“Well, I mean, if you don’t want to—”
“Katie! You’re the worst at this!”
“Well, what am I supposed to say?! I married for love. You married for… what did you marry for again?” She squinted at me.
“Please stop drinking those.” I plucked the coconut from her hand and put it aside. “There is way more booze in that than you think.”
She rolled her eyes, like,Yes, Mom. I really needed to return her to her husband. She hadn’t partied like this without Jesse in a long damn time, and she was used to parties ending with him taking her home to bed. I wasn’t sure she’d thought the rest of this night through, and she was about to lose her winglady.
“I’m serious,” I told her. “I can’t spoon you tonight.”
She grinned. “I know.”
“And I’m marrying him to save my agency. I thought I made this crystal clear.”
“You did…”
“Except you keep questioning it.”
“Well, technically, I thought he already saved your agency. From Janelle.”
“But this gets the agency turned over tomeonce this whole farce is done.”
“What if it’s not a farce?”
“Katie.”
“What? What if you end up falling for him?”
“Oh, God. That never happens, Katie. People don’t get married first and then fall in love.”
“Uh, actually, they do. Did you know that arranged marriages have the same success rate as other marriages?”
“Is that even true?”
“I don’t know. I just made it up.”
I threw my bouquet at her, but I laughed when she did. Thank God I had her here to keep me sane.
“Anyway,” she said, “who’s to say if people who stay in marriages of any kind are really in love or not? This isyourmarriage. Make it whatever you want it to be. If it’s a business deal for a few months, so be it. I once had a relationship start out as a business deal…”
“Oh, Katie. Stop it right there.”
“Why?”
“Because Dane Davenport is so not Jesse Mayes. I keep trying to tell you this.”
“I know he’s not Jesse,” she said. “There is only one Jesse Mayes.”
“Don’t gloat.”
“But so what?” she went on. “I didn’t love Jesse either when I agreed to be his pretend girlfriend. I didn’t even know him. And now I love him with the force of a thousand suns. And that part came pretty quick, actually.”
“Well, I met Dane Davenport twelve years ago and the thousand suns are taking their sweet time rising on this one.”
“I think you like him more than you’ll admit.”
“I think I should’ve let Chaz be my maid of honor.”
