“Grandma, the marriage part isn’t real.”
“My darling girl, what is real versus not? The rings on your hands are as real as the documents you signed and the words you spoke. The rest may simply need time to grow. Your grandfather’s and my marriage was similar in that regard. Our families brought us together, and eventually, when the time was right, we fell in love.”
My cheeks warm at her inference. I go to say something, but she and Aston seem to be having some sort of private conversation with only their eyes.
Before I can question anything, people arrive, and then we’re playing the part. It’s a wedding party. Complete with food and dancing and pictures and cake. I hate it. It feels awful. It feels like I’m skipping a million steps with Aston, and it sits all wrong with me.
It does with him too. I can tell. Neither of us is having a particularly good time nor wants to do the posed things. I get why we’re doing it. The necessity behind it. I’m a Fritz, and he’sa Hughes, and if we were married in real life, we’d have a wedding. It would look exactly like this. Everyone around me is doing this for me. To protect me from the asshole I let into my life and allowed to stay for too long.
“I’m sorry,” I murmur as Aston sways me on the dance floor.
“Don’t be. I get to dance with you. I’m not complaining.”
“But you’re not having fun either,” I throw back at him.
“No. I’m not.”
I swallow and nod, pressing the side of my head against his chest over his steady heart.
“I don’t regret it, Skylar. I already told you that.”
“I know. I just feel… dumb.”
He captures my chin and tilts it up, so I’m forced to look at him. “Why would you say that?”
“We’re at our fake wedding party because I stayed with a bad man and got pregnant with his child. If it weren’t for that, none of this would be necessary. Think of the extreme of this all because of me.”
His eyes soften as he sways us around the center of the floor in my grandparents’ ballroom. “I understand why you’d feel that way, but that’s not how it is. There’s not a person in this room who wouldn’t do anything for you, and that includes attending a party for you. We all do things that make us feel dumb, but sometimes those dumb things lead to the best. I had sex with a stranger in the bathroom of a club and didn’t use a condom because I was drunk and didn’t care at the time. Me. A doctor. That’s a pretty fucking dumb thing to do. I was smart enough to talk to her for a few minutes prior to that so she knew what my name was and was able to look me up. Imagine if I hadn’t? I might have never known Zoey, and where would she be now? I was also dumb enough to believe that Astrid loved me back when she told me she did.”
He runs a hand along my jaw and stares adoringly into my eyes.
“We’re not perfect, Skylar. No one is. But what you did by being with Josh doesn’t make you dumb. You loved someone who mistreated you, and that’s on him and not you. You stayed because love isn’t black and white. It’s shaded in a hell of a lot of grays, and it twists and warps our minds and hearts. It’s easy for people on the outside of a situation to look in on something they don’t know or understand and judge it. Stop doing that to yourself.”
I swallow thickly, forcing a nod. “I know. I know all of this. I do. I just… being here today like this… It’s hitting differently than I thought it would. It’s like it’s throwing all my mistakes right in my face and not only doing it publicly but forcing others along for the ride.”
“We all make mistakes. But sometimes those mistakes lead us down a path we might not have otherwise gone down. And from where I’m standing, as much as I hate that Josh was part of your story for as long as he was and that he might not ever be fully gone, all of that brought you to me.”
My insides grow warm and liquid. “You’re really incredible, you know that?”
He shrugs. “Sometimes I know that more than others.”
I feel that. I truly do. But Aston sees me, all of me, the good and the bad, and he’s still looking at me like I’m his sun. And I see him too. The good and the bad. The perfect and the imperfect. Maybe he’s right. Maybe all the bad things we endure are there to learn from and help us grow and make it so that we can appreciate when the good things come along.
I drag my fingers up to his face and pull him down to kiss me. Because I have to kiss him. He feels like all the fairy tale things I imagined as a kid, only he’s real. He’s here. By my side and dancing with me at our fake wedding and helping me through one of the hardest situations of my life. A situation that hasn’t seemed so bad this week that we’ve been together.
Unfortunately, we’re treated to whistles and cheers andfucking photographs. And just like that, my bubble is once again burst.
After that, we both retreat a bit. Zoey has a blast with the other kids, and I mostly try to hide out with my friends, dodging questions from curious relatives and eating my weight in canapés.
My mother doesn’t push it, and neither does Aston’s. By tomorrow those pictures will be out along with our wedding pictures, and that will be that. It leaves a bitter taste in my mouth. How can Aston and I grow into anything real after this level of a lie?
31
SKYLAR
Zoey releases a heavy yawn, her head heavy on Aston’s shoulder as he carries her upstairs and into the bathroom.
“No. I want Skylar to do it,” she whines. He sets her down in front of the sink and throws me a questioning look.
