I smiled sweetly. “So it ought to be easy for you to walk away and not worry about taking me back.”
He smirked at me. “I don’t think you’ll be so damn smug when I call your mama and tell her that I begged you to marry me, and that you were being so uncooperative I just didn’t think it would work out. What do you think she’s going to do if she hears the sob story from my side?”
“Really? You’re going to tell my mommy on me? Because I won’t date you anymore?” I stared at him for a long, silent moment before adding one last time, “Really?”
I rolled my eyes and tried to shove the door closed, only to have Darrell throw his weight against it. I planted my feet and gave him a death glare, even when he said, “What the hell’s gotten into you, Kelsey? You go away for a few weeks and you come back with that mouth? What makes you think you can talk to me that way?”
“Darrell, I am sick. Sick, sick, sick of your bullshit. I don’t want to see you. I don’t want to talk to you. I want to pretend you were never a part of my life. You leaving me for Loud-Sex Shelley was one of the best things that could have happened to me, because it finally woke me up to how lazy I’d become. So do me a favor and just keep going.” I smirked at him. “And when you ‘accidentally’ call your mom this afternoon, tell her I said hi.”
Realization took its time, but finally dawned on his face.
“You bitch!” Darrell shoved the door again, and I reached for the metal tree on the entry table. But suddenly, he stopped in his tracks, his expression confused as he stared at something over my shoulder.
“Who the hell is this, Kelsey?” Darrell demanded.
I turned to see Charlie standing behind me, long, lean arms crossed over his chest and looking surprisingly dangerous as he stared through Darrell. The image was so striking that my mouth sort of dried up and I ignored Darrell’s repeated demands to be introduced to this strange man standing in “his” apartment. I couldn’t even be bothered to correct Darrell.
“What, you replaced me already? You really are a little slut, aren’t you?” he spat as my grip on the tree tightened. Darrell smirked at Charlie. “Enjoy my seconds, jackass.”
Charlie smiled, but it was more a sneer than a friendly expression. “As much as I would love to beat you senseless over calling Kelsey names, I know that’s what you want. You want a big, ugly fight so you can call the police and report me for assault, right? Isn’t that what little boys like you do, cry victim when you don’t get your way? You’re not worth the sweat it would take to beat some sense into you. So run along, little boy, and bother someone else.”
Darrell lunged toward the door, but Charlie was too quick, slamming it in his face and locking the dead bolt. Cue the barrage of yelling from Darrell, demanding to know who the hell Charlie thought he was, what he thought he was doing with Darrell’s girlfriend, and if Charlie realized how hard Darrell was going to kick his ass. And then he started screaming through the door, telling me to get my ass out in the hall and talk to him.
And then we heard, “No, Mom, I didn’t mean to call you!”
“That was unexpectedly hot,” I told Charlie. “And you were right not to take the bait. As much as he deserves the whoopin’, he totally would have called the cops on you.”
“I do what I can,” Charlie said. “Or I don’t, as the case may be.”
Over the din of Darrell’s tantrum, I just made out my cell phone beginning to blast the original Star Trek theme music, which was Cyrus’s ringtone. He didn’t bother with a greeting. “The two of you need to go to your front window.”
Outside my door, Darrell must have bruised one of his hands or something because he gave one last kick and said, “Fine! Take her! I don’t care!” And then he stomped down the hall.
“Why should I go to my front window, Cyrus?” I asked, waving my hand at Charlie, who followed me toward the aforementioned window.
“To paraphrase the words of Khan Noonien Singh, revenge is a dish best served hot with butter and salt.”
I pulled the phone away from my ear and stared into it. My friend had finally lost his mind. “What?”
“Just watch, Kelsey, jeez.” Wally’s voice sounded from behind us. He was standing in my doorway, munching on a big bowl of popcorn, the little flecks of white scattered on his sandy beard and HAN SHOT FIRST T-shirt.
“Wasn’t that door locked?” Charlie asked.
“Yes, but I have a key,” Wally pointed out.
“You have a key for emergencies. A dramatic entrance is not an emergency.”
“Just wait.” Wally tilted the bowl toward me in offering. I shook my head.
Bud and Aaron tumbled into the apartment like gamboling puppies, laughing their heads off. Aaron had expressive brown eyes and a mischievous grin that reminded me of Puck from A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Bud was so ginger-headed that he was practically a Weasley. He was as stocky and round as Aaron was thin and lanky.
“What is going on?” I exclaimed. “Have you been experimenting with hydroponics again? Because I can only save up so much bail money!”
“Just wait!” Bud snatched some popcorn from Wally’s bowl and shoved it into his mouth. “We’ve been looking forward to Darrell’s comeuppance for years.”
Just then, we saw Darrell stomp into the parking lot and toward his Corvette. He climbed in, slamming the door behind him. He spun out in the parking lot, but as he drove toward McMahon Street, I noticed movement in the backseat through the rear windshield. I squinted at the pale shifting shape as Darrell’s brake lights flashed and he skidded to a stop. “What is that?”
Without speaking, Aaron handed over a pair of what looked like Luke Skywalker’s macrobinoculars. Rolling my eyes, I focused the lenses on Darrell’s car and watched as a foil balloon seemed to bloom in the backseat.
I turned to look at Wally as Charlie claimed the macrobinoculars. I frowned, looked down at the bowl of popcorn, glanced back toward the car and its foil stowaway, and down at the popcorn again. My jaw dropped and I burst out laughing. “No!”
“It wasn’t as hard as you’d think,” Bud said, helping himself to some popcorn. “We told you, Darrell came sniffing around the apartment for mail he thought was his. We may have slipped a large package with your name on it from ShoeHeaven.com into the mix, a package to which we added about ten pounds of popcorn kernels and a remote control microwave emitter. The real trick was keeping the popcorn from rattling around. Shoes don’t rattle.”
I howled with laughter. “And because it was a package of ‘shoes’ with my name on it, you knew he wouldn’t open it or even take it to whatever rock he’s sleeping under. Because he’d want to hold on to it in case he wanted an excuse to talk to me again. I leave no shoe behind.”
Aaron nodded. “Cyrus is on the ground right now, running the microwave emitter. It has a limited range.”
“He’s going to freak out,” I cackled. “He hates the smell of popcorn. And he doesn’t let anyone eat in his precious car. And you referenced one of my favorite eighties comedies, Real Genius. It’s the perfect revenge.”
By now, the foil bubble had popped and was spewing forth a waterfall of fluffy white kernels. I took the macrobinoculars back so I could zoom in on Darrell, whom I could see thrashing in the front seat and mouthing words that didn’t look very happy. I giggled so hard that I may have snorted like Urkel. A few times.
Charlie cleared his throat and in a very fatherly tone said, “Boys, I am very disappointed in you . . . for not including me in this plan. Seriously, this is insanely awesome.”
Bud demurred. “We’ll decide how awesome it is when we find out whether Darrell charges us with destruction of his property.”
“You didn’t destroy it. You just made it smell like Orville Redenbacher. Oh, look, he’s trying to bail the popcorn out like water in a leaky boat.” I snickered as Darrell climbed out of his car, smacking popcorn kern
els off his clothes. He opened the back door and popcorn tumbled out onto the pavement like an avalanche. Darrell tossed popcorn over his shoulder by the handful, glaring at the apartment building.
“Duck!” I yelped. And the others ducked down behind the windowsill. I waggled my fingers at Darrell and then showed him one in particular. He started screaming and stomping and throwing an even bigger tantrum.
Why did I ever let him go?
“You’d better tell Cyrus to get back up here before Darrell’s head explodes,” I whispered. I looked over the windowsill to see Darrell peeling out of the parking lot, leaving a trail of popcorn in his wake.
I collapsed on the floor, giggling hysterically until tears rolled down my cheeks. “I love you guys. I really do.”
“Well, I for one am still upset that I was left out,” Charlie grumbled good-naturedly. “Do you realize how often I get to play the hero? Never. My mother had a doctor’s note to get me out of dodgeball at school.”
“I swear, the next time we reenact nerd revenge from a 1980s classic, we will include you,” Wally promised, pulling Aaron and Bud to their feet. “Well, fellas, I think our work here is done. This may be our only opportunity to swagger out of a room in a manly fashion, so let’s get to it.”
And so my brilliant goofball friends moseyed out of my apartment John Wayne–style. Before shutting the door behind him, Aaron gave me a tip of his imaginary cowboy hat.
“Is every day going to be this interesting with you?” Charlie asked.
“I think you can count on it,” I told him. “And for the record, I thought you slamming the door in Darrell’s face was very manly and heroic. So consider all of your hero points used up. And you wasted them on a guy named Darrell.”
“A life of bravery and valor, completely run off course.” Charlie sighed. “Well, I guess I can make up for my wasted potential by plying you with delicious baked goods. Bonnie sent me a text. She said that Sweet Eats has a new dessert that is the unholy offspring of cheesecake and brownies. Your friend Al tried to call them CheeseBrownies, but no one was buying them.”
“Rightly so; that sounds disgusting,” I said, pulling a face. Though, secretly, I was so pleased that Charlie got along with my friends well enough to have his own text conversations with them. I had a not-quite-there-but-almost boyfriend that my friends liked. Yay for me.
“Well, Bonnie says Al’s asking his favorite customers to come by for a brainstorming session. May I escort milady to the home of delicious forbidden treats?”
How could one man’s voice make cupcakes sound so sexy?
I tangled my fingers into his hair and kissed the little divot above his lips. “That’s very tempting. But didn’t you hear the weather report? It’s supposed to get really ugly over the next few hours. Sleet, freezing rain, snow, frogs, pestilence pouring forth from the sky . . .”
“The weather reports always say that and it never happens,” he said, smirking.
I gave a silly little giggle as Charlie pushed me back to the sofa and pulled me into his lap. “Still, to be safe, I think we’re going to have to stay holed up in this apartment for the next few hours, at least.”
“Whatever will we do with our time?” he wondered aloud, oh so innocent and guileless.
“I can think of a few things that will not violate our embargo.”
“And then cupcakes after,” he insisted.
“Are you always going to be this demanding?” I asked as he nuzzled the length of my neck.
“When it comes to you? Always.”
[[Buy buttons requested. To be added at epub stage.]]
Acknowledgments
In January 2009, my hometown—well, to be honest, most of Kentucky and six surrounding states—was hit by an epic ice storm. Western Kentucky was the hardest hit, with several inches of hard-packed ice on the ground, covered in nearly a foot of snow. This, in a state where two inches of snow on the ground sends people running for the bread and milk aisles.
As my husband, David, says, when the Weather Channel’s Jim Cantore is doing live broadcasts from your Main Street, that’s not good.
The storm took out power in thousands of homes in Kentucky that were left without electricity for several weeks. By the time I emerged from our encampment, I’d written about twenty pages of longhand notes on a legal pad. Most of those scrawled ramblings about feeling cold, twitchy with boredom, and under the extreme duress of being a Southern girl trapped in a virtual Siberia turned into the first few chapters of the Alaskan-based Naked Werewolf series.
“The Big Ice Storm” has proven to be a rich source of inspiration. Even after three Naked Werewolf novels, my agent, Stephany Evans (who inspired the Bluegrass series in the first place with her fascination with my lovable, somewhat bizarre home state), remained curious about my ice storm entrapment and encouraged me to write a book about it.
So thank you, of course, to Stephany, for her productive curiosity about the zany tragicomedy that is my everyday life. To my editor, Abby Zidle, for her patience and her passion for possums. To my in-laws, Russ and Nancy, for letting us take refuge at their house. And to my mom and dad, who contrived several plans (some legal) to obtain a generator and somehow get it through the tree-limb-blocked streets to make sure their grandbabies were warm. Ultimately, their efforts were foiled by common sense and the advice of counsel, but it’s the thought that counts.
And to my David and all the police, fire, and emergency personnel who worked so hard to keep our community safe during a stressful, peculiar time in our history, we will never be able to thank you enough.
ScreamQueen
Molly Harper, Snow Falling on Bluegrass
(Series: Bluegrass # 3)
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