Excerpt
“He said what?”
“Marry me.” Claudia dabbed the corner of her mouth with her cloth napkin before returning it to her lap. Only then did she look at Rachel whose brown eyes were satisfactorily agog. “Can you believe it? He had a ring and everything.”
A furrow appeared between Rachel’s eyebrows. “We’re talking about Ted, right? Your sometimes friend-with-benefits Ted.”
“One and the same.”
“What did you say?” Rachel asked.
Claudia was tempted to tell her that she’d said yes just to watch Rachel choke on her shrimp carbonara. Instead, she shot her a disbelieving look. “I said ‘Are you crazy?’”
Rachel sat back, looking relieved. “How did he take it?”
“He said, and I quote, ‘Yes. Crazy about you.’”
Rachel fizzed a laugh. “And this happened in the bar? While you were working?”
”Yup. He set that ring box on the bar in front of God and everyone.”
“I didn’t think you had that kind of relationship.”
“Neither did I.” Their arrangement had never been more than two friends scratching an itch together now and then. Ted was solid. Reliable. And he didn’t generate one, single, solitary romantic spark with Claudia, which was the number one reason the arrangement worked because Claudia didn’t do sparks. Not ever.
“Then what brought this on? I didn’t think you’d been seeing him lately.”
“I haven’t. The last time was . . .” Claudia thought back. “At the Cinco de Mayo celebration for like five minutes. I ran into him at the parade. Before that was when his mother died. I went to the funeral.” And an odd event that had been. She’d never been to a funeral that had a soundtrack by the Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons. “So that’s it. The funeral then Cinco de Mayo.”
“That was almost three months ago,” Rachel said. “Who asks someone they haven’t seen in three months to marry them?”
“Apparently, Ted does.”
“Do you think his mother’s death might have something to do with this sudden proposal?”
“She died, like, six months ago.” Claudia knew what it was like to lose a parent. She’d lost her father more than a decade before, and while she still missed him, she’d learned to cope because that’s what people did. And because there really wasn’t any other choice.
“Maybe it was a delayed reaction,” Rachel said. “Were they close?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
Rachel hiked an eyebrow. “Was he a mama’s boy? I always thought he had kind of a baby face, so I sort of thought he might be. Illogical I know.”
“No, he’s not a mama’s boy. At least—” She wasn’t actually sure. Somehow, they’d never talked about his family or his past. Maybe because, unlike her, he’d never seemed to have any trauma that needed discussing. “I don’t think he was a mama’s boy,” she said with more confidence, as if sounding certain would make it so. “He has changed his look, though, since she died. He was always so clean-cut with his short hair and all. I mean, he always looked like an engineer. Like he should have a pocket protector in his shirt pocket.”
“He is, isn’t he?” Rachel asked.
“Yes. Petrochemical. But now he looks . . . scruffy. Kind of attractive, but . . . kind of unintentionally. Now he’s got facial hair.” Claudia swiped her fingers across her chin. “Not a beard really, but you know how some razors have that setting that make guys look like they haven’t shaved for three days? Like that. He doesn’t look like an engineer anymore.”
“You mean he looks like someone whose mommy isn’t around anymore, nagging him to shave every day?” Rachel asked dryly as she broke of a piece of her roll and popped it in her mouth. “He did have his own place, right?”
“Of course, he did. What thirty-five year old man lives with his mother?”
“They’re out there,” Rachel said. “Have you ever seen his place?”
Claudia shook her head. “We usually spend the night at my place because he has a roommate.”
“So you never actually saw where he lives.”
“No, I— Wait, yes, I did spend a night at his place. His roommate was out of town and—” And the house had been spotless. And the only pictures had been of Ted and his mother. “Oh, hell. He lived with his mother.”
