someday, huh?” said Amber the intern.
“Yeah, a great story,” Sophie agreed and quickly pushed her way into Bob’s office.
“There you are, Sophie! Our very own internet sensation!” he said as she came in. Bob stood up and came around his desk, his hand held out.
She let him shake her hand, trying to decide where to start.
“Congratulations, Sophie. He seems like a very nice young man. Emily wants to have you both over to dinner sometime soon,” he said, giving her a fatherly smile.
“Well, we’re not really,” she began, but he didn’t let her finish.
“And Harold insisted that we air your interview tonight instead of that piece about the animal shelter.” Bob smiled like he had just handed her a larger than expected Christmas bonus.
“My interview?” she asked. “What interview?”
Bob laughed. “The one you’re going to have with Harold in about an hour. Didn’t you get his message? This is a great story! One of our own gone viral. Harold practically begged for the interview. And don’t worry…We’ve already contacted your fiancé. He says he’s got a free period from nine to ten, but of course you already know that. That’s why we’re shooting the interview this morning.”
Sophie wondered if Bob had suddenly started speaking in tongues. Nothing he was saying made any sense. “Wait…you contacted Brad? How?”
“Oh I don’t know,” Bob shrugged. “I just asked Amber to track him down. I assumed she had gotten his number from you.”
Sophie didn’t have Brad’s phone number, or even know his last name, and yet somehow Amber the intern had managed to “track him down” before she could even get into work? Had the entire station come in at the crack of dawn to plan this? She half expected someone to jump out from behind Bob’s ficus and shout, “Gotcha!”
As she looked hopefully at the ficus, which was far too small to hide an entire human being, something else Bob had said sank in.
“Do you mean Brad’s coming for the interview?” she asked, utterly confused.
“Of course! It’ll be a tight squeeze with him only having an hour to get in and out, but he said that was the only time he could possibly do it today. Sounds like they keep him pretty busy over at the high school.”
“But Brad lives in New York!” she blurted.
Bob frowned and picked a slip of paper up off his desk. “Really? He told Amber he lives over on Sycamore and teaches at the high school. Isn’t that right?”
Brad lived over on Sycamore? He taught at the high school? Suddenly, Sophie felt the room spinning around her. She sank into a chair and put her head in her hands. Was she going crazy? How could Brad, the stranger she had met by chance in New York City, possibly live in Ohio, only a few streets away from where she worked?
“Are you okay, Sophie?” Bob asked, his voice full of concern.
She had to pull herself together and get out of Bob’s office. Taking a deep breath, she sat up straight and tried to smile. “Of course. I’m just feeling a little under the weather today. Think I might have caught a bug in New York. Of course Brad lives here. I just…I just meant that I thought he was still in New York. He was supposed to stay on for a few days, but I guess he decided he couldn’t miss today’s classes after all.”
Bob was still looking at her strangely, so she added, “I left my cell phone in the hotel room in New York, so I haven’t been able to talk to him since I left. That’s why I didn’t know about the interview either.”
There. That made sense, didn’t it? Bob certainly seemed to buy it.
It wasn’t until she had locked herself into the lady’s room five minutes later that she wondered why she had lied.
After washing her face with ice cold water and pinching her arm until the skin turned red just to make sure she wasn’t dreaming, Sophie pulled her cell phone out of her purse. She had turned it off last night because she hadn’t felt like talking to anyone after Abigail had gone home. As she waited for it to boot up, she wondered how she was ever going to get herself out of this mess. She would just have to go back and explain things to Bob. She could tell him she panicked. Or maybe that she had gone temporarily insane.
She had thirty-two texts, seven missed calls, and three voice mail messages. She checked the texts first. Mostly they were from everyone she knew, asking if it had really been her in the video and offering their congratulations. The missed calls were from Harold (one), Amber (two), and her mother (four). The voice mails were Harold (about the interview), Amber (asking for Brad’s phone number), and her mother (demanding to know why she hadn’t bothered to tell her own mother that she was even dating someone, let alone that she was going to propose to him).
Sophie felt sick. She needed a plan. And she needed to call her mother.
She emerged from the bathroom fifteen minutes later because it had taken some time to explain to her mother why she would do something as crazy as propose to a complete stranger. Amber the intern was waiting for her in the hall. “There you are! We’ve got to get you over to makeup and Harold wants to ask you some questions before the interview.”
“Okay, but I need to talk to Bob first,” Sophie said firmly. Whatever happened, she had to stick to her plan: (1) tell Bob the truth, (2) get the interview over with as quickly as, and (3) send out a mass text to everyone she knew explaining that they didn’t need to rush out and start buying her wedding presents just yet.
But Amber was shaking her head and pulling her down the hall by one arm. “You can’t talk to Bob. He left five minutes ago for a meeting with some sponsors across town. It’ll have to wait.”
The makeup girls fussed over not only her makeup, but her hair and clothes as well. Apparently, she wasn’t very good at dressing herself. By 9:45, they had her looking like a completely different person. They had made her exchange the slightly baggy jeans and orange top she was wearing for a white silk blouse and gray slacks that they had produced as if by magic. Then they swept her hair up into some kind of fancy bun, completely redid her makeup, and tied a green scarf into an intricate knot around her neck.
As she examined the result in a mirror, she forgot for a moment what an awful pickle she was in. She looked incredible. She almost didn’t recognize herself. She certainly didn’t look anything like the clumsy, awkward Reindeer Girl in the video.
She had decided that she had better give Harold a heads up before the interview, so he wasn’t totally floored when she and Brad turned out to be strangers. But he never showed up. She kept asking people where he was, but no one seemed to know.
As ten o’clock came and went, she felt herself growing more and more nervous. She combed the station room by room. Harold was nowhere to be found.
At 10:08, Amber found her in the break room.
“Sophie!” the intern said, exasperated. “Everyone’s been looking for you! Come on! Brad’s here and everyone’s waiting for you.”
“He’s here?” she squeaked. “I need to talk to Harold!”
“He’s on set. Come on!”
Sophie let Amber lead her to the interview set, where Brad sat on a tan leather sofa, chatting amiably with Harold. He looked different without the Santa suit. Dressed in a pair of jeans and a black button down shirt, he looked even more amazing than he had that night in New York. She wanted to run her fingers through his dark brown hair.
Wait…No she didn’t! She absolutely did not want to touch his hair. All she wanted was to get through this interview and then never see him again.
Squaring her shoulders, she headed towards the set.
“It was so unexpected, Harold,” Brad was saying. “I had no idea she was going to propose.” He looked up and saw Sophie gaping at him at the edge of the set. He rose smoothly to his feet and grinned at her. “But that’s my girl! One surprise after another.”
The next twenty minutes flew past in a blur of one absurd lie after another. Once again Sophie felt that she and Brad were performing in a play for which she had never seen a script. Which seemed
possible since he actually was an actor. Well, a drama teacher who did a little community theater on the side. The interview went something like this:
Harold: We’ve got a real treat for you tonight. If you haven’t seen the latest viral video to hit the internet, Reindeer Girl Proposes to Flash Mob Santa, it’s worth a watch. This charming little Christmas romance currently has over 6.5 million views and is trending on every major social media platform. And it turns out that Reindeer Girl is none other than Sophie Hayes, an assistant producer here at KJAX. I’m here with Sophie and her fiancé, Brad Wright, a local high school drama teacher. Sophie, why don’t you tell us how you wound up proposing to Brad in New York City just two days ago.
Sophie: Well, um…My friend Abigail took me to New York for my birthday.
Brad: She had no idea I would be there as well. (Putting an arm around Sophie’s shoulders.)
Sophie: (Glaring at Brad.) That’s right. I had no idea that Brad would be in New York. Anyway, I had always wanted to be in a flash mob so Abigail—
Brad: (Interrupting.) And I cooked up a little surprise for her. We got together with some friends of mine in the Big Apple and organized a flash mob on her birthday.
Harold: So the whole thing was in Sophie’s honor?
Brad: (Winking into the camera.) Only the best for my girl!
Sophie: (Digging her elbow into Brad’s side.) Oops! Sorry. Actually, Harold—
Harold: