Without speaking, Aaron handed over a pair of what looked like Luke Skywalker's macrobinoculars. Rolling my eyes, I focused the lenses on Darrell's car and watched as a foil balloon seemed to bloom in the backseat.
I turned to look at Wally as Charlie claimed the macrobinoculars. I frowned, looked down at the bowl of popcorn, glanced back toward the car and its foil stowaway, and down at the popcorn again. My jaw dropped and I burst out laughing. “No!”
“It wasn't as hard as you'd think,” Bud said, helping himself to some popcorn. “We told you, Darrell came sniffing around the apartment for mail he thought was his. We may have slipped a large package with your name on it from ShoeHeaven.com into the mix, a package to which we added about ten pounds of popcorn kernels and a remote control microwave emitter. The real trick was keeping the popcorn from rattling around. Shoes don't rattle.”
I howled with laughter. “And because it was a package of âshoes' with my name on it, you knew he wouldn't open it or even take it to whatever rock he's sleeping under. Because he'd want to hold on to it in case he wanted an excuse to talk to me again. I leave no shoe behind.”
Aaron nodded. “Cyrus is on the ground right now, running the microwave emitter. It has a limited range.”
“He's going to freak out,” I cackled. “He hates the smell of popcorn. And he doesn't let anyone eat in his precious car. And you referenced one of my favorite eighties comedies,
Real Genius.
It's the perfect revenge.”
By now, the foil bubble had popped and was spewing forth a waterfall of fluffy white kernels. I took the macrobinoculars back so I could zoom in on Darrell, whom I could see thrashing in the front seat and mouthing words that didn't look very happy. I giggled so hard that I may have snorted like Urkel. A few times.
Charlie cleared his throat and in a very fatherly tone said, “Boys, I am very disappointed in you . . . for not including me in this plan. Seriously, this is insanely awesome.”
Bud demurred. “We'll decide how awesome it is when we find out whether Darrell charges us with destruction of his property.”
“You didn't destroy it. You just made it smell like Orville Redenbacher. Oh, look, he's trying to bail the popcorn out like water in a leaky boat.” I snickered as Darrell climbed out of his car, smacking popcorn kernels off his clothes. He opened the back door and popcorn tumbled out onto the pavement like an avalanche. Darrell tossed popcorn over his shoulder by the handful, glaring at the apartment building.
“Duck!” I yelped. And the others ducked down behind the windowsill. I waggled my fingers at Darrell and then showed him one in particular. He started screaming and stomping and throwing an even bigger tantrum.
Why did I ever let him go?
“You'd better tell Cyrus to get back up here before Darrell's head explodes,” I whispered. I looked over the windowsill to see Darrell peeling out of the parking lot, leaving a trail of popcorn in his wake.
I collapsed on the floor, giggling hysterically until tears rolled down my cheeks. “I love you guys. I really do.”
“Well, I for one am still upset that I was left out,” Charlie grumbled good-naturedly. “Do you realize how often I get to play the hero? Never. My mother had a doctor's note to get me out of dodgeball at school.”
“I swear, the next time we reenact nerd revenge from a 1980s classic, we will include you,” Wally promised, pulling Aaron and Bud to their feet. “Well, fellas, I think our work here is done. This may be our only opportunity to swagger out of a room in a manly fashion, so let's get to it.”
And so my brilliant goofball friends moseyed out of my apartment John Wayneâstyle. Before shutting the door behind him, Aaron gave me a tip of his imaginary cowboy hat.
“Is every day going to be this interesting with you?” Charlie asked.
“I think you can count on it,” I told him.
“And for the record, I thought you slamming the door in Darrell's face was very manly and heroic. So consider all of your hero points used up. And you wasted them on a guy named Darrell.”
“A life of bravery and valor, completely run off course.” Charlie sighed. “Well, I guess I can make up for my wasted potential by plying you with delicious baked goods. Bonnie sent me a text. She said that Sweet Eats has a new dessert that is the unholy offspring of cheesecake and brownies. Your friend Al tried to call them CheeseBrownies, but no one was buying them.”
“Rightly so; that sounds disgusting,” I said, pulling a face. Though, secretly, I was so pleased that Charlie got along with my friends well enough to have his own text conversations with them. I had a not-quite-there-but-almost boyfriend that my friends liked. Yay for me.
“Well, Bonnie says Al's asking his favorite customers to come by for a brainstorming session. May I escort milady to the home of delicious forbidden treats?”
How could one man's voice make cupcakes sound so sexy?
I tangled my fingers into his hair and kissed the little divot above his lips. “That's very tempting. But didn't you hear the weather report? It's supposed to get really ugly over the next few hours. Sleet, freezing rain, snow, frogs, pestilence pouring forth from the sky . . .”
“The weather reports
always
say that and it never happens,” he said, smirking.
I gave a silly little giggle as Charlie pushed me back to the sofa and pulled me into his lap. “Still, to be safe, I think we're going to have to stay holed up in this apartment for the next few hours, at least.”
“Whatever will we do with our time?” he wondered aloud, oh so innocent and guileless.
“I can think of a few things that will not violate our embargo.”
“And then cupcakes after,” he insisted.
“Are you always going to be this demanding?” I asked as he nuzzled the length of my neck.
“When it comes to you? Always.”
[[Buy buttons requested. To be added at epub stage.]]
Acknowledgments
In January 2009, my hometownâwell, to be honest, most of Kentucky and six surrounding statesâwas hit by an epic ice storm. Western Kentucky was the hardest hit, with several inches of hard-packed ice on the ground, covered in nearly a foot of snow. This, in a state where two inches of snow on the ground sends people running for the bread and milk aisles.
As my husband, David, says, when the Weather Channel's Jim Cantore is doing live broadcasts from your Main Street, that's not good.
The storm took out power in thousands of homes in Kentucky that were left without electricity for several weeks. By the time I emerged from our encampment, I'd written about twenty pages of longhand notes on a legal pad. Most of those scrawled ramblings about feeling cold, twitchy with boredom, and under the extreme duress of being a Southern girl trapped in a virtual Siberia turned into the first few chapters of the Alaskan-based Naked Werewolf series.
“The Big Ice Storm” has proven to be a rich source of inspiration. Even after three Naked Werewolf novels, my agent, Stephany Evans (who inspired the Bluegrass series in the first place with her fascination with my lovable, somewhat bizarre home state), remained curious about my ice storm entrapment and encouraged me to write a book about it.
So thank you, of course, to Stephany, for her productive curiosity about the zany tragicomedy that is my everyday life. To my editor, Abby Zidle, for her patience and her passion for possums. To my in-laws, Russ and Nancy, for letting us take refuge at their house. And to my mom and dad, who contrived several plans (some legal) to obtain a generator and somehow get it through the tree-limb-blocked streets to make sure their grandbabies were warm. Ultimately, their efforts were foiled by common sense and the advice of counsel, but it's the thought that counts.
And to my David and all the police, fire, and emergency personnel who worked so hard to keep our community safe during a stressful, peculiar time in our history, we will never be able to thank you enough.