“How is there a stripper pole in the activity room?”
“I had it installed. As part of the bingo revolt.”
“Oh my God,” I groan, rushing to the stairwell and racing downstairs so I can get across town. “I’ll be there in five.”
Once outside, I call a Lyft, which speeds me through the park to Sunshine Living.
I run to the second-floor activity room, blinking when I find Roxanne, a seventyish man named Michael, and a woman Roxanne’s age, tugging at a silver pole.
“Ah, Summer!” Roxanne rises, a little wobbly, setting her puma head cane down. “Be a dear. You’re so strong and young. Can you help us move this?”
I shake my head in disbelief. This is my life? I’m carrying a plastic bag with a sopping wet bridesmaid’s dress inside, and now I have to uninstall a stripper pole, plus the internet hates me, my dreams have been crushed, and the man I love thinks we are a mistake. He didn’t mean for any of it to happen. He didn’t mean for us to happen.
But first things first. Dropping the bag, I rush to the crew who are pulling—to no avail—at a stripper pole installed in a silver base. After a quick assessment, I figure out they were unscrewing it the wrong way. Grabbing the screwdriver, I slide the tool into the base and detach the pole from it, holding tightly so it doesn’t fall. Once it’s detached, the pole comes apart in two pieces.
Roxanne guards the entrance to the activity room, then mouths, Coast is clear. Let’s take it to my place.
I hand her and her friends the pole pieces. “Maybe that’s where it should have been installed in the first place.”
“Live and learn,” she says, then stomps off with her friends.
I sink down on the couch, grab my phone, and stare at my messages, trying to decide what to tackle next.
But really, there’s nothing to tackle.
I can’t undo The Dating Pool’s decision.
I can’t convince them to requalify me.
And I can’t prove we didn’t lie. We did lie. We were fake, and we won’t ever be real.
But I can at least return my mother’s call.
“Sweetheart. I’m at Mags’s place. Where are you?”
“I’m on my way,” I say, crying for real, and there is nothing fake about these tears.
37OLIVER
“So this is true.”
The words are clipped, crisp.
I pinch my nose, nodding as I slump down on my couch. “Yes.”
I tell Geneva the truth. There’s no point in lying now. “It’s all true that it was all fake.”
She sighs. “I’m soooo—”
I take the liberty of filling in the blank. “Disappointed. Yeah, I’m disappointed in myself too.”
“Yes. I thought I could trust you as my attorney.”
“Of course you did. That’s why you hired me.” A weight sinks onto my shoulders, dragging me down. There is no point backpedaling now. No purpose in covering it up. The proof’s there on social media, where all truths and lies are exposed.
The ring, the comments, the offhand joke between Summer and me post-paddleboat hump. Those people who took a picture of us on the street last night were probably sent by our crazy exes. More proof that exes are crazy.
But even so, I deserve this.
I tricked a client.
“And I suppose that’s what is most surprising. I would expect you, of all people, to know the value of trust,” she says.
I hang my head, dragging my hand through my hair. “You’re not wrong. It was a mistake. It seemed like a way to save face at the time, but I should have told you the truth when you first called me. I wanted to help you with your deal. I want to take care of my employees and my aunt and everyone else. So I said we were engaged because it seemed easier.”
She sighs heavily. “I suppose what’s so strange about it is that . . .” She takes a beat to think, or maybe to mull over what to say. “It seemed so real. Last night, the things you said to Summer, the way you looked at her. I suppose it made me believe in love again. Like it was possible to get hurt and then get back up and try again. When you said—”
“‘I realized after all these years that it’d always been her.’” I repeat my words from last night. Words that make my chest feel lighter. Words that fall from my lips so easily.
“Yes.” There’s a smile in her voice. I can hear it. “When you said that, Oliver, I was so sure you meant it.”
I sit up straighter, recalling last night, remembering how my heart thundered when I looked at Summer at the party. How it ached when I put her in the car. How it sped up when we were in the paddleboat, then the shower, then the bed, only an hour ago.
“I did mean it.” I’m speaking the whole truth now.
“What?”
“I did. It was all fake, and it was all true too.”
