Sweet Misfortune: A Novel (8 page)

Chapter 11

When offered the dream of a lifetime, SAY NO!
Remember, it’s just a dream.

F
OR SOPHIE, THE JANUARY TRIP TO CANNON BEACH
with Garrett, and in particular his unexpected expression of love, was a turning point in her willingness to accept that maybe—
just maybe—
their relationship had a chance of withstanding the cruel test of time. After that, she began opening up to the idea that he really did care for her as much as he claimed, and she even found herself dropping hints that she felt the same way about him.

Valentine’s Day was the busiest day of the year at Chocolat’ de Soph, which meant that Sophie had to work all day long, even after Randy arrived. It took both of them working nonstop just to keep up with the tidal wave of customers looking for last-minute goodies to share with their loved ones. Garrett came by at six thirty and stuck around to help out in the back,hoping to help move things along so he could spend some time with Sophie, but by the time the store closed and everything was cleaned up, the night was pretty well shot. Besides, Sophie was so exhausted from fifteen hours of work without a break that her eyelids were drooping, so Garrett drove her home, gave her a kiss good night, and sent her straight to bed.

The next evening, however, he surprised Sophie with a post-Valentine’s date that more than made up for the lack of romance the previous day. Picking her up right at five thirty, they drove north to a private airstrip near Sea-Tac International Airport, where they boarded a small prop plane that Garrett had chartered. The pilot flew them around the Seattle metropolitan area for twenty minutes, then veered west, landing thirty minutes later on a narrow gravel runway in a remote section of hills north of Mt. Rainier.

When Sophie asked why they were landing, Garrett grinned. “Aren’t you hungry?”

The runway, Sophie learned, was maintained by a restaurant. In decades past, the site had been an old logger’s lodge. But when environmental litigation put the logging company out of business, a group of entrepreneurs scooped up the property for pennies on the dollar and turned it into a gourmet, hunter-style restaurant, catering almost exclusively to small-aircraft enthusiasts. In the ten years since opening, the establishment had become a regular hot spot for flight clubs all over the Pacific Northwest.

The pilot read a magazine in the restaurant’s lobby while Sophie and Garrett dined.

“You’ve got to be kidding me!” Sophie said, when she saw the prices on the menu. “It’s like two weeks’ worth of groceries just for one meal.”

“Don’t look at the prices,” he chided. “That’s what I’m trying to do.” Then he added, “I bet people who can afford to own their own airplane don’t bat an eye at the cost of a meal here.”

“Yeah. Either that, or they know that the safety record of small airplanes justifies an expensive meal, since it may very well be their last.”

Garrett chuckled. “You make me laugh, Soph. I think that’s what I love most about you.”

The timing may have been a bit awkward, but without even thinking about it Sophie blurted out, “I love you, too.”

Both of them sat in stunned silence after the words escaped her lips. Garrett was trying to figure out if he’d heard her correctly, and Sophie was trying to figure out if she’d really just said what she thought she said, or if it was a figment of her imagination.

“Whoa,” Garrett managed eventually. “Did you just—? I mean
…
did you mean that?”

Without looking away, and sounding as surprised about it as he was, she said, “I guess I must have.” She paused, biting her lip nervously. “Is that
…
okay?”

He smiled warmly and reached across the table to hold her hands. “It’s perfect.”

She smiled back in the same manner. The way Garrett was looking at her, Sophie felt an odd sense of vulnerability, but it was balanced out by an even odder feeling of safety and assurance that he wouldn’t hurt her. It was a sensation she’d never experienced before, and she relished it.
This is what it’s supposed to feel like
, she told herself.

The rest of the evening was as enjoyable a time as Sophie could ever remember having, though the specifics about what made it so wonderful were sketchy, even to her. The only concrete details she could recall the following day were the rough landing back at Sea-Tac airport and the smooth kiss good night in Gig Harbor. “I know we did a lot of talking, but I don’t have a clue what either of us said,” she told Evalynn by phone the next evening. “I think emotionally I was so overwhelmed by what I’d told him about how I felt, that that’s all I could think about for the rest of the night. Everything beyond that was a happy blur.”

Two and a half weeks after Valentine’s Day, Garrett attended a weeklong podiatry convention in New Orleans. It was the first significant time he and Sophie had spent apart since meeting almost six months earlier.

Evalynn thought Sophie’s behavior while Garrett was away was gag-worthy, and she told her as much on both of the evenings that they had dinner together. “Are we going to have an actual conversation while we eat?” Evalynn complained on the second night out, “or are you just going to text-flirt with Dr. Dreamy all night again?”

Sophie hardly heard her. “Just a minute,” she replied. “He just sent the
sweetest
note! Let me write him back real quick and then
…
we’ll
…
” Sophie’s thumbs were in high gear before she could finish her sentence.

“Excuse me,” Evalynn mumbled under her breath, as she stood up from the table and wiped her mouth on her napkin. “I have to go to the bathroom and puke.”

Sophie didn’t even look up.

Garrett returned from Louisiana on Saturday, March 8. Sophie was still working when his flight arrived, so he told her not to bother coming to the airport. Instead, he wanted to see her immediately after work for dinner. He wouldn’t say where they were going, but he did let her know that she should dress up.

Sophie carried an extra dress with her to work so she would have something nice to change into before Garrett showed up. As soon as Randy arrived for the evening shift, she went to the kitchen and washed her face in the sink, tussled her hair in the mirror, and then slipped into the privacy of her office to put on the dress. Garrett arrived in a suit ten minutes later.

“Well, don’t we look dapper tonight,” Sophie said when she saw him, then gave him a quick hug and kiss to say hello.

“Dudes,” Randy said jokingly. “I’m trying to work here! Take it outside.”

They ignored him, but went outside anyway and climbed into Garrett’s car.

After driving north for forty-five minutes in traffic, Garrett produced the infamous black sleep mask that he’d made her wear on their second date. “How would you feel about putting this on again for a few minutes?”

She laughed. “What’s with you and blindfolds?”

“It’s the element of surprise that I like,” he answered with a wry smile, “not the blindfold.”

“And if I say no, are you going to call Ellen again and have her twist my arm?”

“If I have to,” he said, pretending to be very serious. “Believe me, I’m not afraid of calling the cops, if that’s what it takes.”

“No,” she said, smiling. “I trust you.” As she fastened the strap around her head, Sophie pondered what it meant that she could say those particular words to him and really mean it. It wasn’t simply that she trusted him enough to wear a blindfold for a special surprise. She trusted that he would keep his promises. She trusted that he cared for her, and that he would put her happiness above his own. She didn’t know how, but somehow he’d managed to show her that love and trust are inseparable; the more her love for him grew, the more she trusted that he wouldn’t suddenly vanish from her life.

Five minutes after Sophie put on the blindfold, she and Garrett arrived at their destination four blocks east of the waterfront on the north end of Seattle. Parking spaces downtown on a Saturday night were a sparse commodity, so Garrett decided it was worth the extra cash to use the drive-up valet service. He got out of his Mercedes, gave the key to an attendant, and then helped walk Sophie the short distance to the front doors.

Once inside, he told her she could take off the mask.

“Good,” she said, relieved. “Because even without seeing, I can
feel
people staring.” As she unfastened the Velcro and let the mask fall from her face, Sophie knew immediately where they were. “The Space Needle!” she said, looking to her left and right. But Garrett wasn’t there. She turned quickly around to look behind her, but he wasn’t there either. Doing a complete circle in place, Sophie scanned the face of every man wearing a suit to see if she’d somehow overlooked him in the throng of people nearby. No such luck.

Perfect,
she thought half-jokingly.
Just when I was beginning to think he might stick around, he vanishes into thin air.
Just then, a woman’s voice echoed throughout the souvenir shop over the sound system: “Sophie Jones to the front desk. Sophie Jones to the front desk, please. Your party is waiting.”

Sophie couldn’t help but break into a huge grin as she made her way around the doughnut-shaped store to the reception desk near the elevators. There, next to the young woman who’d paged her, was Garrett, holding a single red rose.

“What are you doing?” Sophie asked, somewhat embarrassed but nonetheless pleased.

“It’s our six-month anniversary,” he said, as he gave her the rose along with a quick kiss on the cheek. “I thought it might be fun to go back to where it all started.”

“You’re nuts,” she said, still beaming. “But it’s very sweet.”

Taking her arm in his, Garrett redirected Sophie to the elevators at her left. “We’re a few minutes early, but I bet if we head up they can get us seated.”

After getting a table five hundred feet above ground level and hearing the usual spiel of Space Needle facts from their waiter, Sophie and Garrett pulled out pens and wrote their names on packets of sugar, then stuck them up on the window’s ledge. While they waited for their food, they swapped stories about the previous week, happily telling the other how glad they were to finally be back together. Sophie knew that Evalynn would have gagged if she’d overheard the conversation. But Garrett was there, Sophie was happy, and what anyone else thought was of little consequence.

By the time Sophie and Garrett were through with their main course, the restaurant had spun back to where the sugar packets rested against the window. Garrett was closest, so he grabbed the first one, looked at it just long enough to see that five people had signed it, then handed it to Sophie. A few moments later he plucked the second sugar packet from the windowsill and checked it for signatures.

“Weird,” he said, flipping the small white package over and back in his hand. “Nobody signed this one but me.”

“Nobody wrote anything?”

“Well, someone wrote a question on the back, but they didn’t give their name or where they’re from.”

“What’s the question?”

“It just says, ‘Will you’?” he said slowly, then handed it across the table. “Here, take a look.”

Sophie took the packet of sugar and held it in her hands, noting that it was thicker—
and heavier
—than the other one she’d just read. A puzzled look crossed her face. “I think there’s something in it.”

“Yeah, Soph. It’s called sugar,” quipped Garrett.

“Shut it,” she said nicely, looking up at him. “There’s something else.”

“Like a bug or something? Sick. How’d you like that in your coffee?”

Sophie squeezed the packet gently between her thumb and index finger. “No. It’s too hard for that.”

“Well, open it up. Now you’ve got me curious.”

“Ooh. I don’t know. What if it’s something gross?”

“Whatever it is, I’m sure it’s not alive. C’mon, rip it open.”

Grimacing, Sophie tore gently on one end of the packaging, then dumped the contents onto a clear spot on her plate. In the middle of the pile of sugar was the most dazzling diamond ring she’d ever seen. The sight of it caused her to gasp “Holy crow!” as she picked it up and dusted it off.

She looked up at Garrett, who was smiling sheepishly. “How about you remind me what that question says on the back?”

Sophie was still so surprised by what she’d discovered in the sugar that she had barely heard him. “What?”

“The question?”

“Oh,” she replied, picking up the empty paper wrapper again. “ ‘Will you?’ ” she read.

Garrett hesitated a few seconds, watching her study the ring with giddy fascination, waiting for her to catch on. “So? Will you?”

She blew at a tiny sugar crystal that was wedged between the center diamond and the white gold that held it in place. “Will I what?” she responded vacantly, still studying the ring. But a moment later a lightbulb flickered to life in her brain. Her eyes shot up to meet Garrett’s. “Oh… my… gosh,” she said, suddenly short of breath. “Did you just…?”

Sophie narrowed her view to focus solely on Garrett’s dimpled mouth, just to make sure that if she couldn’t hear what he was about to say above the whirring sound of her own thoughts, at least she could read his lips.