CRITICAL PRAISE FOR Mike, Mike & Me

“The inventive premise of Markham’s winning novel involves a love triangle in both the past and the present among pretty Beau, the Mike she married, and the Mike she left behind…. Markham’s latest is an appealing, wholly original yarn.”

—Booklist

“…hilarious…readers will be instantly catapulted back in time, into their own versions of Very Big Hair and spandex bike shorts.”

—Romantic Times BOOKclub

CRITICAL PRAISE FOR Slightly Settled

“Readers who followed Tracey’s struggles in Slightly Single, and those meeting her for the first time, will sympathize with this singleton’s post-breakup attempts to move on in this fun, lighthearted romp with a lovable heroine.”

—Booklist

“Like many women, Tracey needs to figure out when to listen to her friends and when to listen to herself.”

—Romantic Times BOOKclub

CRITICAL PRAISE FOR Slightly Single

“…an undeniably fun journey for the reader.”

—Booklist

“Bridget Jonesy…Tracey Spadolini smokes, drinks and eats too much, and frets about her romantic life.”

—Publishers Weekly

WENDY MARKHAM

is a pseudonym for New York Times bestselling, award-winning novelist Wendy Corsi Staub, who has written more than sixty fiction and nonfiction books for adults and teenagers in various genres—among them contemporary and historical romance, suspense, mystery, television and movie tie-in and biography. She has coauthored a hardcover mystery series with former New York City mayor Ed Koch and has ghostwritten books for various well-known personalities. A small-town girl at heart, she was born and raised in western New York on the shores of Lake Erie and in the heart of the notorious snow belt. By third grade, her heart was set on becoming a published author; a few years later, a school trip to Manhattan convinced her that she had to live there someday. At twenty-one, she moved alone to New York City and worked as an office temp, freelance copywriter, advertising account coordinator and book editor before selling her first novel, which went on to win a Romance Writers of America RITA® Award. She has since received numerous positive reviews and achieved bestseller status, most notably for the psychological suspense novels she writes under her own name. Her Red Dress Ink title Slightly Single was one of Waldenbooks’ Best Books of 2002. Very happily married with two children, Wendy writes full-time and lives in a cozy old house in suburban New York, proving that childhood dreams really can come true.

Slightly Engaged
Wendy Markham

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MILLS & BOON

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In loving memory of my beautiful mom,

Francella Corsi

April 17, 1942–May 11, 2005

You alone read and loved everything I ever wrote….

And you said you liked the “funny ones” best of all. Here’s one

more, written with laughter through tears, especially for you.

Most of all the other beautiful things in life come by twos and threes, by dozens and hundreds. Plenty of roses, stars, sunsets, rainbows, brothers, and sisters, aunts and cousins, but only one mother in the whole wide world.

—Kate Douglas Wiggin

Contents

Part I: Labor Day Weekend

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Part II: Sweetest Day, Beggar’s night

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Part III: Thanksgiving

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Part IV: Christmas

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Part V: Anguilla

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Part VI: Valentine’s Day

Chapter 18

Part VII: October

Epilogue

Part I

Chapter 1

I love weddings!

Doesn’t everyone?

Um, apparently not.

“Cripes, Tracey, I can’t believe this is how we’re spending the last Saturday of the summer.”

That’s my live-in boyfriend, Jack, grumbling as he gazes bleakly through the windshield of our rented subcompact car at the holiday-traffic-clogged Jersey Turnpike. The midday sun is glaring overhead and heat radiates in waves off the asphalt, along with toxic black exhaust fumes.

Thank God for air-conditioning. I adjust the full-blast passenger’s-side vent to blow in the vicinity of my navel, lest it muss my fancy upswept do.

It took me almost an hour and a half a can of Aussie Freeze Spray to get my straight, bra-clasp-length brown hair looking this supermodelish. It’ll probably wilt the second I get out of the car, but at least Jack got to appreciate it. He was momentarily complimentary about my hair and my slinky red cocktail dress before he went back to grousing about the wedding.

It shouldn’t bug me that he didn’t mention anything about how I was wearing a similar red dress the night we met.

It shouldn’t, but it does.

I can’t help it. For the first year or so that we were together, he made a point of noticing details like that. I guess he’s gotten less romantic the last few months. Or maybe I’ve gotten overly sensitive. I shouldn’t go around weighing every comment he makes—or noticing the ones he doesn’t make anymore.

I shouldn’t, but lately, I do.

It’s not that I think we’ve fallen out of love. If anything, we’ve become closer, our lives interwoven. His friends are my friends; his mother and his favorite sister, Rachel, sometimes call just to talk to me. My friends are his friends; my mother and sister—well, forget about them. The point is, we’re still a solid couple. We laugh all the time; we know each other’s most intimate secrets; the sex is frequent and good, if I do say so myself.

So what’s the problem?

I want more, dammit. I deserve more. I’m finally over the pesky feelings of unworthiness and insecurity that festered in the wake of my arrogant ex-boyfriend, Will, who callously blew me off two summers ago.

It’s not as though I’ve come right out and asked Jack what his intentions are—maybe because I’m afraid of the answer. But lately, I’ve found myself wondering pretty frequently—all right, constantly—whether Jack is ever going to take the initiative to make our relationship permanent.

Since he hasn’t, I tend to secretly look for evidence that he’s got the opposite plan in mind. Or, at the very least, that he’s losing interest.

All right, maybe the ghost of unworthy, insecure Tracey has come back to haunt me. But I really should stop nitpicking—even if it’s just mental nitpicking. Really. Before I turn into one of those Bitter Shrews.

Which Bitter Shrews, you might ask?

Oh, you know. The Bitter Shrews who nobody wants to marry. The ones who eventually become joyless middle-aged spinsters with mouths that have those vertical wrinkles in the corners from wearing perpetually grim expressions.

Oblivious to the horrific visions careening beneath my divine updo, Jack props his outstretched wrists on the top curve of the steering wheel in frustration as he brakes to yet another stop.

“We should have RSVP’d no, Tracey. This is ridiculous.”

“How could we do that? Mike’s one of your best friends. Plus he’s my boss.”

“Soon-to-be ex-boss.”

Right. Mike was fired a few weeks ago. Sort of. The command came down from the formidable Adrian Smedly, director of our account group, to Mike’s supervisor, Carol the Wimpy Management Rep. But she didn’t have the balls—or in her case, the heart—to come right out and ax a soon-to-be groom. Instead, she called him into her office and more or less told him to start looking for a new job as soon as possible.

The thing about Mike is that he’s incessantly upbeat in a dopey, wide-eyed kind of way, like a big old happy pup. He trots nonchalantly through life wearing an open, friendly expression, heedless that his shirts are frequently rumpled and his hair is always mussed. If Mike had a tail, it would be perpetually wagging.

So when Carol told him in so many words that he doesn’t have a future at Blair Barnett Advertising, Mike seemed pretty unfazed. In fact, from what I can tell, he hasn’t started cleaning out his office or even put together his résumé. I should know. He’s all but illiterate.

For the past almost three years I’ve been working at Blair Barnett, my primary purpose in life is to proofread Mike’s stuff, both work related and personal. I’ve doctored his memos, his presentations, even the supposedly impromptu toast he gave at his engagement party. If he were doing a résumé, I’d definitely know about it. I’d probably be writing it.

Never mind that what I should be writing by now—what I fully expected to be writing by now—is ad copy.

Last year I was promoted from my original entry-level account management position, but not into the coveted Creative Department, as promised. No, I was given the title account coordinator on the McMurray-White packaged goods account, which basically means I make a few thousand dollars more per year to remain in my claustrophobic cubicle and officially do administrative stuff while unofficially assisting my incompetent boss with his own duties. Oh, and I get all the freebie product I want, which means I am pretty much stocked for life on Blossom deodorant and Abate laxatives.

I’m supposedly still first in line for the next junior copywriting position that opens up in the Creative Department.

The trouble is, thanks to the lousy economy, Blair Barnett has been routinely laying off employees, including junior copywriters and account coordinators, for the past eighteen months. Jack, who is a media supervisor at the agency, keeps reminding me that we’re both lucky we still have jobs.

But I’m twenty-five years old. I don’t want a job; I want a career. And with Mike gone—which, presumably, he soon will be—who’s going to push for me to get another promotion? Certainly not wimpy Carol.

“Aside from whether or not Mike’s my boss, you still lived with him for years,” I point out to Jack, shoving aside troubling thoughts of office politics. “You can’t just not go to his wedding.”

“Why not? I should be protesting his wedding.”

“Protesting?” Amused, I imagine Jack picketing the church in a sandwich board. “On what grounds?”

“On the grounds that I loathe the bride.”

“Yeah, well, who doesn’t?”

Back when Jack was Mike’s roommate and Dianne was Mike’s omnipresent girlfriend, Jack referred to Dianne as a one-woman axis of evil.

I have to say, he wasn’t necessarily exaggerating.

It’s hard to remember that I actually kind of liked her back when she was just a voice on the other end of the phone whenever I answered Mike’s line at the office. My opinion changed rapidly when I found myself sharing girlfriend privileges with her in Mike and Jack’s tiny Brooklyn apartment.

Miscellaneous things I hate about Dianne:

1) She’s a catty, mean-spirited snob.

2) She talks to Mike in this cutesy-poo baby voice whenever she isn’t bitching at him.

3) She once called Jack an asshole behind his back and probably to his face for all I know.

Oh, and 4) She’s getting married.

Hell, yes, I’m jealous.

Don’t you think it’s unfair that she’s getting married, and I’m not?

Yeah, so do I.

Ironically, if it weren’t for me, Dianne wouldn’t be walking down the aisle today. Or, most likely, ever. I mean, who would want a one-woman axis of evil for a wife?

I guess Mike would.

Except that I don’t think he really does. He’s basically getting married by default.

When Jack and I moved in together a year and a half ago, Mike was left without a roommate. He halfheartedly tried to find a new one for a while, then told Dianne maybe they should live together. She said no way. Not without an engagement ring on her finger and a wedding date on her calendar.

Mike swore to me and Jack that there was no way he was getting married. Not to Dianne, not yet, maybe not ever. He supposedly looked for an affordable studio apartment for a couple of weeks to no avail.

The next thing we knew, he had gone over to the dark side and was shopping for diamond rings.

Rather, he was arranging a five-year payment plan with sky-high interest for the rock Dianne had already picked out.

Wuss.

“Are we almost at the exit?” Jack asks, lifting his foot off the brake and creeping the tiny car forward a whopping two or three feet before stopping again with a colorful curse. It isn’t the first time he’s said that—or worse—since we left Manhattan this morning.

The day started off on the wrong foot at the rental-car place down First Avenue from our apartment on the Upper East Side.

Our Apartment.

Funny how even after seventeen months of living with somebody, you still get a little thrill over the mundane daily reminders of domestic coupledom. At least, I still do.

Anyway, we had reserved a midsize sedan, but for some reason the counter agent couldn’t quite express—either because she didn’t speak English or because she simply didn’t have a logical explanation why—we got stuck with a car that’s roughly the size of a toilet bowl, give or take.

At least it doesn’t smell like a toilet bowl, like the rental car Jack and I had when we went to my friend Kate’s wedding in sweltering Alabama last summer.

Then again, the lemon-shaped air-freshener thingy hanging from the rearview mirror in this car isn’t much better. It kind of reminds me of that bathroom spray that doesn’t really eliminate odors, merely infuses them with a fruity aroma. My parents’ bathroom frequently reeks of country-apple-scented poop.

Jack and I keep good old-fashioned Lysol in our bathroom.

Our Bathroom.

In Our Apartment.

See? Little thrill.

After said thrill subsides, I consult the contents of the engraved ivory-linen envelope in my lap: an invitation with a tag line that reads Grow old along with me…the best is yet to be…a reception card and a little annotated road map of this particular corner of hell.

Er, Jersey.

“I think we’re about five miles away from the exit,” I tell Jack.

“That means at least another hour. Maybe we’ll miss the ceremony,” he adds hopefully.

But we don’t. We eventually find ourselves driving along a strip mall–dotted highway with fifteen minutes to spare. Unless we’re lost. Which, come to think of it, we just might be. I think I might have missed a turn a mile or so back, when I was trying to dislodge my numb feet from the cramped space between my purse and the glove compartment.

Jack’s getting crankier by the second, I have to pee, and we’re both scanning the sides of the road as if any second now we might see a picturesque white steeple poking up amidst the concrete-block-and-plate-glass suburban landscape.

“What’s the name of the church again, Tracey?” he asks, apparently thinking we might have somehow overlooked a place of worship nestled in the shadow of Chuck E. Cheese.

Without checking the invitation again, I quip, to break the tension, “Our Lady of Everlasting Misery.”

Jack laughs. “Really? I thought it was Our Lady of Eternal Damnation.”

I giggle. “Or Our Lady of Imminent Sorrow.” Then, the nice Catholic girl in me adds, “We probably shouldn’t be making jokes like that.”

“Sure we should. If Mike’s asinine enough to get married, we can make jokes about it.”

Okay, here I go again.

But the thing is…

Jack didn’t say, If Mike’s asinine enough to get married to Dianne.

He said, If Mike’s asinine enough to get married.

Period.

Which makes me wonder if he thinks only the Asinine exchange vows.

It’s not as if he’s ever said anything to the contrary.

“What’s wrong?” he asks, looking over at me.

“I have to pee.”

“Are you sure?”

I squirm and struggle to cross my legs beneath the skirt of the slinky red cocktail dress he earlier admired but callously didn’t remember to relate to the slinky red cocktail dress I was wearing the magical night we met at the office Christmas party, lo, twenty months ago.

“Am I sure I have to pee?” I echo, irritated. “Of course I’m sure.”

“I mean, is that all that’s wrong?”

No. I have to pee and there’s no room in this car for leg-crossing and I’m doomed to bitter spinsterdom, thanks to him.

My mother and sister were right. I should never have moved in with Jack so quickly.

Mental note: Next time you are cordially invited to live with someone, request ring and wedding date prior to signing of lease.

Dianne might be a bitch, but she’s a brilliantly strategic bitch. Here I am wedged into a citrus-scented Kia, sans ring or any hope of one, while she’s lounging in a stretch limo in a tiara with a glass of champagne in one hand and a prayer book in the other, serenely contemplating happily-ever-after with the man she loves.

Yes. Or, more likely, she has her ever-present cell phone wedged under her illusion-layered headpiece as she curses out some hapless florist who dared to put one too many sprigs of baby’s breath into the bridal bouquet.

Regardless, what matters—at least to me, and, undoubtedly, to her—is that she’s the one who’s getting married today.

“Hey, is that it?” Jack asks suddenly, pointing out the window at, you guessed it, a steeple looming above not Chuck E. Cheese, but T.J. Maxx.

That’s it, all right. Our Lady of Everlasting Misery is decked out with floral wreaths on the open doors, long black limousines parked out front and elegantly dressed Manhattanites milling alongside the white satin runner stretching down the front steps.

Ah, weddings. Gotta love them.

Grow old along with me…the best is yet to be…

How romantic is it to stand up in front of everyone you ever knew and vow to be with one person all the days of your life?

I experience a glorious flutter of anticipation until I remember that I’m not the bride here. That I may never be the bride anywhere. Not if I stick with Jack.

Given that the alternative to sticking with Jack is breaking up with Jack, and that I happen to be head over heels in love with Jack, my flutter of excitement swiftly transforms into something that calls for Maalox.

“This is going to suck,” Jack mutters as we pull into the crowded, sun-steamed parking lot beside the church.

I’m not sure whether he’s referring to the challenge of finding an empty space or the big event itself, but in either case, I couldn’t agree with him more.

Chapter 2

“And now, ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the new Mr. and Mrs. Michael Middleford!”

We all—me, Jack, my three co-workers and their spouses—stand and clap as the band launches into a rousing rendition of Frank Sinatra’s “Fly Me to the Moon.” Our table is in the far reaches of the room, a zone that’s obviously been designated for Work Friends and Aging Distant Relatives. There’s a row of walkers and canes and even a wheelchair lined up beside the adjacent table, where nobody is standing or clapping, presumably because the occupants can neither see nor hear.

Mike and Dianne swoop into the reception hall with their clasped hands held high, resplendent in black tux and white gown. Mike looks dashing, and Dianne…

“She looks like a cockroach,” Yvonne observes over the rim of her martini glass.

“A cockroach? Yvonne, that’s a terrible thing to say about a bride.” Brenda’s Joisey accent seems stronger than ever here among the natives.

“Not if it’s true,” Latisha proclaims.

“Oh, it’s true.” Yvonne gives her Pepto-Bismol-tinted bouffant a little pat. “She might be all decked out in a tiara and veil but she still has a pinched little face and her eyes are beadier than the bodice of her dress. Cockroach.”

“I couldn’t agree more, Why-vonne.”

Naturally, that quip came from Jack, who is on his third scotch and consumed nary a liquor-absorbing mini-quiche or bacon-wrapped scallop during the cocktail hour. He claimed he lost his appetite when he was forced to kiss the bride in the receiving line.

Yvonne nods, for once choosing not to chastise him for calling her Why-vonne, which he insists is his way of being affectionate. Never mind that Yvonne hates nicknames and generally shows affection for no one. Not even her husband, Thor.

Which doesn’t mean she doesn’t love us all to death. Affection just isn’t her style. She’s a tough old New York broad who can generally be found steering clear of small children, kittens with yarn balls and potential group-hug situations.

“Gawd, I hope you people weren’t trashing me at my wedding,” Brenda says with a shake of her big curly black hair. “Did you think I looked like a cockroach, too?”

“Of course we didn’t, Bren,” I say reassuringly, avoiding Yvonne’s and Latisha’s eyes in case they, too, remember that we’d all cattily wondered how Brenda, in her billowing sequin-studded gown and towering rhinestone and tulle headpiece perched atop a mountain of teased hair, was going to fit through the doorway of the honeymoon suite.

“Yeah, I’ll bet you didn’t.” Brenda knowingly shakes her head at me, no doubt reminiscing about how we’d snidely speculated whether Yvonne got a senior citizen discount on the caterer for her green card marriage to her much younger Nordic pen pal, Thor. Oh, and how just last May we placed bets on whether Latisha’s enormous lactating boobs would actually pop out of her low-cut bridal bodice when she bent over to cut the cake.

“Babe, what could anyone possibly say about you?” Paulie asks, patting Brenda’s shoulder. “Yo-aw go-aw-jus.”

It takes me a second to decipher Paulie’s accent, and when I do, I have to smile. He and Brenda are so cute together. She’s far from gorgeous these days, with perpetual dark circles under her eyes and thirty extra pounds of postpregnancy weight. But Paulie is still madly in love with her after two years of marriage and a colicky newborn.

“When I get married, I don’t know if I’ll dare to invite any of you,” I find myself saying. “There are plenty of things you can say about me.”

“Tracey, we would never!” Brenda protests, then asks, nudging Jack’s arm, “So when are you guys getting married, anyway?”

Terrific. I don’t dare look at him.

“I was thinking a year from next February thirtieth would be good,” Jack says without missing a beat.

“Very funny,” I mutter as the men chortle and the women bathe me in sympathetic glances.

I reach for my gin and tonic and find that it’s empty. I’m about to flag down the passing waiter when I realize somebody’s got to drive the lemon-fresh minicar home. Judging by the way Jack’s imbibing, I’m assuming he’s assuming it won’t be him.

“And now, ladies and gentlemen, let’s raise a glass as our best man, Mike’s brother, Tom Middleford, toasts the bride and groom.”

“He better keep it short and sweet,” Latisha murmurs as we all obediently lift our champagne flutes. “I’m ready for prime rib and garlic mashed potatoes.”

I’m ready for prime rib and garlic mashed potatoes, too. What a shame that I was compelled to order the poached salmon and steamed baby vegetables.

Yes, I live in constant fear of gaining back all the weight I lost two summers ago. So far, that hasn’t happened, thank God. But it might. The second I let down my guard, I’ll find myself straining to zip the old fat jeans I keep in the top of my closet as a reminder.

With a sigh, I sip my ice water—which you wouldn’t expect would taste like tap water in a fancy place like this, but it does—and turn my attention to the toast.

Unfortunately, Mike’s brother Tom is as eloquent a speaker as Mike is a writer. Meaning, his big speech is all but incoherent. Not because he’s drunk—at least, he doesn’t look drunk. What he looks is distressed. Distressed that his beloved big brother has just been joined for all eternity to a cockroach in a tiara.

Or maybe I’m reading too much into his expression and his rambling, emotional speech. Maybe I shouldn’t assume that just because I’ve never met anyone who actually likes Dianne, such a person doesn’t exist. Maybe the best man is overcome by joy, and not sorrow.

Nah.

By the time Tom winds down his toast with a dismal, “Cheers,” I’m feeling mighty depressed about the evening ahead.

“Anybody want to come to the smoking room with me?” Yvonne asks, snapping open her black clutch and pulling out a pack of Marlboros and a fancy lighter.

All of us women immediately take her up on it, including Latisha, who doesn’t even smoke.

The men—Yvonne’s husband, Thor, Brenda’s husband, Paulie, Latisha’s husband, Derek, and my non-husband, Jack—are content to stay put at the round flower-and-candle-bedecked table.

The four of us traipse through the ballroom and out into the hallway, where a tiny closed-in space has been graciously set aside for those of us who are willpower-challenged, cancer-defiant, and thus still addicted to nicotine. A noxious haze rolls out when we open the door, but we pile into the crowded room and light up.

Rather, three of us light up. Latisha fans the air with a hand that sports the recently bestowed wedding band she claimed not to want or need. As she fans, she asks, “Tracey, is it my imagination, or is Jack not into getting married?”

“Oh, it’s your imagination,” I tell her breezily. “He’s actually got a diamond ring in his jacket pocket and he’s just waiting for the right moment to pop the question.”

Everyone laughs.

I try to laugh but end up making the kind of sound one might make if an MTA bus rolled over one’s pinkie toe.

“Are you okay?” Brenda asks as Latisha pats my arm and Yvonne’s eyes take on the deadly gleam reserved for bosses who ask her to start payment reqs at five to five on Friday afternoons and eligible bachelors who refuse to marry their live-in girlfriends.

“Yes,” I say, inhaling my filtered menthol. “I’m okay.”

When met with dubious silence, I add, “Sort of.”

“Are you sure?” Brenda asks.

“Of course she’s not okay,” Yvonne barks. “Her boyfriend refuses to marry her. She feels like shit. Who wouldn’t?”

Maybe somebody who hasn’t been told that she should feel like shit, I can’t help thinking. I mean, if my friends weren’t here to validate my irritation with Jack, I might be able to convince myself that it’s just a typical guy thing; that I should just bear with him a while longer.

After all, Jack isn’t downright commitmentphobic like my ex-boyfriend, Will, whom I dated for years without his even entertaining the notion of cohabitation.

No, Jack asked me to move in with him practically the second we met.

Then again…

Don’t you think that’s a little suspicious?

Yeah, me too. But only lately. For the first year of our relationship, I was blissfully happy and oblivious to the idea of ulterior motives.

But that was back when I assumed that Engagement, Marriage and Baby Carriage would be the logical progression of our relationship. That’s how it seems to work for everyone else I know, though Latisha swapped the order of Marriage and Baby Carriage, and I seriously doubt there’s a Baby Carriage in Yvonne’s immediate future.

Meanwhile, now that Jack and I are stalled at phase one, Living Together, I can’t help wondering why he wanted to do that in the first place.

Was he merely desperate to get away from Mike’s eternal chipperness? Dianne’s eternal wenchiness? Brooklyn?

Obviously, he could never have afforded a Manhattan apartment with a roommate, because half the rent on a two-bedroom Manhattan apartment is way beyond a media supervisor’s salary.

Half the rent on a one-bedroom Manhattan apartment is just barely within Jack’s budget, and mine. So if we weren’t living together, he’d still be in a borough and I’d still be in my dingy downtown studio.

Or maybe I’d have given up on New York City by now and moved back to my hometown way upstate. That’s what everyone back home always expected me to do sooner or later. The residents of Brookside know that one doesn’t leave home without someday regretting it…or, at the very least, paying a terrible price.

I still remember the neighbor’s son who notoriously turned his back on his home, his family, his legacy.

In other words, he moved to Cleveland. When he was run over by a snowplow in a freak accident, my parents said he’d gotten what was coming to him.

Yes, I’m serious.

I’m the first person in my family to move more than a few blocks away from my parents. They’ll never forgive me for moving four hundred miles away, and I’m sure they’re assuming I’ll eventually get what’s coming to me. That would explain why my mother’s always offering up novenas in my name.

Forgiveness doesn’t come easily in the Spadolini family. My parents still haven’t forgiven me for daring to say that I don’t like the abundant fennel seeds in Uncle Cosmo’s homemade sausage, for missing Cousin Joanie’s first communion, for forgetting to call my grandmother on her birthday.

I sent her flowers.

But I didn’t call.

In my family, you call.

You can send somebody three dozen roses, imported Perugina Baci and front-row tickets to see Connie Francis, but if you don’t call, you’re out.

So yeah, I’m out.

Especially now that I’m living in sin.

In my family, living in sin is one step away from killing somebody.

Actually, it’s probably worse than killing somebody, considering my parents’ pride in our Sicilian roots, and how they’ve alluded to the fact that our ancestors weren’t exactly antigun lobbyists and didn’t take any crap from anybody.

My father likes to share a colorful anecdote about his father’s compare Fat Naso, and what may or may not have happened to Scully, the neighbor who called Fat Naso’s mother something so heinous it can’t be repeated at Sunday dinner.

Never mind that Fat Naso’s mother callously dubbed her own son Fat Naso because of his weight problem and prominent beak. Back then in Sicily, it was okay to insult somebody as long as you gave birth to them. Conversely, it was never okay to stand by while somebody else insulted the person who gave birth to you.

Pop never comes right out and says what Fat Naso did, but I do know that he didn’t just stand by, and that Scully was never seen again. Pop is real proud of that.

But he definitely isn’t proud of me, his daughter, the puttana.

Okay, he’s never actually come right out and called me a puttana. But I know that to him and the rest of my family, a woman who blatantly sleeps with a man who isn’t her husband is a whore.

The thing is, I don’t feel like a whore. Should I?

I ask my friends just that.

“You? A ho? Get outta here,” is Latisha’s response.

“A whore is somebody who turns tricks for money, Tracey,” Yvonne informs me, in case I didn’t know the Webster’s definition.

But Brenda, who grew up in an Italian-American Catholic family like mine, gets it. “My parents would have killed me if I lived with Paulie before we got married. They’d have called me a puttana and worse.”

“What could be worse than puttana?” I ask her, and she shrugs.

So do I. Then I say, “I wonder if it’s even worth it.”

“If what’s worth what?” Yvonne asks, releasing a smoke ring that wafts into my face. Funny how my own smoke—the smoke I’m inhaling directly into my lungs—doesn’t bother me, but secondhand smoke does.

Mental note: Stop for patch on way home. Time to quit.

This isn’t the first time I’ve thought of that. Jack has been after me to quit smoking for a while now. He even promised me a weekend trip to a fancy spa outside Providence if I can go for an entire month without a cigarette.

So far, I’ve made it through an entire morning. Several times.

It’s the afternoon lull that’s a deal-breaker for me. I can never seem to get past the postlunch hump without lighting up. But I swear I will, sooner or later. I’ll do it for Jack. I’d do anything for Jack.

“I wonder if living with Jack is worth the grief that my parents give me,” I tell my friends. “Maybe if I weren’t living with him, I’d already have a ring on my finger. Do you think I would?”

Without the slightest hesitation, they all nod.

Terrific.

I definitely should have held out, like Dianne did. Well, it’s too late now.

“What do you think I should do?” I ask the three of them. “And don’t tell me to break up with Will, because I know I can’t.”

“Will?” Latisha echoes, her eyebrows edging toward her cornrows.

“What?”

“You said Will, Tracey,” Brenda points out. “Instead of Jack.”

“I did not.”

“Oh, yes, you did. And I bet it’s Freudian,” Yvonne informs me. “You’re in the same boat with Jack that you were with Will a few years ago.”

“I am not,” I protest, even though I realize she might be onto something. “Jack isn’t Will. Jack loves me. Jack wants to live with me. Jack—”

“Doesn’t want to marry you,” Yvonne cuts in. “Right?”

“Wrong. He’s just not ready yet. It happens all the time with men.”

Nobody says anything.

I glance from Brenda (who started dating the devoted Paulie in junior high) to Latisha (who turned down dedicated Derek’s repeated proposals for over a year) to Yvonne (who only intended to have a green card marriage and was promptly swept off her feet by dashing Thor).

Well, what do they know? Their relationships are the exception.

“You know what they say, Tracey,” Brenda tells me. “If you love something, set it free. If it comes back to you, it’s yours. If it doesn’t, it never will.”

“Was,” Yvonne corrects, stubbing out her cigarette. “If it doesn’t, it never was. Not Will.”

“Why does everybody keep slipping up and saying ‘Will’?” Latisha asks slyly. “Does Brenda have a subconscious thing for him, too? Bren, are you secretly lusting after Will?”

“Yeah, and I’m secretly lusting after Carson from Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, too.”

Did I mention that all my friends were convinced Will was closeted and I was a deluded fag hag? No? Well, they did. And obviously still do. At least the Will-being-closeted part.

“Look, Tracey, the point is, maybe you need to set Jack free and see what happens.”

Maybe Brenda’s right. Good Lord, is this dismal, or what?

“Come on,” Latisha says cheerfully. “I bet it’s time for dinner.”

After a ladies’ room pit stop, where I ensure that I am still looking ravishing in red—so why doesn’t Jack want to marry me?—we troop back out to the ballroom, where the band is playing “Always and Forever.” That song, I recall, is supposed to be Mike and Dianne’s first dance together. But the dance floor is empty, the newlyweds are nowhere in sight, and the crowd seems vaguely uneasy.

“What happened to the bride and groom?” I ask Jack, sliding into my seat.

He sips his scotch. “Oh, they left.”

“They left?”

“Yeah, you just missed it. They started dancing and then they had an argument. You should have seen it, Trace,” he says almost gleefully. “She was shaking her fist at him and everything. Right out there on the dance floor with everyone watching. Then she went stomping away and he chased after her. Wuss.”

“Don’t call him that,” I say sharply, despite the fact that I silently called him the same thing a few hours ago. “He isn’t a wuss. He’s a man who’s…who’s in love.”

Oh, please, I think.

“Oh, please.” Jack rolls his eyes and tilts his glass again.

I look around the table and see that nobody is listening to our conversation. They’re all caught up in the bridal debacle, oblivious to the antibridal one that’s brewing between me and Jack right under their noses.

“If you and I were married, I’d hope you’d come after me if we had a fight and I left,” I say unreasonably.

Jack feigns confusion. Or maybe, in his pickled stupor, he really is confused. He says, “Huh? What does this have to do with us?”

“It has everything to do with us. I’m talking about marriage, here, Jack. And the future of our relationship.”

I am?

Hell, yes, I am. And it’s high time I brought it up.

“I’m talking about why you don’t want to get married,” I go on.

“Who says I don’t want to get married?”

“You do.”

“No, I don’t.”

Hope springs eternal. “So you want to get married?”

“Now?”

“No, of course not now. Just…someday.”

“Sure,” he says noncommittally. “Someday.”

“When?”

“I don’t know. In a few years, maybe.”

Hope takes a hike.

“A few years?” I echo, supremely pissed. “Maybe?”

“What’s the rush?”

I’m silent, glaring into the tossed salad that materialized on my place mat while I was gone. I can’t believe we’re having this conversation here. I can’t believe we’re having this conversation at all. But now that it’s under way, there’s no going back. I struggle to think of what I want to say next.

I assume Jack’s doing the same thing.

Until he asks, “Do you want your tomato?”

I watch him poke his fork into it without waiting for a reply.

He has some nerve! Aside from the fact that he just sidestepped the issue at hand, everybody knows the tomato is the best part of a salad, and that restaurants and caterers are for some reason notoriously skimpy with them.

Then again, maybe everybody doesn’t know. Or care.

But I do, and I do. It’s like tomatoes are some rare, expensive delicacy not to be squandered. When I make a salad, I cut up a couple of them so I can have some in every bite. But perhaps I’m alone in my passion. Maybe most people don’t like tomatoes, and they’re only in a salad for a splash of color to liven up the aesthetic.

Who knows?

Who cares?

Me. I care. Because the fact that Jack would blatantly help himself to my lone tomato just shows what kind of human being he is.

“I thought you had no appetite,” I manage to spit out between clenched jaws.

“It came back. Can I have your cucumber?”

It, too, is already on his fork, en route to his mouth.

“Take the whole thing.” I shove the salad bowl in his direction.

“Don’t you want it?”

“I lost my appetite.”

He laughs, with nary a care in the world, damn him.

“Really, Trace? Did you kiss the bride, too?”

No. I just realized I’ll never become one if I stay with you.

But I don’t say it.

What’s the use?

It’s all out there on the table. Now all I can think is that if you love something, you’re supposed to set it free. If it comes back to you, it’s yours. If it doesn’t, it never will…or never was. Or whatever.

Goodbye, Jack, I think sadly, watching him gobble the rest of my salad as though he hasn’t a care in the world.

Chapter 3

Call me a hypocrite, but in the broad light of Sunday morning, the major confrontation Jack and I had at Mike’s wedding doesn’t seem quite so dramatic.

For one thing, Jack was apparently too drunk to even realize we’d had a major confrontation, which goes a long way toward diffusing any post-fight tension. Thus, it was particularly hard for me to stay angry at him, especially when he requested that the band play “Brown Eyed Girl” and dedicate it to me.

I guess he was oblivious to the fact that he’d been set free, because he asked me to dance. What could I do but say yes?

I guess I could have said no. But when “Brown Eyed Girl” is playing and it’s been dedicated to you and you happen to be a brown-eyed girl, well, you get your ass out on the floor and you boogie.

At least, I fully intended to boogie. But for some reason, Jack seemed to think that particular song called for a slow dance.

If you’ve ever tried to stay angry at somebody while slow dancing with them to “Brown Eyed Girl” at a wedding—and really, who hasn’t?—then you’ll know why I wound up more or less forgiving the poor lug. At least, for the duration of the night—which, in the end, actually turned out to be kind of fun.

The band was great, the food, when I recovered my appetite, was decent, and Mike and Dianne eventually made a reappearance. They had apparently reconciled, although she did seem to take perverse satisfaction in smushing the cake in his face when she fed it to him.

I found myself thinking that I would never smush the cake in my groom’s face when I got married; then remembered that I probably wasn’t going to be getting married.

Not to Jack, anyway. Not unless I was willing to wait for years. Which I wasn’t.

But I couldn’t dwell on that all night, could I?

Sure I could. And I guess, in the end, I did.

Jack slept the entire drive home while I listened to the day’s news over and over again on 1010 WINS, the only radio station I could get on the car’s crappy stereo without static, and tried not to hate him.

Now, here it is, Sunday morning, and Sleeping Beauty is still blissfully snoring in the next room.

Normally, I love our cozy apartment, especially on mornings when the sun is streaming in the window and we don’t have to be back at our desks for forty-eight more hours.

But today, the place seems a little too…Ikea. Probably because that’s where all our furniture comes from. Jack really likes that Scandinavian, boxy, functional style. My taste is more cottage chic.

Since the apartment is strictly boxy/functional without a hint of cottage, let alone chic, his taste won. I was so grateful to be jointly buying anything more significant than dinner that I didn’t put up much of a fight. Now here I am, over a year later, feeling like I should change my name to Helga and learn to make pepperkaker so I won’t clash with the decor.

Back when we moved in, the apartment seemed spacious compared to my old studio…at least for the first five minutes. Today, it seems positively claustrophobic. Probably because one can cross the living room in three giant steps, the bedroom in two, and touch all three kitchen walls with one’s fingertips by standing on the center parquet tile.

Plus, the place is cluttered.

Everywhere I look, there are piles of stuff. Not just his; it’s my stuff, too. But his is more annoying.

Like the twelve novels he’s in the middle of reading, and the stacks of freebie magazines he gets as a media supervisor and is definitely going to read as soon as he finishes the twelve novels.

Then there are the suit jackets draped over the backs of every chair. All right, we only have two chairs, but both are draped in suit jackets.

Don’t even get me started on the shoes, the CDs and DVDs, the stuff that comes out of Jack’s pockets every time he comes home.

It’s not like I’m FlyLady, or Will, but at least I’m neater than Jack, and his clutter is starting to bug me. It’s so tempting to start tossing it, which, don’t worry, I won’t do, because Will once threw away a magazine I was reading when I set it down to go to the bathroom. I’m serious; in the space of time it took me to unzip, sit, pee, zip and wash, he not only threw it into the garbage, but carried the garbage down the hall and dumped it into the garbage chute. He didn’t do it on purpose, he said, seeming shocked by my disbelief.

Yeah, and he didn’t do Esme Spencer, his summer-stock costar, on purpose, either.

Anyway, here I am, curled up on the couch with my second cup of coffee, trying to read the Metro section of the Times while pondering my non-future with clutterholic, marriagephobic Jack, when the phone rings.

I figure it’s probably my friend Buckley O’Hanlon. He mentioned something about me and Jack joining him and his girlfriend, Sonja, for in-line skating in Central Park this afternoon. It sounded like fun when he brought it up the other day.

Now, not so much.

For one thing, I’m exhausted from all that dancing, and Jack will inevitably be hungover. For another, I’ve never in-line skated in my life. If my ice-skating and roller-skating prowess are any indication of my skill potential, I should probably learn to blade in a private bouncy tent, as opposed to a public park with gravel, roaming humans and other hazards.

Then again, maybe we should go anyway. After all, Buckley and Sonja are the only true peers we have left in New York. Unbetrothed, cohabiting couples seem to be a dying breed.

As I pick up the phone, I am already wondering if perhaps my weak Spadolini ankles have strengthened over the years, and whether the skate-rental place Buckley mentioned also supplies full-body padding that doesn’t make you look fat.

“Hello?”

“Tracey?” says a voice that isn’t Buckley’s. “It’s me, Wilma.”

“Oh, hi, Mrs. Candell,” I say to the wonderful woman who—sob—will never be my mother-in-law.

“Call me Wilma,” Mrs. Candell urges for the nine hundredth time since we met, and I murmur that I will, but I know that I won’t.

For some reason, I just can’t. Maybe because the name Wilma conjures an image of a cartoonish red bun, a prehistoric jagged-hemmed dress with a rock pearl choker and dots for eyes.

There’s nothing remotely Flintstone-ish about Jack’s mother, an elegant yet bubbly brunette with a penchant for designer clothes and chatty conversation. She’s the furthest thing from Wilma Flintstone, and the furthest thing from my own mother, that I can imagine.

You wouldn’t catch Mrs. Candell in a jagged-hemmed dress and rock pearls, let alone in stretch pants with graying hair and an unappealing line of dark fuzz on her upper lip.

All right, that’s mean. My mother might have a mustache, but she has her good points. She makes a mean minestrone, and she…um…

Well, she has some other good points. But it would be nice if she were as laid back and easy to talk to as Jack’s mother is.

“How was the wedding?” Mrs. Candell asks, and I marvel at how she always remembers exactly what our plans are on any given weekend.

“It was fun.” I tell her the highlights of the ceremony and reception, skipping over the bride and groom’s dance-floor fight as well as her son’s callous torture.

She asks about the color of the bridesmaids’ dresses, the flavor of the cake, the honeymoon destination.

I know! I told you she was great!

Then she says cryptically, “Well, I guess you’ll be next.”

Excuse me?

Did she just tell me she guesses I’ll be next?

What does she mean by that?

I’m silent for a moment, my mind racing. Can Jack’s mother possibly know something I don’t know?

I probably shouldn’t ask, but I can’t help it. My entire future—or non-future—with her son is hanging in the balance.

“Mrs. Candell?”

“It’s Wilma.”

Not.

“Oh. Right. Um, Wilma?” I ask, thinking Mom has a more natural ring to it.

“Mmm-hmm?”

“What do you mean? When you say I’ll be next,” I clarify, in case feigned confusion and sidestepping of issues runs in the family.

“You’ll be next,” she repeats. “You and Jack.”

“Next…?”

“Next. To get married.”

Next…after whom? Hazel and Phinnaeus Moder?

Okay, either the woman is seriously deluded, or she’s privy to some vast Candell conspiracy.

“I don’t think so,” I say cautiously, testing the waters. “I mean, I really doubt Jack wants to marry me.”

“Tracey! Why would you say something like that? Jack loves you.”

If those words coming from his mother don’t warm my heart, I don’t know what will.

Well, yes, I actually do. A proposal on bended knee from Jack himself would definitely be even toastier.

“Well,” I tell his mother, trying not to reveal my burgeoning excitement, “regardless of whether Jack loves me or not, I don’t think he wants to get married.”

“You’re wrong about that.”

“How do you know?”

“I just know.” Her tone is oozing confidence.

I think.

Well, it’s definitely oozing something. Hopefully not bullshit.

“Mrs.—Wilma, I’m not sure I get what you’re trying to tell me.”

Is she trying to tell me something?

Or is she trying not to tell me something?

“Tracey, don’t worry about Jack. He wants to get married. He would kill me if he knew I was telling you this—”

I hold my breath.

“—but he’s definitely planning on getting married.”

Sensing there’s more, I’m afraid to exhale; afraid to move; afraid to do anything that might shatter the moment.

“In fact,” she goes on, lowering her voice conspiratorially, “when he was up here for dinner last week, he asked if I could open the safe-deposit box for him.”

I’m turning blue here, trying to figure out what that could possibly mean, certain there’s more. There has to be.

But she doesn’t elaborate, so I’m forced to let my breath out at last and ask bluntly, “What, exactly, does that mean?”

Silence.

Then, “You don’t know?”

Apparently, I don’t. But now I’m dying to.

“Know what?” I ask.

“About the stone?”

Stone? What stone?

I rack my brains.

Stone…stone…grindstone? Rolling stone? Pizza stone? Flintstone?

What the hell is she talking about?

“No,” I say tautly, “I didn’t know about a—er, the—stone.”

Her flat “oh” might as well have been preceded by “uh” because she’s obviously just spilled something she wasn’t supposed to. Which would be tantalizing if I could get a handle on whatever it is she supposedly revealed. But here I am, utterly clueless, my mind racing with possibilities.

“I just assumed the two of you had discussed it.”

“The stone?”

“Yes.”

“See, the thing is, Wilma…I’m just not following you.”

It’s her turn to take a deep breath. “Tracey, when Jack’s father and I separated last year, I had my diamond taken out of my engagement-ring setting, which I never really liked even though I was the one who picked it out—”

Oh…

Oh, wow.

Diamond. As in rock. The only kind of stone that really matters.

Diamond.

Do you believe this? Are you hearing this? Talk about a bombshell…

“—and I told Emily and Rachel that the first one of them to get married could have it.”

Emily is Jack’s younger sister; Rachel is the next one up from Jack. They have two more older sisters, Jeannie and Kathleen, who are both married.

“But both of the girls are positive that they’ll want their own rings when they get engaged,” Mrs. Candell goes on, “so I decided my diamond is there for Jack whenever he wants it. And…he wants it.”

Well, slap my ass and call me Judy!

Better yet, slap my ass and call me “Mrs. Candell the Second!”

Tracey Candell.

It has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?

Speaking of rings…

“You’re kidding,” I manage to squeak to Mrs. Candell the First.

“No…I gave him the diamond before he left. But you can’t tell him you know about it, Tracey.”

“I won’t. I swear.” My hands are shaking. My heart is pounding.

“Really, I thought the two of you must have discussed this. I guess my son is more romantic than his father ever was,” she adds with a brittle laugh.

I know that the Candells’ marriage was never lovey-dovey, and Jack said it was always only a matter of time before they split up. The month after Emily graduated from college and moved to Manhattan, they separated. The divorce will be final next spring, and everybody seems relieved that it’s almost over.

Still, sometimes I wonder if his parents’ failed marriage has anything to do with Jack’s reluctance to commit.

But right now, all I’m wondering is what cut Wilma’s diamond is, and when Jack is going to give it to me, and how I could have missed the subtle signs that he had this up his sleeve. Because there must have been subtle signs. There always are.

Do you think his comment that Marriage is for the Asinine was a subtle sign?

Me neither.

“Anyway,” Wilma is saying, “if Jack ever knew I’d let this slip to you—”

“I promise I won’t tell him.”

“Won’t tell who what?”

Startled by the voice behind me, I turn to see Jack standing there: boxer shorts, bad breath, bedhead…

Yes. There he is. The man I love. The man who loves me.

The man who apparently has a stone concealed somewhere in this minuscule apartment and is trying to throw me off his trail with all this convincing talk about only the Asinine getting married.

“Who are you talking to?” he asks.

“Your mother,” I admit, gazing adoringly at him, wondering how I ever could have thought I had to let him go. I didn’t have to let him go to find out that he’s mine. He always was. He always will be.

“My mother?” He frowns. “You’re keeping secrets from me with my mother?”

“Secrets?”

“You just said you won’t tell me something.”

“Not you,” I say as Wilma makes a warning noise in my ear. “We were talking about someone else.”

“Who?” he asks dubiously.

“You mean whom,” I amend, just to buy time.

He grits his teeth. “Whom are you talking about with my mother, Tracey?”

“Maybe it actually should have been ‘who’ when you phrase it that—”

“Tracey, come on! Who?”

“Your father.”

Judging by Wilma’s muffled groan, I’m guessing that wasn’t a good choice. But it’s too late now.

“Your mother said something not very nice about your father and she doesn’t want me to tell him.”

I wait for him to ask what she said, but he doesn’t. He merely rolls his eyes and says, “What else is new? And since when do you and my father chat?”

True. I’ve only met the man twice.

“There’s coffee,” I say brightly, to distract him, and I point at the counter in our kitchenette.

Our Kitchenette. That’s right. Ours. Forever.

“I’ll be off the phone in a second. Unless you want to talk to your mother?”

“Not if she’s on the warpath against my father again.” Jack pads over to the coffeepot, yawning and stretching.

I feel gloriously giddy. I’m getting married. I’m getting married!

Just as soon as Jack asks me.

Which, I’m assuming, will be soon. Won’t it? At least by tonight. Or tomorrow, at the latest.

Of course by tomorrow, I reassure myself, while making forced, self-conscious conversation with his mother for a few more minutes. Jack is listening in now, no doubt ready to pounce on anyone who dares slander his father’s good name.

Before the weekend is out, Jack will pop the question, I’ll accept, and it will be full steam ahead to the wedding.

I can hardly wait.

I wonder if it’s too late to throw together something for three hundred guests, give or take, in October?

Part II

Chapter 4

Previously on Lifestyles of the Poor and Single, Wilma Candell inadvertently—or not—revealed that her son, Jack, had a diamond and would be getting engaged any second.

Presumably to me.

That was over a month ago.

Hearing Jack’s key in the lock, I quickly conceal the dog-eared October issue of Modern Bride—which I purchased back on Labor Day weekend an hour after Jack’s mother spilled the beans—inside this week’s People and stick it in the center of a towering stack of freebie magazines he’ll never touch.

Here comes the groom, I think.

I think this with just a pinch of irony, considering that forty days and forty nights have passed since his mother told me that an engagement was imminent.

Actually, I think it with a dollop of irony and a side of frustration.

What’s a girl to do when the man she loves is keeping proposal plans and diamonds all to himself?

All she can do is wait.

Wait, and secretly plan every detail of the wedding so that when The Question—and celebratory champagne corks, and engagement-photo flashbulbs—finally pop, she won’t be waylaid by research on reception halls, caterers and honeymoon destinations.

“Hi, honey, I’m home,” Jack quips, draping his coat over the nearest chair.

I watch him deposit his keys, wallet, sunglasses, Metro-card, umbrella, comb, handkerchief, a handful of change and a pack of Mentos on the table.

I swear he somehow carries more in his pockets than I do in my purse, which is bigger than this apartment.

“How was the meeting?” I ask him, tilting my head up as he bends to kiss me from behind the couch.

“It went great. She was happy with my plan.”

He’s talking about the client and a media plan, of course.

I wish he would talk about me and his proposal plan, but short of asking point-blank whether he has one, I have to be patient. As far as he knows, I still think we might be getting married in a few years and I’m just hunky-dory with that.

If it weren’t for Wilma, I would probably be job hunting in Brookside right about now. Thank God her secret-keeping ability is directly converse to her son’s.

“I brought you something,” he says, and I get my hopes up.

“Here,” he says, and hands me a plastic shopping bag that I can feel contains a smallish box, and I get my hopes up even further.

I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking that nobody proposes by handing over a ring box in a plastic shopping bag.

Here’s my thought: Jack isn’t the most traditionally romantic guy in the world. I wouldn’t put it past him to give me—

“A Chia Pet?” I say incredulously, pulling it out of the bag.

“I saw it and thought of you.”

“Really.”

It’s a small gnome. A gnome that will presumably sprout a green Afro.

For a moment, all I can do is stare at it.

Then, knowing I might regret it, I ask, “Why did you think of me?”

“Because you were just talking about how gray and dreary and dead everything is now that summer is over,” he says, and I can tell by his expression that he didn’t think it was this lame a few seconds ago, before he opened his big fat unromantic mouth.

I’m trying to think of something nice to say to bail him out, but all I can come up with is, “Um, thanks.”

“I just figured it would be nice to see something green and growing.”

“It will be.” A gnome with green, growing hair. How…nice.

“Sorry,” he says. “I guess it was a stupid idea.”

“No,” I tell him, feeling sorry for the poor clod. “It was really…sweet.”

I pretend to admire my Chia Pet. Then, when enough time seems to have passed, I put it on the table.

“All I want to do now,” Jack says, sitting down beside me and taking off his shoes, “is put on sweats, order take-out pizza and watch the Mets get clobbered in their playoff game.”

“Oops,” I say.

“What?” He looks at me suspiciously. “Don’t tell me the cable is out.”

“No…but you’re close.”

“How close? Is the picture fuzzy?”

“No, Raphael is coming over to play Trivial Pursuit. We’re making paella. He’ll be here in fifteen minutes.”

Jack has the courtesy not to groan at that news, but I can tell he wants to.

“How is that close to the cable being out?” he wants to know.

“You know…you can’t get more ‘out’ than Raphael,” I crack.

Jack clearly isn’t the least bit amused.

It isn’t that he doesn’t like my friend Raphael, because everyone likes Raphael. Well, maybe not everyone.

Chances are, your average homophobic red-stater isn’t going to appreciate a bawdy, wisecracking male fashionista. But in this little corner of the world, everyone—including Jack—likes Raphael.

That doesn’t mean he prefers Pursuit and Paella to Pizza and Piazza. Still…

“You hate the Mets,” I remind him.

“Right. And I want to witness them die.”

Is it my imagination, or is that hint of viciousness directed at me?

“Sorry,” I say with a shrug. “But you can still watch the game. Raphael and I will be quiet.”

He snorts at that. “Trace, Raphael isn’t even quiet in his sleep.”

He’s right. We shared a room with him at Kate and Billy’s Hamptons share in July and the air was fraught with deafening snores and anguished—or perhaps libidinous—shrieks. I probably should have thought to warn Jack that Raphael talks in his sleep. And that he sleeps in the nude.

“Well, lucky you, he isn’t sleeping over tonight,” I tell Jack.

“Yeah, lucky me. I’m going to change into my sweats.”

“Sweats?”

“What’s wrong with sweats?”

“Sweats are just too…”

“Too…what?” he asks. “Too comfortable? Too hetero? Too…?”

“Dumpy. I mean, come on, Jack, we’re having company. And you know how Raphael is. He’ll be dressed up.”

“So you want me to dig out my feather boa and hot pants so he and I can be twins?”

I have to laugh. “No, just at least wear jeans, okay?”

“Is a sweatshirt out of the question?”

“Only if you were planning to wear the hooded one with the broken zipper and the bleach stain on the front.”

I can tell by his expression that he was.

“What’s wrong with that one?” he asks. “Too dumpy?”

“Too Unabomber.”

He scowls.

“Don’t be mad, Jack. Come on. Cheer up. Do you want to invite somebody over, too?” I ask in my best toddler-soothing voice, thinking maybe poor Jackie wants a playdate, too.

“Like who?”

“How about Mitch?”

Mitch is one of his college buddies who recently moved to Manhattan and doesn’t know many people yet. I keep meaning to fix him up with one of my friends, because it’s a sin to let a cute single guy go to waste in this town.

“I can’t invite Mitch,” says Jack, who needless to say doesn’t share my views on cute single guys going to waste.

“Why not? He’s probably sitting home alone.”

“That’s better than being pounced on by a horny queen who thinks every single guy in New York is secretly closeted.”

“Horny queen?” I echo ominously. “That’s really mean, Jack.”

“It’s also how Raphael described himself in the last personals ad he ran.”

That’s right. He did. And he meant it in a most complimentary way.

He got a ton of responses, too.

“Don’t you remember what happened when you invited Raphael over the night Jeff was in town?” Jeff is an old frat brother of Jack’s.

Feigning Alzheimer’s, I ask, “No, what happened?”

“For starters, Raphael gave him a lap dance.”

“Oh, yeah.” I shrug. “I guess you won’t be inviting anyone over tonight, then.”

“I guess not. You’re lucky I’m staying home at all.”

I’m lucky he’s staying home? Is it me, or should he be wearing a wife beater and belching down canned beer when he says something like that?

“I’m going to change,” he says, planting a cozy little kiss on my nose, and I promptly decide to let him off the hook.

You can’t really blame a guy for being a little cranky under the circumstances. In fact, how many straight live-in boyfriends would shave, and put on a nice polo shirt and clean jeans for a horny queen?

That’s exactly what Jack does.

He emerges from the bathroom in a mist of air freshener just as I’m about to open the door for Raphael.

“Is that Lysol?” I ask, sniffing.

“Room spray. Gristedes was out of Lysol.”

“Snoopy Sniffer is going to comment,” I warn him.

Raphael’s nose is even more discriminating about scents—good and bad—than he is about fashion.

Jack shrugs, and I open the door.

First, I should point out that with his Latin good looks, Raphael is a dead ringer for Ricky Martin. Rather, Ricky Martin is a dead ringer for Raphael because, as Raphael likes to say, he himself is still hotter than hot and Ricky is more over than pink tweed bouclé.

I should also point out that Raphael is dressed in red from head to toe this fine evening. Red leather jacket, tight red T-shirt, tight red jeans, and—

“Are those red patent-leather spats?” I ask. Ay carumba.

“Yes!” Raphael shouts joyously, and strikes a toe-pointing pose. “Tracey, do you love?”

“Hmm…” I tilt my head. “I could possibly grow to love. Where did you get them?”

“Either I bought them off a folding table on the Bowery, or at JCPenney when I was in Missouri on business last year. I forget which.”

“My money’s on the Bowery,” Jack says dryly, draping an arm over my shoulders.

“Mmm, I think it was Penney’s,” Raphael says decisively, and heads toward our kitchenette toting a couple of grocery bags.

“What did you bring?” I wriggle from Jack’s embrace and follow him.

“Everything we need for paella, including rum.”

“Rum goes into paella?”

“No, Tracey, the rum goes into us. We’re making mojitos. Oh!” He smacks his head. “I forgot something at the spice market. I knew I would.”

“What is it?” I ask, opening the narrow cupboard where we keep your basic salt, cinnamon and garlic powder. “Maybe we have it.”

I have no idea what we have, since this has become mostly Jack’s domain. It’s not that I don’t cook, or can’t cook. It’s just that ever since he cooked for me on one of our very significant first dates, it’s become our little tradition.

“I need saffron,” Raphael reveals. “Got any?”

I glance at Jack, who’s lingering on the outskirts of the kitchen because three adults can’t fit within the perimeter unless one of them is a waif.

“No saffron,” Jack informs Raphael.

“Jack!” Did I mention Raphael’s conversational style is liberally sprinkled with exclamation points and people’s first names? “Do you want to double-check? Maybe you have a smidge left somewhere.”

“Nope. I haven’t bought a smidge of saffron since…hmm, let me think—ever. Can your recipe do without?”

“It can, but…well, that’s kind of like making marinara sauce without tomatoes,” he says dramatically.

Moment of silence.

What to do, what to do…

Jack asks, “Would they have it at the Korean grocer?”

“Probably.”

“Okay, then I’ll go down to the corner and get some.”

I shoot Jack my most grateful, loving look. The look I usually reserve for situations involving my family. Or sex.

“Jack!” Raphael screams joyfully. “Ohmygodthatwouldbegreat! But…are you sure it’s not a problem?”

“Not at all.” Jack is already grabbing his keys. “We’re low on beer anyway.”

“But, Jack, I’m making mojitos,” Raphael protests.

“Will you be insulted if I just stick with a Budweiser?”

“Not at all. Will you be insulted if I tell you that I don’t really like that cologne you’re wearing? It smells a little fruity. Not in a good way.”

“I’d be kind of insulted,” Jack says, pulling on his coat. “Considering that I’m not wearing any cologne.”

“Oops! Sorry. New coat?” Raphael immediately wants to know, buzzing over to Jack like a bee that just discovered a honey slick.

“No, I got it last winter.”

“JCPenney, Jack?”

Jack looks insulted. “Barneys, Raphael.”

“You’re kidding! You know what? It would look really great in a nice tomato red. Or royal blue, with epaulets,” Raphael pronounces, rubbing the placket between his thumb and forefinger.

“Right. Well, I’ll be back soon with the saffron,” Jack says, and manages to extract himself from Raphael’s grasp.

“They call it mellow ye-llow…ba da, ba da…” Raphael sings, unloading his bags as Jack beats a hasty retreat. “Mellow ye-llow.”

The minute the door closes behind Jack, he breaks off his ditty to say, “Tracey! I thought he’d never leave!”

“Raphael! Are you telling me you didn’t really forget the saffron?”

“No. Well, yes,” he admits. “I mean, I didn’t forget it. I just kind of…you know, ran out of cash.”

“What about your credit cards? Maxed out again? I thought you were going to keep the spending in control from now on.”

“I splurged on something yesterday. Something big and juicy-licious…and no, it wasn’t human so don’t even go there.”

I presume there is the male-escort service I talked Raphael out of patronizing one lonely night last spring when he was captivated by an ad for an escort who billed himself as Lengthy Louie.

“So what was your splurge?” I ask dutifully. “And how much cash did you spend?”

“Two hundred bucks.”

“On shellfish and rice?”

He nods. “The saffron would have been forty dollars an ounce.”

“Are you kidding? Where? Your dealer?”

“Tracey, you’re funny,” he says without cracking a smile. He begins unloading his groceries onto the counter. “No, I found it at the spice market.”

“Why is it forty bucks?”

“Because, Tracey…” His eyes are round and he pauses significantly before saying in a near whisper, “It’s like powdered gold.”

“Really?”

Raphael shrugs. “Who knows?” He hands me a mesh bag filled with live clams and a red-and-white paper deli carton containing shrimp.

“This stuff was two hundred bucks?”

“Almost.”

Raphael suddenly seems very interested in the line of grout between the countertop and the backsplash.

“Okay, spill it,” I order. “What else did you buy on your way over? And I’m not talking about food.”

He reaches into his pocket and guiltily produces a silk scarf. “I saw it in the window of that little boutique by my subway stop and I had to have it. It matches my eyes, Tracey, don’t you think?”

“Your eyes are not plaid.”

“Listen, I know what you’re thinking—”

“That you’ve got some major—”

“Cojones?” he asks slyly. “So I’ve been told, many, many times.”

“Um, Raphael, can we please leave your cojones out of this conversation?”

“Tracey, Jack won’t mind getting the saffron for us. He can use some fresh air.”

Before I can ask Raphael what makes him think that—or admit that it’s probably true—he goes on, “And anyway, I was hoping we’d have a chance for some girl talk.”

“About…?”

“About…you might want to sit down for this.”

We both look around the kitchen, which consists of a sink, a stove, a fridge and a few inches of free counter space.

“Never mind sitting,” Raphael says. “You can hear it standing up.”

I lean against the fridge and fold my arms. “What is it?”

“What do you think of a proposal on Sweetest Day? Too provincial?”

“Do you know something that I don’t?” I shout, grabbing hold of his shoulders and shaking him slightly.

“What do you mean?”

“Did Jack say something to you?”

“Jack?” He frowns.

“Jack. Tall guy, brown hair, basic-black leather jacket.”

“Oh, him.” Raphael gives a dismissive wave of his hand. “No, this isn’t about that Wilma bling he supposedly has hidden for you.”

“Oh.” Disappointed, I loosen my grip and reach for the rum. “Then who’s proposing on Sweetest Day?”

“Who do you think?”

I rack my brains. “Honestly, Raphael, I haven’t a clue. Who?”

“Me!” he cries.

“You? To whom?”

“Tracey! Did you forget already?”

It appears that I have.

“Refresh my memory. Do you have a new boyfriend again?”

“Hello-o! Ye-ah!”

“Petrov?”

“We broke up ages ago!”

“Adam?”

“He was before Petrov.”

“Then who?”

Raphael looks exasperated. “Donatello! Tracey, you so know him.”

I so don’t.

But this is how Raphael operates. He has this annoying habit of insisting that you are familiar—sometimes intimately so—with whoever or whatever he’s talking about, when you know damn well that you wouldn’t know him from Adam. Or Petrov.

“Donatello,” he repeats. “Don’t tell me that name doesn’t ring a bell.”

“The only Donatello that rings a bell is in my nephews’ toy box. Isn’t he a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle?”

“Tracey! Donatello is a full-grown, very normal, very juicy-licious human being.”

Yes, normal and juicy-licious go hand in hand in Raphael’s world.

I think I need a drink.

I reach into the cupboard for a couple of glasses as Raphael prods, “You met him last month when I took you out to lunch at Bacio on my expense account, remember?”

I rack my brains.

All I remember from that lunch is Raphael scolding me for not spending more time with him these days…

Oh, and the divine piece of pumpkin cheesecake that we shared for dessert, which I couldn’t pass up once the waiter rolled it over on the trolley and went on and on about—

“Wait, you mean the waiter?” I ask incredulously.

“Yes! Tracey, I knew you’d remember.”

“How could I forget? The way you were flirting with him right from the start—and the way he described that cheesecake…” I shudder at the waiter’s risqué-in-retrospect description of velvety cream cheese melting on the warmth of the tongue. And here I thought he was talking to me. About dessert. “It was very…vivid.”

“Wasn’t it just?” Raphael looks dreamy.

A drink, I think. A drink, and a cigarette.

I take a fresh pack of Salems out of the cupboard and tap it against my palm.

“So what you’re telling me is that you want to get engaged to the waiter from Bacio on Sweetest Day?”

“Absolutely, Tracey. Unless you think that’s too cliché?”

“I wouldn’t call it cliché in the least.”

I pour a couple of inches of rum into a jelly glass and wonder how to make a mojito, then decide I don’t really care at this point.

“I was thinking we could schedule our commitment ceremony for Valentine’s Day,” Raphael goes on, oblivious to my imminent bender, “and I’d want you as my maid of honor, of course.”

Touched, I look up from the cigarette I’m lighting to make sure that he’s serious.

Judging by the tear glistening in the corner of his eye, he is.

“That would mean a lot to me,” I tell him sincerely. “Thank you. I would be honored.”

“And I’ll be honored to return the favor someday, Tracey,” he says, gently patting my arm as if assuring a maiden aunt that someday her prince will come.

“Jack has a diamond, Raphael.” I exhale twin trails of smoke through my nostrils and try not to think about the Chia Pet.

“Of course he does.”

“I’m serious! He has a diamond, and he’s probably just waiting for…for, you know…”

“The right moment?”

“Yes, and for…um…”

“For the jeweler to make a setting?”

“Exactly.”

“Speaking of settings, Tracey, what do you think of this?” Raphael pulls a black velvet box out of his pocket and flips it open. “It’s my big splurge.”

I’ll say. I gape at the marquis-cut diamond engagement ring.

“It’s beautiful, Raphael, but…” I search for a tactful way to put it. “I mean, isn’t that for a woman?”

“Tracey! No!”

“I have to say…” I tilt my head dubiously. “I’m thinking yes.”

“The jeweler said it’s definitely unisex. And I say it’s uni-sexy. I love it, and Donatello will love it, and that’s all that counts.”

Right. Next thing you know, Raphael will be checking out the bridal sample sale at Kleinfeld.

“So what do you think, Tracey? I’m getting married! I’m planning a glorious proposal and an even more glorious wedding!”

Et tu, Raphael? is what I think.

But I give him a congratulatory hug and I try not to be wistful as he talks about cakes and flowers and dance bands.

After all, my whole life doesn’t hinge on when—or even whether—Jack pops the question. I am not one of those so-called New York career women whose secret main goal in life is a diamond ring on her finger and wedding date on the calendar.

Those women are pathetic.

I’m not pathetic. I’m…

Well, I’ve got a whole lot more going on in my life.

I’ve got great friends, a semifunctional family, and someday I’ll be promoted to junior copywriter.

But I can’t help wondering, as I take another drag off my cigarette, what Jack is waiting for.

Is he uncertain?

Is he falling out of love?

Or maybe it’s Sweetest Day.

Maybe he wants to do it on Sweetest Day.

That has to be it.

Chapter 5

“Sweetest Day? Never heard of it,” Jack informs me.

We’re headed home from work on the third Friday night in October—which, if all goes as planned, will be our rehearsal dinner a year from now—waiting in a rush-hour crowd on the uptown subway platform at Grand Central.

“Sure you have,” I say as though he’s just claimed he’s never once wondered what it would be like to sleep with the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue cover model.

“Sweetest Day?” He shakes his head. “I don’t think so. What is it?”

“It’s a day when you show your appreciation to loved ones,” I recite, having looked it up on the Internet earlier so I’d be prepared for this conversation.

“Show appreciation how?”

“You know…cards…candy…” Diamond engagement rings…

NOT Chia Pets…

“Who invented it? Hallmark? Brach’s?”

“Brach’s?” I echo in disdain. At least he could have said Godiva.

“Yeah, you know…the candy guys.”

“I know,” I tell him—or rather, shout at him as the uptown express train comes roaring into the station on the opposite side of the platform. “Brach’s. The candy guys.”

I must say, this exchange isn’t going quite the way I envisioned.

I was supposed to very casually ask Jack how we’re going to celebrate Sweetest Day tomorrow, and he was supposed to get a knowing gleam in his eye and feign ignorance.

The ignorance is there all right, but it sure seems authentic, and the knowing gleam is as scarce as the number-six local.

I wait to make my point until the express train has left the station and the noise level has been reduced to the rumble of trains and screeching of brakes on distant tracks, an unintelligibly staticky public-address announcement upstairs, and—right here for our listening pleasure—an off-key portable-karaoke singer and her coin-cup-jangling pimplike male companion.

I ask, again, “How should we celebrate?”

I can tell Jack’s thinking the question would work better if I left off the first word and made it a yes/no.

Should we celebrate?

His answer to that would probably be no.

His answer to How should we celebrate is merely, “Celebrate?”

Which is no answer. Unwilling to let him off the hook, I say, “Got any ideas?”

“We can watch Game One?”

“Game one?”

“The World Series. Tomorrow night.”

“Oh. Right. I forgot,” I tell the man who once came dangerously close to derailing our relationship by choosing a Giants playoff game over dinner with me.

He chose me in the nick of time.

He even cooked that dinner, the first of many.

Yet here he is, acting like a dopey dog that keeps trotting back to the electric fence line for another jolt.

Jack asks incredulously, “How could you forget about something like the World Series?”

Same way you can forget to propose when your mother has practically done all the work already, I want to tell him.

I say simply, “I don’t know. But it’s not like we don’t have TiVo. Don’t you think we could do something a little more romantic than watch the World Series, in real time, with commercials?”

He has the gall to look alarmed.

Okay, I give up.

“Romantic…like what?” he wants to know.

Time to let him off the hook. “Never mind,” I say with a sigh.

After all, I owe him one for being so charitable to Raphael that night with the paella. He played three rounds of Trivial Pursuit and didn’t even complain when Raphael kept cheating to avoid the Sports and Leisure questions and land instead on Arts and Entertainment.

Anyway, clearly, Jack isn’t planning to propose on Sweetest Day, even now that I’ve enlightened him.

I’ll have to shelve the story I was going to tell our future kids one day about how we got engaged in October, my favorite month of the year. I think it’s safe to assume that the only remotely wedding-related thing anybody’s asking me to be this month is maid of honor at a gay wedding.

I crane my neck to look for the light at the end of the tunnel.

I’m not speaking figuratively.

I’m looking for the actual light, as in the headlight of the number-six train.

All I want is to get home and take off these stockings and two-inch heels. Lame, I know, but two inches are two too many for me.

“Hey, I know!” Jack says suddenly. “How about if we go out to dinner tonight? You know…to celebrate Sweetest Day.”

“Tonight? You mean…go back out after we get home?”

Now that, my friends, is a revolutionary idea. When we first moved in together we came and went at all hours, but we’ve become proficient nesters lately. Most nights, once we’re home, we’re home—especially now that we have TiVo and even last-minute Blockbuster video rentals are a thing of the past. I know. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

“I was thinking we could stop somewhere now, on the way,” he says with the air of one who plans to zip through a drive-through for a couple of Whoppers.

“I don’t know…I’m kind of tired and I don’t really want to hang around all night in this.” I look down at my trench coat, crepe suit and pumps, which I donned for a client presentation with the futile hope that somebody might recognize me as executive material.

“We can go home first so you can change,” Jack offers. “I wouldn’t mind getting into some jeans myself.”

Jeans?

Okay, who said anything about jeans?

Aren’t we talking about a romantic Sweetest Day Eve dinner here?

Apparently, only one of us is. The other has apparently set his sights on the kind of establishment that offers a denim dress code and a tuna-melt special.

I yawn. It’s a fake yawn when I start it, but it turns real before it’s over.

“I don’t think so,” I tell Jack. “I’m really wiped out. It’s been a rough week.”

He’s watching me with an oddly intent expression. The platform has grown so crowded with commuters that his face is about six inches from mine and he’s looking right into my eyes, frowning slightly.

“Are you okay, Tracey?”

“What do you mean?”

“You just seem kind of…edgy.”

I look around at the restless horde of uptown-bound office drones being serenaded by Karaoke Girl, who is now bellowing, “I’ve Been to Paradise But I’ve Never Been to Me.”

“Who isn’t edgy?” I ask. “There hasn’t been a six train in almost ten minutes.”

“No, not about the subway. About…well, I have no idea what. You just seem edgy lately. At home, too.”

“I do?”

“You do.”

I smile to show him that beneath edgy, things couldn’t be more hunky-doodle-dory.

“It’s work, I guess—it’s getting to me,” I tell him, because A) that’s partly true, and B) when you’re in the advertising industry you can believably blame everything on work. It’s second only to PMS in my stress-related-excuse repertoire.

Looking as though he’s had a mini-epiphany, Jack puts an arm around me and pulls me close, pressing his forehead against mine. “I know what you need.”

So do I.

But Grand Central Station at rush hour is no place for him to go getting down on one knee. If the train shows up he might get trampled right onto the tracks, wiping out our future kids and the charming October-engagement story.

“What do I need, Jack?” I ask anyway, per chance we’re not on the same page.

“A quiet night at home. We can watch that new Willie Wonka DVD I just bought in wide screen.”

Willy Wonka? That’s what I need? Is he high?

Granted, I liked the book and I liked the movie—both versions.

But…

Willy Wonka?

“I’ll make that chicken thing you like,” he goes on. “And then I’ll give you a back rub. It’ll get rid of all the stress.”

“Oh.” Big fake-smile. “That sounds great.”

Don’t get me wrong, I would ordinarily welcome a back rub after a tough week at work. And having skipped lunch today, I do find my mouth watering at the mere thought of that Chicken Thing. He makes it with tomatoes and peppers and olives and serves it over diet-friendly whole-grain pasta.

But when I weigh the options—engagement ring versus Willie Wonka/back rub/Chicken Thing—guess which one might as well be full of helium?

“Let’s get strudel for dessert, too,” he suggests.

“Now you’re talking,” I say, amazed at how the mere mention of strudel can make things brighter.

You’ve got to stop obsessing over this ring thing, I tell myself as the long-lost number-six train appears in the distance at last. It’s not healthy.

But I can’t seem to help it.

Especially when, in the sudden shuffle of the crowd to get into position precisely where the train’s doors will ostensibly open, I spot a huge billboard of a smiling bride and groom beside the tag line Married People Live Longer.

Is this a sign, or what?

Okay, intellectually I know it’s just part of that high-profile advertising campaign by some abstinence-advocacy group.

But emotionally, I choose to believe it’s a sign that I’ll be getting an engagement ring in the near future.

But…how near?

And why did his mother have to go and tell me it was coming?

How am I supposed to focus on anything else when every random morning I wake up wondering if today’s the day?

I’m starting to think it would be better if I didn’t secretly know he has a diamond. That it would be better if I were back where I was the night Mike and Dianne got married, when I thought Jack thought marriage was only for Assholes. At least then, I had no expectations.

Then again…maybe he still thinks that. Maybe he just accepted the diamond to humor his mother. Maybe he has no intention of giving it to me in this millennium. Who knows? Maybe he’s already traded it for an ounce of saffron and a six-pack.

The uptown local is packed, of course.

The reverse tug-of-war begins. A mass of people shove to get off; a mass of people shove to get on.

Yes, we are among the shovers.

Because in New York, you do things on a daily basis you wouldn’t dream of doing anywhere else. At least, I wouldn’t.

Back in Brookside, I wouldn’t dream of shouldering my way through the crowded vestibule of Most Precious Mother to snag a primo pew, scattering little old church ladies with limbs akimbo.

But when in Rome—or the subway…

Well, you get the idea. I’m a seasoned Manhattanite after three years here, and I can shove and curse and even flip people off like a native, although only when absolutely necessary.

And only strangers.

When it comes to people I know, I can be oddly complacent in that regard. If only I’d had the nerve to shove, curse and flip off my ex-boyfriend, Will McCraw, before he had a chance to break my heart.

But I was still the old Tracey-sans-cojones back then.

As we shoehorn ourselves into the car, I am careful to align the front of my body with the side of Jack’s to avoid accidental intercourse with the total stranger crammed in beside me.

“You okay?” Jack asks.

“Fine,” I tell him, taking shallow breaths so as not to inhale fresh B.O. from a neighboring straphanger.

“We’ll stop at the store on the way home to get the stuff for my chicken thing.”

“All right.” I feel like I’m going to gag. Does this person not know he’s stinking up the whole car? Or does he not care?

“You don’t seem very into it.”

“I am!” I snap—then repeat sweetly and guiltily at his hurt look.

The train lurches, stalls.

Lurches, stalls.

Then it lurches again, just enough to pull beyond the platform and into the dark tunnel before there’s a hiss as the engine dies and a flicker before the lights go with it.

A cry of protest goes up in the car as people curse in every known language.

“Still okay?” Jack asks in the dark, his voice reassuringly close to my ear. He reaches for my hand and squeezes it.

I take a deep breath of disgusting B.O. air. “Uh-huh.”

If this were two years ago, when I was in the midst of my panic attacks after Will left, I would be about to throw up or pass out or both.

But the panic attacks subsided somewhere around the time Jack came along, with the help of some little pink pills that were prescribed for me by Dr. Trixie Schwartzenbaum. As a delightful pharmaceutical side effect, I lost my appetite and the remainder of the forty pounds I needed to take off.

I eventually tapered off the pills last winter with nary a panic attack nor added pounds, but Dr. Schwartzenbaum warned me that they could be triggered again.

The panic attacks.

The appetite too, I guess. But at least I can combat that with my old standby weapons: cabbage soup, baby carrots and brisk lunch-hour walks to Tribeca and back.

Fighting the panic attacks is a little more complicated. Sometimes I wonder what might set them off again.

Being trapped underground in a packed subway car in a dark tunnel could very well do it.

I try not to remember the old movie I once saw with my grandfather about a subway hijacking. The Taking of Pelham 123.

I squeeze Jack’s hand, hard. He squeezes back.

See, that’s the thing. I always know that he loves me, to the point where his mere presence is reassuring. Not just in this subway crisis (I know, but to me it’s a crisis)—but in my life. That’s why I want to know—need to know—that we’ll be together forever.

Because I can’t imagine my life ever feeling normal again without him.

Surely he feels the same way.

Surely he’s ready to make that final commitment, wouldn’t ya think?

The intercom interrupts my speculation, crackling loudly with a seemingly urgent announcement.

The only words I think I can make out clearly are “grapefruit,” “Ricky Schroeder” and “explosive.”

Or maybe I’m hearing them wrong.

“What did they say?” I ask Jack.

“Who knows?” he replies amid the disgruntled grumbling from similarly stumped commuters.

Okay, I might not have heard grapefruit or Ricky Schroeder, but I’m pretty sure I heard the word explosive.

I try not to think about terrorist attacks and suicide bombers.

Yeah, you know how that goes. Terrorist attacks and suicide bombers are now all I can think about.

In a matter of moments, I am convinced that this is no ordinary malfunction, but an Al Qaeda plot.

We’re all going to die, right here, right now. And when we do, we won’t even be able to slump to the ground because we’re wedged against each other like hundreds of cocktail toothpicks in a full plastic container.

I try to shift my weight, but succeed only slightly.

Great. Now I’m going to die standing up with what I hope is somebody’s umbrella poking into my leg. As opposed to a penis or a gun.

I try to shift my weight back in the opposite direction but that space has been filled. I can’t move.

To add to the drama, from this spot, even in this dim light, I have a clear view of yet another Married People Live Longer ad.

Dammit!

I know it’s not as if all the married people on board the train will be sheltered from harm in a golden beam from heaven while the rest of us losers die a terrible death, but…

Well, that stupid tag line isn’t helping matters. Not at all.

Married People Live Longer.

It might as well have said: Single People Die Young.

My chest is getting tight and my forehead is breaking out into a cold sweat. This definitely feels like a panic attack.

Mental note: place emergency call to Dr. Trixie Schwartzenbaum ASAP.

I’m trapped. Oh, God, I can’t even breathe. There’s no air in here.

Yes there is. Stop that. There’s plenty of air.

I inhale.

Exhale.

See? Plenty of stale, stinky air to go around.

“Come on!” shouts an angry voice in the dark.

“This is bullshit!” somebody else announces.

Another passenger throws in a colorful expletive for good measure.

Then a woman speaks up. “That’s not helping.”

“Shaddup!”

In no time, a train full of civilized commuters has transformed into a vocal, angry mob. If there were more room, fistfights would be breaking out.

“I can’t breathe,” I tell Jack.

“Yes, you can,” he says calmly.

“No, I can’t.”

Verging on hysteria, I fantasize about shoving people aside and breaking a window.

Two things stop me. The first is that it’s too crowded to get the leverage to shove anyone. The other is that I don’t have a window-breaking weapon in my purse.

I guess I can always snatch the umbrella that’s still pressed up against my leg. If it’s an umbrella.

If it’s not…

Well, you definitely don’t want to grab a stranger’s penis in a situation like this.

Then again, if it turns out to be a gun and not a penis, I can always shoot my way out.

Then again, if it’s a gun, its owner might shoot me.

The thing is, if it’s a gun, there’s a distinct possibility that any second now, he might go berserk and start shooting. Things like that happen all the time.

Oh, God. I really can’t breathe.

“Jack,” I say in a shrill whisper, “I’m scared.”

“Why? It’s fine. We’re fine.”

See, the thing is, that’s easy for him to say. He doesn’t know about the freak with the gun.

“I’m really scared, Jack.”

“Of what?”

“You know…” Conscious that the fifty or so people standing within arm’s length might be eavesdropping, I whisper, “Death.”

“Relax. You’re not going to die.”

“How do you know?”

“Because—well, why would you think you’re going to die?” he asks, loudly enough to be heard in Brooklyn.

Terrific. If the guy with the gun/umbrella/penis didn’t think of opening fire yet, Jack just gave him the idea.

“I don’t,” I snap. “I don’t think I’m going to die.”

“But you just said—”

“I was joking.” Before I can muster a requisite laugh, the lights go back on and the engine whirs to life.

The train starts moving again as if none of this ever happened.

Problem over, just like that.

Panic attack averted.

At least for now.

“See?” Jack says. “I told you you’d survive.”

“We’re not home yet,” I point out. “It’s not survival until we’re safe at home.”

“Isn’t that a little extreme?”

“Maybe,” I say with a shrug. Actually, I’ve been in a permanent shrug since we got on the train, thanks to the close quarters. “I just really want to get home.”

Jack just looks at me for a second, then says, “You really are stressed.”

“I really am stressed.”

And you’re the cause of it.

All right, so he had nothing to do with the stalled subway.

But I do find myself thinking life’s minor—and major—disruptions would be much easier to handle if we were engaged.

Then I find myself thinking, in sheer disgust, that I really am one of those marriage-obsessed women after all.

I’m Kate, when she was hell-bent on marrying Billy. All she ever wanted to do was speculate on the status of their marital future, ad nauseam. Raphael and I thought she was our worst nightmare then. Little did we know she’d be even scarier once she had the ring on her finger and a formal Southern wedding to plan.

Now here I am, my own worst nightmare.

How did this happen?

As the train hurtles toward uptown, I tell myself firmly that it didn’t happen—yet—and it won’t happen. I will not focus my energy on an engagement that may or may not be imminent.

If Jack wants to marry me, great.

If not…

Well, not great. But not the end of the world, either.

Mental note: time to stop dwelling on getting engaged.

This wanna-be-fiancée stuff is getting old. I need to toss my secret stash of bridal magazines and stop asking everyone—except Jack—why he hasn’t proposed yet.

Not that I’m going to ask Jack, either.

I’ll have more patience than…well, more patience than I had with Will, for whom I waited an entire summer.

In vain, I might add.

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