AllFreeNovel
Share Us
But the ring looks good on my hand. It’s all sparkly and almost seems to glow as it reflects the light around it. Wish you could see it.
Miss you,
Zara
I lay in bed and just stare at my ring. It's beautiful, nicer than any engagement ring that I ever expected I would have on my hand. Not that it's real. For a few seconds I feel like I want to cry. I never expected the first engagement ring I would have on my hand would be fake. I never expected I'd be in a fake engagement. What was this life? Maybe, just maybe, I wouldn't have felt so bad if I didn't feel like I had a connection with Jackson but I do.
I like him more than I thought I would after everything that had gone on. It sure doesn’t help that I'm majorly attracted to him and our chemistry is through the roof. He's definitely the most handsome man I've ever met in my life, but it's clear to me that he has issues that he's never acknowledged. His grandma was a piece of work. My stomach still churned while thinking about the conversation that we’d had.
I wonder what it would be like to actually be in a relationship with him, to actually be dating him, to actually be engaged to him. "Never going to happen," I mumble to myself. I close my eyes for a couple of seconds and try to stop the plethora of emotions from making me cry. I don’t want to feel sorry for myself. I want to rejoice that I finally have a way out of the poverty and desperation that has become my life. But I can’t stop the sinking feeling in my stomach.
I want real love. I want true love so fierce that it makes me rethink my entire life. I want a man to look me in the eyes and tell me that he loves me more than life itself. I want a guy to get down on two knees and propose, telling me that he can’t envision his life without me. I want the engagement ring on my finger to actually be a symbol of my connection with a soulmate.
Not this fake-ass relationship. That means nothing to Jackson.
I’m starting to wonder if it means something to me, though. Which is stupid because I barely know the man. Though I can’t stop thinking about his mesmerizing green eyes, and that half smirk-smile that tells me he’s about to tease me. And then there’s the way he always tucks my hair back behind my ear, like he’s thinking of an excuse to touch me.
When I envision my true love and a real engagement, it’s not like this. I don't want a man to take me to Tiffany's and tell me which ring to choose. I want a man that will pick the ring himself, but that feels like it's never going to happen. It feels like I'm never going to find real love.
Maybe the simple fact of the matter is that I just need to play along with this and enjoy the moment for what it is. Maybe this will be the only engagement I ever have in my life. And though that's sad, I realize that I want to enjoy what it means to be engaged even if it's not real. I take a deep breath and open my eyes again and clamber out of the bed.
I wonder if Lila and the kids are up. I still can't quite believe that Lila actually bought the lie. I know she's a true romantic, but I can’t fathom how she’s accepted it at face value.
Then I think of Hank and how great an actor she thought he was and knew that maybe it didn’t take much for her to believe anything.
The reality of the situation was that she knew that Jackson and I had chemistry the first day that we met. She’d seen it and she knew I’d spent an amazing night with him. She wanted to believe that it was love at first sight. She wanted to believe that this was all real. She watched way too many romance movies and read far too many romance books. And most probably hoped that the same thing would happen to her one day. And I wanted to just shake her, I wanted to tell her that it was all a fake, a farce, but I knew that Jackson was right. I knew that if anyone were to approach her and ask her, the look in her eyes would give it away because for a split second she would be uncertain of how to answer. Lila was a great actress, but she was a poor liar. It killed me to lie to my friend, but I would buy her a real Chanel handbag to make her up for it.
Because I know Lila knows me like the back of my hand. And she knows that I also believe in true love. And she will see from the look in my eyes that I want something more from Jackson and I don’t want my friend worried about me.
I walk into the living room and spy Lila on the ground with the kids doing a puzzle. There are at least 200 hundred pieces on the table and my head hurts just looking at it. "Morning everyone, a bit early for a puzzle, isn’t it?"
"We wanted to finish it," Lila says, smiling and I resist the urge to comment that it looks like they just started. "Did you sleep well?"
"I did. Thank you for asking.”
"Let me see your ring again," Lila jumps up and heads over to me. She grabs my hands, her eyes wide as she looks down at it. "It's so beautiful." The awe in her voice is mirrored in her eyes. “Jackson did an amazing job.”
"He really did a good job." I smile and look down.
"Why didn't you tell me that you guys had that great of a connection?" Hurt seeps out of her tone and I take a deep breath. This was going to be the complicated part.
"Because I didn't know that it was going to go this quickly," I say to her and she nods slowly. “And I didn’t think he felt the same way as me,”
"I guess denial is not just a river in Egypt, huh?"
"Yeah," I say, trying not to grimace as she giggles at the joke.
“I guess when you meet the one, it really can happen just like that.” I don’t say anything else because I don;t want to keep adding multiple lies to the story. I was going to have to speak to Jackson about letting Lila in on the story.
"Guess what?" She says, her mind no longer on the ring if the sudden humor in her eyes is to be believed.
"What?" I ask her as I yawn. I’m still slightly tired. I’d been up half the night thinking about Jackson. How was the man already giving me sleepless nights?
"Guess who's on their way home?"
"Not Elise?" I’m surprised. I hadn’t expected her back for at least a week or two. That was her normal MO when it came to her hookups. I look down at Charlotte and Luke and feel anger toward my sister. She’s not a good mother, but all I can do is be there for the kids until she grows up.
"Yeah, she told me that she tried to call you, but she couldn’t get in contact with you. So she called me to let you know that she’d be home soon and she had a message for you."
