Page 30 of Playing Along
“I do. Just as a hobby, but I love it.”
“Oh my gosh! I remember now. Mel said you made that fabulous blanket at Reynolds’ house!” Lucy exclaims. “And Mel’s potholders, you made those too, right?”
“Um, yeah.” I blush a little bit under their scrutiny.
“Wow, that’s so cool. I can barely tie my own shoes, let alone stitch yarn together to form something,” Lucy laments. “Although the shoe tying problems are more of a recent issue,” she adds, patting her bump.
“How far along are you?” I ask.
“Five months,” she tells me with a smile. “And I am finally, finally starting to feel like more of a human.” She rubs her stomach some more, then refocuses on me. “But, you’re deflecting. Tell us how you and Reynolds got back together.”
“Yeah, we’re dying to know,” Emily agrees. “He was hung up on you for so long.”
“Really?” The eager word escapes before I can stop it. Emily and Lucy both give me knowing smiles.
“Really,” they confirm in unison.
I try to repress the smile these words bring to my face, but it breaks free against my wishes. Jack was hung up on me for a long time? Maybe it’s selfish that this makes me so happy to hear, but, if so–well, then I guess I’m selfish.
In my defense, I was hung up on him for quite a long time too. Hard not to be when he looks the way he does and has a heart of gold to boot.
He’s like a dang Disney prince.
“Aww, look at her,” Lucy coos, elbowing Emily softly in the side. “She’s all happy and googly-eyed about her man.”
Quickly I school my features into a more neutral expression. I am not going to let my attraction to Jack get in the way of this fake marriage business. Unfortunately, these two are clearly only here to hear all about that attraction to Jack.
“We keep getting distracted,” Emily cries. “So you still haven’t told us about how you got back together? Did you run into each other after all of this time and the sparks just flew?” She puts a hand to her heart dreamily.
I stumble a little, tripping over nothing as I fumble around for how to answer this. Suddenly our simple little we reconnected last night and spontaneously decided to get married story doesn’t sound very convincing. So how am I going to sell this thing?
“I, uh, actually showed up to his house last night,” I tell them. “I knew I was going to be seeing him at Mel’s wedding next month, so I thought I should clear the air between us.”
There. That’s good. Very believable.
“And?” Lucy waves a hand, asking for more of the story.
“And,” I hedge, “we got to talking and realized we’d both missed each other these last three years. With our lengthy history we decided to pick things up where we left off and get married.”
“You got to talking?” Lucy echoes. She exchanges a look with Emily, looking disappointed. To be completely honest, I was very surprised to find out Detective Nathan Stafford, playboy extraordinaire, had gotten married; but the more time I spend with Lucy, the more I see how well these two fit.
“Sorry,” I say automatically. “It was clearly not as romantic as you were hoping for.”
“Well,” she says with a sigh, “maybe not, but I’m used to romcoms where last minute marriages are typically related to politics, citizenship, or insurance issues.” Her mouth drops open. “Wait, is that what this is? An insurance thing? You’re sick and you need his medical coverage?” She peers more closely at me as if to check for signs of illness then adds, “If so, don’t worry; we won’t tell.”
“Really, Lucy?” Emily scolds her. “You read too many romcoms; you know that? They’re getting married because they reconnected and are taking a second shot at love. Goodness. Listen to yourself. Insurance fraud. Reynolds would never do that. He’d never get married for anything less than love.”
I think I’m going to be sick. The combination of Lucy’s too-close-to-the-truth theory and Emily’s assertion about Jack is making me feel nauseous. Jack is a man of honor and good moral character. Purposefully defrauding someone is far from typical behavior for him. Furthermore, he’s traditional. He has always wanted a wife and a big family—people to love. The reason he bought his ranch, he once told me, was because he could see his future family living there. When he proposed to me three years ago he cast a pretty little vision of the life of domestic bliss we’d share raising our family on his ranch. I rejected his vision back then, but now I’m taking things a step further by robbing him of the opportunity to ever have that with someone at all. Because even though he’s marrying me, there’s no way Jack still loves me. I picture his stoney face outside my door this morning. All of his grunts and single word answers. He’s been almost completely closed off to me. Sure there have been moments where I’ve glimpsed the man I fell in love with, but for the most part Jack has been exuding indifference towards me.
He’s marrying me out of pity, pure and simple.
And suddenly I feel as if I’m exchanging one guilty verdict for another.
“Of course, you’re right, Em,” Lucy quickly agrees with her. “My imagination is making me get carried away.” She eyes me. “Although you do look a little pale. Are you okay?”
“Um, yeah,” I say dazedly. “Just a little lightheaded. I forgot to eat this morning with all the chaos of getting ready.”
“Oh,” Lucy says, taking out her keys and hitting the unlock button as we reach her Jeep. “Well, no worries. I have, like, ten boxes of granola bars in my Jeep. Nate is always putting food in my car on the off-chance that there’s an apocalypse.”