The Icing on the Cake (8 page)

For the remainder of our date, Isaac seemed distracted. We exchanged small talk as he drove me back to my place, but that was about it. We didn’t talk and laugh like we had before. And as Isaac walked me to my condo, he didn’t offer me his arm like he had at the beginning of our date as we walked into the restaurant.

I didn’t know what had happened. Had he taken one look at Rona and wondered what he was doing with someone like me? Or worse, had Rona acted completely un-engaged and charmed Isaac, leaving him interested in her? Or had Rona told him I had some sort of communicable disease? Because I wouldn’t put it past her.

“Thanks for everything,” I said when we reached the top of the steps outside my condo. “It was all so thoughtful of you.”

“I’m glad you enjoyed yourself,” Isaac said briskly. And with that he gave me a hug of the variety that little boys give to distant relatives they are meeting for the first time. “I’ll call you,” he said in a noncommittal tone.

“You still have my cell number right?” I asked.

“Yep,” Isaac answered. Then he practically ran into the night.

Well,
I thought as I opened the door and stepped inside,
looks like you got what you wanted after all, brain.

S
ingles ward, Sunday morning. I strutted through the front doors dressed in a grey wool pencil skirt and my cutest pink top—which a girl had eyed covetously and then nearly ripped out of my hand when I was at Cheap Chic’s annual blowout sale a week earlier. On my feet I wore a pair of open-toed heels and a killer pedicure.

I paid such attention to my appearance partly because I believe in donning my Sunday best and partly because I have read quite a few magazine articles that say one of the best places to meet a mate is in church. And since I had been reminded of how great it felt to go to dinner with a kind, attractive, intriguing guy, I was really hoping I would meet another one soon. One I could actually date.

I have a pretty good idea of how my mate-meeting in church will occur. I will walk into the chapel, and there will be a handsome guy leaning over in his seat reading his scriptures. Then, as I walk gracefully past the handsome guy, a gleam of light will shine in through the window and make my hair appear impossibly shiny and make my face look all dewy and glowing.

The handsome guy will look up from his reading and our eyes will meet. We will fall madly in love, and we’ll print the passage of scripture he was reading the moment we met on our wedding invitations. Yes, I’m quite certain that’s how it will go.

As I moved my pedicured feet into the church foyer, I noticed a group of females standing near one of the couches. I could hear them giggling and speaking in higher-than-usual voices. In my experience this can only mean one thing: a new guy.

Just as I had guessed, as I walked closer, I noticed a pair of suit-pant-clad legs extending from the couch. I turned my head away from the scene quickly as if to say I was much too grown-up to be hovering over a new guy. Especially one who was not leaning over in his seat reading his scriptures. It was then that I heard it.

“Annabelle?”

I turned around to see the suit-pant-clad legs walking toward me. And you’ll never guess whose legs they were—they were Isaac’s.

“Annabelle? What are you doing here?”

The girls in the group flashed me narrow-eyed stares as Isaac came to my side.

I tired to speak. “I-I’m going to church. W-what are you doing here?”

The group of girls dispersed, casting disdainful glances in my direction as they walked past.

“I’m going to church too,” Isaac answered, staring at me incredulously.

“Wait a minute? Are you LDS?”

“Yes I am,” Isaac answered. And when he did, something very strange happened inside of my chest. It was kind of a warm, almost burning feeling.

“I had no idea,” I said. “I thought that I could never—” I stopped myself. How was I going to finish that? “I thought that I could never date you because you weren’t LDS, and now I find out you are, and this makes what happened on our date important again, so now I have to ask if you lost interest in me and gained interest in Rona Bircheck.” Yeah, right. I was not finishing the sentence like that. First of all it was entirely too long, and second of all, it was entirely too revealing.

So instead I said, “I thought that I could never find out something like this.” It was quite possibly the worst sentence ever formed, but hey, I didn’t exactly have a lot of time to come up with it.

“This is crazy,” Isaac said. “And I was planning on calling you today and telling you we shouldn’t, you know, go out again because I only date girls in my church.” He laughed uncomfortably. “In fact, last night after we ate dessert, I realized that I was, probably, you know, leading you on or something by the way I was acting, so I tried to get up the guts to tell you that we probably shouldn’t go out again, but I couldn’t.”

I smiled. So maybe he wasn’t acting weird because he had experienced love-at-first-sight with Rona. From the sound of it, he had decided it was our last date, too.

“Well, now I’m kind of hoping we will go out again,” I said. I was shocked and embarrassed that the words had come out of my mouth, so I gestured toward the chapel and quickly added, “So, um, I guess we should probably get in there.”

Isaac nodded and followed me into the chapel. I felt my pulse quicken as he walked beside me. I scanned the chapel and found Carrie and Miles sitting in their usual bench and went to sit next to them. Isaac took a seat next to me. My pulse got even faster.

Isaac recognized Carrie and smiled at her. Then he gave one of those silent nodding greetings to Miles. Carrie looked at me then Isaac and then back at me, her eyes quizzical.

“I’ll tell you later,” I mouthed, making sure Isaac didn’t see me.

“Okay,” Carrie mouthed in reply. Then, with a beaming smile on her face, she held up her left hand, showing me her gorgeous ring.

“It looks so good on you,” I said a little too loudly. The organist shot me a scornful glance over the top of her music.

“You’ll be such a beautiful bride,” I said, lowering my voice to a whisper.

“And you’ll be such a beautiful maid of honor,” Carrie whispered.

“Have you guys decided where you’re going to be sealed?” I asked.

Carrie beamed. “The Oakland temple. And we’ll have a small reception in Oakland afterwards.”

I smiled and squeezed Carrie’s ring-decorated hand.

The meeting was wonderful. The talks were uplifting, and there was a gorgeous musical number by a blonde girl who, Carrie whispered to me, is now dating Arvin.

As the congregation sang the closing hymn, I got the sense that someone was looking in my direction. Pretending to stretch my neck, I darted my eyes around the room, and my eyes soon fixed on the person looking at me: Rona Bircheck. I quickly looked away.

When the meeting was over, Rona approached the bench where my friends and I sat. She looked absolutely perfect and smelled like warm vanilla. And again there was no trace of her ring.

She sat down on the bench behind us and talked to Carrie and Miles for a second, congratulating them on their engagement and cooing over Carrie’s ring. Then she greeted me with a quick hello.

I smiled a mostly genuine smile and said hello back.

As Rona stood up to leave, she looked at Isaac. “We’re still on for lunch at one o’clock right?”

Isaac nodded, and Rona smiled charmingly before turning to walk away.

Lunch? They were having lunch? Why were they having lunch? It couldn’t be a work lunch; it was Sunday
.
Okay, I realize I just said the word “lunch” a ridiculously large amount of times, but seriously, what was Rona up to?

With Rona gone, Isaac turned his attention to me, and I clenched my jaw with the strength of a wolf. The wolf is known for its jaw strength, right? Anyway, I clenched my jaw with the strength of an animal known for having a strong jaw, wolf or otherwise.

I did this to keep my mouth from blurting the countless things I wanted to say:
Isaac keep away from Rona. Even though she obviously isn’t very true to him, she already has a man. She’s a thief. She’s pure evil. She . . .

I kept my jaw tight and pretended to be listening to something Carrie was telling Miles. But after a moment Carrie and Miles bid me and Isaac good-bye and got up from the bench, leaving the chapel completely empty except for Isaac and me.

Isaac looked at me as if he could tell something was wrong. Or maybe he was wondering if I had lockjaw problems; I don’t know. Before he could say anything, I unclenched my jaw slightly and questioned, “Are you going to Sunday school?”

“I’m actually taking off for the Spanish ward. My brother attends that ward, and he’s giving a talk today. I won’t understand a thing, but I still want to go. So, I’ll see you around.”

I’ll see you around?
Clearly, that would not do if he was planning on having lunch with Rona Bircheck. I needed to step up my game.

So, I quickly blurted, “Will you come to my parents’ house for dinner tonight?”

“I would like that,” Isaac answered. And then he smiled his devastatingly gorgeous smile and got up from the bench.

According to the ancient grandfather clock in my parents’ living room, Isaac was ten minutes late. Maybe he was lost. Or maybe he had car trouble. Or maybe he had fallen in love with Rona Bircheck over lunch and thus decided he had no time to waste on me.

“Mom,” I called out, a sudden urgency in my voice, “are your clocks fast?” I hurried into the kitchen where Mom was putting the final touches on dinner.

“No,” Mom replied with a grin. From the moment I arrived at my parents’ house and told them that I had seen Isaac at church and invited him to dinner, Mom had been grinning at me like that.

“Could you take the rolls out of the oven?” Mom asked me. “I don’t have any free hands.”

“Sure,” I agreed halfheartedly as I looked at the sail-boat-shaped clock on the kitchen wall.

As I stared at the clock a vision began to form in my mind. In the vision, Rona set an obviously overcooked lunch in front of Isaac. But Isaac didn’t notice how completely disgusting the food looked since Rona brushed her hand against his as she handed him a fork. Isaac looked up, surprised by the touch. Then Rona began leaning in toward him and . . .

“They’ll burn if they stay in much longer,” Mom’s voice came into my ears.

“Oh, okay,” I said, snapping out of the vision. I slipped an oven mitt—a red mitt in the shape of a crab claw—onto my hand and reached into the oven.

“You know, Annabelle, those rolls are my own invention.” Mom nodded toward the pan of rolls as I removed it from the oven. “The secret ingredient is a little bit of pure molasses.” Mom spoke as if she were telling me the secrets of the universe.

“They look great,” I responded with a smile.

Every Sunday night, I have dinner at my parents’ house. And ever since I started editing recipes for
Central Coast Living
, it seems Mom has put just a little extra effort into our Sunday night meals. She would never admit it, but I think she secretly hopes that someday, in the middle of the meal, I will throw my cloth napkin onto the table and declare, “This food is marvelous! It has to go in the magazine!”

I’ve never had the heart to tell her that I really have no say what recipes go into the magazine. I just edit whichever ones George tells me to edit.

I was lazily placing the rolls into a basket when I heard the sound of a car outside. I quickly tossed the last few rolls into the basket and hurried to the front window. I looked outside, expecting to see Isaac’s Firebird. But I didn’t see the Firebird. No, I saw a fancy, silver Mercedes convertible. I would recognize that car anywhere. It belonged to Miss Rona Bircheck. I stared at the car in disbelief.
What in the world is she doing here?
I wondered, my eyes beginning to narrow.

I continued to watch the car. After a while, I saw Isaac get out of the passenger’s seat. As he exited, I could see Rona, looking like a fashion model in a pair of stylish sunglasses. She leaned over, gave Isaac a saucy little wave and called out loud enough for the whole neighborhood to hear, “I’ll see you in awhile.”

Isaac responded with, “Okay, see ya.”

Finally, Rona zoomed away and I was relieved, but still confused. Why had she driven Isaac to the house? And how was he going to get home? Was he planning on asking me for a ride? Because that would be nice.

I watched Isaac follow the sidewalk up to the house. He had changed out of his suit and was looking yummy in a pair of dark blue pants and striped polo shirt. Was he trying to look that good? And if he was, was it for Rona’s sake or for mine
?

Isaac’s pace quickened as he drew nearer to the door, and I jumped away from the window for fear that he would spot me. He rang the doorbell.