Miss Impractical Pants (11 page)

“We need to track down a dress that I’ll never wear,” Katie responded without thinking, grateful to Heather for giving her the
perfect segue into reason number two for calling the spontaneous meeting.

Heather and Mr. Scott looked at her in mystified silence.

“Just before I let myself be convinced I needed to change my personality, I was about to try on that absolutely amazing and utterly impractical silver dress,” she recalled, retracing her past as if unlocking the clues to an important mystery. “Remember, Heather? When you and Anna and I went shopping a few months ago? That dress was the last impulse I had as the old me, before I became the new me, which is now the old me, making the first old me the new, new me again.”

Heather’s face was blank.

“What in the name of Angela Lansbury’s tea kettle are you running on about?” Mr. Scott snapped.

“I need that dress!” Katie replied as if they were dense. “Don’t you get it? It symbolizes who I was—who I am?”

Mr. Scott shook his head, thinking that Katie had lost her mind, and grinned. “Indeed, I believe she really is back to her old self.”

“I get it!” Heather responded, to Katie’s immense relief. “Let’s go!”

“Slow down, lasses.”
Mr. Scott’s voice of reason cut through the urgency. “It’s been months since you saw that dress. It’s probably long gone by now.”

“That’s why we don’t have another minute to lose,” Katie chastised. “Now stop being such an Eeyore and get your coat.”

“Me?” he blurted in protest. “Go to the ladies’ shops with the two of you? I’d rather have Lady Gaga sing at me funeral.”

“Which is going to be a lot sooner than you think if you don’t get that ornery British butt of yours into the car,” Katie threatened.

Heather’s giggles were out of control. “How does he know about Lady Gaga?”

“He watches the E! Channel religiously.” Katie cast him
a sidelong glance, letting him know
she knew his dirty little secret.

Mr. Scott puffed up. “No one’s ever caught me watchin’ that tripe!”

“Just because no one has caught you
doesn’t
mean it isn’t so,” Katie sniffed self-righteously as she pushed him and the laughing Heather out the door.

One boutique, two charity stores, three consignment shops, and one fabulous silver dress later, Katie used the spare key to let herself in to Jared’s apartment. She shuddered, instantly feeling the raging furniture tension. An unmistakable battle warred between Asian Minimalistic East and All-American Bachelor West for reigning control of the great room.

Before she could step inside, Queen Sheba, Jared’s vicious Chi-poo—a Chihuahua/poodle mix puppy—growled at her from behind the protection of two potent pooey landmines she had deposited in front of the door. Katie offered her hand out for the sniffing, and cooed in sweet soothing tones, “That’s a gooood Sheba. What a good little Chi-poo. You’re the best little Chi-Chi-poo-poo in the whole world. Aren’t you, you hateful little doggie? Who’s the nasty little Chi-Chi-poo? You are, yes you are.”

Sheba dipped her head, indicating she was still not pleased by Katie’s presence, but was willing to allow her safe passage beyond the poo hills.

“I’ve never met a dog I didn’t like…until you,” Katie grumbled under her breath, making a beeline for the roll of paper towels on the kitchen counter.

Sheba watched her curiously as she rolled a fat, cushy pair of paper towel mittens around her hands.

“What?” she asked defensively in response to the dog’s questioning gaze. “You don’t think I’m going pick those up with my bare hands, do you?” She gestured one of her padded hands toward the poop piles.

The dog made no reply.

“Great, I’m talking to a dog. And not just any dog—a dog I probably wouldn’t speak to if it were the last human on Earth.”

With her makeshift pooper scoopers snugly secured around her hands, she put on her brave face and went to work on disaster cleanup.

When Jared opened the door, Katie was kneeling in the entryway, her shirt collar pulled over her nose, cell phone pressed against her ear in conversation with Anna, batting a hunk of poo between her two pillowed hands.

“What’s going on?” He maneuvered his way into the apartment, trying not to hit Katie in the back with the door.

Startled by his appearance, Katie dropped her phone on the floor. “I didn’t expect you so soon,” she admitted through the fabric of her shirt.

“I’m a half hour late,” he grumbled in annoyance.

“Oh.” Multitasking certainly made the time fly. “I’ve been trying clean up this —”

“For shit’s sake Katie,” he scolded before filling his chest with an impatient breath, which he blew slowly out his nostrils.

Despite his uncharacteristic, terse reaction, she couldn’t refrain from snorting a giggle at the unintended pun.

He shot her a slow-motion glare that made her skin crawl. “It’s only dog crap—it’s not that hard to clean up.”

“That’s because I already cleaned up the squishy one.” She didn’t like being put on the defensive.

Without bothering to acknowledge her statement, he stalked into the kitchen for a paper towel. 

“You used a whole roll of paper towels on a couple of dog turds?” he barked upon reentering the room, waving the empty cardboard roll.

“Not the whole roll.” Sniffing, she tugged the paper towel mittens off her hands. “Part of it was already used.”

He snatched the two wads of towels from her hands and pushed past her. In one swift motion he bent down and retrieved the remaining dog poo. 

Katie took a deep breath to stave off the stupid tears. “What’s going on with you? Why are you being so mean?”

“It’s not
mean,
Katie,
it’s
stress.
This is what I’m like after a bad day at work. Get used to it.”

Umm.
I don’t think so.

“Why do you always make everything so complicated?” He chucked the poo into garbage can, overflowing with several other pairs of Katie’s previously discarded mittens. “What a waste!” Still griping, he yanked the plastic bag from the bin and vigorously tied off the top. “You wanted to talk to me about something? What is it?”

Katie hesitated. “Should we sit down?”

“Don’t make a production out of this,
Katie,
just tell me what you have to say.”

“Okay, then. I met with Professor Bell today—”

“Who’s Professor Bell?”

“Professor Bell!
My internship advisor.
Anyway, he called me into his office because I was missing an assignment and—”

She was distracted by his upheld hand and the circling motion he was making with it—“wrap it up” in layman’s sign language.

“Katie, I don’t need all the details, just get to the point.”

A spark of overdue anger ignited inside her, but before she could express herself, a shuffling noise at the door stole her attention. Katie stared slack-jawed at a woman with sleek black hair and tortoise-shell-framed glasses standing in the threshold.

“Katie, this is Natalie. She just got hired with the FBI and is helping me prepare for my interviews.” Jared gave a perfunctory introduction.

She made a quick survey of the woman: five-foot-two, shapely, solid muscle, and small breasts. Not that Katie was looking, but it was hard not to notice since Natalie’s neckline plunged to the middle of her sternum, revealing an intricately lacy black bra that didn’t leave much to the imagination. 

“Hi, nice to meet you,” Katie offered meekly, never one to forget her manners, even in the face of crisis.

Natalie dipped her head in trivial recognition.

“Finish what you have to say,” Jared instructed, “so Natalie and I can get started.”

“What? Oh yeah,” Katie replied, still stupefied by Jared’s behavior and Natalie’s eavesdropping presence. “Um…I had to finalize my internship today. So I’ll be leaving for England sooner than I expected.”

“Oh, okay” was his indifferent response.

“Okay, then...I’ll talk to you later?” was the only response she could muster.

“Yeah, okay. Take the trash with you on your way out, will you?”

Feeling the sting of those damn tears behind her eyes and the flames of humiliation burning up her neck, she grabbed the top of the
trash bag before stooping down to retrieve her cell phone, and made a beeline, shuddering as she brushed past Natalie, out the door.

“What a dick!”

Katie heard the muffled exclamation as she took the stairs leading away from Jared’s apartment two at a time. She put her phone to her ear. “Hello?”

“Tell me you didn’t take out that jerk’s garbage,” the voice demanded.

“Anna, you’re still there? Have you been listening the whole time?”

“Yes, I heard everything! I am so sorry I pushed you into dating that jackass!”

***

“Where in the hell have you been?” Dylan strode out of Jim and Sheila’s house and scolded from the porch the moment Katie stepped from her vehicle. “It’s late and Christopher is fit to be tied. We’ve called you at least fifty times. He’s been worried sick about you.”

She squinted into the dark and could make out Christopher’s lanky silhouette towering over Dylan’s shoulder.

“Tell Mom I went for a drive and turned my phone off,” she said shrugging off Christopher’s motherly concern.

“For four hours?” he pressed

“Yes, for four hours. I needed time to think.” She then looked at Dylan for the first time, blinked her tired eyes a few times, and did a double take.

“What are you doing here?” she squealed, running up the porch and flinging herself into his arms.

He collected her into a tight embrace and replied, “I came to see how you were doing.”

She pulled back and eyed him suspiciously.
“All the way from D.C.?
Why?” Although she already knew she had the Anna Broadcasting Network to thank for his presence.

“Actually, I was at a conference in Phoenix and I wanted to make sure you weren’t dying of a broken heart.”

“Ppphhhshhh, broken heart?
Me?”

He looked at her doubtfully.

“It’s true. My heart is fine. It’s the rest of me that’s confused. I feel like the world’s biggest schmuck. I didn’t even stick up for myself. Instead, I took out his trash while
Natalie
and her cleavage smirked at me.” She turned her face from Dylan. Picking at a crusty tear track on her check, she practically whispered, “How did I ever let myself become a doormat for some guy to walk all over?”