chapter 3

On Monday morning, Nik stared at her laptop from the other side of

the room. It wouldn't stop pinging at her. She'd turned the sound off,

she'd moved over to the couch, but she knew it was still happening. It

had been almost forty-eight hours since the nightmare proposal, and

she was getting hundreds of messages in a constant stream through

every possible avenue. She'd had so many texts when she'd woken up

the day before that she'd thought her phone had malfunctioned.

Apparently, her JumboTron moment had been on SportsCenter on

Saturday night. And then again on Sunday. She'd had no idea that she

knew so many people who regularly watched SportsCenter.

To make things even worse, some enterprising person had tagged

her on Twitter with the video of the proposal, so she was getting

thousands of tweets about it. The bulk of them ranged from insulting

to abusive, with a lot of just plain mean thrown in for kicks. A lot of

men out there seemed personally insulted that she, a black woman,

had rejected a white man. Most of their messages to her used either

her least favorite insult for women or her least favorite insult for black

people and, in many cases, both.

Until she'd blocked Fisher's number, he'd also kept sending her

messages, and most of them weren't as unintentionally funny as the

Vanilla Ice picture. The last few had been kind of scary, and she didn't

scare easily.

The whole time she had to keep tweeting her way through it,

because she used Twitter professionally, and she refused to let on that

any of these assholes were upsetting her. Plus, that was her "brand"

and all—that kind of sarcastic, witty, tough-skinned woman who

nothing could bother. She had to pretend to be laughing with the rest

of the world about what a bitch she was, retweet a few stupid memes

with her face on them, and make a joke on Facebook about herrelationship status changing, when she felt overwhelmed and

outnumbered the whole time.

At least she hadn't seen any footage of Carlos and Angela posted

anywhere. They'd probably jumped in before that camera crew had

gotten anything worth posting. Whatever it was, she was grateful for it.

She wouldn't have wanted them to get dragged into this chaos or to get

punished by the whole world for their good deed.

Good deeds—plural. Not only had they pulled her away from the

camera crew, gotten her away from the stadium of doom, and delivered

her to her friends, but as she'd discovered on Saturday night after

winning the fight with Dana and Courtney to pay their bar tab, Carlos

had already paid for it. And she didn't even know his last name, or how

to get in touch with him to thank him.

"Wait a minute, Nikole," she said out loud. She talked to herself a

lot when she was alone in her apartment, which was frequently. "You

are a journalist. You should be able to find this man in less than five

minutes."

It took her about a minute and a half. There he was, Carlos Ibarra,

picture and all, on the website of his hospital. Thank God the bourbon

on Saturday hadn't dulled her memory. There was no email address

listed, but she clicked around the hospital website to see what the other

email addresses at his hospital looked like. She jumped over to her

email account, opened the "compose" pane, and tried to ignore the

dozens of new emails that had come in since she'd last looked.

To: Carlos_Ibarra@eastsidemedicalcenter.com

From: Nikole@NikoleDPaterson.com

Subject: Thanks again

Hi! It's me, your friendly non-princess from Saturday. I

just wanted to a) thank you again for everything you did,

and b) yell at you for not letting me buy you the drink I

owed you afterward. I don't know if you saw, but the

whole proposal has kind of gone viral, which . . . is an

experience, that's for sure. Anyway, I hope you're well,

and thank your sister for me, too!

Nik

She typed the email in a hurry and pressed send before she could

reconsider. Her friends would be so triumphant if they knew she'demailed him. They would think she bought into their stupid rebound

idea, when that wasn't at all the case. Obviously she found him

attractive—she wasn't made of stone—but just as obviously, it was the

wrong time to get involved with anyone. She just wanted to thank him

again for saving her, that was all.

Of course it wasn't until after she'd hit send that she thought about

the major downside of actually sending an email right now—she'd have

to look at her incoming messages to see if he responded.

She couldn't even get any work done. The story she'd been working

on at the baseball game was still stuck in the same place it had been

when Fisher had told her to look at the JumboTron screen. She'd been

halfway through a sentence, and now she had no idea how the sentence

was supposed to end. She probably had important work-related emails,

but she'd have to wade through the hundreds of other messages to find

them. She threw her arms in the air, went into her bedroom, put on the

first real clothes she found, and left to go for a walk. Without her

phone.

By the time she'd walked the thirty minutes to Courtney's cupcake

shop, she felt a little better. Despite herself, the fresh air and the blue

sky made her relax, and the physical activity even cheered her up a

little. When she walked into Cupcake Park, she didn't quite have a

smile on her face, but at least she could tell the scowl had gone away.

"Hey!" Courtney was alone in the shop when she came in, wearing

her trademark pink lipstick and a pink polka-dot apron. "You haven't

been answering your phone. Dana and I have both been trying to call.

How are you doing?"

She groaned and leaned against the counter. Courtney's brightly

colored cupcakes, all decorated with frosting flowers or trees, stared

back up at her from the other side.

"Coffee, please?" She shouldn't have even bothered to ask. Courtney

had already poured cups full for both of them and set one of each of

her favorite cupcake flavors in front of her. "You're the best, thanks."

"We both know that," Courtney said. The bell rang, and Nik stepped

aside so that the three teenage girls who came in could see and debate

their cupcake choices. By the time they left five minutes later, Nik had

finished her lemon cupcake and most of her coffee. Courtney poured

her a new cup."How did business go today?"

Courtney had opened her cupcake shop just under a year ago, and

there had been a number of touch-and-go moments with it, but lately

business looked like it was picking up.

"It was great. There was a line out the door for like half the day, and

I just got two big orders, including one for a wedding." Courtney

looked hard at Nik. "But I know you didn't walk all the way over here

to find out how my business is going. How are you? How bad is it?"

Nik groaned.

"It's so bad." She took a sip of coffee and reconsidered. "I mean, I'm

not dying or anything, and this should all fade away within a few days.

But God, it doesn't feel like that right now. I'm not answering my

phone because I had to turn the sound and the vibrate off, and then

put it in my refrigerator to chill out, because it feels like the whole

world is calling me or texting me. I needed a break."

She could not tell Courtney that she'd emailed Carlos. She would do

her "I told you so" dance around the whole cupcake shop. Had Carlos

replied to her email yet? Ugh, she wished she'd brought her phone, just

so she'd know.

Courtney checked the time and walked over to flip the sign on the

door from OPEN to CLOSED.

"Do you think all of the proposal brouhaha will blow over?"

Nik grabbed a broom to help Courtney do her end-of-the-day

cleaning of the shop.

"I'm sure it will. I just hope it blows over soon. The only email I

responded to so far today was from the TODAY show, telling them no,

I would not come on the show to talk about the proposal. I'm kind of

worried that Fisher will say yes to them or someone like them, but

there's nothing I can do to stop that, and I feel like reaching out to him

at this point is a very bad idea."

"Have you heard anything more from him?" Courtney tossed Nik a

cloth to wipe down the countertops while she packed away the rest of

the cupcakes.

"Unfortunately, yes. I've blocked him everywhere, which probably

means he's saying all sorts of shit about me that I can't see, but at thispoint, that's better than the alternative."

Courtney turned on Missy Elliott to keep them company as they

cleaned up.

"Oh, I'll find out what he's saying about you, don't worry about

that." Courtney had an evil grin on her face that Nik decided not to ask

about. It was probably better that she be ignorant of whatever

Courtney was planning to do to Fisher.

"Want a ride home?" Courtney asked her. "Dinner? Leftover

cupcakes?"

"No, no, and yes. Or rather, no, yes, and yes. Have I ever said no to

leftover cupcakes? But I can walk home. I need to work up my appetite

for these."

Courtney filled up a box of cupcakes and put it in one of her pink

and white bags.

"Let me know if you need anything else. And if you need company

tonight, I can be there at the snap of your fingers; you know that,

right?"

Nik walked around the counter to give Courtney a hug.

"I know. Thanks."

Of course, once Nik walked home, she'd started to regret not getting

a ride from Courtney. Not because the walk tired her out, but because

she wished she wasn't alone. As she approached her building she was

on high alert for Fisher's silver sports car in the area.

"You're being stupid," she said to herself on her doorstep. "Also,

you're talking to yourself in public this time; you should really save

that for inside the house, Nikole."

She unlocked her front door, and then hesitated on the threshold.

Finally, she grabbed a cast-iron pan from her kitchen and, feeling like

an idiot the entire time, looked in every hiding place in her apartment.

After finding nothing other than a lot more dirty laundry than she

thought she'd had, she tried to relax and sat back down at her laptop to

check her email.

Fifty-seven more people had emailed her in the two hours that she'd

been gone. And not a single one of the fifty-seven was named Carlos

Ibarra."It was like this, Dr. Ibarra," Luke, his newest patient said. "There was

this girl, right?"

Carlos laughed.

"How did I know that that's how this story was going to start? But

keep going, all of the best stories start that way."

Carlos listened to the kid's story, took notes, gave him both medical

advice—for the sprained ankle that he got from running down the

street with the girl (rest, ice, elevation, lots of ibuprofen) and the rash

he'd gotten from hiding in the poison-oak-laced bushes behind her

house (a prescription cream)—and general life advice (girls who make

you go through dangerous situations to prove your worth to them are

always exciting at first and then you regret it).

That, of course, made him think about how he'd shoved that

cameraman out of the way in order to get Nik safely out of Dodger

Stadium. The difference, though, was that was his idea, not hers. But

he understood where his patient was coming from—he still felt a rush

when he thought about swooping down on Nik and getting her out of

the stadium. It was probably just because he didn't do anything

dangerous these days other than driving too fast.

He'd had SportsCenter in the background on Sunday morning and

was engrossed in the Sunday L.A. Times movie section, when he'd

heard the announcer say "Can you believe what happened to this poor

guy?" He'd looked up at the screen, just in time to see Nik's wide-open

mouth and Man Bun drop down onto one knee. He'd been wondering

all day how Nik was doing. He wished he'd figured out a way to

smoothly get her phone number before he and Angie had left the bar.

Maybe sometime he would go back to see if he could accidentally run

into her there. She said she and her friends went to that bar a lot,

right?

He went back to his office after that appointment, hopefully his last

one of the day, unless there was an emergency in the next hour and a

half. He typed his notes from his appointments into the online system,

making sure to only note the parent-friendly details from the stories

that the teens had told him since their parents all had access to their

information. With just half an hour to go until his Monday was over, heclicked over to his work email, to see what stupid administrative tasks

people had sent him this time.

Nikole Paterson? He clicked on the screen so fast that he

accidentally clicked on the email below it first, and had to skim

through a message about vaccinations before he realized what was

happening and went back.

"I don't know if you saw, but the whole proposal has kind of gone

viral." He had, in fact, noticed that the whole proposal had gone viral.

She must have heard from everyone she knew, and then some. He had

no idea how she'd found his email address, but he was glad she had.

To: Nikole@NikoleDPaterson.com

From: Carlos_Ibarra@eastsidemedicalcenter.com

Hey! Good to hear from you. I figured you'd want to yell

at me about the drinks, but I also figured you and your

friends already had too much bourbon to figure out a

bill. And yeah, I saw you on SportsCenter. Have you

gotten emails and texts from literally everyone you

know?

Carlos

He got an email back right before he was about to leave the office.

To: Carlos_Ibarra@eastsidemedicalcenter.com

From: Nikole@NikoleDPaterson.com

To answer your question, every single other email in my

inbox has the subject line "Was that you?" or "OMG that

was you!" and I can't bear to look at any of them. So

yes, I've gotten texts and emails (and Facebook

messages, and tweets, and LinkedIn messages, for the

love of God) from literally everyone I know. I have

ignored all of them so far and have been hiding in my

apartment almost all day, with a brief excursion to pick

up cupcakes from Courtney's shop, but I'm going a little

stir-crazy.

Nik

Was that a hint? She didn't seem like a hinting kind of person, but

maybe?

To: Nikole@NikoleDPaterson.com

From: Carlos_Ibarra@eastsidemedicalcenter.comyou're in the mood for a friendly face tonight, let me

know. About to leave work, want to grab dinner? Text

me, I'm at 310-555-4827. I promise I won't say "OMG

that was you!"

Carlos

He double-checked his phone all the way to the parking garage, but

nothing. Okay, maybe it wasn't a hint. Damn it. It had been a long time

since he'd met someone who could laugh at herself the way Nik could,

even in the middle of a crisis.

Also, he'd really liked the way she'd looked in that snug baseball T-

shirt and those jeans, he wasn't going to lie.

He'd seen way too many accidents in his stint working in the ER to

check his phone while he was driving, but he had to fight himself more

than once from reaching for it on the way home. But when he pulled up

to his apartment and grabbed it out of his pocket, there was nothing

other than five group texts about his basketball league.

Just as he walked in the door, his phone chimed.

Going to take you up on that offer for dinner, but this time it's my treat. What time

and where? Not a bar, though, I'm still recovering from Saturday.

He was so busy grinning down at his phone that he almost tripped

over the Amazon box in his entryway. Worth it.

7:30? Thai? There's a fun place on Sunset, do you know it? Night+Market?

She did know it. He changed into jeans and his favorite T-shirt,

killed some time by replying to all of the basketball messages with

trash talk, and walked back out the door.

He put his name on the list and hung out by the door and pretended

to be absorbed in his phone. She walked in the door at 7:33, not that he

was checking. She stood at the door and peered around the restaurant,

a guarded look on her face, her sunglasses again tucked into her dark

curly hair.

"Hey!" He waved at her. Her face relaxed into a grin when she saw

him. She was wearing jeans and a black shirt that looked better on her

than any plain black shirt had a right to look.

"Hey yourself. Thank you for rescuing me yet again. If you hadn't

suggested dinner, I would have had a half-dozen cupcakes for dinner,

hated myself for it, and then had another half dozen for dessertHe laughed.

"Thai food is definitely a much better idea. Where'd all the cupcakes

come from?"

She leaned against the wall next to him.

"I forced myself out of the house today and walked to Courtney's

shop. I hung around until closing and she gave me the leftovers."

"That's convenient to have a friend with a cupcake store." Now that

he was looking at her closely, he could see a spot of white frosting

standing out against her warm brown cheek and fought his impulse to

wipe it off.

"You're telling me. She usually gives any leftovers to the employees

at the other shops nearby, as a sort of goodwill/'we're all in this

together' kind of thing, but I guess today she thought my need was

more important. I certainly wasn't going to argue with her."

They made small talk as they waited for their table, too surrounded

by other people to talk about anything important. After longer a wait

than he'd hoped, the host finally called his name.

As Carlos walked behind Nik on the way to a table, he admired her

shape in her snug jeans. He was pretty sure this woman hated all men

at the moment, but he could look, couldn't he?

They both ordered beer before they opened their menus.

"You're going to have to keep me from ordering everything on the

menu, I'm starving," he said.

Nik glanced over the menu and grinned.

"Luckily, I heard from you at just the right time before I dove into

the box of cupcakes. And I'm glad you wanted to go to this place. I

haven't been here in far too long; Fisher didn't like spicy food, so . . ."

He looked up at her with his eyebrows raised.

"Fisher didn't like spicy food, and you went out with him for more

than one date? How did that happen?"

She sighed.

"Excellent question, really."

The waitress brought their beers, and she took a sip."Never again, though," she said. "I'm swearing off actors. You think

you're just casually dating, and then bam, they spring a public proposal

on you."

Carlos shook his head.

"Is he a real actor or a wannabe one?"

She laughed.

"You always have to ask that question in L.A., right? A real one, but

a terrible one. And that's not even my rage talking; I thought that even

while we were dating."

Oof. This woman did not mince her words.

"How did you even meet him?" He shook his head. "You don't have

to answer that. You're probably sick of even thinking about this. We

can talk about work, or our last vacations, or baseball, or whatever."

She widened her eyes in horror.

"Good God, not baseball, anything but baseball." They both

laughed. "As for not talking about this, honestly, I wish I could stop

thinking about this. I've probably thought about Fisher more in the

past two days than I did in the entire five months that we were dating,

that's the wild part. But wait, you probably don't want to hear more

about my disastrous love life; you heard plenty on Saturday."

Actually, he'd left right when they'd gotten to the good stuff. And

honestly, he was dying to know the details.

"If it helps you to talk about it, I'm happy to listen," he said. Did

that sound magnanimous enough? "I talk to teenagers all day; hearing

a story about an adult disastrous love life will be refreshing after their

stories, I promise."

She pushed her hair out of her face and smiled.

"Okay, but you're going to have to tell me at least one good work

story afterward, so I don't feel like such an idiot. You see teenagers;

you must have some great ones." She glanced down at the menu.

"Wait, let's order first. You already said you were starving."

The waitress stopped at their table, and they ordered far too much

food for two people."What did you ask?" she said when the waitress walked away. "Oh

right, how I met Fisher." She sighed. "Last year, I did a profile of Anna

Gardiner for Vogue. She only really got big, like, last summer. Right

before she got the role that led to the Oscar nomination and Vogue

cover and everything else, she was in a terrible and short-lived TV

show. Fisher was her co-star."

He held up his hand to stop her.

"I'm sorry, but you got to meet Anna Gardiner? Most famous people

are no big deal, a dime a dozen in L.A., blah blah, but Anna Gardiner?

What was she like? Don't tell me she was terrible; I loved that movie."

He was so thankful none of his friends were here to witness him

babbling about a movie star—they would make fun of him from here to

eternity.

"She was honestly great! Which is the whole reason I met Fisher,

actually. Anna and I got along really well, and she ended up inviting

me to her birthday party, and that's where I met Fisher. When he

asked me out, I was positive that he just wanted to go out with me

because he wanted me to write a puff piece about him for something. I

sort of never stopped thinking that, actually."

She shook her head and laughed.

"The funny thing is that whenever I went to industry parties with

him, when people I knew through my work saw us together, they

would look so confused. A few times, when he was on the other side of

the room, they even said to me, 'You're here with that guy?' I was never

sure if that was an insult to me, or to him."

The waitress set their spicy and sweet wings down on the table, and

they both grabbed one.

"Anyway, going out with Fisher was very low-stress, until two days

ago. I've had such a busy few months of work and Fisher was just a fun

guy I hung out with when I had time. I even felt guilty about saying no

to his proposal, because I didn't want to hurt his feelings! That was,

until . . . well, apparently, I'm not as good at reading people as I

thought I was."

He looked closer at her. He was pretty good at reading people, and

she looked really stressed about this whole situation.

"Have you heard from him again? Since his bad texts on Saturday?"She looked up at him.

"How did you know they were bad?"

He gestured to her face.

"That same worried look that's on your face right now was on your

face on Saturday night when you told your friends he'd texted you. I

figured there was something in there that bothered you, and since

you'd just rejected him in front of thousands of people, I assumed it

was something pretty nasty." He held up his hand when she started to

protest. "I'm not blaming you for rejecting him in front of thousands of

people. As a matter of fact, I was pretty impressed that you were

honest with him, instead of being nice to him just to make him feel

better. But when I saw that look on your face, I figured he wanted to

lash out at you."

She nodded.

"He sure did. Which . . . I like revenge as much as the next person,

so I get that, but he didn't have to keep going."

He dropped his chicken and sat up straight.

"Is he still texting you?"

She shrugged.

"I'm not sure. The last text I got from him before I blocked him was

'Watch your back.' I'm sure he's just trying to freak me out. I don't

really think Fisher is the violent-revenge-for-rejecting-him type." She

shook her head. "But I should know better than to say that there's no

such thing as one violent-revenge type; anyone can be like that. I didn't

tell Courtney and Dana about that text. They would have freaked out,

moved in with me, firebombed his house, and reported him to the

police, probably in that order. Unfortunately, he succeeded in freaking

me out, if that was his motive."

He sympathized with Courtney and Dana. He would want to do the

same if anyone texted stuff like that to Angela.

He reached across the table and touched Nik's hand.

"I'm sorry that happened to you. Are you . . . do you live alone?" He

shook his head. "Wow, did that sound creepy. What I meant was, are

you okay? Are you worried that he'll come to your house if you don't

respond to him?"She started to shake her head and stopped.

"I wasn't at first. I do live alone—I probably shouldn't tell you that;

you're still a stranger, but hey, you have a good sister, you can't be too

terrible—and I wasn't worried at all yesterday. But then today, after

Fisher's texts, and then all of the tweets and emails from strangers that

were way worse than what he said . . . when I walked into my

apartment, well. That was another reason I was glad to leave to go to

dinner tonight; it was good to get out of there and have some

company."

He wanted to ask her what was in those messages from strangers

that were way worse than Fisher's texts, but he wasn't sure if she

wanted to talk about it. And he wasn't sure if he was ready to hear the

response.

Two more platters of food landed on their table. He scooped papaya

salad and pork belly onto both of their plates.

"I'm glad I could help, but it sucks that he's made you so anxious

about this."

She took a bite of the pork belly and grinned.

"This is delicious, but also it's hot as hell." She squeezed his hand,

and he smiled at her. They looked at each other for a long time, their

hands still linked across the table. Finally, she broke the eye contact

and dropped his hand.

"Okay, please, let's talk about something that isn't me. I deserve

your best teen-client story, after that."

He grinned.

"I have a lot of good ones, but my favorite is the kid we nicknamed

Santa, because he and his girlfriend tried to hide up the chimney."

She rubbed her hands together.

"Tell me everything."