Page 58 of Ardently Yours

When Mrs. Darcy’s gaze falls on me after she breaks away from hugging her son, I hold my breath. I feel like I’m being examined. Like I’m the one lying in the hospital bed being scrutinized by a doctor.

What does she see when she looks at me? A successful Black woman? A cafe owner who loves her small town, her family, and her friends and just wants to be happy and unbothered but somehow got mixed up in a crazy plan to pretend to be in a relationship with her son? No. She couldn’t possibly see all that.

She looks at me, then her eyes move over to Will. He gestures for me to come stand beside him. No. Not just beside him. He wraps an arm around me and pulls me close.

We’ve been following the rules we made in our fake dating guide without even realizing it. It’s all come so naturally that I hardly think about it anymore. It happened so fast.

I swallow, ignoring the questions in my mind that threaten to spill out. We’re just good at pretending. That’s all. That’s what I tell myself. That’s what I have to believe.

When his mom looks at us, I want to scream that it’s all a lie.

Is it all a lie? What about what he told me back in my kitchen? I can’t think about that right now.

His mom finally smiles at me and reaches out her hand for me to shake, not a hug, but at least she doesn’t order me to leave or call me a fraud. I think: This is why we’re doing this.

He needed someone beside him. Someone to help him face his family. Someone to prove to them that he’s worthy of his inheritance. But how can a fake relationship do that?

My thoughts jumble together. I have the urge to pray. To talk to God about all of this. About why I’m living a lie. About what I’m even doing it for anymore.

I know lying isn’t something God likes. It’s not something I usually do. So how did I end up here? In this hospital room. Meeting Will’s family. Showing them that he has someone in his corner.

And how did I end up caring so much about him so quickly? Maybe I cared all along. Maybe I just kept telling myself I couldn’t care about him like that.

That we could never be together. But we aren’t together, I remind myself as I go over to the couch and sit beside his sister. Maybe I’m jaded, but I don’t know if telling the truth about us would help him right now.

I look around at his family. The stiff conversation between him and his mother, even though she hugged him only moments ago. The way Georgiana looks uncomfortable, like she’s been caught in the middle of one too many calm, carefully controlled family arguments.

And now, somehow, me. A girl from Selah Falls. From a family that is the farthest thing from rich. Sitting in the middle of a wealthy family drama that feels like something people would tune in every week to watch just to see what happens next. Can I fake it well enough to fit in? I don’t know.

Will’s mom asks him to come into the hallway with her. He hesitates, but follows her.

“I’ll be back,” he tells me. “I’ll bring you something to eat too.”

When Georgiana leans over and whispers to me, “How did you two meet? My brother never tells me anything anymore.”

I know I have to fake it for now. I go back through my memory to that night we made up the rules for this fake dating thing and pull out the story of how we came to be.

The rules are:

Only for the summer. Break up when fall comes. (Working on it. It’s late-August, so we’ve got a little time but at this rate I do not know if we will make it…)

Kissing is fine: cheek, forehead, and sometimes on the lips. (Pecks, not make-outs.) (Working on it…no kisses yet.)

Holding hands is cute. (DONE… without even thinking about it.)

Compliment each other whenever we can, but make it meaningful and realistic. (Working on it...but we have done this in private, so that counts…right?)

Remember our origin story of how we got together. (Focus on this one now.)

Call each other by our real first names more often. (Working on it. But it is not as bad as I thought it would be.)

Tell others we are dating. (DONE.)

I need to focus on the origin story. So I pretend to recall our story for her, keeping my voice low since her dad is sleeping.

“We’ve actually been friends for months. You know he’s been out in Selah Falls, and that’s where I’m from. I own a cafe there. We started working together, and recently we became business partners. We worked so well together that it just felt like the natural next step for us to run the place together. Honestly, he’s been great to have around. He fits in so easily with my friends. We all hang out together, and... it just kind of happened naturally. He and I bonded one night over lattes, cinnamon rolls, and the Jonas Brothers. It was like one day we were just us, like normal, and the next day we had become something new.”

The look on Georgiana’s face says it all. She’s smiling, genuinely happy that her brother found someone. We chat about our mutual love of the Jonas Brothers, and I relax a little. I begin to think she was never okay with him marrying someone he didn’t love.