“I know. I love you too.” Ryan drew in a deep breath and said, “Figure out what you need from me to make this work. Anything you want, anything at all. I don’t care what it is, I’ll get it done. If I can’t, I have people who can find a way.” He ran his hands down my arms. “We’re in this together. Okay?”
I bobbed my head, humming in agreement while I was confused and conflicted as hell. “We always are.”
chapter six
Emme
Today’s Learning Objective:
Students will collaboratively hatch revenge schemes.
I obsessedon Sunday and then crammed all my questions and doubts and strange, sticky hopes in a box, and mentally shoved it into the depths of my closet. I was supposed to be thinking and processing and making sense of the weirdest marriage proposal of all time, but I didn’t do any of those things. I didn’t really want to think about it because I knew I’d run too far, too fast in all the wrong directions. I couldn’t let myself do that again. Not when the last wound was barely scabbed over.
So, I left the obsession box in my mental closet all week, pretending it didn’t exist while Ryan was out of town.
Even if I wanted to tell anyone about this, what would I say? Where does one start with these stories?Hey, I might be fake-engaged. Is it too soon to register for a waffle iron?
And more to the point, was I allowed to tell anyone about it? I had to assume the value of a fake relationship declined with every person who knew it was fake.
While I was very curious about the waffle iron and related topics, this week gave me no time to get lost in those details.My class required every ounce of me, every single day, and more than once I went home without visiting Jamie and stared at the wall for an hour just to decompress. I was late on my lesson plans for next week and hadn’t even started the book I was supposed to be reading for the upcoming professional learning community meeting. Planning the school’s June field day had always been my pet project, the one thing that got me through the final chaotic months of the year, but I hadn’t even come up with a theme yet.
And then there was Ines. From what I could piece together, her degree program had a practical experience requirement she hadn’t met. She’d been offered many interviews for summer internships, but that was where it fell apart for her. Ines had a tough time in artificial social situations like that. She was intensely literal and came across as abrupt when she was trying to be specific or concise. She didn’t know how to play ball with opaque questions and struggled to notice when her responses were turning into sermons.
If I’d known how critical it was to get her a gig for the summer, we would’ve been working on interview prep from the minute she moved in. But here we were in early April with no internship, no upcoming recruiting events on the university’s calendar, and the threat of her not graduating or being able to start her grad program hanging heavy over the apartment.
Ines now existed in the type of eternal panic that I referred to as bouncy ball anxiety—every time she thought about the internship requirement, her worries fed off each other until they doubled and tripled, every scenario in her mind worse than the one before, and she couldn’t bear to be still because her body was buzzing. Just like a rubber bouncy ball thrown down an empty hallway.
Easy to spot. Not as easy to de-escalate.
Especially since I had no idea how to find a job in engineering.
And I was also a bouncy ball because I’d never actually stopped obsessing over what it would mean to marry Ryan Ralston.
Ryan stoodin the middle of my kitchen and made a solid attempt at pretending he didn’t hate everything about the apartment. It was small and narrow, with a sharply slanted ceiling that forced him to stay on one side of the room at all times, and it always smelled like pastrami. We’d never been able to figure out where that feature came from.
He’d noticed the array of water spots on the ceiling, what with being so close to it and all, and the odd, rust-colored stain in the middle of the worn hardwood floors that Grace used to refer to as the scene of the crime.
There was also the matter of the disemboweled oven and all the other projects Ines had left in states of incomplete.
The place didn’t show well.
“I have a condo,” he said, peering at a window with dish towels tucked around it to ward off the draft. “I hardly ever use it. It’s new. And”—his mouth hung open as the corner of the window casing came off in his hand—“clean. It’s very clean.”
“We’re fine,” I said, prying open the baby-proof latch on the refrigerator. The door had a tendency to pop open. That, or we had a ghost who enjoyed a midnight snack and often left it ajar. “I love this neighborhood, and if you climb out that window”—I pointed to the one he was trying to piece back together but making worse by the minute—“and onto the roof, the view is amazing. I spend every sunny day out there.”
“I have a roof garden designed by an award-winning landscape architect,” he replied. “And you don’t have to climb out any windows to get there.”
“I’m sure it’s lovely,” I said. “But this is my place, flaws and all.”
“But—” He stared at the oven.
“It’s okay. I don’t really cook anymore.”
“Anymore?”
I carried the drinks and snacks to the small table shoved up against the wall and ignored his question. No need to get into all of that. “You said you had a dinner meeting tonight.” I tipped my head toward the empty seat across from me. “I don’t want to make you late.”
He cast a disapproving frown at the window and crossed to the table in one step. This really was a narrow apartment, even by Boston standards. The chair creaked under his weight and he gave me a wary glance before reaching for the glass of water I’d set out for him.
