Page 95 of Fake it ’Til Fall
“This has become an emergency.” I set my phone on a stack of pastry boxes and rub both hands over my face. “I need help.”
Bea lifts one eyebrow. “From me?”
“Yes.”
“With your fake relationship?”
“With the optics of my fake relationship.”
“Ah.” She nods. “So the lie has branding issues.”
“The lie has family involvement, small-town news circulation, and a former professional athlete who apparently announces things to his agent before consulting the woman currently holding the fake-girlfriend clipboard.”
Bea stares at me.
I lower my hands. “Metaphorical clipboard.”
“Good. You know I hate them.
“I am aware. I’m emotionally unstable, not reckless.”
My phone remains silent.
I hate that part of me wants Forrest to text back something blunt and irritating, because apparently my standards have dropped so low they now live beneath the café with the spare napkins.
Bea watches me a little too closely.
I point at her. “Don’t say it.”
“I can support you,” she claims.
“Emotionally, yes. Strategically, probably not.”
“I could totally do it,” Bea claims. “I helped my mother keep this place open for fifteen years through three recessions, a rat in the poetry section, and a man who tried to pay for a cappuccino with a haiku.”
“Was it a good haiku?”
“No.”
“Then yes, strategically also.” I grab my phone. “It’s time to call Winnifred.”
“That’s your sister-in-law, right?”
“Yes, and she has great fake-dating experience, a grumpy husband, and access to Winterberry’s gossip sewer.”
She arches an eyebrow. “Are you calling your brother grumpy?”
I nod. “With love. And evidence.”
“I had no idea there was a Winterberry gossip sewer.”
“Fine. It’s more like a drainage system with mums.”
The problem is, calling Winnifred means admitting this is real enough to require consultation. Texting Forrest about zero-star fake dating is one thing. Calling the woman who fake dated my brother before marrying him because I may now be fake dating her cousin is another.
That feels like going to a specialist.
A fake-dating specialist.
