‘You just… You can’t even know what good news this is to me.’ She rubbed her sleeve roughly across her face. ‘Everything’s been so hard, with Matt gone, and – oh, Jonah.’
A fresh wave of sobs overtook her. Beside me, I felt Jonah start shaking.
But his voice, when he spoke again, was firm. ‘You’re not going to be on your own anymore, okay, Fi? I’m going to be there to help you.’
‘We.’
Jonah glanced at me.
‘We’re going to be there to help you,’ I said. ‘Both of us.’
‘I know I’ve only just met you, Sadie,’ Fiona said, smiling tearily, ‘but I think I love you.’
Something blossomed in my heart; warm, golden tendrils snaking their way through my veins.
There. That look on her face. Eucatastrophe. Joy, poignant as grief.
‘How did two people as miserable as your parents produce Fiona?’ I asked Jonah a little later, after we hung up the call. ‘She’s a human ray of sunshine.’
‘I don’t know.’
He laced his fingers together, stretching his arms over his head. ‘There are a lot of things I don’t know about my sister anymore,’ he said, ‘but I’m looking forward to learning.’
It was such an earnest thing to say.
Sincerity, my research had taught me, was often seen as a vulnerability. To earnestly express a feeling was a weakness. It was part of the reason people – including, but not limited to, Professor Christian Fisher – liked to hang shit on romance novels. There was something inherently earnest at their heart: a sincere love and hope and joy that readers often reacted to with the same feelings, a delicate flower that provoked some people to want to crush it.
The part of me that led with her fists should have seen this earnestness, and made a joke of it.
But there was still a honey-golden warmth snaking through my bloodstream, so, ‘That’s really nice,’ was all I said.
Jonah looked at me, and he smiled, the way he had at the dinner table.
My face heated at the memory of his nose brushing gently against mine.
‘If you want,’ he said, ‘I can help you tell your sister.’
It was like a bucket of ice water had been thrown over me.
‘No,’ I said firmly, standing up. ‘I need to do that on my own.’
I had dinner with Chess the next night. ‘Okay, I’m really pushing your boundaries here,’ I said, slidingRoomiesby Christina Laurenacross the table to her as my heart pounded a million miles a minute. ‘I’ve never given you a contemporary romance with this trope before, because it’s kind of fake dating and problematic paperwork all wrapped into one, but it’s good, I swear.’
Her eyes narrowed. ‘What’s the trope?’
I swallowed. ‘Marriage of convenience.’
She groaned. ‘Sadie, no!’
I didn’t tell her.
A few days later, she took me to a fancy new wine bar. She got deep in conversation with the bartender about tannins and tears, and I psyched myself up to tell her. Sure, she hated Jonah, and sure, she was going to hate the idea of me marrying him, even if it was only on paper, but it was a public place. How apocalyptic could her reaction be?
I didn’t tell her.
Dinner at her place the next week.ObviouslyI couldn’t tell her in the wine bar. Chess had no problem making scenes in public places. The one she’d made at graduation with Professor Fisher was proof enough. At her place, then.
Right before I walked through her door, I took off my engagement ring and put it in my handbag.
