Riley sat up, wiping at her eyes, and tried to look like she hadn't been crying for two days straight.
She failed.
The door burst open and all three of her friends piled in—Hannah carrying champagne and glasses, Emily with a bakery box, Jenna with a determined expression that meant business.
"Oh, honey." Emily's face crumpled when she saw Riley. "You look terrible."
"Thanks," Riley muttered.
"I mean it in the nicest way possible." Emily set down the bakery box and pulled Riley into a hug.
Hannah popped the champagne cork with practiced efficiency. "Okay. Talk. What happened?"
"I don't want to talk about it."
"Too bad." Jenna sat on the bed and handed Riley a glass of champagne. "You've been radio silent for two days. We're worried."
"I'm fine."
"You're clearly not fine," Hannah said, surveying the cocoa mugs and laptop and general disaster that was Riley's room. "Did you and Grant have a fight?"
Riley's laugh came out bitter. "You could say that."
"What did he say?" Emily asked gently.
“He won’t talk to me,” she replied as tears welled up in her eyes.
The three women exchanged looks.
"Okay," Jenna said carefully. "Back up. Start from the beginning. That doesn’t sound like Grant at all."
Riley took a long drink of champagne. Then another. The bubbles fizzed on her tongue, but they did nothing to settle the anxiety churning in her stomach.
She set down the glass and said the thing she'd been avoiding saying out loud.
"It was fake. The whole thing. Grant and me. We were fake dating."
Silence.
Hannah's champagne glass paused halfway to her lips. Emily's eyes went wide. Jenna just watched Riley with that careful, assessing look that meant she was processing.
"I know," Riley continued, the words tumbling out now that she'd started. "I know it's stupid. But before the reunion, you all kept teasing me about being so independent. About always being alone. About being too busy for a relationship." Her voice rose, trembling slightly. "It was this running joke—Riley Monroe, too focused on her career to settle down. And I was so tired of it. So tired of being the punchline. So Grant offered to pretend to be the guy I said I was bringing,which was fake, I said yes."
She pulled her knees up to her chest, wrapping her arms around them. The champagne glass sat forgotten on the nightstand. Her friends were still silent, each with varying expressions of shock.
"We agreed it would just be for the reunion. Just enough to get everyone to stop. But then it worked so well, and people were so happy for us, and we just...kept going." Riley's voice cracked. "Through all the holiday events. Christmas. Everything. Except somewhere along the way it stopped being fake. At least for me."
More silence.
Riley couldn't look at them. Couldn't face whatever disappointment or judgment was coming.
"I fell for him," she whispered. "All over again. Like I was sixteen and stupid and completely in love, just like I was in high school. And I thought maybe—maybe—he felt the same way. But then I screwed everything up."
Then Hannah started laughing.
Each of them glanced back and forth at each other, and Hannah shrugged, as if she were acknowledging some secret Riley wasn’t in on.
Riley's head snapped up. "What?"
