My Favorite Fake Romance (The Favorites #3)

Chapter 1

EASTON

My best friend was proposed to on a Ferris wheel near the Louvre, under a moonlit sky. It was the annual holiday market that’s held there—La Magie de Noel—and just as they reached the wheel’s pinnacle, a sign unfurled from the tower across from them that read, Kelsey, will you marry me?

Thousands cheered below and like magic, flakes began to fall from the sky—the first snowfall of the year.

I guess the story of my proposal will be a little less interesting. It was our two-year anniversary, I’ll say. He took me to the restaurant where we’d had our first date. We’d already chosen the ring.

I won’t mention that the restaurant is a steak house, because he’s forgotten I don’t eat red meat. I won’t mention that he is late—fifteen minutes, at present, or forty-five minutes, if you consider the fact that he was supposed to have picked me up at my place.

Or maybe I will mention it. He was stuck in the lab and nearly didn’t make it, I’ll say. So I knew what I was in for, ha, ha, ha.

I’m sure today was crazy—he was away shooting season three of his TV show last week in California, then hanging with an equally famous podcasting friend there all weekend—but it’s not the sort of proposal story that will make anyone say, “God, he loves her so much.”

The waiter sighs as he returns to the table. “Would you like to go ahead and order?” he asks, stopping just short of rolling his eyes.

I shake my head. “He’ll be here any minute now.”

If the situation was different, I’d tell Thomas to forget about it and meet me at my apartment later. But I don’t want to ruin any surprise, if there is one. I just hope he hasn’t hidden the ring in my food.

According to research, two years is the ideal amount of time to spend with someone before getting engaged, he’d said on that first date.

He wanted to make sure I was theoretically ready for marriage and family, being more than a decade younger than him.

It was unreal, a date with the Thomas Prescott—he was famous even then, before the show, at least among scientists—and a lot more unreal discovering he was already talking marriage, but here we are.

And maybe none of this is all that romantic, but neither are we.

We don’t exchange gifts, and we don’t stay up all night having sex.

We don’t send flirty texts, and we always do Valentine’s dinner a week ahead because it’s easier to get a reservation.

Honestly, I’m just glad he’s getting this out of the way before we go to Kelsey’s wedding; no one will be talking about my childhood crush on her brother or how shitty my family is when there’s a two-carat diamond on my hand.

I’ve eaten most of the bread in the basket and am contemplating ordering a glass of wine simply to ease my irritation when Thomas finally appears, slightly more rumpled than he should be, given the dress code—he’s still in the Oxford he wore all day, the tie askew, the sleeves rolled up.

I think the restaurant has a rule about jackets, but he’s so well-known that they’ll let it slide.

“Sorry,” he says, slipping into the chair across from mine before he launches into some story about a whining graduate student while he peruses the menu.

On our first date, he’d told me I was so beautiful I made him tongue-tied, though I’d made almost no effort.

Tonight, I spent forty-five minutes on my makeup and had my hair blown out, and I’m not sure he’s even looked at me long enough to notice.

I won’t mention this when I tell the proposal story either.

The important thing is that no one back home is going to look at my job or my degree or my fiancé and say, “Those Walsh kids all came to nothing.”

Take that, Oak Bluff.

Though what I really mean is Take that, Elijah.

And I really should not be thinking about Elijah right now. One more thing to leave out of this proposal story.

Maybe I just won’t tell it at all.

Thomas’s steak and my pretend-steak-that’s-actually-a-mushroom arrive just as he begins discussing his trip to California and the time he spent with Devon Hunt.

Once upon a time, Thomas thought Devon—a biohacker who gives his own anecdotal research more weight than anything coming out of a lab—was a charlatan.

It’s funny how you can grow to embrace someone’s unhinged views and junk science when he keeps putting you in front of his twenty-five million listeners.

I’m not judging Thomas: I’m sure I’d sell a little of my soul to get funding too.

If the unprincipled move helps you accomplish in five years what might have taken ten, isn’t it worth it?

Thomas says the first person to live to five hundred has already been born.

I’m not sure I agree, but what if it’s true?

If the funding Thomas gets thanks to his show or Devon Hunt’s podcast makes the difference, then why shouldn’t he do them?

I’m pretty sure that first person who hits five hundred will appreciate the extra effort.

“So he’s gotten super into forest bathing,” Thomas is saying. “He’s created this whole spa and the setup is amazing.”

Forest bathing is the exact sort of thing that would have had Thomas rolling his eyes two years ago, when he was more into scientific rigor than vibes.

“You might have a tough time replicating it in Cambridge,” I reply mildly.

He barrels right past that, telling me about the podcast and Devon’s experiments with ayahuasca, his knee jiggling beneath the table all the while.

Is he nervous? I can’t imagine why. We’ve already had the ring fitted and set a date, after all. I couldn’t be more of a guaranteed yes.

“So I’ve been thinking,” Thomas says. Here we go. I sit up a little straighter. “We’ve been together for two years now, but, you know, we’re both still really young.”

I blink. This is an unusual way to kick off a proposal, and I’m tempted to point out that at forty, he himself is not all that young where marriage is concerned. Sure, men can father children well into retirement, but no one’s going to suggest he needs to live a little first.

“And then I was talking to Devon,” he says, “and he was saying that these are our last good years, you know? Like, the last years where we will have money and time, but also youth, to go out and really live.”

Okay, I stand corrected. Devon fucking Hunt is saying Thomas needs to live a little first, at the tender age of forty. The same Devon Hunt who claims human urine has healing properties. The same Devon Hunt who recommends buying breast milk on the black market for athletic performance.

Who better for a famous Ivy League professor to take life advice from?

I place my hands on the lip of the table. “I’m not entirely following you.” Though I am actually following him. What I should have said was, “Where the fuck is this leading?”

“You get married and suddenly everyone’s asking when you’re going to have kids, and then you’ve got kids and bills and no time to yourself. How am I going to go climb Everest when I’ve got a wife and three kids?”

What? I tried to get him to hike the Skyline Trail with me last fall—eight freaking miles—and he refused. “Climb Everest? Since when do you want to climb Everest?”

“It was just an example. There are a billion things you can’t do once you have kids. You can’t charter a yacht and sail it through the Caribbean. You can’t go to an ashram in India for a month. You can’t take off to live in Bali and learn to surf.”

He has never mentioned any interest in surfing, Bali, ashrams, or chartering yachts. He’s had all the free time and money he could possibly want for years and hasn’t done any of these things.

He releases a protracted breath, and his shoulders sag. “So I guess what I’m saying is that I don’t think I’m ready for the same things you are.”

I stare at him and of all the unlikely noises, it’s a laugh that comes out of my throat. “What?”

“I think we should break up, Easton.” He reaches across the table and squeezes my hand. “I know that’s not what you wanted to hear, but I just need a few selfish years before I settle down.”

It must be a joke, right? Because it wasn’t me talking about marriage these past few months. It wasn’t me who insisted on visiting that jeweler on Newbury Street. It wasn’t me suggesting that the Harvard Faculty Club was a better venue for a wedding than Loeb House.

But he’s wincing and not laughing and...my blood turns to ice.

Oh my God. It really isn’t a joke. A week ago he was asking what I thought about Iceland for a honeymoon, and suddenly I’m this ball and chain who’s pushing marriage and keeping him from his best life.

I was once pulled from my bed and spun by an ankle in the dark, with no idea where I was or why it was happening. This is like that. I’m spinning wildly, struggling to prevent the painful crash that will come.

My mouth opens, but no words emerge...perhaps because I know the words would be, “Are you shitting me? You’ve already bought the fucking ring.

You told me you were proposing tonight.” And if I say that, it will instantly affirm his decision.

He’ll have Devon Hunt on the phone expressing shock and concern: Wow, she got that angry?

There’s your proof right there. Is that really someone you want to build a life with?

I couldn’t protect myself from a crash the night my brother spun me by the ankle.

I’m not quite so defenseless this time, because the sad, unromantic truth is that relationships are games—you strategize, you pull back at key moments, press forward at others—and I’m pretty good at games.

My relationship with Thomas is currently Jenga—we’ve built this tower together, and I’m proving its stability by not crumbling when it’s under assault.

A therapist once told me that the way I play dead when someone hurts me is a trauma response.

I just call it my game face. And trauma response or not.

..it works. A mate worthy of Thomas will be nonplussed when things go awry.

She knows that she can stand on her own feet just as well without him—she has no need to react.

I won’t even bring up the fact that he and I were supposed to spend a week in Sweden before Kelsey’s wedding and that I arranged my entire fucking schedule around the trip. But the wedding itself...it matters. Is he really ditching me for that too?

“I RSVPed for two to Kelsey’s wedding.” My voice is admirably calm. His show is up for an Emmy, but my acting skills in this moment suggest I deserve it more.

He squeezes my hand. “That would be a little awkward now, don’t you think?

” His voice is ever so gentle. (It makes me hate him a little, the fact that he thinks he can gentle his way out of this.) “Besides, Devon’s taking this crazy yacht trip and invited me, so I’m blowing off Sweden. ..I’m not sure when we’ll back.”

And there it is, at last.

I was on one shoulder, saying, “Let’s go to this wedding of people you barely know” and Devon was on the other, saying, “Come drop mushrooms on my yacht with these half-naked models.” I am the most boring possible version of the future, and Devon is everything Thomas would be giving up.

Except I know Thomas. There’s a piece of him that still longs to be that guy, the one who parties on yachts and has threesomes and drinks straight out of a bottle of champagne.

But the bigger part of him is furious with himself when a lone glass of wine the night before has fucked up his sleep score.

The bigger part of him says things like “an hour of sleep before midnight is worth three after midnight” and would loathe the pressure of trying to please two women at once.

He doesn’t even like the pressure of pleasing one.

He’ll get two days into this stupid trip before he’s regretting every word he said tonight, as long as I play my cards right.

Should I have more pride? Probably. But Thomas and I just work. He’ll be a decent spouse and father. More importantly, he’s the sort of once-in-a-lifetime thinker who makes me better at my job and at my life than I am without him.

It would feel amazing to tell him off right now, but it’ll feel even more amazing to wind up with the future we planned.

I slide my hand away as I push back from the table, somehow managing a gentle smile of my own, the sort you’d offer if a negotiation hadn’t worked out and you knew a better offer was waiting.

Thomas blinks as I rise. “You don’t have to rush off, Easton. Finish your dinner at least.”

There’s pity in his voice. He’s patting himself on the back for his own generosity when he just dumped me after months of wedding talk. Jesus Christ. He was the one who was pushing to reserve the church before he’d even proposed.

I glance at my watch. “Thanks, but a few of my friends are meeting at this pop-up bar at the Seaport, and if I hustle, I can catch them.”

This is entirely untrue, but Devon Hunt has just spent an entire weekend blowing Thomas up, convincing him he’s a unicorn, so I’m reminding him I might be one too.

A unicorn he caught, then released into the wild when he forgot she was rare.

“Oh, right,” he says, brow furrowed. “If you’re sure you’re, uh, okay.”

“Of course. But since you did dump me, I’m going to let you get the check.” I offer him a cheeky grin and a wink as I grab my purse and walk out.

Ten minutes ago, Thomas thought he had the upper hand. Ten minutes ago, Thomas thought I wanted to marry him and would be brokenhearted when he didn’t propose.

Now, Thomas gets to watch me walk away and wonder if he made a mistake.

He gets to wonder why he hasn’t broken me.

He doesn’t know that Elijah Cabot beat him to the punch.