“But why?” Kat asks. “I mean, jeez, he went to all that trouble to find you, and you won’t even go out to dinner with the guy?”
We’re sitting at my little kitchen table eating Pasta Roni and Caesar salad for lunch after coming back from a yoga class.
I sigh. “It’s complicated,” I say.
“Even if he turns out to be a douchebag, worst case scenario you could just sit there and look at him and still have a spectacularly good time. Oh, and a free meal.”
“We’re fundamentally incompatible,” I say evenly.
“But how do you know that if you won’t even meet him?”
“Because I know,” I say.
“So you say. I wish you’d tell me what he said in his damned application that’s got you all aflutter.” She turns her head and glances at me sideways. “Is he some kind of freak?” She winks.
I roll my eyes. “You know all that stuff is confidential.” I lower my voice. “But no.”
“He’s into S and M, isn’t he?”
“I can’t talk about it—but no. We’re just not compatible on a basic level, personality-wise, goal-wise, so it’s pointless to subject myself to disappointment and maybe even heartbreak.”
“But what if you’re the one girl in the whole world who can change him?” She smirks.
I know she’s kidding—mocking that clichéd impulse that attracts every girl to an irredeemable bad boy at least once in her life—but she’s hit the nail on the head. That’s exactly what I keep hoping I am—the one girl in the whole world who can change him. It’s ludicrous. “Yeah. If he could just find The One, he’d be a changed man,” I say, trying to keep my voice light and bright. But I don’t feel light and bright. I feel miserable.
Kat laughs. “You’re obviously obsessed with him. And he wouldn’t have tracked you down like a big game hunter if he weren’t at least slightly obsessed with you. So why not take him for a spin and at least see if you’re more compatible than you think?”
“It’s not as simple as test-driving a car—”
“Yes, it is. It’s precisely as simple as test-driving a car. I say this with love, girl, but you make everything more complicated than it has to be. No offense.”
“None taken.” She’s absolutely right. I hate that about myself. I sigh. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe I should—”
There’s a loud knock at my door.
Kat’s eyes go wide. “Oh my God,” she whispers. “I knew he wouldn’t take no for an answer!”
My heart’s in my throat. I’m wearing sweats and a T-shirt and no makeup right now. Oh my God, please, Lord, no. He wouldn’t just show up at my house, unannounced, would he? Yes, he would. I know he would. That’s exactly the kind of thing he’d do.
“I guess he’s not letting you off the hook that easily, little Miss Over-thinker,” Kat says, marching with glee to the front door.
I bolt to my bedroom like a mental patient escaping from a psych ward, trying frantically to think what clean clothes I have in my drawer that don’t make me look like I’m dressed for a marathon study session. My heart’s beating out of my chest and my pulse is raging in my ears. I can hear Kat opening the front door and greeting whoever’s on the other side of it. I hold my breath, listening.
A male voice says, “Sarah Cruz?”
Oh God. This is disastrous. Worst case scenario. If he sees Kat first, he’ll only be massively disappointed when I show my face and say, “Sorry. Sarah’s me.”
“No,” Kat says, squealing. “But you’ve got the right place. I’ll take those for her.”
“There’s more stuff in the truck, too. I’ll be right back.”
What the hell is going on? I march out of my bedroom back into the living area to find Kat standing before me with the most exquisite arrangement of roses I’ve ever seen—at least three dozen roses of every imaginable hue bursting out of an elegant crystal vase.
Kat laughs. “Looks like someone’s not accustomed to being turned down.”
Kat and I take stock of the various goodies littering my kitchen table. In addition to the six arrangements of outrageously beautiful flowers, there’s a gigantic box of chocolates in a heart-shaped box tied up in a huge red bow (which Kat has already untied and dug into), a gigantic white teddy bear holding a red, heart-shaped pillow embroidered with the phrase “Be Mine,” and, to top it all off, a sealed, pink envelope with my handwritten name across the front.
I stare at my treasure trove, unable to speak.
“Aren’t you gonna open the envelope?” Kat asks, picking it up and handing it to me.
“Yeah, I’m”—I gesture toward my bedroom and begin walking quickly toward it—“just gonna read it in private.”
Kat looks mildly disappointed, but she says, “Okeedoke.”
In my room, I perch on the edge of my bed and stare at the sealed pink envelope in my shaking hands. I want to open it more than I want to breathe. But I’m nervous. If I know Jonas Faraday, the card will surely include words like “lick” and “come” and “fuck” and maybe even “clit,” and I don’t want to read those words right now, to be honest. I’ve got romantic visions of flowers and candy and teddy bears dancing in my head, and I don’t want his unique form of “brutal honesty” to burst my bubble. Even if I know he’s just making some sort of sardonic point with all this clichéd stuff, I can’t help but enjoy the over-the-top romanticism of it all, even if he’s only mocking traditional romance. Frankly, if all he’s got to say to me at this point is “I want to make you come,” I’m not in the mood to hear it.
I stare at the envelope in my hand. I feel so excited right now, so genuinely hopeful, I almost don’t want to open the card and get let down. The odds are high that whatever’s inside this card is going to ruin this moment—and the silly hopes that are rising up involuntarily inside me against my better judgment. I mean, no matter how cute that teddy bear is out there, we’re still talking about Jonas Faraday, after all—and he’s not a teddy bear kind of guy.
Well, there’s only one way to find out what it says.
I take a deep breath and tear open the envelope.
It’s a Hallmark card. I can’t believe my eyes. It’s a frickin’ Hallmark card, covered in pink and red hearts. The cover of the card says, “Happy Valentine’s Day” in swirling gold letters. Where did he find this card in March?
The inside of the card is imprinted with a stock message that makes me gasp: You are everything I never knew I always wanted. The message is followed by a handwritten letter “J.”
This is the last thing I expected him to say. My mind is reeling. I don’t even know what to think.
“Sarah!” Kat calls from the kitchen. “There’s a note in the flowers!”
I rush out of my room into the kitchen, and she hands me a tiny envelope. I open it to find a handwritten notecard.
“My Magnificent Sarah,
“I hereby decree today to be Jonas and Sarah’s Valentine’s Day—and since I am God, thus it is so. A car will pick you up for our traditional Valentine’s dinner at 8:00, and we will dine at a candlelit restaurant, out in public, like normal people do. At the end of our dinner, I will kiss you goodnight, if you’ll let me, and nothing more—like normal people do—and then the car will take you directly home, without me in it. (Come on, Sarah, it’s just dinner. You need to eat, right?)
“Truthfully yours, Jonas
“P.S. After we spoke yesterday, I saw your photo for the first time—hence the upgrade in your name from ‘My Beautiful Sarah’ to ‘My Magnificent Sarah.’ Damn, Sarah, you’re absolutely gorgeous.”
Holy frickin’ moly. My cheeks are burning. My head is spinning. My knees are weak. What the hell is going on here? I can’t make heads or tails of it. I know in my head that this entire charade is a big fat satire to him—some kind of nod to an alternate, surrealistic reality he’s poking fun at somehow—and yet it’s making me swoon nonetheless.
“What does it say?” Kat asks.
I wordlessly hand her the card, my mouth hanging open.
“Oh my,” she says as her eyes scan the note. When she’s done, she looks up at me, smiling from ear to ear. “Oh my,” she says again. “My, my, my, my, my.”