by R. R. Banks
"I know this is your wedding and all, Thea, but I'm going to be Brad's wife. That outranks sister. If you have something to say to him, you can say it to both of us."
"I wouldn't count your RSVPs just yet, honey," Thea said.
"It's fine, babe," Brad said, gently patting Heather on the butt. "You go ahead to the cabin. I'll meet you there in a few minutes."
Heather pouted her way to the door, and as soon as she was through it, Thea straightened up and got even closer to her brother's face.
"What did you do to her?" she hissed.
"You're acting like I murdered her or something," he muttered.
"No, I'm acting like I know my brother and the shit he's pulled with my best friend before, and now she's nowhere to be found, on my wedding day, and you're grinning like the Cheshire cat. So, I'm going to ask you again. What the fuck happened?"
Brad nodded in my direction.
"Why don't you ask him?"
"Ask me what?" I asked. "I didn't do anything to her. I've been looking for her all day."
"Tell me something, Luca," Brad said. "Were there more terms to the bet other than you had to bring Roxie here, or was that it? Did you have to fuck her, or did you just kind of take your liberties with that when you had the opportunity?"
Bile rose in my throat and red flashed in front of my eyes.
"Brad, what in the hell are you talking about?" Thea asked. She looked at me. "What is he talking about, Luca?"
"Go ahead and tell her, Luca," Brad said, holding his hand out toward her as if in invitation. "Tell the blushing bride here that you aren't her best friend's fiancé. You aren't even her boyfriend. In fact, I doubt you had ever laid eyes on Roxie before coming here. Tell Thea how everything you and Roxie did all week was fake. That you lied to everybody you talked to about how you met, your relationship, your engagement, everything."
"Shut up," I growled.
"Why? Don't you want her to find out the best part?"
"Shut the fuck up."
"I think she deserves to know. This is her wedding, after all. Nobody should deny the bride anything. Do you want to tell her, or should I just go ahead and finish up here?" He paused for a few seconds. "Alright, I'll just go ahead. The only reason that Luca was here with Roxie at all is because of a bet he lost. I heard him talking to the ‘winner’ this morning. Apparently, he got to get out of coming on the trip with her, and Luca came up on the short end of the stick."
Thea looked stung.
"Is that true, Luca?" she asked, looking at me.
Her voice had gone soft and I could hear the pain behind her words. I knew there was no point in lying to her. It wasn't going to do me any good. We had lied enough. I was ready to start being honest.
"Yes," I said. "It's true. Roxie didn't have a date for the wedding, and she didn't want to come here alone. She thought everyone was going to judge her and that they would look down on you somehow. She wanted to make sure the entire wedding week was perfect, so she went out looking for a fake boyfriend. She was supposed to come with Greg, the brother of a woman she works with. He also happens to be one of my best friends. We were talking about the whole situation at a bar one night, and he wasn’t sure if he wanted to go through with it or not. I thought it was a really funny situation and so, yes, I made a bet with him. But it wasn't intended to be cruel. I had a friend of mine play darts against him. I thought she was going to absolutely mop the floor with him and we would all get a good laugh out of it, and Greg would come with Roxie and everything would be fine. It was supposed to be a joke, but it didn't turn out that way. My friend decided to lose the game on purpose, which meant Greg won the bet."
"And you lost," Thea said. "Which meant you had to come here with Roxie."
She sounded incredulous. I could understand where she was coming from. I was standing here on her wedding day, telling her I had put up her best friend and maid of honor as the stakes in a barroom bet and then lost. It sounded horrible.
"Yes," I said.
"Why?" she asked. "If it was so much of a joke to you, why did you come with her? Why didn't you just tell your friend that you were joking, and you didn't want to come?"
"Because I always keep my promises," I said. "And it sounded like it could be an interesting experience."
"You mean it sounded like an easy excuse to get laid."
I pulled my fist back and slammed it into Brad's face before I could even think. He let out a grunt and crashed to the carpet. Thea gasped and pulled back, but I stepped forward, standing over his prone form and glaring down at him with rage burning in my eyes.
"Don't you fucking talk about her like that. Just because you're pissed you couldn't get her in bed with you this week doesn't mean I’ll let you disrespect her like that. Or did you not want your sister to know you've spent the entire week hitting on Roxie and trying to convince her to have one more fling with you before you get married?"
"You can't be serious," Thea said. "Brad, how could you do that?"
"I didn't think she would be able to turn me down," he said, spitting the words at me spitefully.
All pretense was gone. He just wanted to hurt us now.
"You were never good enough for her," I said. "You didn’t know what you with had with Roxie until it was over. Why don't you tell Thea the rest of the conversation you heard this morning? Go ahead. I’ll wait.”
Brad completely ignored my request, a petulant expression on his face.
Fucker.
“No? OK then. This might have started as a bet for me, but the second I saw Roxie, everything changed. No, it wasn't real at first. Maybe we haven't known each other for a year, and we haven't done all those things we said we have, but that doesn't change the fact that I am falling in love with her. That's what I wanted to tell her tonight."
"You need to go find her," Thea said. "I know Roxie, and I never once doubted the two of you were a couple because I saw the way she looked at you. Just like my mother said. You guys were made for each other. Find her. Tell her that everything is fine."
"Not fine," I said.
"What?" Thea asked, a bewildered expression on her face.
"Not fine. I don't want it to be fine."
I stepped over Brad as I headed out the door, already reaching into my pocket for my phone. I heard Thea snap at Brad as the door closed after me.
"I swear to everything I hold dear, Brad, you better not talk about this to a single person, do you understand me? Or I will tell Heather everything you just said."
I felt a mirthless grin curve my lips. Thea and I were going to get along just fine.
For now, I needed to get back to New York, find Roxie, and somehow convince her we should be together.
Roxie
Four months later…
"Roxie, it's for you."
I looked up at Terri through the glass wall at the front of my office and saw she had a bright green sticky note attached to her finger. "Luca" was written across it in black marker. I shook my head. She muttered something into the phone in a voice too low for me to hear. I hoped no one else in the office had noticed how frequently this exact scene had played out over the last few months. I had blocked his number from my phone to avoid this situation, but Luca had managed to get my office number from Greg. And he would not give up. Terri hung up and came into the office, shutting the door behind her.
"Roxie… It's been months now," she said.
"I know how long it's been," I said.
"He's not going to go away, Roxie."
"I can hope that he will."
"You need to talk to him."
"Why?" I asked. "Why should I talk to him? Do you know how humiliating that was for me? I thought I couldn't show my face in Maple Grove again after what happened with Brad. Forget that. Compared to this, I could have thrown myself a one-woman parade down Main Street after that."
"Greg says that Luca talks about you all the time. "
"That's wonderful for him," I said, forcing myself to at least
pretend that I was paying attention to the papers on my desk in front of me.
"He told me that Luca said –"
"Terri," I said, dropping my hands to my desk, "I appreciate that you don't like to see me this way and that you think this is going to fix it, but it's not. I don't want to hear what Luca has told Greg to tell you to tell me. We're not in the third grade. This isn’t a game of telephone. Adults don't communicate with each other through other people."
"They do when they don't have any other option," she said. "How can he explain himself if you won't even give him a chance?"
"I don't need him to explain himself. I'm not interested in anything he has to say. He said all that I needed to know. He just happened to say it in front of the last person I would ever want to hear it. There's nothing he could say now that would make that OK."
"That's probably true," Terri said. "The whole idea of the bet was ridiculous and disgusting, and I've made sure my brother has heard plenty about it. But men do dumb shit like that. It doesn't mean that they are evil or can’t recognize that they’ve done something wrong. Luca isn't going to be able to make that go away. He's not going to be able to say something that will magically make the whole bet disappear or diminish how embarrassed you were in front of Brad. But holding onto it isn't going to make anything better, either. You told me you had so much fun with Luca that week."
"I did," I said. "But it was fake. And I was stupid enough to let myself forget that and pretend that something was actually happening between us. I'm not interested in getting more hurt than I already am. The next time he calls, please tell him I don't want him to call anymore and that we've already informed security, so if he tries to come here again, it will be considered trespassing."
Terri looked at me sadly. It wasn't anything new. That was pretty much the way she had been looking at me since I returned from Thea's wedding. I knew my reaction to Luca's repeated attempts to get in touch with me was extreme, but I didn't know any other way to handle it. Thea had called me before I was even back home and tried to talk to me about it, but as soon as I found out Brad had told her what he heard, I ended the conversation.
I didn't want to hear any more. I didn't want to hear her justify anything or reassure me. I felt hollow and empty. I was humiliated, and I was hurt in a way that was much deeper than what I had experienced before. I had fallen for Luca completely and irrevocably. Even though I tried so hard from the beginning to remind myself it was all fake and that it was going to end when the wedding week was over, I still developed feelings for him. The pain of not only being without him, but realizing that everything between us was the result of a drunken bet gone wrong, cut so deeply it was hard to breathe when thinking about it. I just wanted it all to go away.
I didn't want a weak apology.
I didn't want an explanation.
I didn't want platitudes.
I just wanted to move on.
I had thrown myself into my work as much as possible since coming back home. Though I still had two days of planned vacation left, days I had intended to spend decompressing after the chaos of the wedding, I was back at the office before it even opened Monday morning. I had committed myself to everything I was doing with a feverish sense of dedication, pouring myself into the projects we were working on before anyone else even got to work each morning, and staying until hours after they left. I thought eventually I would burn out, and there wouldn't be any room left in my brain or heart for the pain and longing I felt for Luca.
It never happened.
A shattered heart may be exceptional for productivity but no amount of work in the world would take the place of his caramel eyes and voice that flowed through me like thunder.
Chapter Sixteen
Luca
"I don't know why she still refuses to talk to me."
"You have to understand how hurt she is," she said with a sigh.
"I know how much she's been hurt," I replied. "I am very aware of that. But I want to be the one who makes it go away. That's why I want to talk to her. I need to tell her everything. Make her understand how I feel about her."
"Why don't you just let me tell her? I could tell her exactly what you said. Maybe that would make her more willing to talk to you, if only to see if I was making it up."
"I appreciate it, Thea, but this is something I have to do. She needs to hear it from me, not from anyone else. It’s what she hears from other people, and what they say behind her back, that caused this situation in the first place. I don’t ever want that to happen again. No, she needs to hear it directly from me, but I’m not sure how that’s going to happen since she won’t even see me."
"Are you going to give up?"
"Absolutely not. Roxie is absolutely nothing like the type of woman I thought I would end up with, and that's exactly how I know we’re supposed to be together. I started falling in love with her as soon as I met her. Nothing is going to keep me from her. I don't care how long I have to try, or how hard I have to fight. I'm going to prove to her that this isn't fake. Not to me, at least."
I had stayed in contact with Thea since the wedding. She helped me keep track of Roxie and let me know that she was alright. She was also my sounding board as I tried to work through my feelings. Falling in love wasn't something I had ever considered before, especially not when I agreed to be Roxie's fake boyfriend for a week. But I hadn't just fallen for her, I had crashed head over heels, and now I didn't know how to move forward without her. In that one week we spent together, I felt like I had learned more about myself than in my previous thirty years of life. I discovered pieces of myself that had been missing, just waiting for her to find them. Now she was gone, and I had to find a way to get her back.
"I'll do anything I can to help you," she said. "I would love to see the two of you together. You were perfect for each other, even when it wasn't real."
"It always was. The stories might not have been real, but everything I felt for her, and said about her, was."
Suddenly, I knew exactly what I needed to do.
Roxie
"I need you to take this in the most professional way possible. Put your clothes back on, please."
Kevin was standing with his arms open in front of my desk, his little bird chest on display for the whole world to see. He blinked.
"Excuse me?"
I sighed, sending the email I had just finished typing before he stormed into my office and threw his shirt off.
"Look, Kevin. I appreciate your enthusiasm, but I still don't think you have what we're looking for. If you could just put your clothes back on and head back to your cubicle, I would really appreciate it."
He was still taller than average, though I supposed that wasn't likely to change very much considering he was a full-grown adult. In the last year, he seemed to have stretched out more, however. He was even thinner now, and the effect was now less Silly Putty-esque and more pipe cleaner.
"A man willing to bare his soul and his body for the good of a meaningful and beneficial cause? A trained dancer and waiter?"
"Excuse me?"
My, this all seemed uncomfortably familiar.
"That's what the requirements on the job description said."
"What?"
"The job description for the position for the part in your next fundraising extravaganza."
"The job description didn't say any of that. Well, dancer and waiter were probably in there somewhere, but the rest of it was definitely not there."
"Yes, it was."
"No. I don't think so."
"Yes, it was."
"No, I don't think so."
"Yes, it was.”
"Kevin, I don't write job descriptions that talk about men baring their souls and their bodies. Even when I am planning a spectacularly ‘Under the Sea’ themed fundraiser and hope for mermen to serve the fish."
I was starting to think it was possible that I wasn't actually a fundraising specialist for a nonprofit, and was instead a highly
specialized party planner that sat in a nonprofit office.
"I do."
"What?"
"I wrote the job description. That was part of my assignment a couple of weeks back. You were too busy with other projects, so Terri asked me if I would write the job description to get the hiring process started. She said it would be smoother and less stressful for you."
"And that's what you wrote?"
Kevin nodded, smiling proudly.
I rested my elbows on the desk in front of me and pressed my fingertips to my temples. I closed my eyes and envisioned that I was under the ocean, floating in an indestructible bubble that would protect me from sharks, but still let me admire the lovely mermen. Unfortunately for my hopes for calm, all the chiseled and beautifully be-tailed mermen in my fantasy looked exactly like Luca.
Ugh.
"You wrote that so you could apply for the position, didn't you?"
"Yes."
"And you've been taking dance lessons?"
"Yes, I have," he said proudly, puffing out all of his nonexistent chest. "Do you want to see some of my moves?"
I let out a long breath and leaned back in my chair.