Mr. Black's Proposal Read Free

minerals.”
    “But you can’t—”
    “Andy, please .” I let my voice show just how physically and emotionally tired I was. I could whine in front of my brother and not feel bad about it. “Let me go to sleep.”
    “Alright,” Andy said. He tucked the blanket under my chin. “You’ll tell me all about it in the morning, okay?”
    “Mmmffff,” I said, and then I was asleep.
    The doorbell rang. In my dream, I opened the door and a sexy pizza delivery man was standing with a large pepperoni in his arms. He had Lucas’s face. Come in, I whispered in my best porn-star voice.
    Then the doorbell rang again. Irritated, I opened one eye.
    “Oh, that’s interesting,” I mumbled. “The ceiling is spinning in circles.”
    The doorbell rang once more and I sat up on the couch in a slump of pain. Everything ached, and I had the vague memory of drinking directly out of one of the anise liqueur bottles down in the bakery.
    “Are you going to get that?” Andy yelled. But Lacey wasn’t coming over until later.
    “It’s your new boy toy,” I yelled back. “You get it.”
    “No it’s not,” he yelled back. “We already broke up.”
    “Fine,” I huffed, slumping off of the couch. I steadied myself against the wall as I made my way toward the door. “But if it’s the UPS man delivering your box of dildos—”
    I stopped with the door halfway open.
    It was Lucas. He stood there with a bouquet of red roses in his hand, dressed in a white button down and gray suit pants.
    “Dildos?” He looked down at his bouquet. “I’m sorry. I thought that roses might be better, but if it’s dildos you want—”
    “No,” I said.
    “No? What? I haven’t even asked you—”
    “It doesn’t matter. The answer is no.”
    I tried to close the door, but he stuck his foot in. I slammed the door on his shoe and he yelped.
    “Ow!” he cried. “Stop hurting me!”
    “Stop trying to get into my apartment, and then I’ll stop hurting you. How about that?”
    “No! Ow!” he said, as I slammed the door again, harder this time.
    “What are you, some kind of insane stalker?”
    “Let me talk to you for one minute.”
    “The last time you talked to me for one minute, you asked me to marry you.”
    “I promise I won’t ask you to marry me again.”
    I eyed Lucas.
    “I won’t ask you to marry me today ,” he amended. “Not, you know, forever. That promise has a twenty-four hour life of contract.”
    He bit his lip and held out the roses.
    “Please?” he said.
    “Red roses? Really?”
    “Mrs. Norberg said they meant love ,” he said. He looked down at them, then back up at me. “I’m not used to begging. This is weird.”
    I sighed.
    “Okay,” I said, opening the door. “You can come in. Just for ten minutes. I have to get to work.”
    The smile that burst across Lucas’s face made my heart leap in my chest. I tried to suppress the hopeful feeling that rose up in my chest. I hadn’t lost him, after all. And he really didn’t seem insane. Today, anyway.
    “So this where you live?”
    “Yeah,” I said, suddenly self-conscious of the mess. There were books and clothes piled up everywhere, and Andy had put up his old Backstreet Boys and N’Sync posters. A half-naked Justin Timberlake stared back at us from over the TV with a mop of tight curly blonde hair. I picked up an empty Chinese container to throw away and then realized that there were a dozen more where that came from. I set the won ton box down quietly and shifted my weight on my feet.
    Andy bounced into the living room and was across the hall before I could stop him.
    “I’m going to go get the cupcakes ready. And I promise I’ll keep a close eye on them,” he said, when I opened my mouth to protest. “Don’t worry. No burning them this time.”
    “I thought I’d smelled something burning in my apartment this morning,” Lucas said, a smile twisting upward on his face.
    “Bye, Andy!” I said. He was already out the door.
    “So,” I said,