Page 87 of Wedding or Not

“Is it bad news?” Iris asks, turning from the book she was paging through.

“N-no. It’s not. But I’ll be right back. I need to call someone.”

“Okay.” Iris is observant and sensitive for her age, but she’s distracted by her work and she trusts me.

If there’s no bad news and I need to make a call, she believes me.

Parker, pulling on her hair in frustration as she tries to write out notes, couldn’t care less.

I’m walking toward the front door so I can go outside—that feels more private than any room in Aunt Grace and the girls’ cottage—when another text from Wes comes in.

Ella?

I grimace down at the text and then connect a call to him.

“Hey,” he says, picking up. “Is everything⁠—?”

“No, everything’s not okay. Why aren’t you coming this afternoon?”

I think my tone must surprise him because he pauses before he answers. “I don’t see much reason in it, and I’ve got a lot of work to catch up on.”

“You had that work on Wednesday when we made plans. If you don’t want to hang out with me, just say so.”

“It’s not that.” He’s sounding a little stretched now. Definitely not casual and laid-back as he’s been acting all week. “You know that⁠—”

“I know that we’re supposed to be smart but not that we’re supposed to avoid each other. If we’re never seen together anywhere, everyone will know the whole thing is a ridiculous farce.”

He makes an exasperated sound in his throat. “Who the hell cares what they think anymore? We’ve gotten what we needed out of The Plan.”

“So you want to end it?” I’m trying to channel Audrey and be matter-of-fact, but I’m not Audrey. I’m just me, and I’m buffeted by a torrent of emotion right now. My voice wobbles audibly on the last two words.

“I didn’t say that. Why are you acting this way?”

“Because I thought—” The words come bursting out before I think them through, but when my mind catches up, I bite them off.

Another long pause from Wes. Then he murmurs, almost gently, “You thought what?”

“It doesn’t matter what I thought. This is getting messy, which is exactly what you were trying to avoid when you had us back off. So tell me right now. Do you want to end The Plan?”

“It needs to end eventually.”

“I know that. But I’d rather the world not think we made the whole thing up as a publicity stunt, so I wanted it to… to transition more naturally.”

“Okay.”

“Okay? What does that mean?”

“It means okay. I’m okay with that. But you’re right. This is getting messy. So why don’t we plot out a timeline. How much longer we’re going to do this and exactly what interactions we’ll need to have to get there.”

He sounds businesslike. Cool. Slightly brusque.

The way he used to sound all the time around me.

And so that makes it crystal clear.

Whatever dream I had for a real relationship with Wes wasn’t based in reality.

And when The Plan ends, so will everything else between us.