Bad Boy (41 page)

Jon got his coffee and a sticky bun he’d split with Lucky. The dog greeted him with exaggerated gestures of joy, waving her butt and tail. As he untied her leash and turned to go, he saw Beth sitting alone. He could duck her, but at that moment, despite Lucky, his loneliness was so great that he walked over to her. “May I?” Jon asked.

She looked up. “Oh, sure. How are you, Jonny?”

“Jon. Just Jon,” he told her. “And this is Lucky.”

“I didn’t know you had a dog.”

“Just got her awhile ago. As for me, I’m okay. How are you?”

“Oh, same old, same old,” Beth said. She picked up her coffee and sipped it. She was also consuming a Milky Way. “It’s not much fun at the paper. Marcus got sued for harassment by Allison, and without Tracie
‌
—”

“Tracie’s not at the paper?” Jon asked. He’d forced himself not to read the features, to avoid looking for her name.

“Didn’t you know she quit?” Beth asked.

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“No.” He tried really hard not to ask her anything more; he used all his willpower and yet failed. “When is she getting married?” he asked Beth, shamed and frightened by his lack of control. He couldn’t allow himself to go back to the misery he had suffered these last months.

“Allison?”

“No, Tracie,” he forced himself to say. He hadn’t spoken her name since the last time he’d seen her, and he had promised himself he never would again. His mother had stopped asking how she was, though she hadn’t ever asked what had happened between them. “I knew she and Phil were engaged.”

“For about a minute,” Beth said, making a face. “They broke up.” Jon tried hard not to show any reaction. But he felt dizzy. He didn’t hear Beth’s next words until she was up to “. . . and Tracie’s working at Java, The Hut. At least she was the last time I saw her.”

It was too much information to take in. He thought he must have heard wrong. “As what?” Jon asked. Perhaps this was some kind of bizarre joke.

“I’m not sure,” Beth told him. “But I think you should check it out. I know how she feels about you.”

“You do?”

“Come on. She’s been in love with you for years. She just didn’t know it,” Beth told him. “You know, about some things, I’m not completely stupid.”

“She loves me?” Jon asked.

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“You don’t hang out with a guy for seven years if you don’t love him,” Beth told him. “And you still love her. Don’t you think it’s time to end the fight and tie the knot?”

“Only to hang myself,” he told her.

Jon sat in a window booth, a menu covering his face. Outside Lucky lay under a bench to avoid the passersby. Jon couldn’t help but notice that on the menu were half a dozen Post-it notes with specials listed on them. Beth must be right. The fluttering yellow tags on the menu were more beautiful to him than daffodils on a spring hillside. His heart was racing in his chest. He watched Tracie from a distance as she took an order, poured more coffee, then wiped up a table.

It was hard for him to watch her waitressing. In all the years he’d known Tracie, he’d never even seen her fold a napkin. Now, looking at her, he was experiencing something he thought therapists called “cognitive dissonance.” But he’d had a lot of confusion over the last forty-eight hours about what he saw and what he thought he knew.

After he’d spoken to Beth, he had gone
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home and tried to work out what had really happened
‌
—not what he had thought had happened
‌
—between him and Tracie. As best as he could reconstruct it, Allison had lied to him about Tracie’s engagement. And whether she had done it on purpose to alienate him from Tracie or for some other reason, he didn’t know and probably never would. He’d searched out Phil, and though it had caused him some loss of pride, he was sure it had caused Phil just as much.

Phil sat in the tiny cubicle in the department he’d been assigned to and probably felt humiliated while heads turned to see why such a junior employee was being visited by one of the honchos. Phil had bitterly confirmed Beth’s story.

Tracie approached the table. “Can I take your order?” Jon lowered the menu and stared at her. Tracie started with surprise and could barely stand to look back at him. But bravely, she did. Their eyes locked and all that she felt for him was there in her facial expression. “What are you doing here?”

“What are
you
doing here?”

“I work here,” she said. “Things at the paper didn’t pan out.”

“I heard you were engaged to Phil.”

“That didn’t pan out, either. I wouldn’t marry a guy on the rebound.” Then she bit her lower lip, as if she were punishing it for talking too much. She looked down at her order pad. He could see her try to pull herself together. “Can I have your order please?” she asked.

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“Adam and Eve on a raft,” he told her.

Tracie looked stricken. She teared up and had to turn her head away for a minute. Jon could hardly believe it. When she turned back, she was angry. “This isn’t fair!” she said. “I know I hurt you, but I have to work here. Teasing me is
‌
—”

“I’m not teasing,” Jon said, his voice as gentle as he could make it. “Who are you on the rebound from?”

“Who do you think?” she snapped and threw down the pad. She began to walk away. Jon leaped out of his seat at the booth and caught her hand. She tried to pull away. He turned her to him. Tracie hung her head to avoid eye contact. Tears fell. Jon looked over at Molly.

“Doesn’t she have the most beautiful eyes you’ve ever seen?” he asked Molly.

“Oh! Don’t tease me,” Tracie cried, and tears formed in her beautiful eyes. She tried again to pull away.

“Play nice!” Molly warned him. “No rough stuff.”

“So when are you getting married?” Jon asked. Molly gestured to Laura who came out of the kitchen to watch, her eyes opening wide, her mouth agape.

Tracie turned to him. “I told you: I’m not marrying Phil.”

“Right,” he agreed. “You’re marrying me.”

Then she stood still and Jon had a moment to think about how beautiful, how perfect every line of her was. If he had sculpted her
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himself he wouldn’t alter a single line. “You’re marrying me,” he repeated, this time with all the love he felt for her.

“I am?” she asked, and he watched her expression begin to change, as if blood was flowing into marble and enlivening it.

“ ’Course you are, stupid,” Laura said from her doorway.

“You’re all mad, the lot of you,” Molly told them, pretending to scold. “Well, I suppose you two better get together. There’s no one else in the greater Seattle metropolitan area who would ’ave either one of you.” She shook her head in a mock reprimand.

“I’m marrying you?” Tracie asked him again. She blinked. “Why?”

“Because you love me,” he told her. “And you have for a long time. It’s only now that you really know that,” he said, explaining it to her and himself at the same time.

Tracie wiped her face, covered with tears, with the back of her hand.

Jon handed her a napkin and continued. “And because we’ll have beautiful children. Because I’ll be a great dad and you’ll be a great mom. And because we both love Seattle and want to live here forever. And because you could use a part-time mother, and mine wants the job. Plus, she wants grandchildren.”

Tracie swallowed, mopped off her face again, and threw her arms around him. “Those are enough reasons,” Tracie said. She pushed herself against Jon’s chest, and he breathed in the scent of her warm skin, her clean hair.
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She looked up at him, then sighed and nestled her head against his chest. It fit perfectly.

Jon put his arms around her. The fit was even better.

“I love you, Jonathan,” Tracie said.

“I’ve always loved you,” Jon told her. “And I always will.”

And he was right.

Rule #1:
  Never offer them
anything
. Make
them
offer.

Rule #2:
  Never show them where you live.

Rule #3:
  No sports jackets. Ever. And no checks or plaids
‌
—any color you want, as long as it’s black.

Rule #4:
  It’s all in the pants. Forget khakis. Forget pleats.

Rule #5:
  Wear either throwbacks from thrift stores or really expensive Italian clothes. And mix them. Do on-line shopping only if you want to have on-line sex.

Rule #6:
  No sandals. (Unless you think Jesus had a hot social life.)

Rule #7:
  Don’t tell them what you do for work. Tell them you’re in sales. Let
them
figure out if it’s drugs or rebuilt engines.

Rule #8:
  No glasses. Not even Elvis Costello ones. It doesn’t matter if you’re flying blind because scars are a real turn-on.

Rule #9:
  No shaving
‌
—except once every three days. (Showing up at work looking rumpled or hungover will make women wonder about your private life.)

Rule #10:
  Always carry a motorcycle helmet. Even if you don’t have a motorcycle.