Page 6 of The Dating Proposal
But first . . . the dog needs a walk.
“So I met a guy this morning,” I tell Ms. Pac-Man as we stroll along a quiet block. “I know what you’re thinking. Does he carry biscuits in his pocket?”
Ms. Pac-Man wags her tail, eager for an answer, or maybe just a biscuit.
“I wish I knew. I don’t know anything about him, but it’ll be interesting to see how it goes.”
Her tongue lolls out as she trots along.
“Oh, don’t worry. I don’t want anything serious. When you come out of hibernation, you just want to stretch your legs. You know how it goes.”
As we turn the corner, a throng of joggers whips by, so I rein in the chatterbox in me. Yes, I talk to my dog, but it’s not as if the world needs to be privy to our conversations. Some things are just between a woman and her best friend.
When we finish the walk and return to the house, I send a group text to the brain trust—my sister and my besties: Julia, Hayden, and Erin—letting them know that tomorrow’s scheduled Game of Thrones viewing includes a special request from the hostess.
And I add one more text.
Be prepared, as well, for a special screening.
With my regular appendage on my shoulder—a bag with a laptop and hard drive—I pop over to my friend Hayden’s house on Monday evening. She lives next door, which means we share a wall, an entryway, and a front stoop. Her husband, Greg, is out of town, and she’s holed up in her home office finishing a legal brief that’s due for a client tomorrow, so I help her daughter, Lena, get ready for bed.
I adore Lena for many reasons, including the fact that she loves clothes and fashion and is pretty much the best shopping partner ever. Sometimes, when Hayden and Greg need a break, I happily take Lena out for a girl’s afternoon, and we try on everything on Union Street. And I mean everything. The girl has power-shopping genes twined deep in her DNA, and I love that kind of relentlessness when it comes to clothing racks.
Lena waits for me at the end of the hall, pointing excitedly into her room. Her wavy brown hair is unkempt as usual, in desperate need of a brushing. But at twelve years old, she’s already learning some of the secret tricks of women. She has pushed it back with a red headband that has big white polka dots on it.
“By the way, I totally approve of the look, but your mom said we have to get you to bed. The girls are coming over soon.”
“Look, look, look.” She grabs my hand, pulls me into her room, and shows me her find. Their Siamese cat, Chaucer, who’s part cat, part Satan, is curled around a teddy bear. “He’s cuddled up with my old stuffy. Isn’t he the cutest?” Lena hops onto the bed, tucks her feet gracefully under her legs, and pets the demon. She leans her face in to him, rubbing her cheek gently against his downy fur. He snuggles against her, clearly plotting misdeeds. “My mom says he’s a troublemaker, but I don’t believe her. He’s so sweet to me.”
I clear my throat. “Yes, that’s exactly what she calls him.”
Her mom actually calls the cat Captain Asshole, but that’s not for me to repeat. Chaucer is a master of knocking stuff off of other stuff—dressers, tables, shelves. Once, he whacked a vase off the cupboard above the stove, shattering it into a thousand shards. Hayden was real happy about that.
Lena pats her bed. “Can you show me your old videos here?”
I flip open the laptop and trawl through the archives of The Fashion Hound on the hard drive, accommodating her stroll-through-memory-lane request. “Here you go.”
We watch several videos as Lena grabs potential outfit combos from her closet, displaying the tween-centric looks for my thumbs-up or -down.
When she finds a yellow shirt with a unicorn leaping over a pot of gold, I jump up from the bed. “I want to be twelve, so I can wear this,” I say, grabbing the shirt and pressing my cheek near it. The style doesn’t suit me anymore, but it would have fit with tween-me’s quirky, sassy, cute look.
Lena giggles. “You can borrow it anytime.”
“I wish I could wear this when I meet with investors. But I’ll probably have to wear pants and a starched shirt.”
She pretends to barf.
“Exactly.”
Crash.
A sharp smacking sound rends the air. I swivel around. My eyes bulge as I stare at the carnage.
Chaucer licks a paw fastidiously as my hard drive lies broken on the floor, the case cracked open.
“Bad boy!” Lena shakes her finger at the cat, scolding him.
He doesn’t give a shit. He simply moves on to the other paw.
Hayden rushes in from her office and surveys the damage. “I’m so sorry, McKenna.”
