Miss Impractical Pants (26 page)

“He says he has something important to tell you.”

“I don’t care! That’s what phones are for—not airplanes!”

“It must really be important if he came all the way to London to tell you.” She noticed the muscle at the back of his jaw clench.

She lugged herself out of bed and wobbled around on legs made of Jell-O. “I need to find my shoulder bag? Where’s my bag?” She looked down at her bare legs and feet and changed her line of questioning. “Better yet, where are my pants?” The oversize T-shirt she wore hung off one shoulder,
Flashdance
-style, and was a little too short for comfort.

“You mean your trousers? ‘Pants,’ in England, means your underpants—and you kicked them off.”

“I kicked my pants off? Why?”

“No, you kicked your trousers off; you are still wearing your pants. Please don’t get those confused—especially in front of my mum.”

He waited for her to express her understanding before he would continue. “You kicked your trousers off because they had vomit on them—
your
top, too. They’re in the washing machine. I’ll get you something of mine to wear.”

She shrugged with resigned acceptance and went back to looking for her handbag, which she found by the side of the sofa, and made good use of the emergency comb and toothbrush she kept inside. Her face was still red and swollen from excessive puking, then crying—then puking and crying some more—and her skin was still marked with faint pink blotches, but there was nothing she could do about that.

“How are you feeling?” Lucas asked, handing her a pair of grey sweatpants.

Sweatpants! Aha! Lucas’s second flaw!

“Like I’ve been used for a med school cadaver.”

“Are you still feeling nauseated?”

“Not bad.” She shook her head gingerly.

“Good. I’m going to make you some tea and toast and see if that doesn’t help you feel better.”

“Ewww, no tea,” she said almost urgently. “I mean—no thanks.”

“You don’t like tea?” He cocked an inquisitive eyebrow.

“It tastes like a stinky, crusty, dishrag that’s been left sitting in the sink too long.”

He smiled at her vivid description. “Well, you’re in England now, you’d better get used to it. We drink loads of tea. See if you can’t manage a few sips. I think it will make you feel better.”

“Oh, all right,” she muttered.

She tightened the drawstring of the sweatpants—karma really was a whore—as much as it would go, then rolled the waistband down twice to keep them from falling off. Even then, the cuffs fell completely over her feet and dragged along the floor as she slogged behind Lucas to the kitchen.

***

“Wow, you look like crap,” Jared greeted Katie when Lucas opened the door and stepped aside.

She gave him a “no shit, Sherlock” smile. “Yeah, I’ve been sick. What are you doing here?” She was in no mood for banal small talk.

Jared
grinned
his Cheshire cat grin. “I’ve got some really big news to tell you.”

“And you came all the way to London to tell me?”

“Yeah—well, kind of. We’re heading to Thailand anyway, so I just arranged the flights so we’d have a stop in London. I know it’s not really on the way, but I thought, what the hell! That way I get to see you, right?”

She examined him skeptically.
“Right.”

“I just felt funny about the way we left things. I’ve been pretty pissed about catching you in bed with Dylan.”

Lucas gave Katie an intrigued look that made her blush to the roots of her hair.

“Even after we talked on the phone the other day, things still didn’t seem right,” Jared continued. “I really wanted to see you in person to clear the air—let you know that I’m not mad anymore.”

“You did not catch me in bed with Dylan!” she snapped. “Okay, maybe you did—kind of—but Dylan is one of my closest
friends—we don’t do that. Anyway, that’s what you get for breaking into my house.”

“Relax. It took me a few days to work it out, but I get it now—Dylan is your gay friend.”

“He is not gay!” She struck back in his defense. “Wait, back it up a minute—did you just
say
‘we’re’ going to Thailand?”

He bobbed his head excitedly. “Yeah, Natalie and
me
are going.”

Natalie and
I
! Natalie and I
!
she
hissed in her head before the information could really seep in.

She thought she must have misunderstood, but sure enough, when she peered around the doorframe, Natalie was standing at the bottom of the stairs. Adding insult to injury, Jared’s annoying little Chi-poo, Queen Sheba, lounged inside Natalie’s shoulder bag.
As if anyone besides Paris Hilton could pull off the rat-dog fashion without looking completely ridiculous,
Katie thought,
and even then…. I wonder what strings they had to pull to bring that nasty dog into the
country?
It’d serve them all right if some Thai family indulges on a Queen Sheba shish kabob.

“But I planned that trip. Planning that trip was the basis of our first three dates,” Katie protested quietly so Natalie wouldn’t hear. “You gave me that trip for Valentine’s Day. You can’t just give another woman my Valentine’s present.”
Half the reason I agreed to remain your girlfriend was so things wouldn’t be awkward when we went to Thailand!
Katie thought.

Jared furrowed his brow as if she were speaking crazy-nese. “What do you mean?”

With a defeated shake of the head, she tried to dismiss having been dealt the sucker punch of the century. “Nothing—
forget
it.”

Lucas’s jaw muscle was working overtime. “Come in, I’m Lucas Hayden, Katie’s employer.”

Jared and Natalie stepped inside and followed Lucas to the front room. Lagging behind to shut the door, Katie took a moment to clear her head. Her brain rummaged to find her Jared mantra.
Practicality prohibits princes, presents, and perfection. Practicality prohibits princes…. piss on it!
She was in England now, and nobody was pressuring her to be practical anymore.

“I did it! I got the job with the FBI!” Jared boasted the second Katie entered the room.

“That’s great!” she said with forced enthusiasm, accompanied by Natalie’s clapping and Lucas’s polite words of congratulations.

Jared motioned her over to have a seat next to him on the sofa.

“Katie…” He wrapped his arms around her and placed a sweaty hand over hers, casting an anxious look at the two bystanders in the room. She had never seen him this nervous.

Panic struck her heart. She felt suddenly claustrophobic—penned in by the hold of his strong arms.

His trembling hand moved to her cheek, hoping to soften her stony face.

“Katie, I love you, and I want you to come with me.”

“Go with you…where?”

“Virginia, to start.
Then, after I finish my training—who knows, we’ll have to wait and see.”

Katie made a quick assessment of the room. Jared looked like an eager little puppy waiting for a treat, Natalie made no attempt to hide the sneer on her face, and Lucas…
was that worry on his face?

“I’ve still got the kettle on,” Lucas said.
“Natalie, why don’t you and I go into the kitchen and make some tea—give these two a little privacy?”
He pelted Katie with a cautionary look before leading Natalie away.

Katie began to swelter in Jared’s close proximity, but his arms kept her belted so tightly against him that she could only wiggle an inch or so away from his body.

“Ooohhh-kaaay,” she drawled, feeling like she’d swallowed a sauna. “I wasn’t expecting that.” Again, she struggled against his closeness before giving up and declaring, “I don’t want to move to Virginia.”

A hurt expression skimmed Jared’s eyes. “Don’t you want to
think
about it?”

“Jared, if someone hands me a turd sandwich, I don’t need to think about it to know I don’t want to eat it.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means I don’t belong in Virginia.”

“You belong with me.”

Her eyes bulged from their sockets like two baseballs that had just been whacked out of their leather covers, and it felt like the heat on her internal sauna had been jacked up another hundred and eighty degrees. A tepid trickle of sweat crept down her back.

“Why don’t we discuss this over food? I’m totally craving fettuccini Alfredo. I bet you’ll feel better once you’ve put something in your stomach,” Jared suggested.

The phantom aroma of fettuccini Alfredo played around her nostrils, making her stomach roil. She struggled once more for breathing room, but his grip, like his insufferable confidence, was unbreakable.

“Aren’t you going to say anything?” he prodded when she remained silent.

She began to speak, but instead of a protest, hot, stinky, dishrag-tasting tea and toast spewed from her mouth.

Jared finally released his grip. “Son of a bitch!” he snarled, pushing Katie, who, with one hand covering her mouth, was relying on the other to help her wriggle off the sofa.

His shove knocked her off balance and sent her sprawling face first across the carpet. The vision of fettuccini caught in her brain, her stomach gave another lurch and more vomit squirted out between the seal of her hand and between her fingers.

At the sound of her master’s bark, Queen Sheba leapt out of the shoulder bag, issuing a tiny yip, and ran out of the kitchen, making a beeline for Katie.

“Oh jeez!
Don’t eat it! Bad puppy!
Bad Sheba!”
Jared’s voice bellowed.

Lucas and Natalie trotted out of the kitchen after the puppy, arriving just in time to see Katie scrambling to her feet, puke dripping from her chin and fingers, running to the bathroom.

Tears pouring down her face, she tossed tea, toast, and imaginary fettuccini into the toilet. Lucas seated himself on the edge of the tub and gathered her long, tangled hair away from her face, twisting it into one long cord down her back. She cringed, not because
she didn’t appreciate his help, but because they now had their own puking modus operandi.

“Do you want me to get rid of them?” he asked.

She nodded and put her cheek against the toilet seat, long past the point of caring that its primary purpose was to accommodate butts, not faces.

             
“I’ll be right back,” he promised, giving her shoulder a light rub.

From her vantage point, slumped over the toilet, she watched his calves disappear down the hallway.