why I wasn't coming but I felt obligated to give her an excuse anyway, especially since there was a good chance that I wouldn't be there the next day, either. “Gigi, I'm unable to come to work today because…because my father's taken ill.”

“Ohmygawd, how awful!” Gigi's voice dripped with false concern. “Is it serious?”

“Um, he needs emergency surgery but I'm sure he'll be okay. I just need to be there for…for support.”

“Of course, of course. Is Tad with you?”

“Um, yeah, he's here.” I shifted in my seat. For some reason Gigi's use of my husband's name seemed too familiar. But then again what was she supposed to call him? Mr. Showers? “Listen, my dad's in—” my eyes fell to the
San Jose Mercury News
that Tad had left on the table “—the South Bay, so I won't be able to run back and forth to work or anything.”

“April, you just take all the time you need. I am totally in control of everything.”

I sat up a little straighter. “Excuse me?”

“I said I totally have everything under control,” Gigi said quickly, catching her Freudian slip. “You just take care of your family and I'll take care of the work stuff.”

“I'll only be gone for two days.” I was not stupid enough to give Gigi a whole week to mess up my career.

“No need to rush. Oh, and don't worry about calling Liz, I'll tell her what's going on. Oh look, there she is! Call you later, 'kay?”

And she was gone. I knew that a career-savvy woman would immediately call back and try to talk to Liz first, but I just didn't have the energy. I had lost my baby and no crisis at Dawson's could compete with that.

I got up and turned the volume of the radio up so I could hear Natalie Imbruglia sing about some man who turned out to be a completely different person than he had presented himself to be. I sat down on the love seat and flipped through the paper while singing the lyrics.

I looked up to see Tad watching me from the doorway of the kitchen. “April, if…if I'm ever like the guy in that song, if I ever change, or stop being the man you fell in love with, you'll tell me, right?”

For a moment I was completely speechless. Tad never questioned himself or invited others to do so. “Of course I will,” I said. “Not that it'll ever be necessary.”

He stood there silently for a moment. Eventually he nodded toward the wall clock. “We should go soon.”

I felt my shoulders tense and I dug my nails into my skirt. “I'm scared.”

“You don't have to be scared.” He walked over to me and bent down to kiss my hair. “I'll take care of you.”

I
t's funny how a person can be hit with what seems to be a series of life-altering events only to find that their life hasn't changed at all. It had been six weeks since I had the D and C and it had been less than three months since I had gotten the positive results on the pregnancy test. After each of those happenings I had thought my life was over, and yet here I was standing in the middle of my sales floor with throbbing feet stuffed into uncomfortable but very cute shoes.

I sighed and looked at my watch: 9:30 p.m. The store was supposed to close at nine but Liz had apparently given the order that we were not to make the closing announcements until we had met last year's figures. We were twenty thousand dollars away from that goal, but it was rumored that two teenagers were milling around the lingerie department, so we had at least a snowball's chance in hell of making it happen. My department hadn't fared much better than the store overall so I had sent the other sales staff home early in order to save on labor. I fluffed an already perfect display and rubbed my eyes with the vain hope that doing so would make it easier to keep them open. Tad had been running me ragged lately, but in a good way. On my nights off, we dined at five-star restaurants, saw the best shows and attended concerts. I honestly had never seen anyone with so much energy. Every night he seemed to knock another hour off the time he needed for sleep.

It was great that Tad was so keen on keeping the romance alive, but every now and again I longed for a night of old movies and pizza. I mean, why did romantic dinners always have to involve duck?

Then again, maybe his attentiveness had less to do with romance and more to do with distraction. We hadn't talked much about the miscarriage since the day of my final procedure. That was more my fault than his. I had told Allie and Caleb about it and then promptly sworn them to secrecy and refused to allow them to comfort or counsel me. My mother and Bobe never even knew I had been pregnant. I still wasn't talking to my mother, but I had passed up lots of opportunities to tell Bobe. I knew that if given the chance these people would have agreed with Tad and told me I was a good person and that my feelings had been natural, but what they didn't understand was that I
wanted
to feel guilty. I couldn't help but think that my remorse was payback for the horrible thoughts I'd had during my pregnancy.

As for Tad's sins regarding the rent, I had dealt with that problem by insisting that going forward he would give me the rent payment to mail off every month. I had expected Tad to argue with me over that but he didn't offer a single protest. I had decided that was a good sign. If he was willing to allow me to be the one to put our housing payments in the mail every month then obviously he wasn't planning any other surprises in that area. So if I didn't die of sleep deprivation everything would be fine.

I took another look at my watch and then glared up at the lights that should have been dimmed a half hour earlier. Remorse aside, I didn't feel that I deserved to be held at Dawson's against my will. Things had been relatively normal here. Gigi was acting like herself, there had been no more slips of the tongue that would have threatened to expose her as a power-hungry bitch. After all, that was Blakely's job. Blakely hadn't talked to me about Cherise or the promotion for a while, which had me a little concerned, but she had also been away on two buying trips in the last three weeks.

I wandered around my empty floor completely aware that there was nothing out of place. When the phone rang, it took everything in me to answer with a standard greeting instead of a curse word.

“April? You sound irritated.”

Tad's voice allowed me to bring my guard down. “I'm more than irritated, I'm pissed. They still haven't closed the store or even suggested that the customers bring their purchases to the register.”

“What the hell's wrong with them? Do they think their employees don't have lives of their own? Is there someone I can call for you?”

“Great idea—” I pulled out the day's charge slips and started putting them in order “—you can call Liz at home and tell her how ticked you are that your wife is working late hours. I'm sure that will do wonders for my career.”

“Maybe I could come over there and sexually harass the customers until they leave.”

“Nothing doing—from now on you have to save all of your sexual harassment for me.”

“Well, I'm coming down there. You can't work all night, we have nightclubs to hit.”

“Nightclubs? Are you serious? We didn't get any sleep last night.”

“Yeah, I remember.” I could practically hear him grinning.

“Tad, I'm exhausted. All I want to do is go home, watch a
Friends
rerun and hit the sheets.”

“Tell you what, we'll pump you full of caffeine, tape
Friends,
and after dancing for a few hours we'll hit the sheets together.”

“Okay, let me draw your attention to the big difference in our agendas. Mine actually involves sleep.”

“You're too young to be tired. I'm just a few blocks away, I'll meet you by the employee exit.”

I started to protest but he had already hung up. I considered calling him back but finally replaced the receiver in its cradle with a resigned sigh.

“Everyone, you may now close your registers.” The minute the disembodied voice gave the instructions over the loudspeaker I saw my fellow indentured servants grabbing their blue bags filled with the money from their prematurely closed registers and racing to customer service, where, after a not-so-quick money count, they would be freed. If I got out right now, I might not be the absolute last person in line for a change. The phone rang. I hesitated:
don't answer, don't answer.
It rang again. This is why I'm always late. I have some weird condition that makes it impossible for me to not answer phones. “Dawson's Sassy department, can I help you?”

“Two fucking garter belts.”

“Are you serious, Allie? We stayed—” I checked my watch again “—forty minutes late so they could buy garter belts? Were they really expensive garter belts?”

“Twenty bucks a pop.”

“Did you at least make your day?”

“Nope. And since I had to keep my salespeople overtime I probably won't make my selling-cost goal either.”

“So basically you're telling me there is no upside.”

“Basically I'm telling you I'm ready to go on a killing spree.”

“Hey, I have an idea. Why don't you come out with Tad and me and we'll kill people together?”

“Sorry, but I'm dead on my feet, which by the way are about to fall off. I'm just going to go home, get out my laser pen and do some sniper attacks on the neighbors.”

Totally unfair.
I
was tired,
my
feet hurt,
I
wanted to do sniper attacks. Why did she get to have all the fun?
Because she's not married to Tad, the master of sweet talk.
“Fine, meet me in front of your department—we'll stand in the customer service line together.”

“Gee, with an invitation like that, how can I say no?”

I hung up and looked around. Everyone else on my floor had vacated. I sighed and carried my money bags and receipts up the frozen escalator. Allie was waiting for me at the top looking like she was ready to spit fire. “I hate closing,” she hissed as we walked the rest of the way to customer service.

“Sure you won't come out with us?”

Allie shook her head. “Some other time. Hey, I was talking to Jeremiah the other day and he tells me you've been avoiding him.”

“I have not. He wants to go to dinner with Tad and me but every time we plan something, Tad's work gets in the way and we have to cancel. One of these days it'll happen.”

“Huh…” Allie flipped her hair behind her shoulders. “Tad never seems to cancel on you when you guys are going out by yourselves. Are you sure he's not putting this whole dinner thing off because he's jealous?”

“Of what?” I asked with a note of amusement. “I mean, my God, Allie, is there a man alive that is less my type than Jeremiah? And I can't imagine that I fit into his little rocker world, either.”

Allie shrugged. “Jealousy isn't always based on logic. Anyway, if you do want to hang with him, why don't you come with me to see him and his band practice?”

I felt a stabbing feeling in my stomach. “He asked you to watch him practice? Are you two…moving beyond friendship?”

“Nah, he's not my type, either. I thought he was but now that I've gotten to know him, he's just a little too…”

“Stable?” I asked, thinking of the series of losers Allie had dated over the last few years.

“Funny. No, it's not that. I guess the problem is lack of chemistry, although I'm sure I'll still want to eat him alive next time I see him onstage. But here's the thing, I ran into him at a café near our place and he was with the other band members—”

“I know where this is going.”

“Oh my God, April, the second guitarist has serious bedding potential. He's like a cross between Kurt Cobain and Ben Stiller.”

“So he's a heroine addict with a knack for physical comedy?”

“Shut up. Anyway, you should come. They'll be practicing at his house at one tomorrow. You have the day off, right?”

I nodded and stepped forward as the line moved. “I don't have anything else planned.” I glanced ahead at the cashier sorting through the piles of cash that had been handed to him by the accessories manager. Going over to a guy's house to watch his band practice was so high school, but for reasons that I wasn't willing to examine I found the idea rather thrilling.

Thirty minutes later Tad and I were riding up in the glass elevator at the Saint Francis Hotel. He had vetoed my suggestion that we get our late-night snack at Taco Bell. I allowed Tad to order for us since I couldn't get my eyes to focus long enough to read the menu. The bartender placed a couple of vodka martinis in front of us and Tad raised his glass to make a toast.

“To my wife, the most beautiful woman in this or any other room.”

I took a small sip of my drink. “Flattery will get you everywhere.”

Tad leaned forward so that his lips were aligned next to my ear. “Does that mean that if I keep this up you'll let me ravish you twice tonight?”

I smiled weakly. The only way he was getting it twice was if he served me a double espresso sweetened with a vial of cocaine. “Jeremiah invited Allie to one of his band's practice sessions. I think I'm going to go, too.”

Tad pulled back abruptly. “Why would you want to watch him practice? Wouldn't it be better to wait to see the polished act onstage?”

The edge in Tad's voice surprised me. Maybe Allie was on to something with the jealousy thing. “I think the point is to give Allie the opportunity to pick up,” I said. No point in mentioning that Jeremiah was not Allie's intended target.

“Oh…” Tad took a long drink of his beverage. “Can't Allie do better than an out-of-work musician?”

Okay, that had been needlessly harsh. “He's not out of work, he's a personal trainer and, believe it or not, his band is being booked with a certain amount of regularity these days.”

Tad grunted and took another drink.

“Tad, why haven't we had dinner with Jeremiah yet?”

“What do you mean why? I've been busy with work and so have you.”

“We've made the time to go out together almost every night. But whenever we make plans to hang out with Jeremiah, you have to work late or something.”

“You think I've been making up excuses?” Tad snapped.

“Have you?”

Tad swiveled in his seat. “You're accusing me of lying?”

“All I'm doing is asking you a question. Are you avoiding Jeremiah or not?”

“Not.”

“Fine, I believe you.” We fell silent as the bartender served us the oysters and calamari that Tad had ordered. I didn't really believe him but I was way too tired to fight about it.

I watched him plunge his fork into the calamari and then drench it in a thick red cocktail sauce. “Tad, do you ever get jealous?”

Tad's fork stopped halfway on its journey to his mouth. “Why would I get jealous?”

“No reason. It's just that some people are naturally jealous and others aren't. Where do you fit in?”

“I'm not a jealous person, but if you ever gave me reason to be there'd be trouble.”

“I'm not going to give you reason.” I gently prodded an oyster with my cocktail fork. “Would you ever give me reason?”

“Don't be ridiculous.”

I tentatively placed the oyster on my tongue. “You know, I have never seen you ogle anyone but me.”

“You make it sound like that's a bad thing.”