“No. Of course not. I have a dog.”
Lululemon freezes, not sure if I’m joking or not.
“Of course she’s not going to eat all that by herself,” Sexy Beardstache Baker pipes in for the first time. All three of us stare at him now. “So? You going to introduce me?”
What is that sexy hunk of a man doing?
“Uh… this is…”
Oh, God. I don’t know his name.
“Jack,” Sexy Beardstache Baker says easily, rescuing me as he sticks out a beefy paw and shakes Marley’s comparably small, limp hand with enthusiasm. “Sora has told me so much about you.” I have? “Honestly, I have to thank you, man. If you two hadn’t gotten divorced, then Sora and I wouldn’t have gotten together. I owe you one.”
I don’t know who’s more stunned: me, Lululemon, or Marley.
Jack the Sexy Baker has saved me. In that moment, I want to propose to him and have his babies. As many as he wants.
Now, it’s Marley and Lululemon’s turn to gape. They glance at Jack the Sexy Baker and back to me. I step a smidgen closer to Jack.
“Want a raspberry torte?” Jack offers with a bright, beaming smile. “They haveextraGMOs, non-organic saturated fat,andgluten.”
Lululemon looks as if he’s offered her a cyanide capsule. “Oh no. No, thank you.”
Marley reaches for one, but Lululemon slaps his hand. “Marley! We’re gluten-free,remember?”
Marley looks crestfallen. It becomes clear that his trade-off for screwing Lululemon is eating food that tastes like trash. I’m suddenly feeling much, much better about my life.
“Come on, Marley,” Lululemon scolds, tugging him off by his sleeve. “We’ve got to go.” She glances at me and Jack one last time. “And nice to meet you,” she cries, high-pitched and fake. The subtext in her eyes tells me she hopes I choke on bacon fat and die. I want to tell her that at least I’ll die happy. More than I can say for her if she ends up snorting kale into her sinuses.
When they’re gone, I turn to Jack, my new hero, and we both break out laughing.
“Thank you for that.”
“Oh, it’s not a problem. I hate bullies.” Jack’s eyes narrow a bit, as he watches Marley and Lululemon scamper away like roaches across a dirty linoleum floor. He glances back at me and grins. “It was my duty to even the odds. Those guys were assholes. Did you see all that kale in her cart?”
“Kale: the taste of sadness,” I say.
“Because every great story begins with ‘after I downed a few rounds of kale…’” he snaps back.
We share a conspiratorial grin.
“Another torte?”
“Definitely.” He offers the tray up and I grab one more. “If you’re going to be my fake boyfriend, why not just go the whole mile and be my fake fiancé and husband, too?” I ask, after I swallow. “I mean, are you really going to commit here? Or is this just a casual fake relationship for you?”
Playfulness lights up Jack’s puppy-dog eyes. “Fictionalwedding. I like it. If it’s fake and we don’t have to pay for it, I want like, five hundred guests, and I want to wear cowboy boots and a blue tuxedo.”
“Why stop there? Llamas can be our flower girls, and the whole affair can be blessed by the Pope.”
We both chuckle some more. It feels like somehow, in another life, we were best friends who caused a helluva lot of trouble in the back of some algebra class.
“All of this is getting ahead of ourselves,” I add. “We just met.”
Jack cocks an eyebrow, surprised. “No, we didn’t.”
Now I’m confused. “What do you mean?” Is this a prank?
“You don’t remember me, do you?” Jack asks with a sly smile.
