“Hattie, you’re taking this all wrong. I just can’t bear to see you heartbroken again, sweetie. You remember that boy in college? The one you couldn’t keep up with?”
“He was a huge dick, Mom. And a marathon runner.”
“Yes, but… you were really into him at the time. Jake, wasn’t it? And he just left you behind, and I don’t want that happening with Ethan. Hang on to that wonderful man.”
“It won’t,” I throw back, but the words are on autopilot.
I’m back to fuming about all the ways I’ll never match my fake husband.
The marathon runner was a boy.
A kid who only cared about how many times I hit the gym and how small my waist was. He secretly liked my figure, I think, but he always pretended otherwise.
He also hated that his strength was all in his legs, and he couldn’t throw me around like a delicate little flower.
He was a jerk and Margot was right—I wound up better off without him.
But Ethan is a billionaire. Or he will be soon.
He’s respected up and down the eastern seaboard for being a shrewd businessman in his own right. People know his name instantly and he’s wildly attractive.
The kind of hot that’s so outrageously beyond my league that it’s actually insane.
I’m just a girl who failed to get a library degree and who only owns a bookstore because my future husband dropped it in my lap so I had no reason not to meet his parents.
He bought it as abribe.
Right now, things are fresh and exciting and it’s easy to forget how messy this truly is.
We’re sleeping together, sailing around and having fun.
Fine.
But it was fresh and exciting with Jake once, too.
The one time he complimented me, he was drunk and he told me he loved my boobs—until I couldn’t keep up with him hiking the hills on a trip to Bangor the next weekend.
I pressed him about it.
He insisted he didn’t mind my weight. He just felt ‘obligated’ to tell me I needed to push myself and overhaul my entire diet.
No surprise, we broke up a few days later, after our trip.
What happens when Ethan comes to his senses and decides six months is a very long time with a girl who’ll never be worthy?
Who he’ll never truly love?
How long until my imperfections become too glaring, and he distances himself long before the official divorce?
How many lifetimes of ‘I told yous’ will Mom make me suffer?
With the engagementand the fact we’re sleeping together, I’m spending very little time at my apartment.
We should keep up appearances. People today practically expect engaged couples to live together, and staying at Ethan’s house is certainly no burden.
But it’s also just nice to be together.
When I get back from the bookstore, I head over to his place and get busy in his sprawling kitchen.
