Miss Impractical Pants (6 page)

***

“So help me, Katie Sutherland,” Sheila threatened, “I love you like my own daughter, but if you get even a speck of dirt on either of those shoes or that gown, I’ll ring your neck.”

Katie halted just before the back door, nearly causing a Jared and Dylan pile-up. “What would you like me to do, Sheila?” Katie threw her hands above her head in frustration. “I’ve got to get out to my car to get a change of clothes and I’m not going out there naked.”

“Give your keys to Dylan and he can bring you a change of clothes.”

“No way, that won’t work.” She felt an overdue defiance toward Sheila. “I know exactly where everything is.”
Which, of course, was a lie.
“And Dylan will just make a mess of everything.”

Sheila contemplated the predicament for a moment.

“Do you have any other suggestions?” Katie couldn’t help her own sarcasm.

The Eve St. Sebastian smirk slithering across Sheila’s face was a reminder that Katie had chosen the wrong opponent. Sheila’s cunning eyes sized up Katie, then her two companions. “Yes, I do.” Cool as ice, Sheila gave a succinct nod that warned against argument.

The moment she was slung over Jared’s shoulder like a shimmery sack of potatoes, Katie cursed herself for being so sacrificial. “Put me down! Put me down right now!” She pounded Jared in the back with her fists, but with Sheila’s threats still ringing in his ears, Jared did not respond.

“I should have just said no! Why didn’t I just say no?”

“Because it’s not in your nature to say no.”
Dylan followed behind, making no attempt to hide his amusement.

“If I weren’t such a damn pushover, I wouldn’t even be wearing this gilded toga and these treacherous shoes in the first place! And I certainly wouldn’t be being hauled across the parking lot like some caveman’s booty! I would be taking you to the airport and we would be laughing outrageously, sipping overpriced hot chocolate!”

“But I am laughing outrageously.”

She scowled and continued her rant until Jared deposited her on Rhett Butler’s backseat. Retrieving a pair of jeans and an old hoodie from the heap of clothing in the back, she exchanged Vera Wang and Manolo for Levi Strauss and Uggs—not caring a fig for modesty. Dylan, who had been Katie’s “wardrobe assistant” through most of their high school and college years, was unfazed. Jared, on the other hand, looked like his eyes were going to pop out of their sockets, his face boiling several shades of scarlet as he tried to look at everything other than the half-naked Katie.

“Well, I guess this is it.” She jumped from the car with much more enthusiasm than she felt and attacked Dylan with a zealous hug that almost toppled them both into the snow.

“Poor Cinderella, I’m sorry that you’re stuck here cleaning up, and I’m sorry we didn’t get to hang out.” His squeeze was so tight it stopped the trickle of tears that had begun trailing down her cheeks.

“Next time,” she said, trying not to show her low spirits.

“I’m going to miss you, Katie.”

“I’ll miss you, too.” She dove in for another hug.

Jared, catching a clue for the first time that evening, slogged off to warm his car.

“He likes you,” Dylan began as soon as he was out of earshot.

Katie rolled her eyes. “He’s a total hovercraft.”

“Do you even know what a hovercraft is?”

“Yeah, it’s someone who suffocates people with his omnipresence.”

Dylan shook his head. “No, it’s not. Do
me
a favor and just say yes when he asks you out?”

“When he asks me out? What encouragement have I possibly given him to ask me out?”

Dylan contemplated for a second. “Well, none, but Christopher has given him plenty. Jared has wanted to ask you out since before he met you.”

Katie pitched her eyes to the heavens and cursed Christopher’s name.

“Do it,” he pleaded, “as a favor to me and to Christopher.”

“Not for Christopher,” she dug in. “I’m tired of bailing his butt out tonight.”

“For me, then?”

“Why do you care so much?”

“I just don’t want to see the poor guy crushed before you even give him a chance.”

Katie emptied her lungs in one exaggerated exhale. “Fine,” she conceded with a stamp of her boot. “But you owe me.”

“Fine.”
He pulled her in for one last hug and planted a warm kiss on her cheek.

Entrenched in her sofa, Katie stared up at her ceiling. She worried about its increasing fragility. Upstairs, her aerobics-obsessed neighbor, Stanley Speedo, was pounding his way through another session of
Sweatin’ to the Oldies.

Tha-dump-da, tha-dump-da, tha-dump-da hoomph.
Tha-dump-da, tha-dump-da, tha-dump-da hoomph.
Katie scrunched her eyes shut. The last thing she needed overshadowing her feelings of self-loathing was half-naked images of Stanley marching in time with Richard Simmons. There was a very good reason she’d dubbed the man Stanley Speedo—not only was she unable to wrap her tongue around his real name, but she’d never seen him in anything but a Speedo.

Just thinking about not thinking about it provoked her gag reflex. No matter how many times Katie’s brain shouted
Dooonn’t loook!
her
eyes were always drawn like magnets to his
you-know-what.
How could they not? He was like a nappy-headed rhinoceros in Spandex.

In the two years they had been neighbors, he always greeted her with the same cheerful “Hallo Katie, pretty lady!” in a heavy Mediterranean accent. He was a nice man and a concerned neighbor, and Katie tried to not to fault him for his poor fashion sense—she’d been on the European continent enough to know he certainly wasn’t the only man with a penchant for banana hammocks. But tonight, she couldn’t help it.

As he rhythmically danced to bring her house down, his droopy, naked belly shaking with wild abandon, Katie realized her life had become routine.
She bear-hugged a pillow to her stomach.
Once—
okay, tons of times, on occasions such as this, when she felt suffocated by the monotony of daily life, she’d sketched out a life plan: her Amazing Plan. She’d spent the last hour tearing her place apart until it looked like a burglary scene, and hadn’t been able to locate even one of those copies. She didn’t have the will to scribble out another, so she spoke the list aloud like a well-rehearsed mantra.

1.
      
Graduate

2.
      
Pay off student loans (not immediately, of course)

3.
      
Explore Eastern Europe

4.
      
Choose a meaningful career that will not compromise a life of travel and adventure

So far, she hadn’t checked off a single item of her Amazing Plan.

A snapshot of her bank statement flashed in her brain. She bent her head and stifled a scream against the pillow. It was missing a couple of zeros—thanks to the previous year’s Paris extravaganza. One missing zero meant she’d have to wait a few more months to begin planning her next adventure—but two missing zeros…. She sighed and slunk deeper into the sofa. What did it matter anyway? She still had one semester to go before getting her bachelor’s degree, and she was too close to actually accomplishing something to take another sabbatical.

Too discouraged to leave her sofa, Katie stretched her leg to its full extent and opened the DVD cabinet with her chipped nail-polished toe. She might as well immerse herself in the wonderful world of chick-flickdom and down a whole pint of Ben and Jerry’s. If she was
going to feel unfulfilled and pathetic, she might as well feel like an unfilled and pathetic cow.

She toed out a selection of classics and scooted them across the floor toward her. For no particular reason, she arranged them with her foot by favorite leading men. As soon as the discs were in order, her other foot had a temper tantrum and scattered them to hell and beyond. Weren’t there any movies that didn’t involve leading men—besides those snail-paced British movies where women sit around pretending to enjoy a dull life while they pine for companionship? If she were one of those British heroines, she’d hurl her sewing basket against the wall and show them how life was meant to be lived—sans leading man.

What she needed to do was get out of the house before resorting to an irrational sobfest. She glanced at the clock: six o’clock, not too late. She pushed off the couch and dashed toward her bedroom. Exchanging her purple fleece bathrobe and penguin pajama bottoms for a pair of jeans and a brown ribbed turtleneck—a boring outfit that reflected the state of her life—she gathered her hair into a loose ponytail that spilled to the middle of her back. She pinched a little extra color into her complexion, and marveled that it took less than five minutes to find her car keys. At least one thing was going right.

***

A light from the television flashed through the front window of the ivy-covered Tudor home. Katie’s heart raced a little as she pulled Rhett Butler up the narrow drive. She didn’t have an excuse for coming here. Not that she needed one, but she would have liked to have something prepared. She made her way up the front porch and shivered as she waited for Mr. Scott to let her in.

The door swung open.
“Bloody hell, lass!
What’cha doin’ on me doorstep in this kind of weather without wearin’ so much as a jumper?
It’s cold enough to freeze the bits off a brass monkey!” the robust widower chided, his brogue seeming thicker than usual. “Get yourself in and put wood in t’oile.”

Katie was puzzled. “Put wood in the oil? Why would you put wood in oil?”

Mr. Scott stopped tightening his cardigan and rolled his eyes at her. “It’s not in
theee oy-ill,
you Yank. It’s in t’oile—I believe you would say ‘put wood in the hole.’”

“No, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t say that—it doesn’t make sense.”

Mr. Scott’s usual rogue curl had escaped the conventional combing of his silver hair, joggling this way and that. “For heaven’s sake, impossible child, it means shut the door.”

Katie stepped into the house and did as she was told. “You know
,
if you would have just said that in the first place, the door would have been shut five minutes ago.”

His laugh was hearty, as though he had been saving it up all day long. She feared he probably had.

Her brow furrowed. “So, Mr. Scott, did you do anything exciting today?”

“Let’s see now. I met a few ladies in the market and had them round for tea. Then, I invited them to lie down on their bellies so I could use their backs as canvases while I practiced me tattoo artistry. It was brilliant fun.” His tone couldn’t have been flatter.

“Oh, Mr. Scott, didn’t you do anything today?”

“You know damn well I did as I always do. I read me books and did me crosswords. Now stop na
ggin’ me. I hired you to be me R
ealtor, not me nanny. And it’s
Avery.
‘Mr. Scott’ is me father, and after so many years, I’ll thank you to remember that.” He turned from the door and stalked off, grumbling as to why, three years ago, he’d chosen Katie to represent him in the buying and selling of some investment properties.