“It’ll be our prom promise,” he said.
“A solemn vow,” I said, wiggling my brow and pursing my lips before I added with a smirk, “Ollie.”
He narrowed his eyes, growling at me. “You’re evil. But even so, I doubt you’ll need to cash it in. You’ll have no problem getting dates . . .” He trailed off like he was waiting for me to say something more.
Was I supposed to say something? Something clever or romantic?
I didn’t know, wasn’t sure what he was getting at. Teasing him was easy. Understanding him was hard in moments like these.
And deciphering my own tangled knot of emotions—friendship, a dash of attraction, a close family connection, and that terrible kernel of pending grief, cresting like a wave not far from the shore—was impossible. Best to not even try.
So I simply laughed and said, “You’ll have no problem either, Emilys of the world aside.”
The odd thing was that Emily didn’t go to the dance. She wasn’t there with her wanker boyfriend.
The next week, I overheard her in the cafeteria line talking to a friend as she scooped salad onto her tray. “It’s strange,” she said. “I was so sure Oliver Harris was going to ask me to prom. He never did.”
I blinked, my face flushing as she unwittingly revealed his secret to me.
He’d never asked her.
I never let on that I knew he hadn’t.
It didn’t really matter anyway.
I was his pity date, and Phoebe was the happiest we’d seen her in a long time.
15SUMMER
Present day
All day long, all the time, all across the world people say, “I’ll do anything.”
But it’s just a saying, like “I’m dying to see your dress” or “This song is the worst.”
So when Oliver takes me up on my offer to do anything, my jaw comes unhinged. My brain buzzes with static, a radio stuck between stations.
Did he just say “become your fake fiancé”?
That’s the anything?
Cashing in on our prom promise? Isn’t that what we’ve always done? First with Emily, and later with Drew the third and his pens, with Hazel and her tea, and with all the other douche exes we’ve both had.
But not for three weeks.
More like for a few minutes, an hour, a night.
And now we’re making believe for twenty-one long days. I should be dreading it, like a twenty-one-day paprika-infused juice cleanse.
When someone cashes in a voucher for a debt you owe, it’s not supposed to be enjoyable.
But being Oliver’s pretend fiancée doesn’t sound that bad.
It sounds weirdly sort of fun, when he explains why he needs one.
Like being immersed in a great romance novel.
Hell, maybe, just maybe, a touch of pretend will eradicate those occasionally pesky tingles from my body. Satisfy a craving or my curiosity perhaps.
I confirm I heard him right. “So, let me get this straight. I wrote a letter for a contest extolling your virtues as an ex, the internet misinterpreted it, your client freaked out, and your solution is for us to pretend we’re engaged?”
He quirks up an I’m so clever brow. “Brilliant, right?”
I laugh. “That’s one word for it.” I shake my head, but I’m already in, and we know it. “A deal is a deal, and no prom promise shall be reneged on. So we better lay out the rules.”
His eyes twinkle with delight, and maybe relief too. “We should. Rules are good, right?”
“Rules are vital for any game people play.”
As if we’d planned it, we both gesture to the park as if to say, Let’s walk and talk. There’s no need to say it. It’s one of the things we do, and the park is my favorite place in the city.
We used to hop the train in from Connecticut and do teen things, and we usually ended up in the park eventually.
Heading into the park, we roll up our fake fiancée planning sleeves. “So, how did this happen? Well, besides the obvious. My letter. I’m sorry for it,” I say, and I feel like I’ll be apologizing for this for the rest of my life.
“Don’t. It was quite sweet.” His tone is neutral, though, and I can’t tell what he means. “Even if it was nearly deadly to my business.”
I cringe. “So what happened?”
