Chapter 32
Alyssa slit open the cardboard box, careful not to let the blade cut deep. The box was filled with paper napkins, and she could ruin the whole top layer if she were careless. It was an appealing thought, really—she felt like stabbing something. Napkins weren’t her first choice, but hey, life was tough. She laid the box cutter aside and flipped the flaps up. Valentine napkins—all pink and lavender, the visual equivalent of granulated sugar. She flipped through—one stack had tiny hearts with sayings: “I Do,” “Yes,” “Love You, Baby,” “Hot Stuff.” One design was scrolly interconnected hearts, and a third had a fat Cupid raising his bow, his forward thigh obscuring his boy bits. How could a baby that age have the dexterity to nock an arrow? Seemed unrealistic.
All the Christmas items were already on the shelves. The Valentine’s Day items would go out the day after Christmas, coexisting with New Years’ stuff for a week. Some people would pick up Valentine things when they came in for New Year’s party supplies, but wouldn’t bother just for Valentine’s Day itself. January could be a slow month in party planning.
The door chimed and Alyssa looked up, pushing a strand of hair back from her eyes. It was a customer with a sleek black bob and … holy cats, it was Krystelle Rohrbach, looking exactly like she had in high school except for the tailored powder-blue suit. In high school she’d worn designer jeans and expensive sneakers.
“Alyssa?” Krystelle said, popping her eyes and pushing her head forward like a turtle. But turtles don’t generally throw your pencil pouch down the stairwell. Or invite you to run for lunch with their crew and then leave you stranded at McDonald’s, so you have to walk back to school, and your heel bleeds from the blister you wind up with, and you get detention for missing fifth period and … “Oh my god! It’s you. You’re still working here?” She looked around, eyes wide, like a journalist investigating a prison camp.
“Hi, Krystelle,” Alyssa said. “How can I help you?”
“Wow, this place hasn’t changed. I used to buy glow lights here for my lake parties. You remember those.”
Of course she did. She’d heard all about them. She’d just never been invited.
“Are you looking for anything specific?” A sense of decency maybe? We have those next to the curly ribbon.
“So probably you’re up to date on me. I married Trace Arnold and his medical practice is just thriving.”
“Trace Arnold?”
“He was a senior when we were sophomores. You remember Trace! Everyone was in love with him.”
“Oh,” Alyssa said vaguely. She did not remember him, but she did want to sell Krystelle whatever she was here to buy.
“Anyway, I’m planning a Valentine’s dinner for the other doctors in his practice. Not on Valentine’s Day itself, of course—we’ll be sprinting off to Cancun.” She gave a radiant smile.
“What date are you looking at?” Alyssa said, leading her to a consultation corner. It was a couple of folding chairs with a chipped Formica table between them—a hundred steps below the consultation rooms at Stacey’s Interiors. Alyssa had never been so aware of the store’s shabbiness. The floor was concrete, the shelves powder-sprayed cream and riddled with little holes, as though Party Barn was too cheap to pay for a whole shelf. The overhead lights were suspended metal hoods with exposed fluorescent bulbs. There was no attempt to make it … presentable. It was the kind of place you went to buy red drink cups for your high school kegger when your parents were out of town. Janet had worked hard and given it a reputation for party planning and staffing, but she wasn’t one to think about the appearance of the store itself. Alyssa should have done something about that. Immediately when she began working there. Before Krystelle Rohrbach Arnold walked in.
“I’ll need it catered, of course,” Krystelle said. “You can arrange that. And I’ll need you to set everything up—decorate the place and be there to serve and troubleshoot, and then clean up after us.”
“Well, the caterer would do any serving,” Alyssa said.
Krystelle waved a hand. “Arrange it however. But if you’re in charge of the party, I expect you to be there to make sure everything runs smoothly.”
“Sure,” Alyssa said. “Is this at your house?”
“Yes. We have plenty of space.” Krystelle went on to detail her house, which rooms would work for serving, for mingling, where the help could refill glasses.
The help.
This wasn’t why she’d gone to college or stayed up late learning about the stain absorption of different woods or … Krystelle was still talking. When it finally ended, Alyssa smiled brightly, showed her out, and shoved the paperwork into a folder with a savagery she normally reserved for expired coupons.
“Easy, cowboy,” Janet said from the back. “Everything okay?”
“No. That was the girl from high school who thought she was better than everybody else, even though she wasn’t nice or talented or smart.”
“And now we get to take her money?”
“And now I’m her ‘help.’”
“Aw, screw her. What’s her theme?”
“Valentine’s! So I can sprinkle Cupid confetti on her stupid table while my own heart remains unclaimed.”
“That’s a straight-up lie.”
“We’re out of confetti?”
Janet looked at her. “Lying liar from Lyingtown.”
Alyssa stuck her tongue out and went back to unpacking boxes. She was almost done when her phone rang. She glanced at the screen—Vanessa.
“I’m having a party tomorrow, and you should come.” No hard feelings about the homeless shelter job, then.
It took Alyssa a moment to respond. “I should? I mean, thank you. I think I can …”
“Oh,” Vanessa said. “I should tell you that Nick’s okay. He seems really good, actually. I thought you’d want to know.”
“That’s great,” Alyssa said. She had no idea what Vanessa was talking about. “Is there some reason he wouldn’t be?”
There was a beat of silence at the other end of the phone. “Well, because of the crash. I’d have thought this would be hard for him—being in another plane that almost went down.” The world stopped for one beat, two, and then Alyssa realized that the beating was her own heart. “Alyssa?”
“Their plane almost went down?” She felt like her throat was lined with sandpaper.
“Oh no—you didn’t hear? It was on the front page of the newspaper and, well, everywhere.” Alyssa had been heading for the sink in the tiny staff lounge, to get a glass of water, but now she detoured to the computer. She nudged Janet sideways with her hip and ignored her stare. She had a tab open and typed “Red Wheels AND airplane” in the search bar before Vanessa spoke again. “Nick always asks if you’ve been over …”
“He does?”
“Yeah, and I had the impression you were getting close. I mean, it’s obvious he likes you,” Vanessa said. “I thought you’d want to know. Because no matter how cool he acts, that had to have been traumatic, right? Devin says he calmed everyone down, though.”
“Oh my god,” Alyssa said as photos came up of the team’s plane approaching the airport at an angle, one engine engulfed in flame. What must Nick have been thinking? She should call him. Immediately. She needed to get off the phone, but Vanessa was talking again.
“I’m sorry I told you so abruptly. Because there is a little something there, right?”
“I don’t …” Alyssa said. “I mean, I’ve enjoyed his decorating project. It’s always rewarding to, um …” Why couldn’t she just admit she liked him? That he had helped her understand she had unfinished business in her family? And that she lusted after him most of the day?
Vanessa laughed and saved her from flailing on. “So, about the party. A bunch of friends are going to be here. Commissions, Alyssa! They’ll see our house, they’ll love our house—because of course they will. They’ll say, ‘Who did that gorgeous thing with the topiaries in the entryway?’ and I’ll say, ‘She’s right here! Hire her.’ And you get rich and famous. And also have a good time.”
Alyssa laughed. “You’re wonderful, but you don’t have to do that.”
“I want you there anyway. As a friend. It’s on a Tuesday night because of Devin’s stupid schedule, but you’re less likely to have a conflict, right?”
Alyssa smiled. “What should I bring?”
“Nothing! You don’t have to plan this party or design the kitchen or anything! Well, you already did the kitchen. Be here at seven!”
Vanessa said goodbye and they hung up, and Alyssa was grateful that she hadn’t said a thing about her dodging the homeless shelter job. She started to call Nick six times but talked herself out of it each time. Would he want to talk about being on a second plane with an engine fire? What if he were in the middle of something that he had to concentrate on, and she made him think about it again? She settled for reading every article she could find about it and watching the clip of the plane landing eleven times.
Finally Janet said, “You planning to do any work this afternoon?” Alyssa nodded absently and watched the clip eight more times. Finally, she stowed her phone on a shelf and unpacked Valentine’s Day supplies, from the kitschy to the lush, until closing time. No one else came in for party planning, but she sold two bunches of Mylar balloons and persuaded a man to go with a pretty floral motif instead of buying paper plates that read “Over the hill” for his wife’s birthday. One small step for humankind.
She worked most of the weekend, but she doodled a little with the design for the sign for her someday-agency and texted Ryan to see how he was doing. He responded entirely in emojis, but at least she’d reached out.
When Tuesday arrived, she flipped the “Closed” sign exactly at six and scurried home to shower. It was going to be great to have something to do. She’d already met a couple of Vanessa’s friends, but a whole houseful of women would be fun. It had been a while since she’d had time for a girls’ night. She added a shimmer shadow along her brow bone and felt a stab of guilt. Janet and Emma would hang out with her if she ever made the time. They needed to do more than lunch at Gilda’s.
She always put effort into her makeup, but she was putting on her A face for tonight. She chose a cute outfit she’d found at a discount outlet the last time she’d made time to shop with Emma. It looked good with a complicated wedge that was too much for most occasions but would be perfect for tonight. Then she decided the wedges were fussy, and she was not fussy—she was sleek and sophisticated. So she slipped on a soft black sweater that showed off a phenomenal necklace she’d bought herself as a graduation present, and switched to shiny black flats. She was having a good hair day, and it survived the sweater change.
Alyssa knew the route to Vanessa’s house by heart. She enjoyed the drive now, and when she pulled up to the French-style mansion, there were already a dozen luxury cars parked in the driveway. It wasn’t going to be hard to find her vehicle when she left, she thought ruefully. She knocked on the front door and it opened instantly—and there was Devin, Vanessa’s hunky husband and the captain of the Red Wheels.
“Hey, Alyssa,” he said, pulling the door wide for her to come in. “Don’t cost me any money.”
She smiled. “No new throw pillows?”
“I would definitely throw them,” he said, laughing. “Let me take your coat.”
She shrugged out of her jacket and handed it over, then made her way into the home. Its rooms were so familiar—she had their dimensions memorized. She was distracted looking at the furnishings she’d selected, the art and plants and a table that had gotten pushed out to make more legroom, when she realized that the room wasn’t filled with women. It was couples and a few single men. She scanned the room quickly—every guy there could choke a gorilla with his thighs. It was a team party—that’s why Vanessa had said it was planned around Devin’s schedule. Of course.
It would be rude to leave immediately, but she couldn’t possibly stay if Nick was there. She was pretty sure he wasn’t—she didn’t see him. And then a deep, familiar voice behind her said, “Well. Look who’s here.”