Chapter Six The Proposal #3
“They will turn it into a ceremony.”
“Tessa will.”
The final rule looked absurdly formal. It also looked like the only one neither of us could enforce. Amy set the pen down.
“So.”
“So?”
“If you answer the marathon question, Miguel signs the transfer, Blake documents the former-client conflict, and we agree on the relationship history, I will enter.”
I should have felt only relief. The certification stopped looking like an emergency-funded gamble. The prize became possible. Instead, I felt the last rule sitting between us. No genuine feelings. I had suggested it because it sounded impossible in a funny way. Now it felt like a warning.
“Okay,” I said.
Amy held out her hand.
“A temporary competition partnership.”
I took it. Her hand was cool and smaller than mine.
“A fake relationship,” I corrected.
“For practical purposes.”
“Obviously.”
We shook. Neither of us let go immediately. Amy looked down at our joined hands. Then back at me. The room became too quiet. I released her first.
“Relationship history,” I said.
“Yes.”
“We met at the gym.”
“True.”
I leaned across the table, warming to the assignment. “You tried to steal my treadmill.”
“You were using my reservation.”
“Less romantic.”
“It should be plausible.” Amy poised her pen above the page, refusing to reward me with a smile.
“You dropped a dumbbell near my foot.”
“No.”
“It was love at first injury.”
“No.”
I pressed a hand to my chest. “I saw my life flash before my eyes.”
“You nearly caused my death by distracting me on a treadmill.”
That one almost made her laugh. Keeping her mouth straight required visible effort.
“That has chemistry,” I said.
“It has liability.”
“We can work with both.”
Amy opened a new page.
“How long have we supposedly been dating?”
“Three months.”
Amy looked up so quickly the pen nearly slipped from her fingers. “We met three weeks ago.”
“People won’t know.”
“Tessa will forget.”
Tessa remembered a typo in my résumé for two years. “Tessa loves lying for entertainment.”
“That is true.” Amy drew a line through the number. “Two months?”
“Six weeks.”
“That means we started dating before you became my trainer.”
“Ethically cleaner.”
“Emotionally fast.”
I watched her calculate the fictional timeline, brow furrowed in concentration. I spoke before I could make the thought harmless.
“You flirted with me within five minutes.”
“You were yelling about a reservation.”
“You were beautiful when angry.”
I said it before I could turn it into a joke. Amy’s fingers stopped on the page. I had imagined saying it before; I had never said it aloud. Her brown eyes held mine. I could have laughed or added something ridiculous. Instead, I let the truth remain.
“You are,” I said.
The room tightened around us. Amy looked down at the notebook.
“Six weeks,” she said.
Her voice was quieter.
“Six weeks,” I agreed.
We built a relationship history from a dropped resistance band, coffee after training, a river walk, and six weeks of fictional dating. Amy chose reliability as my favorite thing about her. I chose her dry humor.
“You claim I am not funny.”
“You do not know when you are funny.”
“That is different.”
“Fine. Your eyes.”
She stopped writing, then changed the subject by recording that her favorite thing about me was my ability to make people feel capable.
“That answer is true,” she said.
The honesty slipped under every defense I had.
“We should include at least one false detail,” I said. “If everything is true, this gets confusing.”
“It is already confusing.”
At one o’clock, we left the consultation room with a fictional relationship, six rules, a provisional prize split, and a deadline for my confession.
Before Amy left the gym, she completed Miguel’s intake, signed the transfer, and received a copy countersigned by Blake.
My access to her training file changed from editor to read-only challenge partner.
Rose stood at the front desk. She looked at the notebook in Amy’s hands. Then at me. Amy smiled politely.
“Rose, would you be available to witness an agreement on Thursday?”
Rose closed her eyes.
“Of course,” she said.
After Amy left, Rose turned to me.
“You didn’t tell her.”
“Thursday.”
“You set a date.”
“Are you proud?”
“No.”
I tried a hopeful smile. Rose continued to look like a disappointed ethics committee.
“But impressed?”
“No.”
“She said yes.”
“I gathered that.”
Through the front windows, Amy waited at the crosswalk with the binder against her chest. A gust of wind lifted her hair.
She glanced back, and our eyes met through the glass.
She gave me a small, uncertain wave. I waved back.
The last rule appeared in my mind. Neither party will develop genuine romantic feelings.
We had agreed too late. Not because I was in love with her.
That would have been ridiculous. I had known her for three weeks. But as Amy turned and crossed the street, I understood the rule had not been written to prevent something impossible. It had been written because pretending would not be the difficult part.