In a Rush

Chapter 4

chapter four

Emme

Today’s Learning Objective:

Students will drown their sorrows in melted cheese.

I wasn’t obsessive about being on time though I turned into a vicious little gremlin when I was late. Even worse if I would’ve been on time if not for other people getting in my way.

Case in point: half the sidewalks in this city being closed for construction or clogged with groups of people trying to figure out their Saturday night plans in the middle of Boylston Street.

By the time I reached the Newbury Street restaurant, I was fifteen minutes late and hot from darting in and out of traffic and elbowing anyone who got in my way.

I could feel the red in my cheeks. It was never pink with me, never a rosy blush, but always beet red like I was a sickly Victorian child with scarlet fever.

I stopped outside the restaurant to fix my hair and fan some cool air under my wintery layers. It was not the most elegant position—hunched over with my coat gaping open while I flapped the front of my sweater like I’d lost a cookie in there—though with my luck, it wasn’t surprising to hear a car door slam and then, “Everything okay over there, Muggsy?”

“Shit,” I sighed to myself. Straightening, I smoothed a hand down my sweater and over my hair. Still red-faced like I’d lost a slap contest, I turned to find all six feet, three and a half inches of Ryan Ralston staring at me. I barreled toward him, arms wide open. “It’s so damn good to see you.”

His arms lashed around me and my feet came off the ground, and a light, silly laugh loosed from my chest. It felt good to be with my friend again. It felt like coming home. Even if we were turning into the same people taking up the whole of the sidewalk that I was cursing and elbowing five minutes ago.

“Do I even want to know what you were doing over there?” he asked, his voice deep and quiet in my ear.

“Try to assume the best and ask no questions. The fewer details I disclose, the safer you’ll be.”

He set me down, his hands pausing on my hips as I regained my footing. He ran a cool, steady glance over me, lingering on my flushed face, and then motioned to the restaurant. “Does this work for you?”

I went back to fanning myself. “I’m good with anything.”

“We both know that’s rarely the case with you. Did you look at the menu?”

“If it’s all the same to you, I’m in the mood to turn my blood volume into pure vodka, so the food is incidental to me.”

A low laugh rumbled out of him. He had the best laughs. He wasn’t much for smiling, but I could always count on him for a laugh that would fill all the nicks and cuts on my soul.

“I take it we have some catching up to do.”

I headed toward the restaurant. “You won’t believe the half of it.”

He held open the door for me. “Try me.”

I leaned back in the sumptuous velvet circular booth and folded my legs in front of me because my feet didn’t reach the floor, saying, “Give me your updates first so I don’t feel bad about monopolizing the next hour with my pointless crises and personal dramas.”

He stared across the table at me, his dark coffee eyes lighting with amusement. “ Only the next hour?”

The server returned with our drinks—a beer for Ryan, something with muddled blackberries and herbs and quite a lot of liquor for me—and I held up my glass for a toast. “Happy birthday, old man. Enjoy the time while you have it. I hear it’s all downhill after thirty.”

A fraction of a smile pulled at the corner of his mouth as our glasses clinked together. His smiles reminded me of torn construction paper, jagged and unpredictable. Even his widest, truest smiles were uneven like that. And so, so rare. “Yeah, well, you’ll find out for yourself when we’re back here drinking to you in three months.”

I took a long sip and returned my glass to the crisp white tablecloth. I was trying to take it slow though the fruit in this drink told my brain I was drinking juice and should chug it. But I didn’t want to get sloppy or weepy. We hardly ever got to see each other and I didn’t want to blow it by drinking myself silly. And this was a very nice place. That was probably why I’d never heard of it until Ryan sent a link to the menu.

“How’s the family?” I asked.

Ryan fired a glance at me and then down at the table. Loosely translated: Everyone is good, things are still hard, it’s fine, let’s not talk about it. “Claudia moved home after graduation. She’s managing social media content for that outdoor clothing company in Maine. She’s very proud of a series of videos she made from the point of view of a moose shopping for winter gear.”

“Oh, that’s fun,” I said, though even in my sorry state, the thought of returning to the coastal New Hampshire town we’d left felt like an unspeakable low. “Ruthie finished law school last spring, right? She’s local now?”

He hooked a finger inside the neck of his navy blue sweater, nodding. It looked soft and silky, definitely a cashmere blend. I doubted he knew that. Certainly didn’t care what his sweater was made of or that it probably cost more than my monthly rent. “She’s a junior associate at a corporate law firm in the Financial District. The hours are rough but she loves it.”

“And everyone else? All good?”

There were five Ralston kids. Ryan was right in the middle, surrounded on all sides by sisters. I knew the younger two, Ruthie and Claudia, much better than I did Chloe and Amber.

“Mom’s doing well. She’s cut back on her midwifery patients but still going strong.” He shoved a hand through his hair. “It helps to have Claudia home. Gives her a place to focus her energy since my grandmother doesn’t put up with all the hovering. Gramma CeCe calls me every week to read awful things that people have said about me on the internet, so she’s great.”

“Yes, I would like to be conferenced in for next week’s reading, thank you for asking.”

“She’d love that.” He reached for his menu, cleared his throat. “She asks about you.”

He didn’t add anything about her asking when I might visit next or why I didn’t come home when I only lived about an hour away. He knew the rules the same as I did.

I turned my attention to the menu. It differed slightly from the website, which drove a certain corner of my brain a little bonkers, but there were a few additions that made it worth the inconvenience. “Oh, what do you think about artichoke dip? My friend Grace—you remember Grace—she’s from an artichoke family and she got me hooked?—”

“What the fuck is an artichoke family?” he asked with a laugh, his brows pinched tight like I was really, really testing his patience.

It was so easy to test his patience.

“You know what I mean.” I laced my fingers together on the table and leaned in. “There are certain families that know how to buy and cook and eat artichokes. They do it all the time. It’s part of their lifestyle. I am not from an artichoke family and neither are you. I had to be introduced to artichoke culture.”

He rested back against the booth, crossed his arms over his broad chest. He stared at me for a moment, his scruffy chin tipped up like he was trying to figure something out. He pushed his sleeves up, exposing the tattoos on his forearms. I’d always wanted to get a closer look, to figure out what all those designs came together to mean. A chunky watch sat on his wrist, the gemstones signifying each hour sparkling back at me.

“Are you fucking with me?” he asked.

“Why would I fuck with you about artichokes?”

“You’ve fucked with me over less.”

“Name one thing,” I said.

He held up a fist, unfolded his thumb. “You said you have to pay your rent in cash and deliver it to a bodega in Charlestown.”

“That’s all true,” I said. “And I am ninety-two percent certain the market is the headquarters of the local mob.”

“Mmhm.” His index finger came next. “The last time I saw you, you told me one of your teacher friends moved to Rhode Island to marry a guy so she could inherit a tulip farm.”

“Also true,” I cried.

“Tulips bloom for like three weeks a year. You can’t run a farm on tulips.”

“That’s the part you don’t believe? That it’s a tulip farm?”

“The whole thing is a classic Emme fuck-around but the economics of a tulip farm puts it over the top. Just like the mafia boss who owns your apartment building.”

“You have so little faith in me,” I mused.

His middle finger joined the other two. “What about the time you and Grace got arrested in Montreal but you talked your way out of it by playing an old voicemail from one of your stepdads and telling them you had diplomatic immunity?”

I jabbed a finger at him. “That happened! It was the year Jim’s team won the Stanley Cup and everyone loved him for the first time in his sad little life.”

“But diplomatic immunity?”

“The diplomacy of hockey,” I said, full of feigned reverence. “I was an ambassador.”

“You were a drunk college kid,” he said, laughing.

“And I sorted out the situation. Diplomatically.”

Adding his ring finger to the others, he said, “You told me you were anemic and that was why you couldn’t stay warm and needed to borrow”—he leveled a pointed stare at me—“ steal my sweatshirts.”

“I was anemic.” I rubbed my hands together. Ice cold as always. “Probably still am.” When he went on staring, I shrugged. “I promise I’m not fucking with you about the artichokes.”

“Admit that you like fucking with me.”

“Only if you admit that you like it when I do.”

“Maybe,” he muttered, dropping his hand to his lap. “Get the dip.”

“So, I’m already having the worst year of teaching in the history of public education and then Grace moves out in January to live with her fiancé,” I said, shoveling a chip through the dip. “And I’m happy for her. I’m happy and I’m not jealous, and I’m not saying these things to sell myself the lie. But I wasn’t even alone in the apartment for a week before Ines texts me to say she needs a place to live.”

“What happened to the dorms at MIT?”

“Her dad ‘forgot’ to pay for the spring semester and she lost her room.” I pointed another chip at him. “Honestly, I’m shocked she got through three and a half years of college without Gary going broke again.”

“It’s probably better if you don’t ask any questions about where Gary got the money in the first place,” he said under his breath. “It might implicate you in a RICO investigation.”

“Oh, Gary,” I murmured. “When will he ever learn?”

Gary was my first stepfather and my favorite of the bunch. My mom left him when our house in Miami was seized by the federal government and we were escorted off the property. But he was a really sweet guy. Far better than the two stepfathers that followed.

“I take it you invited Ines to move in,” Ryan said.

“What was I supposed to do? I had an empty room and she’s family…ish.”

He arched a brow at that but went back to the dip without comment.

“Her schedule is packed with classes and labs and a whole bunch of other stuff, so I never see her. I think I saw her once last week and that was it.” I took a sip. “But when she’s there—in the middle of the night, I guess—she takes things apart. Microwave, hair dryer, blender. Doorknobs—everything, anything. I’ll wake up in the morning and find the appliances in a million pieces on the kitchen floor but Ines is long gone. I demanded she return my hair dryer but I haven’t had a smoothie since February. I’m back on Pop-Tarts.”

He nudged a few chips toward my side of the platter. “No good deed unpunished.”

“Yeah, well, I must’ve done a whole lot of good because the punishment just keeps coming.”

I nodded toward the back of the booth, and Ryan immediately understood as he shuffled around to the bend. We were in the restaurant’s most private booth but there was no hiding that my companion was a superstar in this town. The whole place was straining for a glimpse of him, for any clip of conversation they could steal away to tell their friends and coworkers that they’d seen Ryan Ralston out to dinner with some overheated girl who hated her job and had a cheating ex.

When we were at the back of the booth, I continued. “I was seeing this guy and I thought things were going well.”

His knee brushed my thigh as he shifted. He glanced down and then back up at me, crossing his arms again. “The firefighter?”

I bobbed my head. The best thing about Ryan was that I could tell him all of my awful and ugly things like this, but they were never awful or ugly to him. They were simply the facts of a story. I couldn’t remember a single thing he’d ever held against me. “Yeah, but I went to his place one night thinking we’d be getting engaged soon and found him in bed with someone else.”

He winced. “Muggsy.”

“My life is a slow-moving tragic comedy.”

He shook his head. “How do you do it? How are you able to locate the most worthless guys in every town?”

“It’s a gift.” I rolled my eyes but Ryan only grimaced like I was missing the point. “But here’s the really sad part. He’s the best man in Grace’s wedding and I’m supposed to be putting everything into making this special for her, but I’m out here white-knuckling it through every damn minute of wedding planning. I’m barely cutting it as a maid of honor and it’s because of this trash-bucket boy who had a ring in his drawer that wasn’t for me and I can’t get away from him for the next few months.”

I reached across the table for a glass of water. It was more to keep my hands busy than anything. Ryan’s knee pressed into my thigh while he drummed his fingers on his elbow. Again, my attention snagged on the ink peeking out from under his sweater. All of it came after high school. Some toward the end of his college years but mostly since turning pro. If we ever had more time to talk, I’d want to hear about every piece.

“Obviously, I need a revenge date for this wedding,” I said, laughing to fend off the bitterness, the hurt that still lingered right beneath the surface. The desire to scream until I lost my voice and the urgent, fiery need to make Teddy regret every single minute of it. I needed him to know how wrong he’d been—about all of it. “I’ve been working that angle hard, but do you have any idea how difficult it is to find a decent, tolerable human man who is actually, literally single and not just a creep on the internet? It’s next to impossible. I have been looking and looking for years, Ryan. Years . I’m so tired of dating. I’m so tired of putting myself out there and talking and getting to know people, and then watching it come crashing down. It’s one dead end after another.”

I traced the rim of my glass while Ryan drew in a deep breath. He went on tapping his elbow. It probably hurt. I still didn’t understand how he didn’t dissolve into a blob of aches and pains after every game and practice. I knew I would.

“Then why are you doing it?” His words were low, like he wasn’t sure he wanted me to hear.

“What am I supposed to do? Wait for my future husband to appear on the fire escape outside my kitchen window? I want to stop, but what is that going to get me? I know it’s not cool to say it because I’m supposed to love my independence and not need anyone to complete my life—and don’t even get me started on my parents and their marriages—but I want to be married, I want to be settled, and I want to stop feeling like I’m living in the in-between. I want to stop looking for someone to love me.”

When I was finished heaving my sob story into his lap, he met my eyes with a dark, even gaze and said, “You can.”

“What?” I turned the water glass, letting the condensation slick my palms. “What do you mean?”

“Stop looking. Marry me.”