Page 45 of One Golden Ring
“Thanks,” I tell him, sliding my thumb across the screen to accept the call. “Mandy?”
“There you are!” she yells.
“Hey,” I say, pulling the phone back slightly from my ear. “Is everything okay?”
“I don’t know,” she says. “Is it?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I ask her.
“How could you send me that photo and then not call and tell me what’s going on?” she demands.
“What photo?” I ask her.
“That coy little photo of Christmas milkshakes,” she says. “Where you’reclearly wearing an engagement ring.”
Busted.
My heart stops beating for a second.
“Hello?” she says.
“Oh,” I say, glancing over at Michael.
I can’t say anything to her in front of him, and she’s yelling into the phone so loudly I’m pretty sure anyone within ten feet can hear her.
“Oh?”she echoes. “That’s all you have to say?Oh?”
“Well, I wanted to talk to you about that,” I say carefully.
“I’m all ears,” she says. “I didn’t even know you were dating anyone.”
“Mandy, can we talk about this later?” I ask her, knowing it’s probably hopeless.
“No, we can’t talk about it later,” she wails predictably. “Who is he? Why don’t you want to tell me about him? Is this mystery man worthy of my baby sister?”
I need an out, or this is all going to come crashing down.
“Guacamole,” I whisper.
Guacamolewas a special word of ours when we were kids. It started because for some reason the word tickled my funny bone, and I couldn’t hear it without laughing.
It went on to become something Mandy would whisper to me as a sort ofwe’re-in-this-togetherwhen wewere scared, or as a code word to cover for each other if our parents were wondering who got into the cookies.
“What’s going on, Darcy?” she asks, her voice softer and more serious.
“Everything’s fine,” I tell her. “I promise. Let me call you tonight?”
“Okay,” she says. “I love you, you know?”
“I know,” I tell her. “I love you too, champ.”
I hang up and Michael seems to be pointedly looking away. I guess he caught on to some of that.
“Derek and I didn’t really tell anyone we were dating,” I say weakly.
“It’s understandable,” he says. “You work together. So how are they doing in there?”
Relieved at the change of subject, I jump right into a description of the tiny solar system Derek and J.B. are creating.
