Ford took my hand, his mischievous grin shifting to a more serious look. “Your family is still dealing with the fallout from what happened with your dad, right?” he asked.
“You want that kind of scandal rubbing off on you?” I asked. It didn’t make any sense. “Trust me, you don’t. If you’re trying to piss off your mom, you’re going about it all wrong.”
“That’s not what this is about,” he said. “Imagine it: A blissful wedding between the youngest Zoric and the successful son of one of the most respected families in Chicago. The last hint of any possible scandal will be gone from your family for good.”
As much as I hated to admit it, “You have a point.”
“Your family will be thrilled, mine will be happy,” Ford added.
“Not according to your mother’s face they won’t be,” I said.
He took my other hand and pulled me closer, so we were standing face-to-face. I looked up at him, still skeptical.
“She just needs time to adjust,” he said. “Trust me, she’s been dreaming about me getting married since I was in diapers. This will be the crowning social event of her life. She’ll love it.”
“Ford, stop. You can’t be suggesting we actually go through with this!”
“Why not? We can even make it official. Like with a contract.”
“A contract?” I echoed. Pretending to be Ford’s girlfriend was bad enough. Pretending to be his fiancée was even worse. A pretend marriage? That was a whole new world of bad ideas.
He was nodding, eyes lighting up as he got more and more excited by the idea. “We’ll just fake it for a year, maybe. It has its benefits, Em. Focus on the benefits!”
I couldn’t focus on anything while I was having such a hard time breathing.
Finally picking up on the fact that I wasn’t saying very much, he let go of my hands and brought his up to cradle my face gently.
“Look,” he said, his voice soft. “We both know what will happen if we don’t do this. I’ll bow to my mom’s iron will and get back together with Claudia. We’ll get married, because that’s what everyone will expect us to do, and then spend the rest of my life miserable with her and our two point five clone children. And probably some purebred designer poodle named Winston.”
“Claudia’s allergic to dogs,” I reminded him. “Maybe you could get a goldfish.”
“Even worse,” he said, cracking a smile. “Don’t leave me getting drunk every night with Winston the goldfish. Please.”
I stared back at him and returned his smile, even though the thought of sitting back and watching him marry Claudia made my stomach churn.
“This ends in marriage, either way,” Ford said. “But wouldn’t it be better with you? It’s notreal-real either way. Be my wife, and at least I can promise we’ll have fun.”
I had to look away. I was speechless. What could I possibly say to his proposal? And could I really live with myself if I spent the rest of my days—the rest of our friendship—sitting across the table from him and Claudia, knowing that I could have stopped it all? No way.
But the thing was…therealthing making me hesitate…
Was my brothers.
Both of their marriages had started out as fake. Both of them had entered into a union with formal contracts and the express intention of divorcing after a year, only to discover that they were legitimately in love with their wives and wanted to make their marriage the real thing.
If I agreed to do this with Ford, could I ever truly convince myself that I wasn’t secretly hoping it would end up as happily ever after for me as it had for Stefan and Luka? What if I never recovered from the divorce? What if this faux marriage doomed our friendship even more?
I looked back up at him. He was still holding my face, his own expression a mix of hope and good humor. It would be so easy to kiss him if I just lifted onto my toes. I knew he’d kiss me back, too, despite a lack of audience. He’d do it because he’d take it as me agreeing to his plan.
But if I’d learned anything in the past week, it was that fake kisses from Ford felt as good as real ones. If we were married—even if there was a contract, even if we had an understanding—just think how many kisses I could give him over the course of a year.
Maybe enough to make the inevitable heartbreak worth it.
The clock struck two a.m. It was long past midnight. The party was over. I let Ford put me in a private car back to my apartment, dropping my purse, heels, and dress on the hardwood floor as I walked through my living room, the lights of Chicago glowing softly out of the floor-to-ceiling windows. I crawled into bed, pulling a comfortably worn-in old band T-shirt over my head. Then I took a deep breath and stared up at the ceiling, processing what I had done.
Munchkin click-clacked into the room and then leaped up onto the covers next to me, his face tilted curiously as he tried to gauge my mood. He couldn’t speak, of course, but he always seemed to know when I was upset or sad. Or confused. He seemed to understand me, sometimes better than the human beings in my life.
“Ford proposed,” I told my dog. “In a most unorthodox fashion.”
