Page 16 of The Wedding Fake

“You should come with me,” he said, and my heart did a whole stutter-stop thing that probably required medical attention.

“You want…your fake girlfriend…to meet your mom?” I asked slowly.

I might’ve expected him to get defensive, or maybe insulted, but Hudson only laughed. “I just posted about you. My parents and my sister are going to know something is up. Frankly, it seems easier to introduce you and tell them we broke up later than to explain how I came to be pretending to date you.”

The man had a point and yet I didn’t want to go. Didn’t want to lie to his mother or his sister. My mother and sisters—fair game—but it felt wrong to extend this beyond Nora’s wedding. “If I can get free I’d love to come with you,” I replied, suddenly praying Nora would keep me busy, even though I knew she wouldn’t. We were here for a full week. I’d said from the beginning it was unnecessary.

The car went quiet, like maybe Hudson knew I didn’t want to meet his family, and again, guilt wracked me. “Tell me about your sister. It’s just the two of you, right?”

He hesitated, and I realized he probably didn’t want to talk about his family, not that I knew why. “Yep. Sammie. She’s two and a half years younger than me and a teacher in Cranberry Falls—in the elementary school we went to, actually.”

“Do you get along?” I asked tentatively, not sure where the landmine was in this conversation, but tiptoeing nonetheless.

“Sure. She’s nosy and opinionated and a pain in my ass, but I love her. We talk on the phone a lot.”

“That’s sweet.”

“Is it different for you and your sisters?”

“Me and Em are really close like that, but Tess and Nora are both a bit younger, so they’re closer to each other, I think. But we all talk. I talk on the phone with Emily almost daily, and Nora every week or two. Tessa is probably the one I talk to least, but I always have fun with her when we’re together. I think she just hates the phone. How about your parents?”

“My parents have one of those amazing, impossible relationships that no one can live up to, leaving their children frozen and afraid to commit for fear of failure.”

I laughed a big laugh. Talking to Hudson was so easy. “I know exactly what you mean. That’s how I feel about my parents.”

“Like you wish they would’ve had a dysfunctional relationship so you could have realistic standards?”

“So I take it Sammie isn’t married?”

“Nope,” he replied, the word making a little popping noise on his lush lips. I let out a slow breath, reminding myself I’d promised Hudson I wouldn’t make something out of our fake date that it wasn’t.

“Is Nora the first of your sisters to get married?”

“She is. She’s the youngest and first.”

“Does it bother you?” he asked, running a hand through his hair.

Yes. It was supposed to be me. Me and Dan.

“No,” I lied, but even though Hudson barely knew me, I was sure he could tell it was a lie. “I mean, it’s just not the way I thought things were going to turn out,” I said honestly.

Hudson looked out the window where pine trees whipped by. “I get that. I think the same thing every time I visit home.”

I always found the trip home long and tedious, but today I would’ve dragged it out another four hours if I could’ve. I was dreading home just as much as I was dreading this wedding, and the truth of the matter—the truth I tried not to think about—was that my life wasn’t supposed to play out like this. When I’d been with Dan, I’d pictured us getting married, buying a house a few blocks from my parents, and having kids. It was such a neat and orderly plan, and now I was bringing an acquaintance from an elevator to my baby sister’s wedding, playacting a life I wasn’t exciting enough to earn on my own.

“You okay?” Hudson asked, and I jolted out of my pity party with a start.

“Me?”

Hudson chuckled, looking around the car with one eyebrow raised.

“Okay, obviously me,” I conceded. “I’m fine. Just zoning out.”

“Alright,” he replied, but the crease between his eyes and the way he scrutinized my face when I turned his way for a moment suggested he didn’t believe me. “Are you worried they’ll figure us out?”

I probably should’ve been, but I wasn’t. Between our elevator adventure and this drive, I knew my fake boyfriend better than I’d known some of my legitimate boyfriends. “Not really,” I said. “No one in their right mind would ask a stranger to come to their parents’ home for a week and pretend to be in a relationship, so it seems unlikely anyone will figure us out.”

“You probably have a point.”