99 Percent Mine

I’m trying to teach him how to be more approachable. More understanding. More like me.

At the first Sanderson Christmas party, I stood alone and awkward for an excruciating two minutes, during which time I was the subject of speculation. I felt like the word how was said a lot. I could hear their drunk, high-pitched whispers. She looks normal. Sweet. So small! How does she cope with that . . . monster? We should rescue her.

Maybe he keeps her chained in his basement.

I waved like a dork to show that I was not shackled and was there of my own free will. They shrank back, then fell totally silent as their chief financial officer, aka the Overlord, approached me with a glass of wine. His eyes were soft with tenderness and my heart stopped beating until he restarted it with a kiss. The Overlord snuggled me into his side, fitting us together just right. Hard and soft. Darkness and light. Good cop, bad cop.

I registered the jaws dropping. He’s smiling!

He’s the Overlord, he calls them his Underlings, but I can see the little signs that he’s getting better at this. At a lot of things, actually.

“Did you remember your dad’s present?”

“Yep. We’d better get going if we’re going to make the party. Mindy and Patrick have been texting me obsessively. Don’t be late, don’t be late.” He’s sarcastic but I know how much this means to him.

“Yep. We’d better get going if we’re going to make the party. Mindy and Patrick have been texting me obsessively. Don’t be late, don’t be late.” He’s sarcastic but I know how much this means to him.

I give his arm a stroke and a squeeze. “We won’t be late.”

I can’t lie on the couch tonight because I’m needed in Port Worth. I’m Josh’s little lucky charm. When I’m there, he and his dad don’t fight. Luckily for them both, I’m always there.

“Got quite a collection by now, Shortcake,” Josh says, looking at the rows of Matchbox cars on the shelf behind me. He forgets our hurry and takes a red Volkswagen beetle out of his pocket, sliding it into one of the gaps.

“My toys have given me a reputation for being quirky and approachable.”

“No one would guess this strawberry-sweet exterior hides a complete hard-ass.”

“I learned from the master. I’m known for being firm but fair.”

“Mmm. Tell me more.” He loves sitting at my desk to look at everything I surround myself with, and he lowers himself down into my chair like it’s a milkmaid stool. His eyes are lit with a creepy kind of devotion as he looks at the castle of books against the wall, and the Smurf hidden in one of the battlements. He finds my bottle of perfume and smells the lid as he strokes my computer mouse.

“That’s where you’ve been,” he says in a scolding tone to the cardigan slung on the back of my chair. He folds it into a breadslice square on his knee.

I’ve turned him into such a total freak.

I’m an even bigger freak when I visit his office. I once touched the speed dial button on his phone marked SHORTCAKE just to make my cell phone ring. Then I was jealous of myself. That’s a sensation I feel a lot.

How am I living this life? How did I win so much?

Like he can read my mind, Josh picks up the framed photograph on my desk. It’s us together in the strawberry fields. Our eyes are summer bright, and I am sitting between his legs leaning b

ack against him. Around us is a carpet of green, studded with red. The picture is a tiny bit crooked because my dad was a little overexcited by the secret he was keeping.

Five minutes after this photo was taken, Josh said, “Hey, it’s an old Smurf in the dirt.”

He knew nothing would make me drop to the ground faster. I scratched frantically through the leaves. Where? Where? What I found in the vines at Sky Diamonds Strawberries was a Tiffany blue box. Then I realized he was kneeling down, too.

Lucy blue. True-love blue.

Even as he squeaked the box open and began to speak, I was dimly aware of cheering from the house. My parents were spying from the office window.

After I brushed the squashed berries from the back of his T-shirt, I learned that Josh had become an expert in diamonds. Carat, cut, color, clarity. He shivered with delight as he described staring at imperfections through a loupe. I could just imagine his laser eyes crumbling stones to ash. The way he tells it, he searched through a pile of worthless pebbles until he found something worthy of my tiny finger. I tell him it’s too big, too much, too perfect. He just laughs and says, I know, then makes me forget whether we’re still talking about the diamond.

I think my cheeks are going pink right now. When he looks me in the eye, he smirks. He’s definitely a mind reader.

“We need a vacation,” he decides, his finger straightening the terra-cotta tile I use as a coaster. I got that tile in Tuscany. “I’m taking you back. Cheese and wine and sleeping in the sun.” His eyes follow the line of my dress down my body. “Red dresses and champagne and carbohydrates.” A pause, and there’s a little vulnerability in his expression now. “I didn’t go crazy and dream it all, did I?”

“I have frequently assured you that I’m real.” I take his hand in mine and use it to pinch my forearm. “I was there for every incredible second. I always will be. Now, quit talking about carbohydrates. You’re turning me on.”