My Lucky Day:
A Romantic Holiday Story
By Rusty Fischer, author of Christmas in Snowflake
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My Lucky Day
Rusty Fischer
Copyright 2014 by Rusty Fischer
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This is a work of fiction. All of the names, characters, places and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or, if real, are used fictitiously.
Cover credit: © Viorel Sima – Fotolia.com
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Author’s Note:
The following is a FREE short story edited by the author himself. If you see any glaring mistakes, I apologize in advance and hope you don’t take it out on my poor characters, who had nothing to do with their author’s bad grammar!
Happy reading… and Happy St. Patrick’s Day!
Enjoy!
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My Lucky Day:
A Romantic Holiday Story
She answers the door wearing a soft green V-neck and a pair of khaki cargo shorts.
“Molly?” I ask, the toolbox heavy in my hand as I stand on her shamrock covered “Welcome” mat. “Happy… Happy St. Patrick’s Day!”
She blinks a little at the greeting and, before she replies, I catch her eyes flit from my face to my nametag and then back to my face. “Brent?” she asks, with the vaguest hint of recognition.
A little color rises to her cheeks and her hand kind of flies to her hair, still auburn and long, but pulled back into a loose ponytail. “I… I…” she sputters, waving me inside with her free hand. “I must look a mess. Someone should have told me you were coming.”
I chuckle, wiping my feet on her mat and stepping inside the tile foyer of her two-story townhouse.
“Well,” I explain as we linger just on the threshold of her spotless, model home worthy living room. “The dispatcher never really knows who will show up. It’s kind of just who’s the closest at the moment we get the call, you know?”
“Like cops,” she murmurs, distracted, looking around at the sleek off-white leather sofas and low slung black end tables around the room. Framed black and white prints of empty buildings line the soft white walls.
“You okay?” I ask, tempted to reach out and touch her forearm, but it seems like that would only freak her out all the more.
“Yes, sure, fine,” she says, looking back at me with those soft green eyes. “It’s just… I wasn’t expecting it to be anyone I knew.”
I chuckle, looking down at my navy shorts and scuffed shoes and my scratchy “Sunshine Cable” uniform shirt. “Me either, Molly. Trust me!”
She snorts that old snort and waves a hand, dispelling the tense atmosphere in the sunny, modern living room. “I’m just being weird today,” she explains, looking at me apologetically. “I mean, well… how have you been?”
“Good, good,” I say noncommittally because, here I am, the cable guy, standing like a shlub in her spotless living room. “You?”
“Good, good,” she replies and we both chuckle at our awkwardness. “You look good,” she blurts, and now it’s my turn to blush.
“Yeah,” I say, tugging on the uniform shirt with my free hand. “This cheap polyester really spotlights my rugged charm.”
She blushes again and I admire the way the clingy green T-shirt hugs her ripe, luxurious curves. She’d always been a bit of a tomboy back in school, but she’s matured into a voluptuous red-haired beauty and I find myself distracted by her transformation.
“You too,” I blurt, realizing I’ve been gawking too long. “Look good,” I explain.
“Oh please,” she groans, turning slightly from me as if she’s shown up in a ratty old nightgown. “I just… this is just my work stuff. I just figured they’d send some old geezer and he’d hardly notice.”
I raise my toolbox and joke, “Well, I am ten years older than the last time we saw each other.”
She nods, a wistful look coming to her eyes. And then, just like that, it disappears and she offers me that same, crooked smile. “It’s… it’s upstairs, if you want to check it out?”
I’m momentarily confused, until I remember why I’m there. “Oh, right, your Wi-Fi connection, right?”
“It was a little spotty last night,” she explains, leading me up a flight of dark, hardwood stairs to the landing on the second floor. It features the same dark wood on the floors and is furnished sparsely, but effectively, like something out of Dockside Imports showroom, with funky wicker chairs and Asian-themed throw pillows and a hammered metal coffee table featuring an array of colorful votive candles on top. “But then this morning, it crashed completely.”
She stands outside a den type room, explaining. Inside I see a wicker desk and modern flat screen monitor and a sleek white tower beneath an old, boxy router. I can sense her problem right off but am enjoying the way she talks with her hands, the soft, creamy lipstick she’s wearing and the little tendrils of auburn hair encircling her face.
“Have you been able to get online at all?” I ask, realizing she hasn’t spoken for awhile.
“Brent?” she says, looking at me funny but still smiling. “I literally just said I haven’t been able to get online at all.”
I snort and blush and creep past her into the den. There are framed movie posters on the wall, nice ones, done professionally, not on the cheap. Good ones, too. Classics like Happy Birthday Horror, April Fool’s Massacre, even a limited edition print of my own personal favorite, Werewolf Leprechauns from Mars.
She catches me admiring them. “You a fan?” she asks, hesitantly, as if that’s a bad thing.
“Majorly,” I say, turning back to her with a newfound respect. “Are you? I mean… in school I took you for more of a Babysitter’s Blunders type of girl.”
She smacks me playfully on the arm and shakes her head. “Then you weren’t paying very close attention. Didn’t you read all those horror movie reviews I wrote for the school newspaper?”
I blush, admitting that I hadn’t. “I wasn’t… I didn’t realize I was a horror fan until a few years after high school,” I confess.
I glance back at the posters on the wall, the cluttered desk, the futon couch in the corner with a pillow and comforter folded carefully at the end. From everything I’ve seen so far, this looks like the only lived-in room in the house.
“Are you still writing them?” I ask, setting down my toolbox and finally checking out her ancient router.
“What, reviews?” she asks, leaning against the wall and watching me. “Yeah, kind of… that’s… that’s why I need the Wi-Fi up and running again, to update my blog.”
I pause, hauling out my frequency meter and glancing up at her. “You’re a blogger now?”
She nods and looks away, as if embarrassed. “No way!” I tease, applying the meter to the router. “For which blog?”
“My own,” she says, looking back at me. “Molly’s Monster Movie Madness?”
I chuckle, turning to read the meter. Yup, her router’s shot, but I don’t tell her that right away. I’m having way too much fun. “No way,” I blurt. “That sounds right up my alley. I’ll have to read it sometime.”
“God no!” she says, covering her face with one hand.
“Why not?” I ask.
“I’d be so embarrassed if someone I knew actually read what I wrote.”
I shake my head. “Look, anyone who likes Werewolf Leprechauns from Mars can’t be all bad,” I reason.
She’s silent for a moment and I look up to find her peering down at me, curiously. “I guess… that’s kind of why I’m a bit frantic,” she admits, nodding at the router. “I promised my readers reviews
of all six of the Werewolf Leprechauns movies and I can’t post them until my Wi-Fi is back up.”
“Post them?” I chuckle, standing reluctantly. “Don’t you think you should be busy writing them instead of bossing me around?”
She smacks me on the arm again and says, “I wrote them last week, I just didn’t want to post them until St. Patrick’s Day, you know?”
I nod. “That’s pretty cool. I’d definitely check that out.”
She nods, biting her lower lip. “So,” she says, flicking her eyes down at her computer tower. “Is there any hope?”
“Your router’s busted,” I tell her, and her eyes widen and her nostrils flare and I fear she’s on the verge of a panic attack.
“What?” she gasps – literally, gasps. “Well… can you fix it?”
I kind of wave my hands in a “calm down” gesture and say, “Molly, absolutely. I have one of the new models in my service truck and, actually, your Wi-Fi should run about two times faster once I put it in.”
She sags against the wall in a posture of relief, avoiding my eyes as I slink by. “I’ll go get it now,” I explain, sulking past.
“Thanks, Brent,” she says, still leaning on the wall. “Really, I… I appreciate that…”
I smile, pausing at the doorway, but she’s still looking down at her feet. I shrug and drift down the stairs, admiring the classy wall art and sleek furniture and spotless serenity of Molly’s townhouse.
I quick get the new router and as I’m walking back inside, I hear water running in the kitchen, just off the foyer. “You want a little iced tea?” she asks, holding up a pitcher.
“That’d be great,” I say, heading toward the stairs. “Let me just get you back up and running in the modern world, and we can catch up?”
The router takes three minutes, flat, and I hop on her browser to make sure she’s fine. She’s more than fine, she’s double-triple upgraded fine.
Back downstairs she has iced tea waiting in little green plastic beer mugs with shamrocks down the sides. We toast and my eyes can’t help but flit around the spotless kitchen, looking showroom clean.
In a wicker basket on the counter, looking slightly out of place, is a can of cheap corned beef, a jar of purple cabbage and some off brand mint chocolate squares.
“Mmmmmmm,” I say, savoring the tea. “This is great, thanks.”
“It’s nothing,” she demurs, looking down again. “Thank you for coming out so quickly. I thought I was going to have to leave my readers stranded on St. Patrick’s Day.”
“How long have you been blogging?” I ask, looking at the store-bought shamrock shaped sugar cookies she’s put out on a paper plate shaped like a pot of gold.
She sees me eyeing and shoves the plate closer, so I grab one. “A couple of years,” she sighs. “I was working for this paper out in Atlanta, doing the social column, writing restaurant and entertainment reviews, that kind of thing. When they let me go, I started blogging full-time, but there wasn’t a ton of money in it. Fortunately Dad had this place, so he let me move in, rent-free.”
“Nice one,” I say around a mouthful of sugar cookie.
“If you say so,” she mutters, not quite under her breath.
“Is he still big into real estate?” I ask, and she huffs.
“Not quite as big as he thought,” she explains, sipping some tea. “He bought a bunch of these units, pre-construction, before the bubble burst. Now he can’t sell any of them for what they’re worth, so he rents them out when he can. Between renters, I go in and clean them up, check on them regularly, handle complaints, that kind of thing.”
“Earning your keep,” I mutter, nodding.
“Something like that,” she sighs, reaching for a cookie.
Just then my cell phone vibrates on my tool belt and we both look at it, frowning, like teenagers caught out after curfew. “Shoot,” I actually say, seeing the dispatch number and knowing it’s another call. “I have… I have to take this…”
She smiles, no big deal, and I inch out the foyer and onto her landing. “Can’t you find anybody else?” I ask our dispatcher, Randy, when she tells me I’ve got another call nearly twenty minutes in the opposite direction.
“I would if we had anybody else,” he says, chuckling. “Seems like most of you guys started celebrating St. Patrick’s Day early today. You’re the first tech I’ve had respond in the past hour.”
“Okay,” I sigh, noting the address and hanging up.
Inside, Molly stands at the kitchen counter, expectantly. She reads my face and nods, understanding. “Do I owe you anything?” she asks, reaching for her purse by the cordless phone.
I wave her away. “Even if you did, which you don’t, I wouldn’t take your money, Molly.”
She looks a little relieved and reaches for the plate of cookies, now covered in green plastic wrap. “At least take a tip,” she offers, and I smile, heart light. I could kiss her, but I don’t.
Of course I don’t.
Instead I fiddle with her paperwork on the little binder I keep in my tool bag and slide it on the counter while she’s reaching for the door. “Thanks again for coming so fast,” she says as I inch by her and onto the welcome mat again.
“Thanks for being here,” I say, stupidly, cringing the minute it’s out of my mouth.
I cling to her cookies for support and we stand there, eyes meeting, not quite sure what to do next. My phone rings again, as if on cue, and when I curse she snorts and covers her mouth.
“You better go,” she sighs, waving me off. “Drive safely, Brent, and Happy St. Patrick’s Day.”
“You too,” I go to say, looking up from my damn phone but, by the time I do, she’s already shut the door.