Page 12 of Gin and Bear It

Me: Wait, 10 minutes?

Ash: Yes, 10 minutes, Jada.

I wish he wouldn’t use my name. I can just hear him saying it in that flirty tone he used at Wes and Rose’s wedding.

Ash: Get dressed. Or don’t. I don’t mind.

I roll my eyes. Dick. I put on a bra under my lounge romper and throw a hoodie on. I’m not putting in more effort than that. My apartment is always cluttered but I’ve set up my systems to where it’s relatively easy to clean. It’s tidy enough.

He arrives exactly ten minutes later, my buzzer croaking. I go downstairs to get him since the button to let people in doesn’t work.

Seeing him outside my apartment is jarring, like opening the door and seeing a moose standing around—he’s unexpectedly big. He’s a bit leaner than his brothers, but as he brushes past me, his broad shoulders make me feel petite. We walk up the stairs to the door and I let him in.

I wrap my hoodie around myself as he takes in my apartment, like a fabric shield. It’s been a long time since anyone new has seen my place. My apartment is my space to just be. It’s filled with things that mean a lot to me and set up for my ADHD brain to actually function.

“Want coffee or something?” I ask, nodding over to my kitchen.

“Sure, thanks.”

Instead of following me into the kitchen, he meanders a bit in my living room, taking a closer look. Too close of a look for my comfort, even though he’s not touching anything.

“You can sit.” I nod at my kitchen table.

He raises an eyebrow at me, then smirks.

“You don’t want me creeping around?” Despite his defiant tone, he sits down at my table.

“Nope, I don’t.” I start a pot of coffee. It’s half-caf. I like the taste of coffee, but too much of it plus my meds makes me feel like my heart is going to explode—but he doesn’t have to know that.

Pipsqueak slinks out of the living room, butting his head against the lower cabinets, then my ankles. He beelines over to Ash next.

“Are you a cat person?” I ask.

“I’m cat neutral.” He watches as Pip weaves his way between his ankles, then around the table legs. “My dad is allergic and hates them, so I was never around them much. Unless Waylon randomly found a kitten and hid it in his room.”

His tiny, amused smirk shouldn’t be attractive, but it is. God, half of this fake marriage—assuming his argument is compelling enough to push me over the edge—is going to be me trying to not revert back to teenage me who had a hideous crush on him. At least I have several instances of being humiliated by him to set me straight.

I finish making the coffee and pour us each a mug. Then, I sit across from him so our knees don’t have to touch.

“Anyway, changed your mind?” he asks. God, his posture is smug, somehow. Too relaxed, like he knew that he was going to be here today. His long legs are stretched out in front of him, almost touching mine despite my effort to maintain distance.

“I said I wanted to talk about it. My timeline has shortened significantly since my cousin decided to get engaged and scraped together the credits to graduate next month. But I’m not automatically saying yes.” I cup my hands around my mug so I don’t fidget. “Because there are so many ways this could go sideways.”

“But you’d want it to work?” He raises an eyebrow. The hazy light coming in through my window catches his greenish brown eyes.

“I want my grandparents’ hotel. Not what I have to do to get it.” I sip my coffee.

“But why didn’t they just give it to you? You said it was a ploy to get your ex to propose, but why would a married couple need to run it together?” he asks.

“Running a hotel is hard and time intensive. My grandparents ran it together as a team and they were able to succeed because of it. They said all the time that their marriage was the only reason that the hotel was a success and told me that I needed a good partner in my corner,” I say. “And my ex used to work for the hotel. He had…ideas. Charm. Stuff that they thought were good ideas. Maybe they would have been, if he didn’t quit.”

That was the first lie he ever told them—that he was quitting to focus on his PhD in Hospitality Management over at Crescent Hill University, where we met in our master’s program. He quit because we were on the verge of breaking up and we were always disagreeing on everything. Or more accurately, he was constantly questioning everything I ever did with that little smile on his face.

I’m glad I dropped out of the program. I would have lost it if we spent any more time together. Grace dropped out too, and now the only remnants of our ill-fated doctoral degrees is our group chat with other dropouts called Ph.DEEZ NUTS.

“If we got fake married, you’d still have to run it alone,” Ash says. “I have to work for Stryker Liquors.”

“That’s fine. I have Grace to help me. And the staff. They’ve been there for years. Some for decades, even.” I have complete faith in them. My grandparents knew how to hire dependable people.