Justin sent me a picture of a graphic. The second I opened it I almost choked on my laugh.
So Justin Dahl has invited you to break a curse with him. Congratulations!
We know that you have many options when it comes to curse breaking and choosing the right partner can be difficult, which is why we’ve gone the extra step and provided you with some reviews.
» “Justin was a wonderful gentleman. And I met my husband Mike after we broke up! 10/10 would break up with him again. —Sabrina B.”
» “Justin smells very nice and even my cat liked him, and my cat doesn’t like anyone. Highly recommend. —Karina S.”
» “Justin made all my wildest dreams come true, which was to get married to someone who wasn’t him at Disneyland! If I could give six stars I would. —Kimberly R.”
» “Justin saved my dog and my grandma from a burning building. He’s my hero. —A Real Person.”
And then finally:
» “I’m only writing this because I’m assuming if he gets a girlfriend she’ll tell him how stupid he is for naming his
dog Brad and she’ll convince him to change it. Justin was very polite and has excellent personal hygiene. You should date him. —Faith.”
I shook my head at the screen, laughing. I texted him.
Me: Nerd
He replied with laughing emojis.
I had to admit, he’d piqued my interest in Minnesota after our marathon call yesterday. He’d piqued my interest in him, which is why I’d spent the day making phone calls and sending emails and putting together a presentation for Maddy. It was time sensitive and I had to do it tonight, and it was not going to be pretty. I blew air through pursed lips and got up to go find her.
She was in the living room on the sofa in front of the wood-burning stove on her phone. I came into the doorway. “Hey, do you have a second? I want to talk to you about something.”
Maddy looked up. Then her eyes dropped to the laptop I was holding and she somehow immediately knew what was about to happen. “No.” She shook her head. “No. No, no, no, no, no. NO.”
I came into the room and slid onto the couch next to her. “Hear me out.” “We are going to Hawaii, Emma. It was my turn to pick. I bought a new
bathing suit—”
“You can wear it here too.”
“I am not going to Minnesota. It’s a flyover state. It’s not in our top twenty-five—”
“How did you know I was going to say Minnesota?”
“Uh, because you’re all twitterpated over what’s-his-face? Listen to me, you don’t really like him. You’re only feeling this way because he’s six- three.”
I laughed. “He is not six-three.” “Well how tall is he then?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t ask, I don’t care.”
“Well he looks six-three to me and I think that’s clouding your judgment. You are not swapping Hawaii for Minnesota.”
“Why not?” I asked. “It is a beautiful state, we could day-trip up to Canada. Remember that cupcake shop you saw on Food Network? Nadia Cakes? They have two locations there. And the top twenty-five is more of a guideline than a rule.”
She crossed her arms. “A rule we’ve never broken? Not once in three years? And how dare you try and lure me off a tropical island with cupcakes. Exactly how spectacular is this man’s penis?”
“Maddy!”
“What?! You are not selling me on your sudden love for the Upper Midwest. Do not sit here and pretend like this isn’t a hundred percent about the guy.”
“Justin. And yes, it’s a little about him. But this is purely logistical.” “Oh yeah? How?”
I tucked my leg under me. “Okay, so I know how this is going to sound. But if Justin and I date for a month, then break up, in theory”—I put my fingers in quotes—“the next guy I meet will be The One.”
She gave me a look.
“What? It sounds like fun,” I said. “You’re telling me you don’t want to see if it works?”
“Have him fly to Hawaii to see if it works. We do not go out of our way for men. We do not inconvenience ourselves for men, we do not change our well-laid plans for men. No.”
“Tickets to Hawaii are like a thousand bucks round trip right now. I can’t ask him to do that once a week for a month, that makes no sense. Look.”
I opened the laptop. “Look at the place I found for us—” “There is no place cool enough for me to—”
“It’s a historic cottage on an island in the middle of a lake.”
She paused in the way that I knew meant I’d gotten her attention.
I tapped on the tab and turned the screen toward her. “It’s two bedrooms. It’s super cute. Look at the porch. We could have our coffee there every morning, overlooking the water. It has a beach, with sand and a firepit.”
She peered over and pressed her lips together while she studied the pictures. Then she looked up and narrowed her eyes at me. “If it’s on an island, how are we supposed to get to it?”
“It comes with a boat.”
She arched an eyebrow. “A boat?” “A pontoon.”
She paused. “I get to be a sea captain?”
I nodded. “You get to be a sea captain. It’s only fifteen minutes from the hospital. And guess which one it is? Royaume Northwestern.”
Her eyebrow went higher. “Royaume?” “Yup.”
Minnesota had never been on our top twenty-five, but Royaume Northwestern was one of the best hospitals in the world. It was a huge selling point. Hospitals like Royaume had excellent certified-nursing- assistant-to-nurse ratios, nice lounges, lots of perks.
She seemed to think about it for a second. Then she shook her head again. “We’ll piss off the agency if we bail on Hawaii.”
“Nope. We haven’t signed contracts yet. They really need nurses at Royaume, they said they’re more than happy to make the switch. And it’s only a six-week assignment, we’ll be in and out. Just for the summer.”
She sat back against the sofa. “What department?” She looked at me.
I closed the lid of the laptop and mumbled it under my breath without looking at her.
She leaned in. “What? I couldn’t hear you. I thought for a second there you said Med Surg.”
I glanced at her. “I did. It’s Med Surg.”
She slapped her hands on her thighs and got up. “NOPE.”
“Come on!” I said, watching her walk to the door. “It can’t be that bad!” She turned. “Med Surg and it can’t be that bad? Are you kidding me? Surgeons are assholes. They are assholes in direct proportion to how good they are. Can you imagine the absolute audacity of the doctors working there? The abuse we will be subjected to on a daily—No.” She shook her
head. “I’m not doing it. Absolutely not.”
“They’re only assholes if you suck at your job—”
“They draw their energy from making nurses cry. We’ll be sacrificial lambs. And you know we’ll get all the crap assignments because we’re the newbies, they’ll float us three times a shift—No.”
I let out a slow breath. Then I set the laptop gently next to me. “I didn’t want to have to do this…”
She crossed her arms again. “Do what?”
“The trailer park.”
I let it hang there between us.
Her arms dropped. “You said you were never going to bring that up again,” she breathed.
“No, I said I was going to drop it. But I guess now I’m picking it up because you’ve given me no choice.”
“That was three years ago, Emma—”
“I agreed to a three-month stay in a luxury trailer home in a luxury
trailer park in Utah with allllll the amenities—” “Emma—”
“And when we got there, it was a two-thousand-year-old camper with no working AC, mice, a drained pool, and a creepy laundry room. No long- term rentals in sight because it was peak tourist season, so we were trapped in the RV from Breaking Bad for three months—”
“I found us a different place and you didn’t want it!”
“Really? The spare bedroom from the drunk guy you met in the ER who kept telling me I’d be prettier if I smiled more? That guy?”
She looked away from me. “I can’t believe you’re bringing this up,” she muttered.
I stood and walked slowly toward her, knowing I had her. “All I’m asking is to put off Hawaii for six more weeks. We get to stay in a gorgeous cottage on a lake, we have a boat for the summer, we get to cross Royaume off the bucket list. Yes, I realize Med Surg is less than ideal, but we’ll be working with some of the best surgeons in the world. And then I get to try this thing with this Justin guy—it’ll be an adventure.”
She didn’t reply.
“You can pick where we go for the following six months. You get two turns back-to-back.”
Her eyes slid to mine. “Can I pick the same place the whole time?”
This caught me by surprise. “We never stay at the same place for six months,” I said.
“Yeah, well we also never chose from a state not on our top twenty-five and we never skip turns.”
My heart started to pound. I don’t know why the thought of not moving made me feel slightly panicky. Maybe it was just the change in routine? We always moved on once a contract was up.
But I wanted this. It sounded fun. And if we waited until after Hawaii, we’d get to Minnesota when it started to get cold, and no way was I doing Minnesota in the winter no matter how cool Justin made it sound.
“Fine,” I said. “We can stay someplace for six months. Wherever you want.”
She drew in a deep breath and let it out before looking reluctantly at me. “Fine,” she mumbled. “We’ll go to Minnesota.”
I started bouncing all over the living room.
She jabbed a finger at me. “But you’re not allowed to bring up the trailer. Ever again. We are even. And you’re buying me cupcakes when we get there or the deal’s off.”
I bounced back to her and hugged her.
She shook her head. “Med Surg and no Hawaii, just so you can break up with some guy.”
“We’ve done stranger things.”
“Yes,” she said. “Yes, we have.”
 |
I didn’t tell Justin about Minnesota. I wanted to surprise him. We talked and texted on and off for the next week and a half until Maddy and I packed up to make the two-day drive to our new state.
Our contact for the cottage was a woman named Maria. She worked for the owner, who had a full-time residence on the mainland of the lake. We’d be parking our car in his driveway and using his dock to come and go to our cottage.
When we pulled up to this house, five minutes early, we sat in our car and stared. It was huge. A mansion.
“What the hell does this guy do?” Maddy asked, shaking her head. “I don’t know,” I breathed.
She looked at me. “How’d you find this place again?”
“The agency. The lady seemed like she knew someone. I think it was luck.”
I got out and shaded my eyes as I looked up at the house. I’d never seen anything like this in real life. It reminded me of a castle. Stone walls and
minarets. I could see at least four chimneys.
“Maybe he’s a famous rapper?” Maddy said, “Or like, some big executive?”
“Jeff Bezos maybe?” I joked.
“He probably has a helipad on the roof.” “He probably does…”
As we started pulling our bags from the trunk, a brown-haired middle- aged woman came out of the side of the three-car garage. “Are you Emma?” she said in a thick Mexican accent.
“Yes, hi.” I smiled.
“Hello. I’m Maria,” she said. “I’ll take you to the cottage. Is this all you have?” she asked, looking at my two bags and Maddy’s three.
“This is it,” I said. “Are we okay to park here?”
“No,” she said, taking one of Maddy’s bags. She handed us a garage door opener and pointed to the bay on the far left. “You can park in there. Mister doesn’t like to see cars in the courtyard. I’ll wait while you move it.” We moved the car into the garage—which had a lift inside to double- stack vehicles. Maddy mouthed What the fuck? to me while Maria wasn’t watching. And then we followed Maria across an enormous backyard to the
lake, dragging our luggage through the perfect grass.
The back of the mansion was even grander than the front. The backyard had a pool and an enclosed gazebo. White Adirondack chairs lined up on a huge sandy shoreline and beyond that a yacht was parked under a cover off the dock.
Farther down, an old pontoon so dilapidated it looked like it had washed up in a storm was tethered to a pole.
“This is your boat,” Maria said. “It’s old, so you beat it up all you want, Mister won’t care. Do you know how to drive a boat?”
“No,” I admitted.
She opened a door on the side of the pontoon and started loading our bags. “I’ll show you. It’s easy. Just like a car.”
We stood behind her as she gave us a quick tutorial on how to start it and raise and lower the prop. Then she untied it, pushed off the dock, cranked it into reverse, and backed out expertly into the open water. She turned us around and started for a large island toward the center of the lake.
Maria spoke over her shoulder as we drove. “The radio doesn’t work
and it doesn’t go fast. There’s life jackets and a paddle under the seats. You have to put gas at the marina, I’ll show you on a map. Look at the house so you remember where to go when you come back.”
Maddy scoffed quietly. “Yeah, I don’t think we’re going to lose the house. They can probably see it from space.”
My hair whipped around in the warm late-July breeze, and I had to hold it at the nape of my neck to keep it out of my face. The sun beat down on us. The boat didn’t have a canopy over it. Like an ancient, nautical convertible with no top. It was just wide open to the elements.
Maddy must have been thinking the same thing I was. “Does it rain a lot in Minnesota?” she asked, raising her voice over the sound of the old motor. “All the time,” Maria said. “I’m so happy he did this. This is the first
time Mister’s ever rented the cottage.”
“Why did he decide to rent it?” I shouted.
She waved her hand. “He never uses it. His girlfriend left him a few years ago and he never came after that. Too sad because he always came with her, you know? This has been in the family for fifty years, and now it sits empty. You will like it, it’s very nice.” She nodded ahead of us. “You see the dock with the owl?”
We strained to look. There was a small dock on the island ahead with a plastic owl perched on the end. “That’s it. Very easy to find. And you can see the house from here. See? Very easy.”
I was relieved it was such a short trip. I’d looked at a map of Lake Minnetonka and it was huge. I’d been a little worried we’d get lost trying to go back and forth, but you could see one dock from the other.
When we pulled up, which took a lot longer than the short distance implied—Maria was right, the boat did not go fast—Maddy grabbed on to the pole and pulled us in as Maria showed me how to kill the motor. She showed us how to tether the boat and turn off the battery, and then we grabbed our bags.
We started walking toward the property, the wheels of our luggage thunking on the planks of the dock. There was a tiny sand beach, just big enough for the firepit and four beach chairs. At the top of a zigzagging flight of wooden steps I could see a small white cottage nestled in the trees. We had neighbors on both sides, but they were far enough for privacy.
We lugged our bags up the stairs and were sweating by the time we
made it to the door. We came in through a screened-in porch that overlooked the lake. Maddy and I shared a glance. It was adorable. White wicker rocking chairs and a small matching loveseat with thick floral cushions. A cute coffee table and plastic ferns in wrought-iron planters and hanging baskets.
“This is it,” Maria said, unlocking the front door. “No candles allowed, but you can use the fireplace. It doesn’t have a heater.” She pushed open the door and we followed her into a gorgeous, bright, cozy living room. Maddy and I looked around smiling. “Oh wow. It’s even better than the pictures,” I said.
Maria looked pleased.
The house was vintage rustic. Colorful area rugs covered the weathered hardwood floors. In front of a stone fireplace, there was a chunky white couch with a heavy knitted throw blanket draped over the side and plaid throw pillows at each end. There were mismatched armchairs that looked lived in, a hope chest turned coffee table, and a chandelier made of driftwood over the four-person table in the kitchen. The kitchen had a large white farm sink, white cabinets with glass panes with mason jar cups and handmade bowls and plates behind them. No dishwasher, but we’d live.
Maria sighed at the house and shook her head. “Every year I come, I clean and dust. He never comes. Finally I said, ‘Why don’t you make someone happy with this place? You rent it.’ I’m glad he listened.”
“Me too,” Maddy said.
“A place like this should have laughter in it,” Maria said, taking us to the bedrooms. “Memories.”
The bedrooms were off the living room on either side of a short hallway with a single bathroom shared in the middle. The bathroom had a white claw-foot tub, pale blue tile, and an old pedestal sink. I took the room with the cushioned reading nook in the window and Maddy picked the one with the hanging swing chair in the corner.
“Where’s the washer and dryer?” Maddy asked, looking around after the tour was over.
“No washer,” Maria said. “If you bring it to me, I’ll wash your clothes for you. It’s an extra charge or you can go to the laundromat, but it’s not close. Also you have to bring out all your trash. There’s no trash service. You can throw it in the bins in the garage when you get back to the house.”
We both nodded.
“Use the house address for mail,” she said, going on. “I’ll leave it for you in the garage. Any problems you call me.”
Maria gave us the cottage key and her number. Then we drove her back to the mansion to drop her off. Maria had made it look easy, but I was glad the boat was old and junky, because it was actually pretty hard to maneuver and I had a feeling we’d be bumping into the dock more than we liked.
We decided to go into town and get groceries since we were already docked.
“It’s great, right?” I asked Maddy as I pulled out of the mansion’s garage.
“Yes, it’s great.”
“Did you see the cute wall art? All the Minnesota lake-life stuff?”
“Yes.” She let her flip-flop fall off and put her bare foot on the seat to put her chin to her knee. “It’s like we just went back in time to 1950.”
I smiled.
“Who do you think owns that house?” I asked. “Mister.”
I laughed. “Kind of sad he stopped using it,” I said, pulling out of the neighborhood.
“Sounds like it had too many painful memories.” “Yeah. We’ll appreciate it though.”
We drove about a mile away from the lake to a more commercial side of town that Google Maps said had a grocery store. That’s when I saw it.
“Oh my God,” I said. “I have to pull over.” Maddy looked out the window. “What?” “Something for Justin.”
I turned into the mini mall and parked.
Maddy looked around. “What do you need to get for Justin here?” “Hold on.”
I texted him.
Me: Tell me how many fingers to hold up.
A second later:
Justin: Hey, did you make it to Hawaii? How was your flight? Did you get in okay?
I gave my phone a twisted smile.
Me: I did. How many fingers? I have a surprise for you.
He replied with a smiling emoji and the number 3. “Let’s go.” I got out.
“What the heck are we doing?” Maddy asked, following me.
“Get a picture of me on this bus bench. Help me make it look good.” She eyed the bench. “I don’t think anything can make this look good.”
She took the picture and handed me back my phone. I cropped the photo so it was just me and the ad on the seatback. Then I sent it through.
It was a solid fifteen seconds before my phone started to ring.
