And here I was just starting to think this day might turn around.

 

I was sitting at the stoplight half a mile from Brian's, singing along loudly and badly to Matchbox Twenty, drumming on the steering wheel. For some reason, jamming out to some bad Top 40 music - well, this song wasn't so bad, I had to admit - was just what the doctor ordered today for my discombobulated soul. I could almost begin to forget the throbbing pain in my ankle, the sight of flames in the microwave at work, the endless maddening refrain of "Disconnected from server" as we'd struggled to update the website today, and the memory of the stunned look on that poor writer's face as I'd told her to pack up her desk, four days before Christmas.

 

"And all you want is just to hold her, but she don't go for that." I sang even louder, pumping my fist to punctuate the next words. "She has a hard! Time! Comin'! When she can't hit-"

 

BAM! The car jolted forward violently, through the crosswalk. I hit the brakes to keep from flying into the intersection toward a grisly death named for a type of steak. My neck snapped forward, and my ankle was instantly forgotten.

 

All the blood drained from my face and hands, diverted to my frantically pumping heart. Matchbox Twenty was still singing on the radio about that mean girl. In the rearview mirror, I glimpsed a kid who couldn't have been any older than 20, his panicky face half obscured by an already-deflated airbag.

 

I pulled off to the shoulder, but the kid's car didn't move. A line of cars was already swerving around us, the drivers alternating between gawks and glares. Slowly, on wobbly legs, trying to favor my bad ankle, I climbed out of the car. It was no use, I quickly realized. My bright red high heels, which had looked so cute and festive this morning, which I'd managed all day until stumbling hard on the way out of work, were just making things worse. I threw my shoes angrily into the passenger seat and limped around to the back of the car in my stocking feet, ignoring the cold pavement.

 

My bumper was a dented, scratched nightmare, but the Edge was definitely drivable, although somewhere in heaven my stepdad was grumbling about getting the alignment checked. At least my car was better off than the other one, an old-model green Saturn with unsightly gray bumpers, which had apparently bounced off my larger vehicle and was now smashed down to about two-thirds its original size. SUV 1, plastic car 0.

 

"I'm all right." The other driver had already climbed slowly out of the car. "You OK, lady?"

 

I looked up at the kid, who was at least six-five, and drew in a shaky sigh, fighting tears. "Yeah. You wanna call the police or should I?"

 

He shifted uncomfortably. His face was pitted with acne scars, and his teeth looked like he'd switched right to Code Red from his mother's milk. He was wearing a faded Carl's Jr. polo.

 

"Let's not and say we did," he said, and now, my sense of smell delayed by the cold air, I couldn't mistake the smell of weed rising from that fast-food uniform.

 

I sighed. "Fine. Let's at least exchange information." I reached into my purse and pulled out the little cards my insurance company had sent me, the ones with my name and policy number already printed on them - quite handy when the sensible thing to do after an accident is the furthest thing from your mind. I thrust one at him and waited.

 

He handed me a McDonald's receipt with his name and number scribbled on the back. And that was it.

 

"Iontaveinsurance," he mumbled.

 

You know that line in Clue where Mrs. White talks about flames on the sides of her face?

 

It was kind of like that.

 

I crossed my arms. "All right, kid," I said through clenched teeth. "Give me 300 bucks to fix my bumper, and I won't call the police."

 

Again with the mumbling. "Ionthave300bucks."

 

No, I supposed not, or else he might have had insurance.

 

"Then why the hell exactly should I not call the police?" I snapped.

 

He looked down at me with pleading eyes. "Because it's four days before Christmas."

 

Damn it all to hell. I glared at him, limped back to my driver's seat and drove away without another word.

 

Part of me wanted to call the insurance company as I drove, see if maybe I had an uninsured driver clause I didn't know about off the top of my head. Part of me, the part that was shaking with shock, was afraid to do anything besides stare straight ahead at the road, hands at 10 and two, driving five under the speed limit, barely breathing. Before getting this car four months ago - when I'd shown up in Louisville behind the wheel of a U-Haul, ready to start my life over after the indignity of a pink slip from Rolling Stone - I had driven a car about six times in four years. I had become a nervous driver on the best days. And today had been the shittiest day in the history of days.

 

Ah, what the hell. I reached into my purse for my phone. My thumb grazed the screen, felt the crack, and I remembered: oh, right, no phone calls for me.

 

Shittiest day in the history of days.

 

I pulled into the driveway of a big, gorgeous, rambling, unpretentious ranch house with a bay window in the front. Brian's blue Jeep was already there. I turned off the engine and rested my forehead against the steering wheel. The tears I'd been been too dazed to muster at the accident scene pooled in my eyes now.

 

My mom's voice echoed in my head. "Oh, honey," she'd sigh and say, "some days you're the windshield, some days you're the bug."

 

I wanted nothing more than to go in the house and let Brian kiss it and make it all better. Starting two days ago, he was off for two whole weeks, and I'd been excited about every single day of it for a month. But I couldn't bring myself to get out of the car.

 

Something made a funny rubbing sound against my car window. Wait, a rubbing sound? I looked up to see Brian's handsome face pressed against my window in a ghoulish contortion, cheeks and lips puffed out, eyes crossed. In spite of my tears, I laughed.

 

He opened the car door and gave me a lingering kiss hello, but my halfhearted response made him pull back and frown. "What's wrong, girl?"

 

The compassion in his voice brought the tears flooding back as quickly as they'd faded. "Everything. Look at my bumper."

 

He took a few steps to his right, and his eyebrows went up. "Who did that?"

 

I sighed. "An uninsured driver reeking of the habitual."

 

A resigned sigh. "All right, come on inside." He took my hand and pulled me out of the car. I grabbed my purse, but not my briefcase. I didn't even want to contemplate work tonight.

 

I winced as I put weight on my ankle. He noticed right away. "OK. Two things. Where are your shoes, and did you hurt your ankle?"

 

"Oh, today has just been a double-decker shit sandwich," I said dryly.

 

"Well..." He picked me up and slung me over his shoulder in a fireman carry, ignoring my shriek of protest, and started up the front walk. "Solved that problem." I could hear the grin in his voice. He normally only did this when he was about to have his way with me. I really hoped he was just saving me the walk, because I was so far from being in the mood that I could have been wearing a habit. Even staring down at that Michelangelo masterpiece of an ass was doing nothing for me. And that was saying a lot.

 

Inside the house, Brian set me down in the foyer just long enough for me to shrug out of my heavy coat and for him to toe his sneakers off. At least, so I thought, until his phone started ringing.

 

He pulled it out of his pocket, rolled his eyes at the screen and answered it. "What up, dawg."

 

"DUDE!" Nick's voice exploded through the earpiece, making me stumble. "I figured out why Chewbacca digs the Ewoks so much in Return of the Jedi."

 

"You seriously need a girlfriend," Brian said, a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. "Also, you coulda texted me."

 

"Yeah, but this was faster. Do you know why?"

 

Brian rubbed his forehead. "It's because Ewoks are little Wookiees. Think about the names, dude."

 

"I KNOOOOW!" Nick crowed. "It's fucking genius!"

 

Brian glanced down at me. "Dude, Meg just got here," he said to Nick. "I gotta go."

 

"All right. Hi, Meg!" Nick shouted through the phone.

 

"Hey, Nick?" Brian said to him.

 

"What?"

 

"Get your hearing checked, broseph."

 

Brian stuck the phone back in his pocket and smiled apologetically down at me, and then hoisted me over his shoulder again and carried me to the living room, where he deposited me on a wonderfully overstuffed couch and carefully pulled my feet into his lap. A fat pine tree sparkled in the corner, hung with blue and silver ornaments; we'd put it up together just a couple of weekends ago.

 

"So, bad day?" he said softly, running his thumb along the instep of one foot.

 

"The worst." I sighed. "I won't bore you with the grisly details. I don't even want to talk about it."

 

"No, I wanna hear about it." He smiled. "You'll feel better if you do."

 

I rolled my eyes. "You're a real pain in the ass, Littrell."

 

The smile morphed into a distinctly shit-eating grin. "Thank you. So, bad day?"

 

I rubbed my forehead. "I had to fire someone today." Four months in as an editor at the local alt-weekly, four months of managing other writers for the first time in my career, and I'd already had to do what I believed to be the worst thing a manager ever had to do. It was the thing I had dreaded most when I had decided to apply for a leadership job in a newsroom.

 

Brian's eyes widened. "Today? The Friday before Christmas? Wh-"

 

A tremendous trombone blast sounded from across the house. We both jumped.

 

I squeezed my eyes shut as the sound got fractionally closer. A pounding pulse in my forehead joined the rhythm, compounding my misery. "He's been on Christmas break for, what, like, five hours? He couldn't take a break for one night?"

 

I heard Brian sigh. "So, you know how he had an early out today and I drove up to get him from school?"

 

"Yeah?"

 

"He had his report card. He has a C- in band."

 

I opened my eyes. "In band? How the hell do you get a C- in band? In the fourth grade?"

 

"By not practicing." Brian pinched the bridge of his nose. "Leighanne sent the trombone with him. I called her when we got here, and apparently she's been getting bad progress reports for weeks." He shrugged. "News to me."

 

A shaggy-haired specter of my husband at 10 came parading into the room, his stance wide, playing a slow and emphatic rendition of "Seventy-Six Trombones," music clipped to the front of the instrument. At least he wasn't struggling for lack of ability. If my head hadn't been three notes away from exploding, he would have sounded pretty OK.

 

"Baylee!" Brian said. His son stopped playing. "Where's your silencer?"

 

Baylee flashed a carbon copy of the smug grin his father had given me just moments earlier. "At Mom's." He waved at me. "Hi, Meg!"

 

I waggled my fingers at him, trying to muster a smile. "Hi, kiddo." I loved him to pieces, this ornery little guy who was essentially my stepson, but right now I wanted him to go to his room and play the quiet astronaut game. For the rest of the night.

 

Brian smiled tightly. "Hey, buddy, you know how we talked in the car about how you have to practice every day?"

 

"Yeah?"

 

"Maybe you could take a break tonight. Meg had a really bad day and wants us all to just chill out tonight."

 

Baylee gave him a baleful look and shook his head, unruly blond curls bobbing. "Dad, you're full of contradictions," he said, clearly using one of his $5 words from school. And off he went, tromboning again.

 

 "At least go down in the basement!" Brian shouted after Baylee. I faintly heard the basement door creak open and the trombone recede, muffled by the floor.

 

I was back at square one, except now with a throbbing head. My neck was starting to feel like no prize, either.

 

"Welcome to my week." Brian looked in the direction of the basement door for a moment, then turned back to me with a smile on his face. "OK. He's gonna play till he gets distracted by the Wii. I'm gonna run you a bath and fix you a drink, and I think you have some non-work clothes here somewhere, and you're gonna tell me all about your bad day."

 

Now I couldn't help but smile back. "That sounds perfect."

 

"Yeah?" He stood up, gave me a hand up, wrapped an arm around my waist and helped me limp down the hall to the gigantic master bath. He winked down at me. "I'm not carrying you again."

 

"What good are you?" I muttered.

 

The master bath's enormous tub alone was enough to make me want to move in every single time I saw it. But noooooo, we had to agree we'd try at least living in the same city for a change before we jumped into officially living together. And I still had two months left on even the piddly six-month lease I'd signed to facilitate that trial. And since moving to Louisville, in my valiant attempt to not be Dad's Floozy Girlfriend, I hadn't spent the night even once when Baylee was here, not that the kid was stupid or anything. Damn it all.

 

Brian left the room while the water ran and I stripped down - no mean feat while trying to balance on one foot as much as possible. I found his body wash and poured some under the running tap. Not exactly the ideal bubble bath, but at least it would smell heavenly.

 

I stepped into the still-running water, tub filling fast, and sank all the way under, hair fanning out above me, the noise and stress of the world muffled by the water. If only I could just retreat into this silent underwater cave instead of going back to work.

 

A hand reached down into the water and tapped my shoulder. I stuck my head out of the water to see Brian holding a bottle of whiskey and two glasses full of ice.

 

"Bless your heart," I said.

 

He opened his mouth to speak, and his phone rang again. He pulled it out of his pocket, sighed and answered it. "A.J. What's goin' on, dude?"

 

I reached over and shut off the water, but since A.J. had a slightly better inside voice than Nick, I couldn't make out what he was saying. Brian's confused expression was a clue, though.

 

"Yeah, she is here, actually. ... I thought you had her number ... Oh. Well, you should have-" He covered the mouthpiece with one hand. "Is your phone off? He said he called you and it went right to voicemail."

 

I sighed. "Yeah, about that. My phone took a trip down the stairs today. I gotta use yours to call the insurance company after while." I rubbed my still-throbbing forehead with a wet hand. "I told you today was a shit sandwich."

 

Brian was back on the phone with A.J. "I gotta tell you, she's kind of indisposed. ... What?" His face reddened, but he smirked. "Dude, one, that's kinda personal, two, Baylee's here, and three, what makes you think I'd answer the phone if we were?"

 

He handed me the phone and a towel. "He says it's urgent." His face was still red. "And I feel weird about you talking to my buddy naked."

 

"That makes two of us." I stood up slowly, took the towel and wrapped myself in it, pretending not to notice Brian's private little smile as I rose from the water.

 

"All right, what's this about?" I said to A.J.

 

"Meg. I have a serious question for you. You need to help me settle an argument."

 

I sighed. "Bye, A.J."

 

"This'll take two minutes!" he whined. "Who did ‘Atlantic City' better, Springsteen or The Hold Steady?"

 

"What?"

 

"You heard me."

 

I looked at the phone in disbelief. "Since when do you listen to The Hold Steady?"

 

"I don't, but Rochelle does and we're arguing about it and I said I'd call the expert because, well, you try pissing off someone who could give birth any day." A.J.'s tone was slightly desperate.

 

"This is LIFE OR DEATH!" I heard Rochelle shout in the background.

 

I blew out a breath. "Springsteen's version is a classic, and poetic, and totally understated. The Hold Steady's version is more, like, overtly emotional, with all the heavy instrumentation and the whole ‘everything dies, that's a fact' over and over again. They might as well be two different songs."

 

"But which one is better?" A.J. persisted.

 

"It's a matter of taste." I paused. "But it's really hard to dog the Boss."

 

The last thing I heard as I hung up on A.J. was the beginning of him crowing "I TOLD YOU!" at Rochelle. So much for not pissing off a pregnant lady.

 

I set Brian's phone on the vanity, dropped the towel and slithered back into the water. Two minutes. Two. Fucking. Minutes. Of peace and quiet. To talk to my boyfriend.

 

Brian handed me a glass of whiskey. "What was that all about?"

 

"I don't even know." I belted back the whiskey. "Apparently I'm the expert on Springsteen covers."

 

"So highly sought after that idiots call me looking for you." He smirked, sitting down next to the tub and taking a sip of his whiskey. "So who'd you have to fire?"

 

"The new girl." I squeezed my eyes shut. "I busted her plagiarizing. It was just a horrible situation, but I really wanted to wait till after the holidays. My boss insisted. Kept going on about how she was making us look bad."  Back into my head floated the image of my writer, who had reminded me so much of myself at the beginning of my career, crying in the conference room as her career at LEO Weekly ended. "Because that's totally more important than ruining some 23-year-old's Christmas."

 

"That stinks," Brian said softly. I felt his hand on my shoulder just under the water, rubbing the knotted muscles near my neck, then in my neck. "Doesn't sound like there was anything for it, though."

 

I sighed as my muscles, then my brain, began to loosen.  "I know. It's jus-"

 

"Dad?"

 

"Jeez!" Brian jumped up a little too quickly, almost spilling his drink. He set his glass down and walked out into the hall, shutting the bathroom door behind him. I heard him through the door. "What is it, buddy?"

 

"When's the pizza gonna be here?" I heard Baylee ask.

 

"Uh...I don't know. I called half an hour ago. They sounded busy. Probably another 20 minutes."

 

Well, this was news.

 

"OK. What's in the bathroom?"

 

"I'm getting ready to take a bath."

 

"You're weird, Dad. Where's Meg?"

 

"She's lying down in my room. She has a headache. So please keep your voice down."

 

The hall light hadn't been on when Brian had opened the door, and I hoped Baylee couldn't see his face, which I knew had to be bright red. Mercy, but his dad was a bad liar.

 

I wanted to slide back underwater, but that would have prevented me from drinking. I picked up my glass from the edge of the tub and took another long swig, draining the glass. My head was finally starting to clear. I was finally starting to feel like I could really dig into this horrorshow of a day with Brian. If he'd just get back in here and get back to rubbing my shoulders...

 

"OK. Hey, Dad, I have a weird question."

 

"What's that?"

 

"Since my name is Baylee, did I happen because of Bailey's?"

 

The whiskey burned the inside of my nose. I clapped a hand over my mouth to stifle a snort of laughter.

 

Brian sounded like he wasn't sure whether to be horrified or impressed. "Baylee Thomas. Where did you learn to talk like that?"

 

"I heard someone on TV say it."

 

"Well, that's a really great reason for you to watch nothing but PBS. Weren't you playing your trombone?"

 

"I just got done. I'm gonna go play Wii now."

 

"Good. You do that."

 

Brian opened the door and slipped back into the bathroom. Sure enough, his head resembled a strawberry.

 

"I guess I should be glad my mama always told me never to hang around a man who was a good liar," I teased him. I shook my head. "‘Did I happen because of Bailey's?'"

 

Brian shook his head, too, laughing. "I don't know what planet that kid is from." He sat back down next to the tub and sipped his whiskey. His eyes danced with amusement. "And if that was true, then someday he's gonna have a little brother or sister named Knob Creek."

 

I didn't have the energy to smack him like I probably should have for a comment like that. Instead, a ray of joy and hope pierced my crabbiness, the way it always did when he mentioned the future. I grinned up at him.

 

"If I can put up with you that long," I said lightly. "Ordering pizza without telling me?"

 

He looked sheepish. "You don't have to eat with us. I'll save you some."

 

I rolled my eyes at him. "You might as well bring a couple slices in here. I don't trust you."

 

He splashed me a little. "See, you're not all gloom and doom. What else happened today? What'd you do to your ankle?"

 

I propped up my ankle on the far edge of the tub, slouching a little in the water as I did. "I thought it'd be cute to wear heels to work for once, and I turned it real bad in the parking lot."

 

Brian sucked in a breath through his teeth. "Sorry, girl."

 

I plowed on, before we could be interrupted again. "And the website was down all morning, and the microwave in the breakroom caught on fire while I was nuking lunch, and-"

 

The doorbell rang. "Damn it, already?" Brian muttered, setting his glass on the floor and climbing to his feet. He looked apologetically down at me. "I'm sorry. This is madness."

 

An irritable sigh escaped me. "Well, you better go get it."

 

He kissed my forehead. "I'll just stick it in the oven to stay warm, and I'll be right back."

 

I rubbed my face. Maybe it would have been smarter to just go home. Back to my apartment, where my mother would be showing up in less than 24 hours for the long Christmas weekend, where I still needed to clean. Where I'd be alone after a bad day, but at least alone in peace and quiet.

 

You know that's a shitty option, a voice in my head chastised me. Back in New York, I'd always been alone and miserable in the silence at the end of a bad day. The 11 months Brian and I had been apart, doing the long-distance thing, had only brought that misery into sharper relief.

 

I could just hear Brian talking to the pizza man. It sounded like they were about done.

 

And then I heard barking.

 

"What the hell?" I heard Brian shout.

 

A frantic jingle of dog tags sounded throughout the house, a skittering of claws on hardwood, and a huge brown border collie came bounding into the bathroom, a yipping Yorkie on its heels. The border collie was wearing a pink rhinestone collar, the Yorkie a pink bow in the fur above its eyes. Both trailed pink leashes behind them.

 

Two runaway dogs. And they were in my bathroom.

 

Before I had a chance to contemplate the subconscious meaning of calling this "my bathroom," the border collie was in my bath.

 

I shrieked, jumping to my feet, naked as the day I was born except for a few bubbles. My feet skidded on the slippery tub bottom, my ankle gave out beneath me, and I fell back into the water with a splash, my butt unceremoniously hitting the bottom.

 

The border collie jumped out of the tub and sprinted out of the bathroom as quickly as he had come in, now soaking wet and covered in bubbles, stinking of wet dog and my boyfriend's shower gel. The Yorkie lingered, lapping at Brian's whiskey.

 

I heard more footsteps in the house. An older woman shouted, "Fluffy! Duffy! Bad dogs! Come!" Her voice got closer with every word.

 

My eyes opened so wide that I was sure my eyelids had disappeared. Oh, no. She was not coming in here.

 

I struggled to my feet, grabbed the towel and stepped out of the dog-water. The rug slipped under my feet, and I grabbed the side of the tub for dear life. The Yorkie, spooked, darted out.

 

"Bad, bad dogs! Fluffy! How did you get so wet?" the woman chastised them.

 

In a little while, she'd also be asking how Duffy got so drunk. I hoped for everyone's sake that little shit-dog had the constitution of a fraternity president.

 

"I am so, so sorry," the woman was saying to Brian. She was at the mouth of the hallway. "They got away from me and just made a run for it. At least they didn't eat the pizza."

 

"Joyce, I think your dogs have had an awful lot of fun for one day." Brian sounded bemused.

 

If I had given my dogs rhyming names and dressed them in pink, they probably would have sought shelter, too, I thought as I steadied myself and wrapped the towel around myself. I was now covered in bubbles and dog hair. What kind of fucked-up dog shed in December?

 

Favoring my bad ankle, I wobbled on the other one and caught the side of the tub - right next to my empty glass, which fell to the floor and shattered, glass shards and half-melted ice cubes skittering across the wet floor.

 

Well, that confirmed it. Today, I was definitely the bug, splattered hopelessly across this forbidding windshield of a day. I sank to the floor and burst into tears.

 

The front door closed. After a couple of minutes, Brian walked back into the bathroom. He stood in the doorway for a second, surveying the hairy tub, the water and broken glass and sobbing girlfriend on the floor. His face fell as I looked up at him. "Meg..."

 

I sniffled. "I'm s-sorry," I hiccupped. "I'm just..." Hiccup. "...so..." Hiccup. "...stressed out."

 

"I know, sweet girl." He sat down on the floor beside me and put his arms around me, hairy dog-water and bubbles soaking into his shirt. "I'm sorry. I wish I could make it all go away."

 

I laid my head on his shoulder. "You tried."

 

He stroked my wet hair. "I hope the rest of the weekend isn't this stressful for you," he said softly. "Our first good Christmas. I'm just glad you're here."

 

I swallowed hard. I was sitting wet, cold and almost naked on the floor of a wet, trashed bathroom, exhausted, in pain, and suddenly it was the best I'd felt all day.

 

Without thinking, I wiped my tears with a wet hand. "It'll be good," I whispered. "I'll have you." I cleared my throat. "Hopefully it's all just getting itself out of its system now."

 

He kissed my forehead and held me for long seconds. Everything was still.

 

"Hey, listen," he whispered.

 

I lifted my head. "What?"

 

"It's quiet." He smiled down at me. "There's your peace and quiet."

 

I smiled back at him, relief flooding through me. "Hey, how about that?"

 

He sat back against the side of the tub, one arm still around me, and reached for his whiskey with the other hand.

 

"Um, I wouldn't drink that," I said.