Small Things You Promised novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: No Big Deal
The morning after Ty proposes, Carlie leaves his grandmother's ring stuck in the champagne on her kitchen floor and tells him to get out, and that night the paramedic carrying her neighbor out of the heat turns out to be Lacy's husband.
Ty Waddell proposed to me at midnight on the Fourth of July.
By ten the next morning, I knew I was going to give the ring back.
It was the floor.
My kitchen floor was sticky with dried champagne from wall to wall.
Red and blue streamers were glued into it.
A paper flag was stuck to the leg of the table.
Missy stood in the doorway with two iced coffees and stared at me.
"You're breaking up with him," she said. "Because of a floor."
"Yes."
"Did he cheat on you?"
I shook my head. I was smiling, which scared her more.
"Did he hit you?"
"No."
She groaned and set my coffee on the counter. The cup stuck to it.
"Carlie, you're making a big deal out of nothing. Just tell him to clean it up."
"He won't."
"You don't know that."
"I know that."
I couldn't get down there myself.
My back had gone out at the party, the way it does when I stand too long.
The disc at the bottom of my spine felt like a hot coin.
I couldn't kneel. I could barely bend to pick up my shoe.
Ty knew that.
He'd known it for five years.
At ten fifteen he came down the stairs in his Waddell Heating & Air polo, hair wet from the shower.
He kissed my cheek and walked straight across the floor.
His boots made a sound.
"Babe," I said. "Your mama and the cousins are here at eleven. Can you mop?"
"It's no big deal." He grabbed his keys. "Mama's seen a floor before."
"Please. I can't get down there."
"I'll do it when I get back. I've got to run grab ice."
His phone buzzed in his hand.
I saw the name on the screen before he tilted it away.
Lacy.
The door shut behind him.
Missy looked at the floor. Then at me.
"Okay," she said slowly. "Tell me about the frosting again."
I didn't have to.
She'd been at my birthday party in March.
Somebody knocked my sheet cake off the counter, and Ty said, "I've got it, babe, go sit down."
The frosting sat on that floor for four days.
It turned gray and started to smell.
On the fifth day, I got down on my knees with a spatula and scraped it off, bit by bit.
Ty watched the Braves from the couch.
When I finally cried, he looked at me.
"It's no big deal," he'd said. "Why get so worked up?"
Missy went to the fridge for ice and stopped.
The thermometer on the door said ninety-four.
It wasn't even ten thirty.
My kitchen faces west and has one window, painted shut since the forties.
I fainted in that kitchen in April.
A neighbor heard the pan hit the floor and called 911.
The paramedic who carried me out had stuck a note on my fridge before he left.
Get AC in this kitchen. Heat exhaustion, not a joke. Medic 7.
Ty threw it away in May.
"He said he'd put a unit in," Missy said.
"Two summers ago."
"Ty installs air conditioners for a living."
"I know, Missy."
His whole family came at eleven.
His mama, two of his cousins, and a bottle of champagne for the happy couple.
Ty came in behind them with two bags of ice.
And Lacy Crenshaw.
"Lacy's family," Ty said, before anyone asked. "She grew up next door."
Lacy wore a pale yellow sundress and pearl studs.
She looked down at my floor and covered her mouth.
"Oh, honey. I'd just die."
I'd cooked since seven.
A breakfast casserole, biscuits, fruit, a pitcher of tea that sweated through its own napkin.
By noon the kitchen was ninety-seven degrees.
Everybody ate standing up around the island because the chairs were stuck to the floor.
I stood at the stove and held on to the counter with both hands.
My back seized every time I breathed in.
Lacy was two bites into her casserole when Ty saw the onions.
She hadn't noticed them.
He had.
He took her plate, sat down on a stool, and began to pick them out with his fork.
"It's fine," she said, grinning. "There's hardly any."
One piece at a time.
"No, ma'am," he said. "Onions make your arms itch. Why risk it?"
His mama smiled at that.
One of the cousins said, "Y'all are too cute."
I looked at Ty bent over that plate.
He was so careful. He didn't miss a single piece.
"Ty," I said.
"One sec, babe."
I let go of the counter.
My back screamed, and I didn't care.
I took his grandmother's ring off my finger.
It was small and old, and twelve hours ago I'd cried when he put it on me.
I leaned down as far as I could and pressed it into the dried champagne on the floor.
It stuck.
The room went silent.
"You can have that back," I said, "when you clean the floor."
Ty laughed. Then he saw my face.
"Carlie. Over a floor?"
"I fainted in this kitchen in April. Do you remember the date?"
He opened his mouth. Nothing came out.
"April eighteenth," I said. "You were at Lacy's mama's house putting in her new air conditioner."
Lacy picked up her purse.
"You remember her onions," I said. "You've never once remembered my back."
"Baby, it's no big deal. I've been swamped."
"I know. You always are."
I looked at his mama, then back at him.
"This is my house. I want your things out by Friday."
"Ty," Lacy said softly. "Maybe we should go."
He went.
He went with her, and he left the ring on the floor.
That night it was still ninety at nine o'clock.
Missy and I were on the porch with the fan when the sirens came up the hill.
The ambulance stopped next door.
The old man who lived there was eighty-four, and he'd been on some charity's waiting list since March.
He had a sign in his grass. Your unit is coming!
I was halfway across the yard before I thought about it.
The paramedic came out of the house with the old man on a stretcher, bagging him.
He was tall, with a dark beard and a scar through one eyebrow.
I knew him before I read Medic 7 on the rig.
He knew me too.
"You're the kitchen girl," he said. "You ever get that air conditioner?"
"No."
He looked down at the yard sign as they rolled past it.
At the small print along the bottom. Installed by Waddell Heating & Air.
Then he looked at me.
"Waddell," he said. "That's your fiancé."
"Not since lunch."
He loaded the stretcher and stopped with one hand on the door.
"Cool Seniors Chattanooga," he said. "That's my wife's charity."
"Your wife?"
"Lacy Crenshaw." He climbed in. "I'm her husband."
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