ME: It’s a business arrangement
SAGE: Sure
ME: He’s a PROFESSIONAL
SAGE: A professional who looks like he walked out of a gothic romance novel
SAGE: This is going to end in disaster
SAGE: I’m so excited
ME: I hate you
SAGE: You love me. When do you meet him?
ME: Thursday. He’s picking me up at 7.
SAGE: PICKING YOU UP???
SAGE: Like a DATE???
ME: Like a BUSINESS MEETING
SAGE: Poppy
SAGE: Babe
SAGE: You’re already in trouble
I toss my phone onto the couch cushion and press my palms against my eyes. She’s wrong. She has to be wrong.
This is a transaction. A service. I’m paying Julian Blackthorne to pretend to be my boyfriend for four days, and then he’ll disappear back into whatever mysterious world he came from, and I’ll go back to my regular life of ring lights and sponsored content and pretending I’m fine.
I pull up his photo again. Those dark eyes stare back at me, giving nothing away.
“Who are you?” I whisper like the photo of Julian was going to somehow answer back.
Nope. No surprise there. The photo didn’t respond.
I spend the next three hours perfecting my presentation deck. I add talking points for every possible relative. I create a fake relationship timeline—how we met (through mutual friends, vague enough to be unverifiable), when we started dating (four months ago, recent enough to explain why no one’s heard of him), why he’s not on social media (values his privacy, which tracks with the whole mysterious vibe).
By the time I’m done, I have forty-seven slides, color-coded tabs, and the beginning of a stress migraine.
I email everything to the address Spellbound provided. Then I stare at my closet for twenty minutes trying to figure out what towear. I mean, what do you wear to a fake-dating business dinner with a man who looks like that?
Thursday. Seven PM. My apartment.
Four days to convince myself this isn’t insane.
My phone buzzes one more time.
SAGE: For the record, I’m going to need updates. Constant updates. This is the most interesting thing that’s happened to either of us in months.
ME: Nothing interesting is going to happen. It’s BUSINESS.
SAGE: Sure babe
SAGE: Keep telling yourself that
