9. Chapter 9
Chapter 9
Marcy
Fake engagements were made for tougher stock than me. I’d thought I was tough.
Nope. I was dough. Loose, floppy dough. Like I had beneath my fingers, molding and shaping into an ideal bride.
Bride? No! Bread. I meant bread.
Usually kneading dough calmed me. The act of baking, of creating something whole from many disparate parts, was my creative outlet. I loved how precise bread baking was, but how it offered opportunities to experiment.
“Marcy? You okay?” Hudson poked her head into the kitchen. “Oh. You’re stress baking.”
Wisely, she stayed parked in the doorway. She knew better than to make sudden movements when we were outnumbered by flour sacks and mixing bowls.
My shoulders sank. I couldn’t bake my way out of this. I turned to her and let loose.
Tears streamed down my face. My breath snagged against a silent wail caught in my throat .
“Marcy!” Hudson rushed in and threw her arms around me. “Oh my goodness. What’s going on? I’m sorry I’ve been gone this week.”
A sob wrenched free. I held up a limp hand covered in flour and specks of bread dough.
She pulled back and grabbed my hand. Looked at my ugly cry face and then back at the hand. And the ring. “I’m going to need a translation.”
“I’m engaged!” I wailed. Yeah, it was not cute. It was not a whimper. I sounded like a toddler in full Target checkout aisle meltdown.
“Wha…”
Hudson, to her credit, took a moment before she badgered me with questions.
Here’s the thing: I knew I was being ridiculous. Crying in my kitchen, surrounded by three in-progress loaves over a plan I’d agreed to, that I’d half come up with, and didn’t have enough sense to include any of my friends on, who surely would have told me this was all a terrible idea, was peak absurdity.
“Okay. Wash your hands and let’s sit down.”
I did as commanded and sat at our small dining table. She pulled her own chair close to face me. “You and Patrick are engaged.”
I gasped. “How did you know it was Patrick?”
“Who else would it be?” She sensed her error instantly. “Erm, educated guess, I suppose. I know you’ve been insistent you two are just friends.”
“ We are .” I sniffled. “Friends, I mean.” I divulged the whole story, from diner to family dinner, including the part that most terrified me. “They all looked…so happy. And Patrick—he looked legitimately jazzed about the idea. When Mamá hugged him declaring her absolute delight at us getting married? Things got really real.”
Hudson only nodded.
“But it’s not real. ”
She nodded again.
“We’re doing this so people will actually vote for him and I can get that trust money and open my bakery. It’s admittedly a weird scenario, but he’s the only person I’d do this for. And he’d do anything for me.”
Hudson gave me a strange look, which I ignored as I hopped up for a tissue. I paced instead of sitting. “You should have seen how thrilled Mamá got. I haven’t seen her that excited since my college graduation. She was tearing up and talking about a wedding veil she and her mother both wore. She asked when we could start planning the wedding!”
I swung to look at Hudson, who still hadn’t said anything. “What? What are you thinking?”
“I think you’re right that you wouldn’t do this for anyone else.”
“Okay.”
“And, well.” She smoothed her hands against her skirt. “You need to be careful.”
I sat again, totally lost. “Careful? Do you see me? I’m a freaking mess. We’re already past careful. I need damage control. What was I thinking?” Truly, what had I been thinking? I’d focused so much on my bakery dream and the dazzle of that start-up money, I’d lost all sense. And then toasted to it over an Italian dinner.
“You need to be careful about Patrick. He really cares about you.”
I knew it was rude, but my eyes rolled. Okay, I rolled them. “Obviously, he cares about me. We’ve known each other most of our lives.”
“He wouldn’t do this for anyone else, Marcy. Anyone.”
I felt like we were having two different conversations here. “I know. I told you that. I guess I’m just freaking out and looking for a little support here. You know, you can slap me. Right in the face. Maybe I need sense slapped into me. ”
“I’m not slapping you!” Hudson huffed and scooted her chair back. “Let’s get to the bottom of why this is upsetting you so much. I highly doubt you were forced into this situation. Were you?”
She knew the answer because I’d told her as much. “No.”
“And you’re not actually getting married.”
“No.”
“But the dinner announcement and seeing Patrick all happy with your parents feels real and that upsets you. Why?”
I slumped into the chair. “The idea is they’d be so happy we were engaged that they’ll be less mad I’m throwing away my accounting degree to open a risky bakery business. And it’s working. And that’s scaring the crap out of me.”
She let me have the space to sort my thoughts. Incredibly thoughtful and I hated it. Yes, things grew really real when my parents—well, Mamá—gushed over Patrick. (And Papá? Honestly, the man just wanted dinner, and I couldn’t blame him.) When Nonna said she’d hoped it would be Patrick, and here Hudson guessed my mystery fiancé in a hot second? That bothered me. Deeply.
I returned to the kitchen. I washed my hands again before going in on my abandoned bread dough. I gave it a few more rolls against the floured board before placing the dough into a bowl and covering. I waited for that peaceful sense where kneading the dough acted like a calming massage to my nerves.
But that calm didn’t come. Hudson hovered nearby as I took the time to center myself.
“I’ve told my family, and you and Jillian and Noah, that Patrick and I are only friends and nothing more. That’s the truth.” I turned and leaned back against the counter. “I’ve protected that friendship. We work good as friends and I like not worrying that we have to be something more. I like that we haven’t ruined what we have with romantic feelings.” Save one regretful moment, but that wasn’t important right now. “If people believe Patrick and I are destined to get married simply because we’re longtime friends, that’s on them. Not me.”
Hudson said nothing. She was either a really good listener or holding back.
“I…I don’t want to lose that. I care about Patrick. A lot.” The words snagged at my suddenly parched throat. This wasn’t new information, but I certainly had never said it in the context of agreeing to marry him. Even for a ruse, that still carried weight. “If I barely knew him, it’d be different. But it’s Patrick .”
“Hot prospective mayor and lawyer Patrick.”
“Hot!” I made a noise with my mouth that was supposed to be disgust, but let’s be real here. Neither of us bought it. “It’s hard to consider someone I’ve known this long and so well as hot . That feels so cheap. He’s not like, man meat.”
Hudson sighed. “No one’s suggesting he’s man meat. But you can’t deny he’s good looking.” She twirled her hair as if to pretend she wasn’t eagle eying my face for my response.
I refused. I refused to respond. My face: blank as a wiped clean pastry board.
Hudson marched to the fridge and yanked the door open. She grabbed a sparkling water. “If I really thought you were totally and purely friends, I wouldn’t push. I would respect the boundary. But I’ve seen something between you two. And it doesn’t mean it has to go further—I’m not saying it should. But to pretend that lingering attraction isn’t part of what’s making you upset about the situation you put yourself in is, well, it’s dishonest. You should at least acknowledge your own potential dishonesty.”
My mouth slowly dropped open. Acknowledge lingering attraction? My dishonesty? What was happening here?
An acute urge to shove Hudson hit me hard (instinct from a childhood with brothers) but I couldn’t shove my best friend. First, because I was an adult. Second, because deep down, she might have had a point .
Maybe a small point. But that wasn’t everything. Not even close.
I could admit Patrick was good looking—sure. Obviously he was. But him being hot, or attractive, or charming, or well-dressed, none of that made any sense to upset me. That couldn’t be what was actually bothering me. It had to be something else.
Besides, I didn’t even want to get married. I was only doing this to get my family off my back. For…manipulative reasons.
The reality of seeing how happy this engagement made my family, it hurt because it might never be real. “Getting married means following the path my family wants for me, regardless of what I want. I’ve already done that my whole life and still they expect more. I did everything they said and I feel like my life is at a standstill. Mamá says she doesn’t pressure me, but she says things like ‘when you’re married with your own kids then…’ and all I can think is, what if I don’t do those things? It’s assumed. Expected. And now with the money? The thing I want was out of reach, but now it isn’t. I can get what I want, but only if I trick them into believing I’m their obedient daughter ready to settle. It’s supposed to be a distraction, but it’s like I’m setting myself up for failure when they find out this isn’t real and I only want a bakery, not a husband.”
It especially upset me to deceive them about something that thrilled them. They loved the idea of this manufactured engagement. The fake me I put in front of them as a distraction. Not the real me with a passion to open a bakery.
So I’d pinpointed why I was upset. Not that it helped.
“Oh well. Might as well give up and not bother trying at all.” Hudson sipped her drink.
I wasn’t sure I could handle waiting two more years for the trust while my family hassled me about future weddings and babies with unknown suitors. Nonna and the great aunts had already been threatening to set me up with local losers. Meanwhile, more hours clocked in at my stable but soul-defeating job .
“Maybe I’m being selfish by wanting more,” I admitted. Lots of people would be happy with steady work, a clean, rodent-free apartment shared with a responsible roommate, and being the one who other people mooched off their streaming service subscriptions because it meant you had the money to afford multiple streaming service subscriptions. Maybe that was making it.
Hudson hummed in response, clearly gearing up for a rebuttal.
“Don’t you dare mention that Pinterest board.” I gathered my curls and tied them back with a hair tie from my wrist. “I only give my family what they want if we actually get married. As long as we each can get what we need without going that far, then I’m still in control. Patrick gets his election campaign. I have a clear shot at the money, and we stay friends. I have to keep my head straight.”
A fake engagement with clear goals. I was overthinking here. Just stick to the plan with the goal in mind. How hard could it be?
Hudson shot me a skeptical look. “Do you think you can?”
Now that was the question.