In Which Murdering Kelsey Seems Like a Viable Option
Pulling on yoga pants and a hoodie after the corset experience and the hip bruises was absolute bliss. I managed to put myself together enough for the drive home in Bonnie’s van, adding a few accessories and a huge pair of Jackie O sunglasses. At least, I thought I looked presentable until I wheeled my little suitcase out to the van and Kelsey got a look at me.
“Oh my God, you had sex,” she gasped, nearly dropping her cell phone, which would have seriously disrupted the text message she was typing.
“What? How would you . . . ? What?” I spluttered.
Kelsey’s jaw dropped as she yanked my scarf—a floral linen affair that had been stuffed in the corner of my overnight bag after a previous trip—away from my neck. “You have a hickey, you big hussy!”
“Who are you texting at this time of the morning?” I asked, pulling the light linen floral print back into place. “And that’s not a hickey.”
“Why else would you be wearing a scarf in fricking July? And don’t change the subject,” she snapped.
I chewed on my lip, trying to think of a plausible explanation. I fell on a circular hairbrush. I’d been hit by a high-powered Ping-Pong ball. It was an experiment with a new makeup technique. Unfortunately, Kelsey was not, in fact, an idiot and wouldn’t believe any of it. I sighed. “I’m blaming the cider.”
She arched an eyebrow. “Because apple juice makes you want to do the dirty?”
“One-hundred-proof apple juice does.”
Kelsey burst out laughing, the mischievous glint in her eyes making me distinctly nervous. “Sadie, that wasn’t hard cider we were drinking last night. The encampments are booze free to keep them family friendly, remember?”
And suddenly, I did remember. So why had I felt so silly and off-kilter the night before? Why had I been so quick to jump on the idea of being “tipsy” and not in control of my impulses? “Damn it.”
“So did you meet someone after we came back to the motel? Who was it? That cute fiddle player from the band? The glassblower? Was he able to put those strong pouty lips to good use? . . . Oh, no!” Kelsey cried. “We agreed that you would not have sex with Josh unless it was my day in the pool!”
“How did you guess— When did we agree to that?”
“It was an unspoken agreement,” she insisted, shaking my arms, which wasn’t helping the whole sex-soreness issue. “And I guessed because of that frozen ‘trying to find a way to tell Kelsey upsetting news’ face you make when you’re about to disappoint me. Seriously, Sadie, I don’t think you’re ready for anything Vaughn is going to dish out. He’s a classic nail-and-bailer. And you’re sort of a prude. You’re going to get all emotionally involved and he’ll be throwing his clothes back on and texting his next ‘appointment.’ And then the rest of us at the office will be treated to the awkwardness that is post-breakup Sadie.”
“You’ve never dealt with post-breakup Sadie.”
“And that’s what scares me. Developing squishy feelings for the person who could end up being your boss is not a good idea. You know this. Hell, you led our office sexual harassment training on this. And let’s not even discuss the fact that he may be just trying to distract you from working on your campaign so he can swipe the job out from under you.”
“So the only way I could get a guy to date me is if he were trying to literally screw me out of a job?”
“No, you know I don’t feel that way. I just . . . I worry about you, Sadie. You glide along, acting like everything is okay, when we both know you take this stuff so seriously that it makes you physically ill.”
“What happened to all of your sympathy for Josh?”
“I wasn’t worried about Josh. I was worried about you and your bad decisions.”
“I’m fine. I’m a big girl. I’m not going to let this get out of control. And if I do, you will be the first person I will accept an ‘I told you so’ from.”
“You know I don’t do that,” she said, patting my shoulder. “Not without the proper backup music. But I will mock you in the moment. Hell, I plan on mocking you on the way home.”
I dropped my face into my hands and groaned. I heard approaching footsteps and realized that Charlie, Ray, Josh, and Bonnie were joining us in the caravan of discomfort.
Kelsey patted my shoulder. “You know, I was kind of bummed that I forgot my cell phone charger and have no entertainment. But I am really looking forward to the long van ride home, aren’t you?”
“You are not my favorite person right now.”
I looked up to see Ray watching me, carefully, a wrinkle of worry forming between his brows. Josh seemed to be making a concerted effort not to look at me, which was more than a little upsetting. So I focused on tucking my luggage away and not blurting out anything embarrassing.
I blushed furiously as I tried to step up into the van and faltered, those stupid strained muscles preventing me from climbing into the back row of seats. I hissed and Josh’s head whipped toward me. Charlie solicitously offered his hand and helped me up. “Walking around in period shoes has us all sore,” he assured me.
Kelsey snickered, and I smacked the back of her head as Charlie boosted me into the van. She glared back at me but I went all innocent doe eyes on her. “Muscle spasm.”
Josh climbed into the front row of seats and cast a glance over his shoulder toward me. I slid my sunglasses over my eyes and hid. I didn’t know how to respond, but it wouldn’t be like a high school girl upset that her boyfriend didn’t sit next to her in study hall. I would hold my head high. I would behave like an adult, an independent, progressive woman who did not assume that an evening of naked gymnastics equaled guaranteed lifelong commitment. I would stop blushing because it seemed to make Kelsey giggle.
Kelsey was getting on my last damn nerve.
“If anybody wants some more of that apple cider, I bought some for the trip home,” Ray offered.
I groaned and covered my face with my scarf.
“Best. Trip. Ever.” Kelsey sighed.
• • •
We seemed to have decided not to talk about it. Or at least, Josh had decided not to talk about it and I didn’t want to be the one to start that conversation. If I refused to bring it up, then he would assume I was just as emotionally well adjusted (read: shut off) as he was, so he didn’t have to worry about me breaking into his office to steal his Facebook password.
For a week, we both pretended to be just fine. We remained calm and cordial, but we only talked about work-related matters. Our previous playful banter was all but forgotten. There were a couple of days when I wondered whether the sex had actually happened, which was pretty damn irritating. I did not enjoy sexual gaslighting.
And this is why people should not sleep with coworkers. But I would never admit that to Kelsey, because her “I told you so” sometimes involves singing and complicated choreography.
My feelings about Josh were a big murky mess. I tried to figure out what I’d done wrong, and then I realized I hadn’t. I hadn’t done anything wrong. You know, other than sleeping with a coworker, which was frowned upon. But I hadn’t been clingy. I hadn’t started naming our unborn children the moment he took off his pants. I’d behaved like an adult. If Josh was upset about something, he could talk about it with me like a big boy. If not, well, that was on him.
To my disappointment, emotional maturity wasn’t any more fun than being a hypersensitive drama queen. My feelings were still hurt. Work was still awkward. But I held my head high and behaved professionally, with the exception of smacking Kelsey every time she mentioned the words “apples” or “cider.”
We were days away from moving into the Louisville Stay Inn, where we would be staying during our weeklong state fair stint. My “Not What You Expect” campaign had gelled beautifully. I’d checked and double-checked the proofs for my brochures and guides, then hand-delivered my copies to the printer. Just in case Josh had called off the truce without telling me. So other than my general uncertainty, things were looking pretty good for me.
The Kentucky State Fair was a great mix of fun and function for our office, clearing our schedule for a week in mid-August so we could provide support at the fair headquarters. More than half a million people visited the fairgrounds each year to ride their way through the Thrillway and mill through the exhibition halls displaying foods produced and prepared in Kentucky, handmade arts and crafts, and prize-winning animals and plants. And of course, gorge themselves silly on foods on a stick.
My staff usually worked a good portion of the morning before we were relieved by staff from other departments within the tourism office. Kelsey and I would run a little wild, dieting scrupulously for weeks before the fair so we could devour every deep-fried food we could find. I had no idea they could deep-fry Coca-Cola. Sometimes Angela joined us, but she had a lower tolerance for stomach-challenging cuisine and thrill rides.
And of course, I felt obligated to visit the Kentucky Cookout Tent, a large food venue sponsored by the state’s producers of pork, corn, poultry, and mutton. It was like a culinary tour of Kentucky on a plate. Kelsey always made fun of the fact that I overordered to prevent hurting the farmers’ feelings. Was it difficult to eat country ham, corn on the cob, barbecued chicken halves, and mutton in one sitting? Yes, but I didn’t want to play favorites.
We usually stopped by the horticulture displays to see Mr. Leavitt. Having stomped homemakers into annual submission at our local county fair with his rose and azalea specimens, Mr. Leavitt progressed to trying to make old lady gardeners cry on a state level. He’d won blue ribbons every year since I’d known him.
Kelsey’s My Little Pony fantasies ran amuck at the World’s Champion Horse Show in Freedom Hall. While there were some divisions for harness horses, the show was more about making the mounts and their riders as pretty as possible and showing the purity of the bloodlines. Kelsey also seemed to have some unresolved 4-H issues, because she was unnaturally interested in the agriculture displays. Personally, I thought if you’ve seen one impressively bred cow, you’ve seen them all. But she didn’t judge my need to ride the Tilt-A-Whirl over and over, so it worked for us.
This year, we had to put our fun off until after I’d set up my campaign display tent. Ray had declared Kelsey “Switzerland,” forbidding her from helping either of us. Instead, I was using the fairgrounds crew to set up the tables and hang banner racks. Hanging up the actual banners and posters, draping the tablecloths, and unpacking the various freebies was my job and mine alone. I was also responsible for mounting my own flat-panel TVs and stuffing my own goody bags. I was giving away tote bags filled with pens bearing the tourism commission’s Web address, an awesome book titled Weird Things You Didn’t Know About Kentucky, and custom bingo cards listing some of the strange highlights of the state’s year-round calendar.
By the time we arrived at the fairgrounds on the morning before opening day, the weather was blazing hot, with the sort of sticky humidity that had my clothes plastered to my body before I got to my car. I arrived at our tenting area between the midway and the main pavilion building to find both of the exhibition tents closed up tight. Our position relative to the rides guaranteed foot traffic would wind past us as people worked their way toward the exhibition halls.
The shipping crates marked HUTCHINS were waiting outside my tent, mummified in their plastic-wrap cocoons. Josh’s crates were similarly stacked outside of his tent. I barely resisted the urge to slice through the plastic wrap and look inside. When I saw Josh coming down the midway, I yanked the Velcro flap enclosures apart and ducked inside my tent. I dragged my crates inside and cracked them open, repressing the urge to squeal when I saw my materials.
The printer had used a bold blue to stretch “Kentucky—Not What You Expect” in elegant, scrawling text across my banners. Using Kelsey and her amazing image-manipulation skills, I tried to turn all of the traditional images on their ears. The photos ranged from women in fancy tea hats eating messy barbecue to grizzled old-timers in overalls quaffing mint juleps on a palatial porch. We used a picture of all of the state colleges’ mascots playing poker—using every marker in my big book of favors to get all of those costumes in the same room. We had a shot of three jockeys in their crisp, colorful silks fishing from a rowboat at Kentucky Dam. We had a big, happy dual family photo from the Hatfield-McCoy Reunion Marathon. We even used a picture of Josh in his Civil War uniform, texting on his smartphone. I tried a mix of the old and the new, the strange and the sublime.
Thanks to Kelsey, the visuals were great. The storyboards for the ads popped. The brochures gave all of the right information in a cool format. It was good. This wasn’t desperation or hubris talking. It was a solid campaign, visually interesting and memorable. The problem was that I didn’t know if Josh’s was more interesting and memorable. I had a good view across the fairway and could see a steady flow of traffic of staff going into Josh’s tent with pretty heavy equipment. I groaned. Knowing my luck, Josh had found some corporate diamond sponsor and secured an air-conditioned luxury tent with a pool.
I wanted Josh to do well, but I wanted to do better. Then again, if he got the job, I would stay at the office. I was comfortable working with Josh; it was the personal stuff that confused the hell out of me. And while I wouldn’t be happy continuing on as an assistant, I knew that I would continue to do good work. However, I was pretty sure that if I got the job, Josh would leave. His dream was to open up his own marketing firm, not to work for the state, supervised by some insane woman with way too much interest in oversize fiberglass objects.
I couldn’t think about it. Either way, I was going to be a little happy and a little upset. I had exactly twelve hours to make things work in my own tent before the grounds closed for the night, so I planned to make the most of it.
• • •
By the time I got the tent somewhere near the level of organization I desired, it was well past dark. I was dripping with sweat, and I had scraped several layers of skin off my arms while opening the crates. But my tables were the perfect mix of precisely fanned brochures and creative fluff—clear plastic jars filled with blue candy, piles of buttons with my slogan pressed on a blue background. This was the stuff of marketing legend.
I was going to have to refresh the tent at the end of each day, after the crowds (please, Lord) destroyed it. But I was pleased with how it had turned out. I might actually get some sleep that night, which would be a refreshing change. I came out to find Josh crouched outside his tent in a pair of tattered cargo shorts, nursing a bottle of water.
Sweaty and caked in a fine layer of dust, Josh looked exhausted. I plopped down on the ground next to him, wiping at the sweat gathering on my own brow. Josh didn’t acknowledge me, just sat staring off into space and glugging down his water. So I leaned back on my palms and gazed up and down the deserted midway. Heavy canvas tents fluttered against the soft summer breeze. The occasional food wrapper rolled across the packed dirt like a plastic tumbleweed. A furry gray-and-white shape toddled out from under a pile of trash and trotted past us, its leathery pink tail dragging behind it in the dirt.
“Was that a possum?” he asked, without looking up.
“Yes, it was,” I said, nodding. “I’m guessing he wants to be first in the funnel cake line.”
When the possum ambled around a corner toward the food vendors, Josh lifted a white paper bag. “Kelsey brought us some sandwiches. She didn’t want to seem like she was favoring you, so she delivered them here.”
“Thanks.” I chuckled, accepting a turkey club on whole wheat. I swatted away a fly that was too chummy with my kettle chips. “How is your display looking, Bambi?”
He frowned as he rolled his shoulders, cracking his back into place. “Bambi?”
“I’m trying to decide what I’m going to call you when you’re wearing your cheerleader outfit.”
It was clear from the expression on his face that he’d entirely forgotten our bet. While that gave me some hope he hadn’t actually bought my UK cheerleading outfit, there was no way he was going to get out of the specially designed U of L pleated skirt I’d had made. (Kelsey’s nerd herd made their own cosplay costumes, so they were pretty skilled with a needle.) “That’s not funny.”
“That’s where you’re wrong.”
He fiddled with the loose wrapper on his water bottle. “So, I behaved like a total jackass after the encampment, huh?”
“Emotionally stunted, uncommunicative jackass just about covers it, yes,” I said, nodding.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I just—”
“I don’t really want to hear why,” I told him, pressing a hand to his chest to get him to both stop and give me some physical space. “For right now, we both need to stay focused on the contest and keeping our tents running. But I do want to say that if you get the job, I will stay. I will work as your assistant, with no reservations. I think we can make it work. As for everything else, the personal stuff, I don’t know. But for right now, everything’s okay. I’m not going to say I’m thrilled with how things are working out, but we’re going to get through the next week and we’re going to let the chips fall where they may. No pressure. No anger.”
I’d expected him to be happy, or at least crack the barest hint of a grin. But instead, for a split second, he looked upset. “Really?”
“Your enthusiasm is overwhelming,” I told him.
“It’s just that up until now, you were pretty unsure.”
I unwrapped my sandwich, avoiding his searching stare. “And now, I’m sure. I’ve changed my mind. It happens sometimes.”
In a dance that was well practiced by now, we exchanged the unwanted sandwich ingredients—tomatoes from mine and onions from his—and tucked into our food. We ate in silence, each afraid of what the next day would bring, of the decisions we’d made and avoided. Josh reached over and wrapped his hand around mine, squeezing it gently. I looked up at him and smiled.
We were going to be okay, the two of us. I had to believe it. If we could get through the next week or so without one of us flipping out, we might be able to achieve some form of happily ever after.
That must have been the dehydration talking.