Proposal (The Mediator, #6.5)(27)
“Actually, it isn’t. Oh, it’s quaintly charming in its own way, I suppose, but nothing historic ever occurred there. Well, except for what happened between you and me,” he smirked, “and considering the way you’ve been avoiding me these past few years, I guess I’m not the only one who remembers that as being historically significant.”
“Nothing ever happened between us, Paul,” I said. He was only trying to get under my skin, the same way he’d tried to get under my bra at graduation. That’s how he operated, much like a chigger, or various other bloodsucking parasites. “Nothing good, anyway.”
“Ouch, Simon! You sure know how to hurt a guy. I distinctly recall one afternoon in my bedroom when you did not seem at all repulsed by my advances. Why, you even—”
“—walked out on you, remember? And no one can tear down a house that old. That has to be a violation of some kind of city code.”
“You slip enough money to the right politicians, Simon, you can get permits to do anything you want in the great state of California. That’s why they call it the land of opportunity. Congratulations, by the way, on your stepfather’s success. Who would have thought that little home-improvement show of Andy Ackerman’s would become an international sensation. Where’d your parents move to with all the money he’s raking in from the syndication rights? Bel Air? Or the Hills? Don’t worry, it happens to everyone. I’m sure they haven’t let fame go to their heads. Your mother is a lovely woman with such gracious manners, which is more than I can say for her only daughter—”
“You say one more word about my mother,” I snarled, “and I will end you, Paul, like I should have done years ago. I will find you, wherever you are, remove your head from your body, and stuff it up your—”
“You already used that one,” Paul reminded me. “So I take it that you do have a sentimental side, Suze. How surprising. I always knew you had a soft spot for that undead boyfriend of yours, of course, but I never expected it to extend to real estate. Oh, wait—Jesse must be more than just a boyfriend now that you managed to reunite his body with his soul. I’m afraid I’ve been a bit out of the loop lately—and who has time to read their alumni newsletter anyway? Have you two tied the knot? Wait, silly me—of course you have. It’s been six years since high school! I know a love as passionate as the one you and that necromantic cholo shared couldn’t possibly wait six years to be consummated. And from what I remember, Hector ‘Jesse’ de Silva respected you far too much ever to try to get into your pants without the sanctity of holy matrimony.”
I felt my cheeks begin to burn. I told myself it was indignation at his racism—necromantic cholo? Really?—but I knew some of it was due to a different emotion entirely. I was happy Paul wasn’t in the same room with me, or he’d surely have noticed. He’d always been discomfortingly sharp-eyed.
“Jesse and I are engaged,” I said, controlling—with an effort—my impulse to swear at him some more. In the past, anytime Paul was able to evoke any kind of emotion from me at all—even a negative one—it pleased him.
And the last thing I’d ever wanted to do was please Paul Slater.
“Engaged?” Paul crowed. “What is this, the 1950s? People still get engaged? Do people even get married? I mean, straight people?”
I really should have thought before I acted and never called him in the first place, I thought miserably, eyeing a poster Ms. Diaz, the Mission Academy guidance counselor, had stuck on the wall over by the entrance to her office. It was one of those posters ubiquitous to the profession, a blown-up photo of a kitten struggling to hang on to a tree branch emblazoned with the words Aim High!
Too late, I realized I ought to have aimed high and approached Paul with cool dispassion, not let my emotions get in the way. That was the only way to handle him.
But he’d always been good at pushing my buttons.
All my buttons.
“Isn’t an engagement a little old-school for a modern girl like you, Simon?” he went on. “Oh, wait, I forgot . . . Walking Dead Boy likes to do things the old-school way, doesn’t he? Does that mean”—he sounded more pleased with himself than ever—“you two are waiting for marriage?”
I felt another overwhelming urge to lash out and punch something, anything, maybe even the tabby kitten in the poster. But the wall behind it was three feet thick, built in the 1700s, and had withstood many a Northern California earthquake. It would definitely withstand my fist.
“That is none of your business,” I said, so icily that I was surprised the phone in my hand didn’t freeze to my face.
I was trying hard not to clue Paul in to how annoyed I was with my boyfriend’s prehistoric notion that we not only couldn’t marry until he was in a financial position to support me and whatever children we might have (even though I’d assured him I was on the pill and planned to stay on it until I’d finished my MA and had a job with full dental, at least), we couldn’t move in together.
Even worse, Jesse insisted we had to wait until we’d formally exchanged vows—in a church, with him in a suit, and me in a white dress and veil, no less—before we could enjoy conjugal relations. It was the least he could do, he insisted, out of “respect” for all that I had done for him, not only bringing him back to life, but providing him with a life worth living.