“Well, it’s actually because...” I sip my watered-down cocktail to steel my nerves. “There’s something I wanted to ask you. Something important.”
It might be the swaying lights, but I think I spot a bead of sweat trickling down the side of Buckley’s face.
“Uhhhh, okaaaaaaay.” Buckley’s eyes dance away from me.
“Are you all right?” I ask, handing him my napkin because he is already sopping. He blots at his suddenly shiny nose.
“Did it get hot in here?” he asks, fanning himself with his hand.
The agent from the neighboring table leans over: “I’ve been asking myself the same thing.” But the agent looks like he’s a smarmy ball of sweat all the time, so I don’t consider his opinion relevant.
“Do you think it’s something you ate?” I try to flag down the waiter so we can see a list of ingredients. Buckley doesn’t have any known food allergies, but of course, tonight of all nights, he might as well go into anaphylaxis. I bring the bad luck with me wherever I go it seems.
“No.” He glugs back his water. “No, I’m fine.” The water dribbles down his chin and onto his lap. My worry mounts.
I haven’t seen him this nervous since the day he asked me out. We were at an amusement park, we’d just stepped off a roller coaster, and the exhilaration of the ride mixed with the worry about my answer caused him to faint. In the nurse’s station, mostly filled with children who ate too much cotton candy and retched on the Tilt-A-Whirl, he grabbed my hand like a patient on their death bed and asked, “Will you go out with me?”
He was so pale and clammy, yet still so sweetly beautiful. I sighed and said, “Of course. You didn’t need to do all this to guilt me into it. I would’ve said yes no matter what.”
Once again, over-the-top, but we laughed for a good five minutes. It felt good—better than crying—so I decided it was right.
“Go on,” he says, roping me back into the moment. A moment I’d honestly like to forget about at this point. None of this is what I planned for, and now I’m worried this whole night has been ruined beyond repair.
“Really? I think we should see what was in the salad. Maybe it was the dressing? You don’t normally eat pomegranates. Was that even pomegranate I was tasting?” I’m half stalling, half trying to make sure he’s okay.
“No, I’m fine,” Buckley snaps. Snapping seems to be his favorite way to speak to me these days. When did that start? And now that I think of it, why did I assume this was a good idea in the first place?
Oh, right. Because of what’s currently hidden in my pocket.
“If you’re sure,” I say, fortifying myself once more. I clear my throat. “I brought you out here so I could ask you to be my—”
“Don’t propose to me,” he whispers quickly with deadly seriousness.
“Huh?” His words bounce around inside my head like a pinball, launched and looping.
“Don’t propose to me.” He looks like he’s about to cry. His eyes dart around the restaurant making sure nobody is peering at us. I haven’t just lost the thread of this conversation. The whole thing has unraveled like a Forever 21 scarf at this point. “I won’t say yes if you do.”
Stunned laughter bursts out of me when his words decode themselves. Heads turn in our direction. Even the agent is put off by my performance, and he seems like he’d represent just about anyone. I don’t mean to make a show of myself but this is too rich. When I calm down enough to speak, I say, “I wasn’t going toproposeto you.”
“You weren’t?” he asks. He appears almost embarrassed—for his assumption or by me? I can’t tell. “Then what was all that about?”
“I wanted you to audition forMadcap Marketwith me.”
Other people loveWheel of FortuneorWho Wants to Be a Millionaire?Some worship at the altar ofJeopardy!Thanks to my late mom, I grew up grinning ear to ear while watching teams of two race down the aisles of a fake grocery store looking for specific products and trying not to fall into waiting pools of Reddi-Wip or aged barrels of baked beans. It’s slapstick at its finest. God Bless America.
“When I was reminded on Instagram about their open casting calls for the show, I knew we needed to be on it,” I tell him, excitement cranking through me. I conveniently leave out the part that I had seen the post while drinking. I don’t know what it is about spiked seltzers, but they always lead to financially unwise decisions.
From my pocket, I pull out two plane tickets to Los Angeles that I impulse bought courtesy of black cherry White Claw.
“What?” Buckley mumbles, looking over the tickets I’ve handed him.
“It’sMadcap Market,” I say. “We leave four weeks from today!”
My heart drops another inch into my stomach for every silent second that goes by. For every new crease across Buckley’s forehead and beside his frowning mouth.
“You and that show.” Buckley shakes his head in visible disbelief. “It’s an unhealthy obsession.”
This is far from the reaction I was hoping for. It’s been forever since our last vacation. Dovetailing a TV game show into one seemed like a good idea. Or, at least, not an awful one. I blink back my panic and immediate hurt. “Obsession? You know whatMadcap Marketmeant to me and...” My sentence trails off as my lip quivers. I can’t spit outmy momno matter how hard I try.
