Page 1 of Fake It Till You Make It

Chapter One

FLEEING THE SCENEof a breakup should come with a checklist, and jumper cables. Amarie Walker sat frozen in the passenger seat of her best friend’s new Toyota Prius, her life stuffed into three Louis Vuitton Damier travel bags with gold-embossed initials—his, not hers—in the back seat. Vali, her ride-or-die since freshman year of college, stared at her from behind the wheel.

“You ready to tell me why I drove five hours from the District to pick you up at the edge of nowhere?”

Ignoring the blatant dig about their current location, Amarie averted her gaze from Vali’s face, a flawless mask of patience perfected by a nude color palette on her lips and round cheeks, with brows sharp enough to cut the national debt in half. How did she manage a Lizzo-worthy look at seven o’clock in the morning?

“I’ve ruined my life,” Amarie hiccupped, wiping away the dampness trickling down her full cheeks. “I stayed too long and left too early—in the morning, obviously. Either way, I’ve ruined my engagement and my life.”

And the foreseeable future, intentionally, according toher mother. Who, in hindsight, Amarie should have calledaftershe’d formulated a plan. As it was, she lacked a rebuttal to her parents’ ridiculous accusation. What reasonable twenty-eight-year-old woman would choose homelessness, joblessness, and pennilessness at the same time? Certainly not Amarie. In fact, she rarely took one step without ensuring she had a safety net. Preferably, in the shape of another carbon-based life form. But not Russell. She was done with his excuses and her own; their love story was officially reduced to a forgettable paragraph in her dating history.

“Aw, my sweet friend with horrible taste in men,” Vali soothed, pulling her in for a brief one-armed hug. “Who did slut-nuts do this time?”

“His future baby mama,” she sobbed. “Take a left turn to go up the mountain, please.” Tears plus Amarie always equaled the same equation—Russell inserting his thermometer in another woman’s hot spot.

“Whoa,” Vali mouthed, following Amarie’s directions. They found themselves in a charming small town of bungalow houses, big yards, and American-made steel under detached tin-roof car porches. Like the homegrown establishments they drove past—Black Bear Barbecue and Things, the Yogurt and Yoga Place, and Dog-Eared Page Books—the town’s landscape possessed an unconventional beauty of a bygone era repurposed. As the Prius’s tires bumped and jostled over a weathered creek bridge lined with sleek chocolate cattail plants, champagne diamond–colored water spilled down an evergreen mountainside, crashing into cotton-tipped waves before disappearing beneath rough planks. The scent of damp earth and wildflowers wafted through the car’s ventilation, the moisture settling on her skin.

“I love him, but I was stupid to trust him again.”

“No, Mari. You’re human.”

“A stupid human.”

“Trusting the man you love isn’t dumb, girlfriend.”

“Then why do I feel foolish?”

Vali shifted the car into a lower gear, her grip on the gearshift tight and prolonged. Her lips thinned, the angles sharpening to a needlepoint. “Because his lies fooled your heart. That’s on him.”

“What about me?”

“You’ll heal,” she whispered, as the odometer added another bumpy mile between an unknown future and heartbreak.

“You sure?” Amarie gulped down the ripple of anxiety swelling, threatening to capsize her confidence. She had expected an exhilarating rush of freedom after walking away from her fiancé of six years. Instead, she felt adrift, a broken fragment tossed into an unforeseeable future.

“Of course. I’m a nurse.” Vali smiled.

“Instead of love, I settled for lies.” A humorless laugh escaped her mouth. “After the first one… I knew.” Amarie remembered the clawing pain in her chest the moment she’d overheard his sex-hazed voice and the phlebotomist’s giggles through his office door. A guttural urge to rush in and jab Russell and that needle-wielding bloodsucker until she stopped seeing red had gripped her, but she’d battled the instinct.Explosivedescribed their confrontation when he’d arrived home afterworking late.

“I come home to you,” he’d explained. “You live in my house. Work in my practice. We are partners who love and respect one another,” he went on. “That girl was a one-time mistake,” he lied through his perfect teeth.

Amarie had convinced herself that because she shared Russell’s granite bathroom counter space and slept, ratheruncomfortably, in his queen-sized bed that crowded her generous curves, he respected the fidelity of their relationship. Of course, she’d heard his mutterings about her fashion sense. Trained herself to forgive his February 14 memory lapses. Had she morphed into a fiancéezilla? Nope. If she extended basic decency, respect, and love to this self-absorbed man, her commitment would pay it forward, right? She would give her best. In return, her man would reserve the number one place in his life for her.

“You should’ve called me,” Vali fumed. “I would’ve helped you grand slam his tennis balls, Venus-and-Serena-style.”

Amarie snorted, followed by a sudden peal of laughter. “Your bail would have been beyond my account balance at the moment,” she sighed, breaking eye contact before Vali asked for more details. “Besides, a dollar menu is ten times his value.”

Vali nodded. “No lies detected.”

Which hurt even more to acknowledge. Back when they’d first met, Amarie had appreciated Russell’s Ivy League style of classic white button-downs, V-neck sweaters, and khaki trousers. Closing her eyes, she envisioned that too-curly hair with the gelled side part, his studious expression behind wire-framed glasses. Then her favorite image, the day he’d spoken to her, a cheery Red Cross volunteer delivering free books to new mothers. His boyish smile had captured her naive heart in a made-for-daytime television soap opera. She had been completely smitten with his attention, and his status—shameful, but true. Nine months to the day, she’d practically skipped into her parents’ Florida home, gushing to tell them that she, their late bloomer only child, had moved in with her doctor boyfriend. She’d been proud of herself. Her father had, too. That had been a first.

Amarie gave her friend’s shoulder a playful shove. “Be glad I called after Prince quit spewing his guts. Tragic to witness. Kleenex worthy.” Unfortunately, her 2005 purple BMW 328i sedan was ill-equipped for a successful getaway.

Hours before, Amarie had sat behind the wheel, peering into the darkness as billowy clouds of white smoke rose from beneath Prince’s hood. A trio of judgmental goats had looked on as unshed tears stung her eyes. The check engine icon was a glowing red signal of how stupid she was to try to save herself or manage the basics of everyday existence. Alone and disappointed at her current predicament more than the breakup, she’d Facetimed Vali, sob-splaining how she was stuck in aBlair Witch Projectreboot with unsavory onlookers, that being the goat trio.

“I know how much you love that car. I would’ve led the resuscitation efforts.” Vali grinned. “And, not to be salty, but I would’ve stormed Russell’s ivy tower last night, too.”

“You’re the best, Vali.”