Page 88 of Wedding or Not

I say, “That’s a good idea. We can plot it out on the drive to the flea market. Unless you still insist on canceling on me.”

“No. I’m not going to cancel.” He sounds tired, battered.

Exactly what I’m feeling myself.

CHAPTER 29

On the drive to the flea market, we lay out specifics for two more months of our public marriage, consisting of public appearances once a week and a slow decline of our interactions, including a couple of arguments.

It will make perfect sense to the world.

A whirlwind romance, gone viral online, would rise and fall quickly as real life caught up to the wave of manufactured feeling.

What the world saw will be mostly the truth.

Our relationship is petering out in reality in exactly the same way we want to display.

It’s fine.

We were probably doomed to fail from the beginning.

After all, lasting love doesn’t happen that way. It’s not crafted out of nothing to put on a show.

So for the next week, I try to talk myself into believing it’s for the best and that soon I’ll forget all the time I spent with Wes, how close I got to him, how he made me feel.

All of it will fade into a faint, conflicted memory, and I can go back to the life I’ve made for myself.

It will be perfectly fine.

Maybe it will actually be fine if I keep telling myself it is.

I don’t see much of Wes the next week, but it’s a relief as much as anything else. If I had to face him, I might have trouble believing I’m better off without him in my life.

On Saturday night, a week after we went to the flea market, we scheduled to drive to Baltimore for the concert of a folk-rock musician who is one of Wes’s favorites.

I like the singer too, so I’ve been looking forward to it despite my confusion around my feelings for Wes.

To get there, we take several county roads before we turn onto one large state road that leads to the outskirts of Baltimore. The county roads aren’t heavily trafficked, so it’s not a stressful drive. For more than thirty minutes, we’re driving a comfortable distance behind the same Buick sedan, which is holding the exact same speed as Wes.

We listen to music, which frees us from the pressure of deep conversation. And I’m sinking into an achy resignation about our fake marriage and the man beside me when something happens.

It’s so unexpected it’s almost surreal. Like a vision from a dream or nightmare where the world doesn’t function in normal ways.

The Buick, which has been driving with steady speed and consistent steering, veers onto the shoulder without slowing down and then keeps driving right off the pavement.

There’s no ditch and no guardrail. Just a gently sloped hillside of grass leading to some trees.

The car barely slows down even when it hits the grass, and the angle of the slope must be too much for the Buick’s stability. It flips, but it hits the trees before it gets all the way over, so it ends up crashed and propped on its side.

“Oh my God!” I’ve watched the whole thing like it’s a movie or a dream, but it’s neither of those things. It’s real, and the sight of the mangled car in such a precarious position makes my stomach heave.

Wes started slowing down as soon as the car veered off the road, and now he pulls to a stop on the shoulder.

“Wait here, baby, and call 911,” he rasps as he jumps out of the SUV and goes to open the back hatch.

I’m stunned and nauseated, so I can only watch as he grabs what looks like a crowbar from the back and runs toward the crashed car.

What the hell is he doing?