“Warding off some misfortune,” I said. “Where’re you off to?”
“Maggie and I have a lesson at Exotic Animal Haven around one o’clock.” He looked at the still-closed curtains by the dining table, as if to judge the weather. “With the snow, I want to leave a bit early. Afterward, we’ve got some socializing to do at Puppy Pals. I should be back around five….” Pop put on his scarf and gloves. “Will you still be here?”
“I suspect that’ll be the case,” I answered.
Pop nodded. “I’ll pick us up something for dinner.”
“No, no. I’ll cook something.”
“Twist my arm,” he said with a chuckle. “You’ll be okay alone?”
“Sure. How much trouble can I get into?”
Houston, we’ve had a problem.
Chapter Three
TO ANSWERmy own question: a lot.
I could get into an excessive amount of trouble, sitting at Pop’s with zero, zilch, and nada to keep me occupied. Ididtry working from home. I had shop emails to answer, calls to make, and some research to do, but hunched over my laptop with an internet connection seemed like a rabbit hole of bad ideas. I supposed I could have more seriously done wedding prep, but to be honest, I’d have rather stuck a fork in my eye. Not that I didn’t want to get married. That I wanted very much. I simply didn’t have the sensibilities to give a crap about all the details that were apparently supposed to make the big day even more magical.
I mean, color palettes? Mood boards? Lighting designers?
For Christ’s sake, I’d marry Calvin standing in my skivvies out front of Macy’s.
Romance I could do. I thoroughly enjoyed syrupy-sweet declarations of love. Hell, after a year, I still practically swooned when Calvin called me his baby or sweetheart. And I liked flowers and candlelit dinners and hand-in-hand walks through the park in the rain with the best of them. But there was something about weddings that didn’t feel all that romantic. More like an obligation. Fulfilling a civic duty. I liked date nights with my fiancé because it was justus. We did it for no onebutus.
Weddings meant company. It meantin-laws. And if that reason alone wasn’t enough to kill the mood… weddings meant a whole lot of folks staring at the happy couple through a magnifying lens as we went through preplanned and rehearsed motions. It didn’t seem spontaneous and loving in that respect. It seemed tedious, if the planning was anything to go by.
I don’t know. I found the act of being married romantic. The mere thought of spending my life with a guy whogets mewas an actual dream come true. And I’d pay serious cash to see Calvin dressed to the nines. But weddings themselves?
Meh. My planner was full of more doodles than actual plans, and it was bumming me out.
Max had suggested more than once over the last two weeks to give in and hire a planner, which, yeah, was probably a smart move if we wanted to get hitched sometime in the next decade… but it brought me to my other problem.
Money.
New York City wedding planners came with price tags that gave me hives. This hoopla was already going to be expensive enough, but to shell out how many more thousands for someone else to make the phone calls and decide between periwinkle or lilac? I supposed I could tell them to do the entire thing in shades of gray so we could skip the color details entirely….
Anyway. Point was, owning a business with as niche a market as mine, I wasn’t a millionaire. I was well off and successful, all things considered, but I sure as fuck didn’t have extra Benjamins hanging out in my wallet. If I did, I’d be paying off the excessive hospital debt a lot faster. My dad had offered to help pay for some of the wedding, but he was a retired college professor—he wasn’t bringing in the cash. And that left Calvin, who was absolutely not footing even one penny more than what I could meet him at, differences in our salaries be damned.
I shut the notebook a bit more forcefully than intended. I turned in my chair, pushed my glasses up, and stared at Dillon, fast asleep on Maggie’s bed. I could abide by the rules of dog—when in doubt, take a nap. But I wasn’t tired. I could tell Quinn I took her up on the suggestion of jacking off, but doing it alone was no fun. Not when I had a brick wall of man to play Adult Twister with.
So what was I left with?
Human toes at the Museum of Natural History.
“No,” I said firmly. “No, no,no.” I stood up. “It’s Christmas. Focus on that. I could make myself useful and order a tree.” I picked up my phone from beside the notebook, typed inChristmas trees NYC, and dialed the first business that came up.
“Skippy’s Trees,” a man said, half the greeting already spoken before the receiver had been fully moved into position.
“Yeah, hi, do you offer delivery on Christmas trees?”
“Complimentary delivery and installation to Manhattan, the Bronx, Brooklyn, and Queens,” he quickly spouted off, for what I’m sure was the hundredth time today, alone. “Additional fees required for delivery to Staten Island. No delivery available for Long Island and Jersey.”
“I’m in the East Village,” I supplied.
“So you want a tree or what?”
