She's With Stupid Read online

  “No offense, sweetie, but if my potential someone even remotely resembles your actual someone, I may consider throwing myself off a cliff,” Emilie responded tartly.

  “Wow,” Lana’s eyes widened in curiosity. “What exactly is wrong with Will?”

  Emilie shuddered. “That list would take about a year to complete. Just wait till you meet him; he makes our entire catalog of past Stupid’s look like candidates for bachelor of the year.”

  Lana raised her eyebrows at that. All of them had dated some pretty big yo-yo’s. “That is not physically possible. And if he’s that big of a nut, why is Kate considering binding herself to him in holy wedlock?”

  “Because she has clearly lost her mind! You’d have to be crazy to marry a man named Will Sturgis. It sounds like an exceptionally stinky fish.” Emilie shook her head despairingly. “Think of their poor children!”

  Lana giggled at Emilie’s distress. “Aw, I’m sure little Dory and Flounder Sturgis will be adorable.”

  “Excuse me, I’m sitting right here!” Kate crossed her arms and pouted. “First of all, what’s with the “wedlock” and “binding” lingo? It’s a marriage, not a life sentence. Second, I do not plan on having children for a good long while. And third, and perhaps most important of all, Will is not nearly as weird as Emilie’s last boyfriend! What was his name again? Odysseus?”

  “You are not allowed to bring Homer into this,” Emilie said with an indignant sniff. “He was a very sweet man, and it was not his fault that he had allergies.”

  “Allergies? Emilie, the man went into a sneezing fit every time he got within three feet of you.” Kate laughed at the memory. “You never even got to kiss!”

  Emilie sighed sadly. “It’s true. I tried changing my perfume and soap three times, my detergent five times, and I can’t even remember how many shampoos I went through. We finally had to break up because I was such a mess.”

  All three of them laughed at the idea of fastidious Emilie looking frazzled and decidedly un-chic.

  “However,” Emilie said, “that does not even compare to the freakish nature of Kate’s intended. Even Kate thinks he’s creepy.” She gave Kate a look that dared her to lie.

  “Okay, okay, he is kind of odd,” Kate admitted in defeat. “And maybe he isn’t the sharpest tool in the shed. And maybe his fashion sense leaves something to be desired.”

  Emilie rolled her eyes. “He dresses like a Bible salesman.”

  “And you want to marry him?” Lana said, no longer able to contain her confusion. “Have you lost your mind?”

  “He also smells like cheese,” Emilie interjected helpfully.

  “He smells like what?” Lana managed to ask between gasps of laughter.

  “Okay,” Kate snapped. “I’m choosing to ignore the cheese comment because Emilie has a point — a very cruel point, but a point, nonetheless. But the important thing is that Will loves me more than anyone I’ve ever been with before. And it’s time for me to get married. I’m twenty-eight already!”

  “We’re all twenty-eight, you ditz,” Emilie said affectionately. “That doesn’t mean we should rush down the altar with the nearest warm body for the very small privilege of having a wedding ring on our fingers.”

  “I hate to knock you off your high horse, babe, but I’m not the one with a book of baby names sitting conspicuously on my bookshelf, am I?”

  “So I want kids. Who needs a man for that?” Emilie shrugged defensively. “That is what adoption and/or sperm banks are for.”

  “Please,” Kate scoffed. “Are you honestly going to sit there and pretend that you haven’t been sitting around for the last decade waiting for a certain Marine to return from distant shores and realize what a schmuck he was so that he can finally sweep you off your feet and carry you into the proverbial sunset?”

  Lana cringed at the not particularly kind reminder of Ethan Drake. Though his parents had lived two hours away from New Bern on their family farm in Eastern Kentucky, being Kate’s only cousin meant that Ethan had been a constant presence at Kate’s birthday parties and school plays for as long as Lana could remember. Then, when the girls were seven, Kate’s Great-Aunt Olive had invited all of the kids to stay the summer at her house on Lake Michigan. They had spent every summer vacation together for the next nine years there, frolicking on the sand and having the run of the property.

  Ethan had been the perfect playmate, always quick to offer them piggy back rides and boosts onto hard to reach tree branches. He and Emilie had been especially fond of each other, and for some reason the hyperactive boy was always willing to sit still for hours at a time while Emilie styled his hair in attractive pigtails or served him imaginary tea and cookies.

  They had all been really close until Ethan grew facial hair. Then, suddenly and for no apparent reason, they weren’t close at all.

  Emilie had taken the abrupt withdrawal of Ethan’s affections particularly hard. For months, she had tried to charm him into acting like his former self, but it hadn’t done any good. It had taken a long time for Emilie to accept that he no longer wanted anything to do with them, and even longer to accept it when he’d up and joined the Marines without even saying goodbye.

  “I have no intention of discussing him,” Emilie said through gritted teeth. A revealing blush stained her cheeks at Kate’s knowing grin and Lana’s concerned frown. “And I certainly do not base my decisions around what he may or may not choose to do with his life. It has nothing to do with me.” Her voice was firm, but her eyes were suddenly bright with unshed tears.

  Kate immediately leaned forward and placed her hand on Emilie’s knee. “I’m sorry, Emmy,” she said. “I didn’t mean to upset you, not really.”

  Kate bit her lip in regret and Lana glared at her. She should have known better than to mention Ethan. For whatever reason, his actions had seemed to hurt Emilie far more than they had anyone else. To this day she refused to talk to him, which worried Lana and amused Kate to no end. And if the electrical tension that thickened the air every time he and Emilie had been forced to be in the same room with each other over the last eleven years was any indication, it totally irritated Ethan.

  With a resigned sigh, Emilie patted the hand resting on her knee and pasted on a smile. “You’re forgiven,” she said lightly before glancing down at her open notebook and bringing the conversation back to the subject at hand. “Now what kind of color scheme were you thinking about for the wedding?”

  Visibly relieved, Kate settled back in her seat and shrugged. “You’re better with stuff like that, Em.”

  Emilie nodded in agreement and began rattling off the options at rapid-fire speed, causing Kate to look dizzy. Lana shook her head and smiled happily. Yes, things in New Bern were still exactly the same, but Lana was surprised to note that, for once, this did not bother her at all.

  They exited Perfect Perk forty minutes later and, after a noisy group hug that elicited several more stares and fond smiles from passersby, the girls went their separate ways. Kate had a paper that she could no longer put off writing if she ever hoped to finish grad school, and Emilie was going to take Lana over to her apartment so they could determine what stuff Lana would need when she moved in.

  Kate caught the flash of mild terror in Lana’s eyes when she barely had time to fasten her seat belt and grip the console for dear life before Emilie backed her flashy silver Mercedes out onto the square at breakneck speed, narrowly missing an old man with a walker.

  The car had been a college graduation present from Emilie’s father, one of the most prominent divorce attorneys in the greater Cincinnati area. Mr. Thatcher had been giving Emilie ridiculously overpriced gifts like that for the last twenty years in a never-ending quest to assuage his guilt over walking out on Emilie and her mom (on the day of Emilie’s seventh birthday party, no less) for a barmaid with cotton candy hair and Dolly Parton’s bosom.

  Kate often bemoaned the fact that her own father chose to ease his guilt over her parents’ divorce with unbeara
bly long dinners at Applebee’s and boring father-daughter outings to the zoo, while Emmy got sparkly diamond bracelets, shiny new cars, and shopping sprees at Nordstrom’s whenever her dad felt the urge to bond. Still, though she wouldn’t have minded an occasional piece of jewelry in lieu of yet another trip to see the dumb zoo babies, Kate supposed it was easier to like your dad when you interacted with him and not exclusively with his bank account.

  A smile tugged at Kate’s lips as she watched Emilie’s car speed down the village square and through a yellow light with nary a pause. Muttering a quick prayer for Lana’s life, Kate started towards her own vehicle and breathed a sigh of relief that her announcement had gone so smoothly. She knew how Emilie felt about Will, so she had been the teensiest bit worried that she would refuse to help plan the wedding.

  Emilie had come through in the end, though, and Kate was glad for it. She was not at all ashamed to admit that she had no clue about weddings and the things that went along with them, and Kate needed Emilie’s taste and organizational prowess if she hoped to throw a decent party.

  She was even willing to put up with the snide remarks about Stupid — no, Will. It just would not do to call one’s future husband Stupid. It had already happened a few times, and Will had not been at all pleased.

  Kate could only hope that Lana did not come to share Em’s less than favorable opinion about Will. She was already feeling nervous about what she was getting herself into, and Kate would appreciate a little less ribbing about her fiancé.

  It wasn’t as if Emilie didn’t have some valid points about Will; he certainly wasn’t the kind of guy Kate had pictured herself with when she was a kid. He was a little strange, completely fixated on video games and various cheeses from around the world, and not much else. He had zero interest in cultivating any sort of social life, and he refused to shower more than twice a week — thus the cheesy smell. All in all, Will was definitely not her idea of perfection.

  But she was not possessed of Lana’s adventurous spirit or Emilie’s inordinately high standards. All Kate really wanted out of a husband was total adoration, and Will, for all of his many faults, gave that to her in spades.

  For that, she was willing to overlook his more iffy personality deficiencies and focus on all of the compliments and gooey looks he threw her way on a semi-regular basis.

  And Kate didn’t care what she said to the contrary, Emilie was still a little hung up on Ethan. It was technically none of her business what Emilie did with her love life, but Kate was willing to bet big money that some deeply hidden part of Emilie’s admittedly complicated brain was still waiting for her childhood sweetie to come home and make amends.

  Emilie was dying to fall in love and start a family, but she seemed unable to find what she was looking for. Or, if what Kate had long suspected was true, Emilie was simply unwilling to admit that she may have already found it years ago.

  Chapter 2

  Two weeks after Kate’s inauspicious engagement announcement, Emilie found herself gazing pensively at exactly what she thought she might be looking for when Leo Foster strolled into her classroom during her seventh period free bell. His golden hair grazed the bottom of his earlobes, making Emilie itch to run her fingers through the tousled mass. He was wearing his usual Friday outfit of jeans and a wrinkled blue oxford that had probably been new in 1999, and he had just a hint of a five o’clock shadow grazing his jaw like gold dust. It gave Emilie the random desire to nuzzle it and give herself whisker burn.

  With a slight shiver, she fought the urge to sigh stupidly and braced herself for yet another awkward conversation. Emilie had been faintly charmed —and taken aback by said feeling— by Leo ever since he took the job as eighth grade biology teacher at St. Mary’s Academy last spring. This was totally irrational, she knew, because in the last month they had had a total of three real conversations, mostly pertaining to frogs.

  Emilie blamed herself for that.

  After finally noticing his intense regard, she had taken to returning his longing looks about six weeks ago. Once it became clear that Leo was too shy to approach her himself, Emilie had oh-so-brilliantly decided that the best way to break the ice would be to ask him for information on frogs for a fairy tale project she was working on with her students.

  Yes, frogs. Emilie shuddered to think of how truly low her standards had sunk that she would actually encourage discussions about amphibian mating habits, which Leo seemed uncomfortably knowledgeable about. None of that really mattered though because, frogs aside, the moment she looked into Leo’s chocolate brown eyes, Emilie was in love.

  Or rather in lust, but she was fully prepared to fall in love with him just as soon as the opportunity presented itself.

  That, however, had proven more difficult than anticipated. For a start, their presumably mutual attraction was stuck in neutral because Leo seemed to enjoy the bizarre effect his presence seemed to have on Emilie’s composure. If she tripped over her own feet one more time just because he managed to sneak up on her in the hallway (and the cafeteria…and the teacher’s lounge…and the parking lot), she was literally going to shoot herself in the foot.

  The fact that her agitation seemed to entertain Leo would normally have bothered Emilie — as a rule, she disliked men who derived pleasure from toying with a woman’s affections and balance. However, her attraction had not waned in spite of that glaring flaw because he seemed perfect in all other aspects of his personality. He was quiet and shy and kind, his general amusement at her newfound clumsiness notwithstanding.

  Emilie was actually a bit surprised by her physical interest in Leo, given how rare that kind of attraction was for her. In fact, she had heretofore only ever experienced anything remotely similar once in her life, with Stupid Ethan, and she refused to count that debacle with Kate’s wretched cousin as an actual relationship because she had been nothing but a child when they met and was barely entering puberty when their bond had been abruptly severed for no apparent reason by the jerk. Therefore, she determined that she had actually only been in two serious relationships.

  The first had been with her high school boyfriend, Edgar, who after pressuring her for months to “kiss it,” had broken up with her a week before graduation for being a sinful temptation and a bad influence. Edgar had wanted to be a preacher and the wife of a future preacher did not, evidently, do those things even when her stupid boyfriend whined and begged for it for months on end until his girlfriend was so irritated that she decided to get the darn thing over with just so he would shut his mouth. Emilie had not been sorry for that relationship to end: Stupid Edgar had never been a thrilling companion, and his entire body had been alarmingly covered in freckles.

  Her second serious boyfriend had been her college sweetheart, Peter. Peter had been the perfect boyfriend — thoughtful, sweet, and considerate. He was always giving her surprise “rainy day presents,” once going so far as to make a life-sized paper mache Winnie the Pooh just because he knew how much she liked that bear. He never pressured her to do more than she was comfortable with when they were alone, he never forgot her birthday or their anniversary, and he was, by far, the nicest guy she had ever known. Turns out he was also gay. Emilie found him in a decidedly intimate embrace with the captain of the Lacrosse team less than a week before graduation, and the image was still vividly imprinted onto her retinas.

  It hadn’t been so bad, though. Peter and Lacrosse Guy still sent her a Christmas card every year, and seeing them together had helped Emilie firm up her resolve to not overly concern herself with dating unless she thought someone had the potential to last. It was just more trouble than it was worth to date for the sake of dating, especially when guy after guy ended up being so interchangeable.

  But now she wondered if Leo might be different. Maybe it was just hormones, but Emilie could have sworn that she heard bells ring the moment he had first locked eyes with her in the teachers lounge. So what if it had been the bell for homeroom? It was still sort of romantic. And ever since t
hen she had been taken with an insistent urge to see where a relationship with him might lead. That these urges were sprinkled liberally with visions of what Leo looked like without his shirt on was entirely beside the point.

  “Hey, Emilie.”

  She started at the sound of his voice and shook her head to erase the annoying thoughts from her head. Leo gave her a condescending smile that would have raised her hackles any other time. Right now, however, she was too nervous to detect the glint of satisfaction that sparked in his eyes at her obvious discomfiture around him.

  He tilted his head to observe her reaction to him. “I thought this was your free bell, too. I’m not interrupting anything am I?”

  “Not at all. I was just entering some grades.” She quickly closed out a wedding website from her screen and smiled her most beguiling smile at her future husband.

  Sadly, the future Mr. Emilie seemed not to notice. He was too busy wandering around the classroom and absently snooping through the stray notebooks that students had left behind throughout the day.

  She waited with bated breath for him to say something. This was it. He had finally worked up the nerve to reveal his true, undying feelings for her. And as soon as he admitted them, they could progress beyond this Meaningful Looks and Fleeting Touches stage into the Getting It On stage.

  “So, how did that frog project go?”

  Okay. Clearly he was not the most intuitive of men.

  “It went really well, thanks for asking,” she said through clenched teeth. “The kids now have a whole new perspective on The Frog Prince. Thanks again for all your help. I don’t know what I would have done without you.”

  Leo’s chest puffed up at that, and Emilie discreetly rolled her eyes. Her mom was right, men were so easy sometimes.