Out of the corner of my eye, I see Nola give a slight, singular nod. She’s unsure what my grandmother’s reaction to the proposal will be, but her nerves are unwarranted. The excitement in my grandmother is brewing. Stella claps her hands together and sways again to the song like she’d never stopped. “I love it. It’s been too long since our family’s been involved in a good scandal.”
“We’ve never been part of a scandal, Stella,” Violet smirks.
“What little you know, dear.” Her reply is blasé but there has to be a story there. “Tomorrow, then. What a great day for a fake wedding. Nola, will your family be there? Do they approve of what you’re doing?”
“It’s just me.” Nola eases up. “My sister is with her in-laws for the holidays but thinks it’s a risk worth taking. My parents are on a three-week cruise and will find out when they return. Emma’s out of town for the weekend.”
“That’s just as well.” Stella reaches for her glass and downs the remainder of her drink in one gulp. “What everybody is going to find before long are two people who have fallen in love despite their best efforts not to. Then we will have a real wedding!”
Nolaand I get to her house well after eleven. She kicks off her shoes by the front door and turns on the fireplace before sinking into a corner of the sofa, curling into a ball, quilt nestled around her. “That . . . was memorable.” Her voice is thick and tired, but there’s no way either of us are going to go to bed. The adrenaline rush of time spent with Stella courses through us. “I like your sisters.”
I take the other corner of the couch and stretch my body out, one leg down the middle of the sofa, one on the coffee table, hands clasped behind my head. “They like you too, which is saying a lot because those are two hard women to win over.”
This makes her lips curve up slowly and in the glow of the firelight, she’s nothing short of beautiful. I internally chide myself. She’s always beautiful.
“What are you thinking?” I ask.
“Stella was unfazed by this fake marriage and it is almost more unsettling than if she had fought it.”
My hand runs through my hair. “She loves to surprise us and be a wild card in her reactions. You get used to it after a while.”
Nola faces me and straightens with a serious expression on her face. “Look, I’ve already been married once. I’ve done the dream wedding, the unyielding commitment thing. All through dinner I thought about this. You shouldn’t have your first marriage be a sham?—”
“I wouldn’t have come up with this if I cared about that.”
“I just want to give you an out.”
I study her a long second and see the internal struggle she’s having with taking away the specialness surrounding what a real wedding should be. At the same time, she isn’t spiraling the way I’d expect for somebody so organized and uptight. “You are weirdly chill about this.”
She grins. “I’ve recently promised myself I’d be more fun.”
“If you’re looking for fun, go to Disneyland. This . . . this is going to complicate things.”
“I’m a big girl, Max. You don’t have to take care of me.”
The response, on the tip of my tongue, is that I’m starting to think I want to. I’m not sure because I’ve never actually felt that way about another human being outside of my family. My life has revolved around me and that’s worked out well for me. Saying as much in this setting feels way too intimate, so instead I stare too long, until the silence stretches into uncomfortable territory. I clear my throat and change the subject. “When were you in Austria?”
She doesn’t seem to mind my avoidance and thinks about my question. “Mmm, three years ago? Doing the art for thosechain hotels you think are beneath me pays off, remember? I did a collection for a well-known brand in Vienna, and as a thank you, Emma and I got to stay there for a week.”
“Which one?”
“Nope. I have to sign NDAs.” She winks.
Stella asked to see the contract we’d pieced together last night. She largely laughed it off as something a toddler could have come up with and offered to have her lawyer draft something that was more appropriate in the morning. I get her insistence we both protect the money we’ve worked hard for, but I definitely don’t care to take a single mom to court, and I don’t see Nola ever going after my earnings either. To pacify her, we agreed and then asked the family and Patrick the dishwasher to sign NDAs in case media reached out to them for a comment. Satisfied, Stella shuffled us off to dinner without further discussion.
By eight, we’d eaten, checked out theWhite Christmasfloat for the holiday parade, had pie, and cleaned up the pre-dinner celebration in Stella’s room. She’d gotten tired and I could see signs of the beginnings of confusion starting, so I sent my sisters back to my house. Nola grabbed the nurse and the three of us helped get Stella to bed. I sat by her, “You Got It” on repeat, until she fell asleep.
The nurse said she’d stay with her. “If this keeps happening, I know the director will want to discuss moving your grandmother to the other side of the center to be with the memory care patients.”
Ideally, that would be a discussion to have with Madelyn and Violet present, but with both of them leaving tomorrow night, that’s a hard conversation to save for another holiday. Next we went to my house and stayed for a couple of hours. I love how Nola wasted no time befriending my sisters.Madelyn’s celebrity status only lasted so long in Nola’s eyes before my sister turned mere mortal by tossing her hair up into a messy bun and putting on comfy pants and a sweatshirt. The three of them swapped stories and downed a gallon of Tillamook Chocolate Brownie Batter before I could find a spoon.
We’d already planned to have me live with her but given the uptick of people standing outside my house with phones ready to catch a glimpse of us, that meant it was starting tonight. My stuff’s at Nola’s, though I was desperate to have more time with my sisters before we’d go months without seeing each other, but in the end, we decided to keep up appearances of the happy, newly married couple.
Nola burrows her head into the back of the sofa and looks at me. “Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“Can you expand a little on why you call Stella by her first name when things are good, but when she has a moment, you call her grandma? You gave me a little of the story at pizza, but now I’ve seen it more and if I’m going to be your wife, I’d like to know.”
