Page 2 of The Wedding Fake

“Have a good one, Claire,” I replied. I hadn’t meant to say her name aloud, it had just slipped out, but her head shot up, her questioning eyes catching mine as the doors slid shut.

2

CLAIRE

“I can’t do a whole week,” I groused, pressing two fingers into my eye socket, just above my eye. The pressure did nothing to combat the ache that was blooming there. “I have to work.” Even as I said the words I knew Nora wouldn’t care. Nora, my youngest sister, was sweet and loyal and immature and demanding all at once. And her upcoming wedding only seemed to be highlighting her demanding side. I wanted to ask if she expected Emily to come home for a whole week, but I already knew the answer. No one in the family was going to demand our oldest sister miss a single moment of her obstetrics residency unless it was necessary. And these extra days weren’t necessary.

Nora sniffed once, and I couldn’t tell if she was fuming or close to tears. Possibly both, knowing Nora. I stifled a sigh as she began to speak again, her voice sounding wet and cracking, making it clear that she was, in fact, crying. “I thought you could make time in your work schedule for your sister. A wedding is a once-in-a-lifetime event, you know.”

Was it, though? I rolled my lips between my teeth as if the words might pop out by accident, a swell of guilt bursting in my chest. I wasn’t supposed to think those things, but I couldn’t help it. I didn’t see how this marriage was possibly going to stand the test of time. Nora and her fiancé, Ethan, were both immature twenty-two-year-olds, and Ethan had only proposed because college was ending and he was worried Nora would move on. That hardly seemed like the recipe for a lasting relationship. Still, I hated myself for not being able to manufacture optimism. “I just don’t see how I’m going to get off,” I answered quietly.

There was shuffling, and I suppressed a groan when I heard my mother’s voice a moment later. “Now she’s crying,” Mom hissed. I inhaled deeply. It wasn’t as if I was trying to make my baby sister cry, it was just that the sister in question tended to be unreasonable and overly emotional.

“I’m sorry, Mom, it’s just taking off a whole week is really hard. You have to understand.”

“Do you have the days or not?” Mom asked flatly.

I opened my mouth and then closed it once, having a hard time lying to my mother, but still not wanting to tell her the whole truth. I had exactly five days, but if I took them now, I’d be stuck for the rest of the year. Lots of people didn’t care about that kind of thing, and I wished I was one of those people, but I wasn’t. Not having at least two days in case of an emergency gave me heart palpitations. Was Nora’s demand that I be at a dress fitting two days earlier a good enough reason to give up that cushion? What if something came up during the next four months? Four months was a long time.

“I told her, I’m willing to pay extra to get the fitting done when I get there,” I said, carefully avoiding answering Mom’s question.

“That’s a yes,” Mom said, and I silently cursed how well the woman knew me.

“A yes to what?” I asked, even though I knew the answer.

“You have the days, and it’s your sister’s wedding. I think you should be here.”

I groaned internally. It was always like this. Mom and Dad couldn’t say no once Nora turned on the tears, and apparently no one else got to either. I opened my mouth to argue, but all that came out was, “I’ll make it work.”

“Good. I’m glad that’s settled,” she said.

I expected her to hand the phone back to Nora, who would be magically tear-free, inevitably, but Mom continued talking instead. “You know, Ethan’s brother will be at the wedding.”

“I kind of figured,” I said flatly, cursing my phone carrier’s excellent connectivity. Back in the days when coverage was a little more spotty, people could pretend to have reception problems and hang up on their intrusive mothers.

“You know he’s held a flame for you for years, Claire Bear,” Mom continued.

Ethan’s brother, Grant, was handsome—I could admit that—but he was not my type. Far as I could tell, the guy wasn’t interested in settling down with one woman. Why my mother was dead set on this match was beyond me.

“You should give him a chance.”

My lips twisted in what I’m sure my mother would consider an “uncharitable frown.” Mom could manipulate me into using every last vacation day I had, but she’d never get me to date Grant Dupree.

Been there, done that.

Not with Grant—obviously not with Grant. But men like him were all the same, and I didn’t intend to be one in a long line of hook-ups—or worse, the naive girlfriend who believed he might consider staying faithful to her—ever again. “You know I’m not interested in Grant, Mom.”

I’d learned my lesson, and I wasn’t putting blind faith into any more men—nor was I looking for a hookup with my sister’s future brother-in-law. Too messy. No-strings sex hadn’t been my forte when the world was healthy, and it seemed out of the question post-COVID.

The last time I had sex it’d been with someone I loved and trusted—someone I thought would never cheat on me—and I ended up needing an STD panel.

I shook my head to clear it, drawing in a cleansing breath. The last thing I needed was to be thinking about Dan.

“I know you say that, but it’s been awhile since Dan,” Mom protested. I grunted my disagreement, but didn’t argue. If nothing else, that part was true. I had more or less said goodbye to any hope of sex or love or intimacy when I broke up with Dan a couple years earlier.

“We’ll talk about it when you get here,” Mom said, apparently encouraged by my silence.

“Right,” I muttered. Mom was going to talk about it whether I liked it or not—that much I knew. “I better go call my boss if I’m going to be taking off all these days,” I added, reluctantly opening my laptop and pulling up my email.