Big Rock

by Lauren Blakely

  I pretend to gaze in wonder. “Amazing. It’s almost as if you make shit up for a living.” Then I drop the snark. “And, incidentally, I’m hoping it won’t be pretend much longer.”

  He raises an eyebrow in a question.

  I shrug happily and speak quietly. “It was fake. It became real for me. I hope for her, too. I’m going to talk to her tonight and see if she feels the same.”

  Nick offers a fist for knocking. “Go for it,” he says, no teasing, no sarcasm now. “You two always seemed right for each other.”

  “Yeah? Why?” I ask, eager for corroboration.

  But, he laughs and shakes his head. “Dude, what do you think I’m going to say?” He clasps his hands together and bats his eyes, overdoing the hearts and flowers. “Oh, it’s so sweet the way you finish each other’s sentences, and both like gummy bears.” He drops the act and shrugs. “All I know is you’ve got my vote.”

  “Thanks, man. I appreciate it.” I pause, then narrow my eyes. “Incidentally, if you ever touch my sister, that’s grounds for me to shave your head in the middle of the night and dye your eyebrows orange.”

  His eyes widen and he clutches his locks. “Not the hair. It’s where all my power comes from.”

  “Exactly. So, beware.”

  We take our spots on the field for the bottom of the ninth, and when the other team doesn’t score, “Raise Your Glass” by P!NK commemorates this Saturday-morning victory. I trot off the field and high-five my teammates.

  I slap palms with Mr. Offerman. “This is going to be all yours now,” I joke, gesturing to the team.

  “Can’t wait,” he says. “I love it all. I hope you’ll stay on the team, and your friend, too. We’ll need a big bat if we want to win the championship next season.”

  Man, it’s a weekend softball league. Chill out.

  “I hope you win it all,” I say, staying cordial through the end, as P!NK sings about all the underdogs, and Emily mimes holding a glass to go along with the words of the song. As I stuff my glove and hat into a duffel bag, I glance at Charlotte, who’s getting into the celebration, too, bumping hips with Harper, and it’s pretty cool to see her like this with my sister. It feels like this could be a regular thing—Charlotte hanging out with my family as the woman by my side, not just as my friend. I can picture it all unfolding before me. Days and nights of her. Real instead of fake.

  The music stops abruptly, and P!NK’s unbridled enthusiasm for celebrating is replaced by a tinny echo, like when someone cues up a new song with a scratch of a record. But it’s not music that comes from the handheld speaker that Emily clutches.

  It’s voices.

  Or, rather, my voice.

  “Are you not feeling well? Do you have a headache from last night or something?”

  I freeze.

  My blood rushes cold, as the memory of when I’d said those words slams into me with stark clarity—in the bathroom with Charlotte at MoMA. My jaw clenches and my chest seizes up, because I know what’s next. My eyes search the crowd that gathers near home plate. It’s sparse, but all the key players are here. The Offerman clan. My parents. Me. Like statues, listening to Emily’s recording of my private conversation with Charlotte.

  “I can’t fake this.”

  The words came from Charlotte a week ago. Adrenaline kicks in, the drive to stop this right now. I take a step closer to Emily and gesture for the speaker as my voice reverberates, amplified from days ago. “The engagement?”

  My father’s brow furrows. He meets my eyes, and a flash of disappointment appears in his, chased by embarrassment.

  Mr. Offerman stares at me, then snaps his gaze to Charlotte on the bleachers. Her mouth is open, and her eyes are full of terror.

  Must. Stop. Now.

  I rush to Emily. Maybe I can grab the speaker from her hand and hit stop before the next words sound.

  “Stop it. Please,” I plead, reaching for her phone, her speaker, her sense of motherfucking privacy.

  She shakes her head and holds the speaker high, as the next line from Charlotte rings loud and far too clear. “No. That’s fine. The pretend engagement is fine.”

  Emily hits stop, and I expect her to turn to me and say “caught you.”

  But instead, Abe appears, walking around the edge of the makeshift bleachers to join Emily on the field. I do a double take, and point at him. He stands next to Emily, and smiles at her like a proud…teacher?

  Emily stares at her dad. “Do you believe me now that I don’t want to study art at Columbia?”

  Columbia. Emily’s going to the same school as the tenacious reporter. That must be how she knows him.

  Mr. Offerman’s nostrils flare as he steps forward. “Emily, now is not the time to discuss your intended major. What on earth is this about?”

  Yeah, I’m kind of wondering the same thing.

  Especially because I thought this was about Charlotte and me—but it also seems to be about a father and a daughter.

  Emily glares and parks her free hand on her hip. “I have no interest in studying art. I’ve told you that for years. You never listen to me. You never listen to what I want. I want to study business in college. Like you did. But you think business is a man’s world. You’re wrong, though, because I just saved you from selling your business to a liar. Ever since I met them, I knew something was off,” she says, gesturing wildly to me, then to Charlotte. “So I talked to Abe at dinner at McCoy’s, since we realized I’m going to the same college he attends. And guess what? He felt the same way about the happy couple, and we decided to work on it together to get to the bottom of this business deal, and the heart of the story. And it’s this, Daddy.”

  She points at me, the accused. “Spencer Holiday faked his engagement to Charlotte Rhodes so you’d buy Katharine’s, thinking it would appear like the family friendly and wholesome business you want it to be, not something associated with someone best known for discussing dick pics in the business trades.” Her feet are planted wide, her hands on her hips, determination in her eyes. “How does that sound for a story that Abe can run tomorrow? Got an official press comment?”

  Abe and Emily both stare at us with smug delight, but I zero in on Emily.

  Mostly, I want to laugh and claim she’s making all this up because the little pathological liar is off her meds. But some small part of me wants to applaud the girl for her guts. I don’t like being the target of her underhanded tactics, but holy fucking balls. Emily has some big gonads, and she’s sticking it to her father for being a sexist pig. She’s also been playing all of us—that flirting at dinner was never flirting. She was playing me, trying to get to the bottom of the lie she sniffed out.

  “Is this true?”

  The question doesn’t come from Mr. Offerman. It comes from my father. The man I admire. The man I respect. The man who taught me to be better than I’ve been for the last week. Shame washes over me as Dad sidesteps Mr. Offerman. He’s not looking at the man on the other side of the business deal. He’s looking at his son.

  His flesh and blood who lied to him. Who embarrassed him. Who hoodwinked everyone here.

  My face burns. The fact that my feelings for Charlotte have become real is meaningless. None of that matters. I nod and start to fashion an answer.

  But the slap of flip-flops on flimsy metal interrupts me. Charlotte races down the makeshift bleachers and across the grass and dirt.

  “Stop,” she says, holding up a hand. She’s twisting her ring on her finger. “The fake engagement is my fault. Don’t blame Spencer.”

  My father furrows his brow, and turns to her. “What do you mean?”

  “It was my idea,” she says, contrition in her tone, guilt in her eyes. “I asked Spencer if he’d pretend to be engaged to me so my ex would stop bothering me so much.” Her voice is heavy. She tugs at the ring, and I grit my teeth, hating to see it come off her finger.

  “That’s not true,” I say. She’s taking the fall, and I can’t let her. This is my mess, and I need to
clean it up.

  She raises her chin. “It is true,” she says, her tone firm and certain. Her eyes glare at me, and me alone. They say, don’t you dare interrupt me. Charlotte looks to my dad, then Mr. Offerman. “It’s all on me. I needed Spencer to pose as my fiancé so my ex would leave me alone. I live in the same building as him, and it’s been awful since the split. Everyone knows he cheated on me, and I’ve dealt with their stares and looks of pity. But when he started begging me every day to take him back, I needed to do something drastic to make it stop.”

  Mrs. Offerman nods imperceptibly. Her eyes seem to say she understands Charlotte’s plight. Charlotte is so damn convincing—but then, she doesn’t have to be convincing. She just has to be honest. Nearly everything she’s said so far is the truth. Even if the initial idea came from me, the rest of her story adds up.

  Unlike my ruse.

  “Charlotte, you don’t have to do this,” I say softly, just to her.

  She shakes her head and speaks to the group. “No, I do have to do this. I asked him to pretend to be engaged to me so I could finally have some peace where I live. But please don’t blame Spencer. The fake engagement was all my choice, and he went along with it because he’s a really great guy, and he just wanted to help me. We planned everything, every detail, including how we would end it.” She sighs, but holds her chin high. “After one week, and now it’s been a week. So, I guess this is it.” She tugs off the ring. Her eyes are darker than I’ve ever seen them before. Inscrutable. She looks to the others. “It was never real, but not for the reasons you think.” She plunks the ring in my hand, and curls my fingers around it. “Thank you for pretending for me.”

  She wraps me in a hug. “I’m so sorry,” she whispers, and my muscles tighten with a sick hope as I wait for more words just for me, words like, I’d like to thank the Academy, or Do I get a gold star for that performance? But they don’t come, and her apology feels as real as any words she’s ever uttered.

  She breaks the embrace, casts her eyes to everyone else, and repeats herself. “I’m sorry.”

  She leaves, walking away from me. No just kidding comes my way, because this is all too real, and each step she takes crushes me. Like a fool, I stand frozen at home plate, my insides a churning mess of emotions as the embarrassment shifts into something worse. Hurt. So much damn hurt, like my heart has become bruised. She doesn’t love me.

  It was never real.

  Mr. Offerman turns to my father. His nostrils flare. His eyes are hard. “I don’t care whose idea it was. I don’t do business with liars. The deal is off,” he says, slicing his hand through the air.

  Rihanna’s “Take a Bow” plays from Emily’s sound system.

  I cringe, and Mr. Offerman roars at his daughter. “Enough.”

  On that count, we agree.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  My head spins and my chest has a gaping hole in it.

  That doesn’t stop Harper. She pulls no punches.

  “Look.” Her hand clamps on my shoulder as she marches me through the park, Nick on my other side. “Your to-do list today just got a whole lot longer.”

  It’s a good thing she’s guiding me, because I have no clue where I’m going or what I’m supposed to do. My dad took off fifteen minutes ago to deal with the cratering of the most important deal of his career, thanks to me. And Charlotte is history. I tried to find her, but she’s vanished in a puff of smoke. I could call her from Harper’s phone, but as the reality settles in like a dead weight in my heart, I’m not so sure I’m ready for that kind of self-inflicted torture just now. Hey, Charlotte. That’s a bummer that you’re not into me, but I had some ideas for our new marketing campaign? Oh, good. Glad you like my plans to sell more shots. Nachos are on you tonight.

  “Okay. What’s on the to-do list?” I ask, my voice hollow. “Any chance it involves me waking up from this nightmare?”

  She scoffs as she tugs me closer to avoid a skateboarder. “No. Welcome to your life, Spencer Holiday. Your big mouth has gotten you in a lot of trouble, and you need to dig yourself out of this hole.”

  “It’s kind of the size of a black hole, though,” Nick says. “Do you have a shovel that’ll work on something that deep?”

  I want to laugh. I really do. Instead, I scowl. “While you work on finding that shovel, maybe you can also let me know what to do about Charlotte? Seeing as I now run a business with a woman who served me walking papers on home plate.”

  My sister shoots me a look that could burn up asphalt. “She’s not the first item on the to-do list, Spence.”

  “She’s not?”

  Harper shakes her head as the path spills out of the park and we curve onto Fifth Avenue. She points. Far in the distance. Down the avenue. “There. Ten blocks away you’ll find a jewelry store. Up on the sixth floor is our father’s office. You need to go see him and grovel.”

  My shoulders sag, and I sigh heavily. “I really fucked this up.”

  Nick laughs sympathetically. “You did, man. But now it’s time to unfuck it.”

  I hold my hands out wide. A horse-drawn carriage clacks along Fifth Avenue behind us. “How does that work? I’m familiar with fucking. But unfucking—is that like pulling out early?”

  Nick shakes his head. “Not exactly. It’s a new scientific discovery, though. Like reverse osmosis, but instead of water, it filters out your fuck-up. Got it now?”

  Harper rolls her eyes. “Guys. Focus. Now is not the time to practice one-upmanship in smartassery.”

  I drag a hand roughly through my hair. “All right. Let’s do this. What is step one?”

  Harper draws a deep breath and turns to Nick. “Should we tell him, or let him figure it out on his own?”

  Nick screws up the corner of his mouth, then pushes his glasses higher. “Not sure his brain is working at full-speed today.”

  “Tell me what? Were you two talking about this already?”

  “Yeah. Duh. When you tried to run off to find Charlotte,” she says, and I wince at the reminder of how I raced off to catch up to her after Rihanna’s song screeched to a halt. But the blond beauty was long gone, leaving me nursing this black-and-blue heart. Meanwhile, she has my phone, keys and wallet, so I’m operating blind.

  Penniless, too.

  “And what did you decide I need to do?”

  “Dude, first you need to apologize to your dad for lying. You need to explain why you did it, that it came from the right place, but that it was a mistake, and you’re sorry,” Nick says, taking on the role of straight shooter.

  I nod. “Got it. I can do that.”

  “Then you need to try to fix this mess,” Harper says, chiming in.

  “How?”

  “You should ask to talk to Mr. Offerman. See if you can smooth things over.”

  I cringe at the thought of groveling to that asshat. “He doesn’t want to have anything to do with Dad anymore.”

  “That’s right now,” Nick says. “Tempers flare in the heat of the moment. See if he cools down. You’ve got to try.”

  I nod, taking this all in, knowing they’re right. “And if that doesn’t work?”

  They lock eyes again, then look back at me. “You. You’re the way to unfucking it,” Harper says.

  “Oh shit,” I say in a heavy voice as it hits me exactly how I’ll have to reverse osmosis this fuckup for my Dad.

  * * *

  Harper gives me a ten-dollar bill. I feel like a grade-schooler clutching his allowance. “Now, only use it if you need to take a bus home, dear,” she says, like a parent admonishing a child.

  She gives me a shove toward the entrance of Katharine’s. “Go.”

  I head inside, sticking out like a sore thumb with my gym shorts and ball cap. I make my way to the elevator and press the button for the sixth floor. After the doors close with a whoosh, I inhale and exhale, fighting to keep my focus on my dad. Not on Charlotte. Not on the worst words I’d ever heard in my life.

  It was never real.

&nb
sp; I don’t know how I could have misread things between us so badly. I was so damn sure we not only had epic chemistry, but so much more. But that must just be the cocky bastard in me, making assumptions that the woman wanted me.

  When the woman doesn’t lie.

  She made that clear from the start.

  She said she’s a terrible liar, which means everything she said at the ball field was true.

  How the hell am I supposed to go back to working by her side? To running a business with her?

  When the elevator reaches my dad’s floor, the doors slide open. I step out and see a familiar face. Nina walks toward me, dressed in a crisp suit even on a Saturday. But then, Saturdays are the store’s busiest days.

  “Hey there. Are you looking for your dad?”

  I nod. “I am. Is he in his office?”

  “Yes. He’s working on some contracts.”

  A flicker of hope ignites in me. Maybe the deal is back on. Maybe the kerfuffle blew over in mere minutes. Maybe there are Walmarts on Jupiter.

  Still, I have to ask. “Is Mr. Offerman in there?”

  “No,” she says with a small smile, then drops a hand gently on my arm. “But go see him.”

  She leaves, and I draw a deep breath, square my shoulders, and walk to my father’s office. Whatever is coming—whether anger or disappointment—I will take it like a man.

  I knock, and Dad says to come in.

  He’s at his desk, still wearing his softball jersey, his fingers poised over the keyboard. I can’t read the expression in his eyes. I seize the moment, the words tumbling out in a traffic jam.

  “Dad, first of all, I owe you a huge apology. I lied to you and tricked you. And I’m sorry. You raised me better than that. I should never have pretended I was engaged, but in my defense, I thought—stupidly—that it would be the thing you needed for the deal. When I met Mr. Offerman, he so clearly didn’t like my past or my ‘reputation,’”—I sketch air quotes—“so I thought I could simply be engaged for a week as you finished the deal. It wasn’t Charlotte’s idea. It was mine. I thought I was doing the right thing and making sure that my past wouldn’t be the reason your deal went sour. But instead it went sour anyway, because of me.”