“I thought you’d be out here,” she said. “I was coming to see you in the kitchen on my break, but you were gone.”
“Sorry,” I said. “I just needed to get a minute of air.”
“Mind if I join you?”
“How could I say no to my fiancée?” I asked and grinned. She laughed and sat down next to me. I offered her the beer and she took a sip, then made a face. “What’s that all about?”
“Beer,” she said. “I don’t like it.”
“Then why did you take a sip?” I asked.
“Because I was being polite!” she laughed.
“You are an odd duck, you know that?”
“I am,” she said. “But so are you.”
“That’s the truth,” I said. “So, are you all ready for tomorrow? Big day.”
“That’s an understatement. We’re getting married tomorrow.”
“I know. It’s wild, right?”
“It is,” she said. We fell into silence for a few moments. “I got the marriage license today.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah, I filed for them for us the day after the dinner. They came in surprisingly fast,” she said.
“Anything else we need for that?”
“Nope,” she said. “We’re all set. All that’s left is to go to the courthouse and have the judge sign it.”
“Are you going to take my name?” I asked. I expected her to laugh and shake her head. Why would she? This was a fake marriage.
“Hell yeah, I am,” she said, snatching the beer and taking another sip. Another disgusted face made me laugh again.
“Seriously? You want my name?”
“Not only is Anderson a better last name than Beckett, but it means I have no connection to my parents anymore. They won’t be able to say I live off their name. I will be my own person,” she said.
“Fair enough.”
“Plus, yeah, I like the sound. ‘Chloe Anderson.’ It has a ring to it,” she said.
“It does. So, you’re sure you want to go through with this?”
“Of course I am,” she said. “One hundred percent. You?”
“Absolutely,” I said. “One hundred percent.”
We both smiled, and I took a deep drag of the beer. There was only a little bit of it left, and I handed it to Chloe as I stood up.
“Heading in?” she asked, taking the beer bottle with a confused look on her face.
“Yup. Since you liked it so much, I figured you could finish it,” I said, grinning. She laughed and shook her head, and I left.
I was happy with her answer. It was emphatic and happy and real. She wasn’t just doing this because it was her only choice; she was doing it because she thought it would be a good idea. She liked me. I liked her. We could make this work.
I was happy. Maybe a little too happy. For as much as I knew, deep down, that eventually we would have to figure out how to have an amicable divorce once one of us found someone we actually wanted to date, for now, it was a great situation. Besides, if we kept having nights where we slept together, we weren’t going to have too much time to sleep with other people.
Nope. Not going to go down that route. I needed to shut those thoughts away and focus on the immediate future. Tomorrow, I was going to go to the courthouse and marry a woman that I enjoyed the company of, and we were perpetuating a lie to make both of our lives easier. That was the point. Catching feelings now would not only be unhelpful, but it would be the dumbest thing I could possibly do.
I had to push those thoughts to the side, go back to finishing up the flurry of dishes that needed to come out of the kitchen and close down the kitchen quickly, so when we shut the doors, Chloe and I could get some rest before an early day tomorrow. It was going to be a doozy.
22
Chloe
Growing up, I never really thought that much about my wedding day. I knew it was a thing most little girls did, but it wasn’t what I was particularly interested in. When Hannah would come over, sometimes we would talk about dreams for our weddings, but mine changed each time because I could never remember what I had decided on before. Hannah was different. She’d had full-on plans by age ten and could tell me what it would look like down to the color of the pews.
She liked to talk about the style of bridesmaid dresses and the flowers that would create the arch she wanted to say her vows under. They would coordinate in color, of course, and carry on through the details of the ceremony. But the reception would have its own theme and color scheme, which meant she and the whole bridal party would have different dresses to change into for the big reveal.
I tended to whip out fantastical ideas like riding down the aisle on a giraffe or exchanging vows in an enormous aquarium or while skydiving. These ideas didn’t amuse Hannah, but they were the best I could do. I just couldn’t get myself into the mindset of a traditional wedding the way she did.