The Perfect Arrangement (5 page)

And so she did. She wrapped one arm around my neck for a brief, friendly squeeze.

I tried not to feel awkward. And reminded myself—on repeat—that they didn't know I'd been spying on them this past Saturday. “Congratulations on the wedding.”

Chelsea beamed. “Thanks!”

“Are you two not going on a honeymoon?”

“Oh, we are. I made this guy promise me that.” She squeezed his waist. “Right, Matty?”

“We had to delay it a bit because of work. We're leaving on Monday.”

I pulled at the collar of my shirt. “Where to?”

“California's wine country,” Chelsea said. “I've always wanted to tour a vineyard. Italy was too far for a week, so we decided this would be the next best thing. Have you ever been?”

Matt laughed, a jovial glint in his eye. “When we dated, Amelia hadn't even been on a plane.”

“Well, that was six years ago, Matty. I'm sure she's been on a plane by now.”

My ears caught fire. Because, no, I hadn't. Thankfully, I was saved from responding by my stepmother, who raised her voice to gather everyone's attention. Apparently the birthday girls had pulled into the parking lot. This many people couldn't exactly hide, so we all became very still and silent. Then Candace and Crystal appeared—identical twin Barbies alongside their handsome Ken husbands—and everyone let out a resounding, “Surprise!”

I had to give Jeanine credit. Her daughters looked truly taken aback.

Candace set her hand against her chest. Crystal's mouth fell wide open. And then they both started laughing and playfully reprimanding their spouses for keeping such a secret. Jeanine got to them first, enfolding them both in a great big hug, dabbing tears from her eyes when she let go. “My babies are thirty. I can't believe my babies are thirty.”

I searched for a way to get to them. The sooner I could extend my birthday wishes, the quicker I could get home to my cat.

I stepped inside my quiet, two-bedroom cottage, leaned against the door, and let out a long stream of breath. Exhaustion had etched itself into the base of my neck in the form of a throbbing headache. I'd gotten roped into staying longer than planned. Two hours of small talk with people I barely knew had taken a toll. As had the stilted conversation I'd had with William and Bridget. Judging by the odd looks my brother kept giving me, he suspected something was off.

Baxter jumped down from his favorite spot in the bay window and rubbed up against my leg. I gave him a pet. “Did you miss me, Bax?”

He weaved figure eights around my ankles, arching his back and curling his tail.

“I missed you too.” I set my purse on the small table in the entryway and slipped out of the ballet flats I'd changed into after work.

Baxter followed me into the kitchen, where I popped a couple of extra-strength Tylenol and turned on the burner beneath the teakettle. I scooped up Baxter and brought him with me to the kitchen nook, where I often left my laptop. I petted a purring Baxter in my lap and waited for the computer to boot up and the teakettle to whistle.

The kettle whistled first. I poured myself some chamomile tea, then opened up my inbox, hoping to find an email from Rachel.

Unfortunately, I didn't. But there was something from Nate Gallagher.

From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Date: Tue, Sep 15, 2015 5:42 p.m.
Subject: Re: so very sorry for the mix-up

Dear Amelia,

Your mea culpa is not necessary. You're not bothering me at all. Which I wouldn't say if it weren't true. You don't know me, but if you did, you'd know I don't say false things to make people feel better.

You're actually doing me a service. I've been searching for ways to procrastinate, and this is the perfect excuse. People say I'm good with advice. So maybe it's not an accident at all that the e-mail meant for your Fiji-traveling friend, Rachel, ended up in my inbox instead.

Can I help?

Best,

Nate

PS: I actually own a flip phone. My friends all like to poke their fun, but I think they're just jealous that I haven't succumbed to technology's allure.

“There are far, far better things ahead than any we leave behind.”
—C. S. Lewis

I sat back from the computer while my tea breathed ribbons
of steam into the air.

“Can I help?”

First I dented his bumper and he refused to let me pay for it, then he had the courtesy to call me at my flower shop after my embarrassing mess-up, and now he asked if he could help? I rewound my memory to Saturday, trying to recall as much about this Nate Gallagher as possible.

A nice head of thick, dark hair. The kind that men with receding hairlines most likely envied. An athletic build. Not football athletic, but something like tennis or track. Above average height. He'd worn his wedding attire well. My age, perhaps, and good-looking, only I couldn't remember to what degree. I'd been so consumed with getting away quickly before Candace or Crystal could see me that I hadn't paid much attention to the man I hit.

I dipped my chamomile tea bag up and down in the hot
water, then did the only thing any logical girl e-mailing with a nice, handsome man would do. I googled him. I typed “Nate Gallagher” into the search engine and took a sip of tea. Lots of things came up. So many I wasn't sure what to click first. There were multiple Nate Gallaghers in the United States. How could I know any of these pertained to the Nate I rear-ended?

I clicked on Google Images. Pictures loaded onto my screen, several of which were familiar—a man with olive skin, dark brown hair, light brown eyes, straight teeth, youngish, and very,
very
cute. The kind of cute girls not only noticed but couldn't help commenting on. And he was e-mailing
me
, asking if he could help. I clicked on one of his pictures, which led me to a travel article written in 2009 on lesser-known towns in Ireland. I skimmed it enough to know it was well written (witty and charming), and sure enough, at the end where it talked about the author was the familiar picture, along with a bio. Nate Gallagher was a travel writer. Or at least he had been in 2009. Google showed me several other articles, all equally well written, all dated before 2011.

Facebook rendered no results. There were plenty of Nate Gallaghers, but none who were cute men living in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. I did find a profile on Twitter. After scrolling through almost two years' worth of tweets (he posted once, maybe twice a month) that ranged from funny to serious to incredibly random, I started to feel very stalkerish and clicked out of the site. When all was said and done, here was what I learned about Nate Gallagher:

He was cute.

He was interesting.

He was a fan of the Philadelphia Phillies.

We shared the same faith.

I wondered if he'd come to the wedding as a friend of the bride or the groom. If the groom, he must have been a recent friend, since surely I would have remembered if someone like him had been friends with Matt in college. I sat back in my chair. I
did
need advice and I couldn't really count on Rachel, seeing as she was now living in some remote village halfway around the world. And Nate
had
offered.

I clicked the Compose button, stared for a long while at the blinking cursor, took another sip of my tea, and started typing.

From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Date: Tue, Sep 15, 2015 10:36 p.m.
Subject: An Affair to Remember

Dear Nate,

I don't know. Perhaps you can help me. It's a pretty complicated situation. Or maybe it's not and I'm only making it complicated. One thing is for sure: it
is
urgent. And since I have no idea when Rachel will get the message I sent to her in Fiji, I think I'll take you up on your offer.

When I sent you that frantic e-mail, I had just finished delivering some flower arrangements to the public library in Apple Creek, which is a town not so far from my flower shop. Actually, let me back up a little. Earlier in the day, my brother stopped by to let me know he was going to propose to his
girlfriend. It caught me off guard, mostly because they've only been dating since the end of May.

Anyway, as I was walking back to my car after dropping off the flower arrangements to the librarian, I saw my brother's girlfriend with a man who definitely wasn't my brother. Let's just say they looked . . . awfully cozy. I was shocked. Absolutely shocked. And so I sent Rachel, or actually you, that frantic e-mail.

To make matters worse, my brother came back to the store this evening and announced that she said yes. Supposedly the two of them were to have dinner last night, but she had to cancel (to have dinner with another man!), so he went to her school (she's a teacher) yesterday afternoon and proposed. I had no idea what to say. Or do. There's not a single person on this planet I love more than my brother. He's head over heels for this girl. This will absolutely crush him. But I have to do something. I can't pretend I didn't see what I saw.

So here I am, sitting in my kitchen with my cat in my lap and lukewarm tea by my elbow, feeling terribly conflicted and at a loss. What would
you
do if this were your brother?

With gratitude,

Amelia

PS: What has you procrastinating?

I brought my hands away from the keyboard. I had saved the subject line for last. At first I titled it
She Done Him Wrong
, one of Cary Grant's earlier, lesser-known movies with Mae West, but then I got paranoid that Nate would have no idea what I was talking about and would simply think I had bad
grammar. Not a good thing for a guy who had a sticker on his back window about the Oxford comma. I ended up deleting that subject line and changing it to one of Grant's better-known films, even if it was an affair I'd rather forget.

I reread the message a few times, cracking my knuckles as I did. It was an unattractive habit, I knew, but some occasions simply called for knuckle cracking. Was I really going to send this? It was pretty personal information to send to a person I didn't know. But maybe that was a good thing. Nate didn't know me or my brother or his fiancée. He lived in the Upper Peninsula. There wasn't really any harm in him knowing, was there?

The cursor hovered over the Send button. The sight of it made my hands clammy. Before I could chicken out, I squeezed my eyes tight and clicked.

From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Date: Wed, Sep 16, 2015 12:31 a.m.
Subject: Re: An Affair to Remember

Dear Amelia,

You weren't exaggerating. It is complicated. I'm sorry you're faced with such a horrible dilemma.

Here is my honest advice. If I were you, I would talk to my brother's fiancée. Tell her what you saw and give her a chance to explain. Maybe it's not what you think?

I want to thank you for trusting me enough with your problem, and for giving me an excuse to procrastinate. At the moment, I'm currently ghostwriting a book for a celebrity. My contract forbids that I say who, but I will give you two
hints. He's rather famous and he's not the easiest fellow to work with, which I think might surprise many of his fans.