Chapter 7
7
[Genie]
F riendship is certainly one thing, but fiancée is quite another.
And my mind is still reeling with scenes from the garden party.
My mother’s shrill question about a ring. Heather’s haughty tone when she caught Judd and me in the side yard. Judd’s quiet hesitation.
What do you think?
He meant the ring, right?
Still holding my wine, I stare at Judd. He’s so . . . handsome. Classic looking. All American boy with billionaire vibes. My God, look at this place . But, a melancholy aura surrounds him. Take in the fact I know he’s a fighter and those tattoos add to the edge I saw in him only a week ago. He’s the full package, and a lot to unpack.
“What are we doing?” I whisper.
First, I can’t say Judd and I are old friends. We were friendly. We were in Math Club together. And that’s where I grew bold enough to ask him to his prom. The high school ritual is a rite of passage, and Judd didn’t want to attend. I thought it was more likely he didn’t have anyone to go with to the dance. And I didn’t want him to miss out.
He’d been so aloof throughout most of high school. That dark soul in the back of a classroom with moody eyes and a permanent scowl. However, he wasn’t a troublemaker. He skated underneath the radar. Of teachers. Of admin. Of other students.
But I noticed him. I sensed he was different. Special. Unique. Like a unicorn.
My gaze flits to his covered bicep and Judd sets his glass of wine on the island counter, without taking a sip. He takes my glass from me and sets it down as well, then pulls out one of the stools.
I’m still wearing this atrocious dress in putrid yellow. Judd doesn’t even comment. He grips my waist and hikes me onto the raised seat, then pulls out a stool for himself. We face one another and my left arm rests on the island countertop.
“What do you want us to do?” Not a trace of anything salacious is in his question and yet everything in me lights up.
I could list a few things I want to do with Judd as he is now—a gorgeous man with a body that rocks.
I hadn’t missed the tightness of his abs beneath his dress shirt when my arms were wrapped around him while riding his motorcycle. Or the firmness of his thighs pressed against mine as we rode. Even the thumping of his heart was a turn on when he placed my left hand over his chest before we took off.
But Judd and I have some unresolved issues between us. Twenty-two-year-old issues that might best be left alone.
“Maybe we should talk about Heather.”
“Maybe we shouldn’t.” Judd mirrors my position, and he swipes through his thick hair, brushing back the floppy strands against his forehead. “Honestly, we’re over. We’ve been over for a while, we just needed to have that final conversation.”
The official end. I understand that.
“I’d like to focus on new beginnings,” he says next, his eyes lowering to the ring on my finger.
With some strange instinct, I flex my fingers, as if emphasizing the ring under his appraising gaze.
Once again, I admire the ring as well. The gold band. The lilac-colored gemstone. The ring is simple while lovely.
“If you weren’t planning to marry Heather . . .” Because I distinctly heard that portion of his argument with Heather earlier today—how he would not be asking her to marry him. “Then why did you have this ring at the ready on you?” Had he been planning to ask Heather to marry him at some other time? Before today?
The top three dates for engagements are Christmas Eve, New Year’s Eve, and Valentine’s Day. Rather cliché, if you ask me. If I ever was to get engaged, which I don’t suppose will happen, I’d like the proposal to happen on a random day. A date that becomes significant because I got engaged on that day.
Judd sighs and his hand covers mine. He toys with the ring. A strong forefinger and thumb pinching the gemstone. He gently rocks it side to side. His eyes never losing focus on it.
“Once upon a time, I’d thought about asking her. Last summer. Once. Then, my brother Ford and I had a discussion.” Judd is pensive a moment, thoughtful as his brows crease. “I sounded shallow when I described her.” He swallows. “And even shallower when I thought about the reason I might marry her.”
“Which was?”
“She liked me.” He pauses his movements with the ring and looks up at me. His tone is sharp as he spews the juvenile- sounding words. The look in his eyes strikes me, though, and I realize that sorrow in them might not be sadness, but a lonely boy turned into a lonely man.
“But I had an entire checklist of reasons why we weren’t right for one another.”
“And today just felt like the day to breakup.”
Judd lowers his eyes again, staring down at the ring on my finger once more. He slides his fingers down the length of mine, pressing the tips of his to the tips of mine, forcing my hand upright. He twines our hands together and, with our wrists resting on the countertop, we hold onto one another.
Being single as long as I have, I’ve had time to evaluate handholding. In some cases, it can be the most intimate contact between a couple. In other cases, it can feel distant, uncomfortable, almost distracting. Like how long do I hold his hand before I can pull away.
Judd holding my hand lands firmly in the intimate column, and leads me to wonder once more; what are we doing?
More importantly, what is happening between us?
We aren’t those kids in a grade school classroom. The one where I asked him to be my friend when he was assigned to be my reading buddy. We aren’t angsty middle schoolers, staring across a crowded library wondering: is he looking at me or someone else? And we aren’t those high schoolers on the cusp of adulthood, using Math Club to fulfill a college application (him) and earn extra credit in geometry (me).
We’re different people now, and I don’t know him.
I might have never known Judd.
I certainly didn’t know why he’d stand me up for his prom.
Like I don’t know why he’d blurt I was his fiancée in a state of panic.
“Today felt like the day for lots of things,” Judd whispers, staring at our fingers that are clasped together.
We’re linked.
“Endings and beginnings,” I whisper, afraid to pop this strange bubble that seems to be expanding around us. “So, this is your mother’s ring?”
As if heading off a question I hadn’t asked, Judd lifts his head, and says, “I never intended to give it to her.”
Judd sits upright and runs his other hand down the buttons of his dress shirt. The movement reveals the chain he wears underneath the crisp material and the ring remaining on it.
“I’ve been wearing that ring”—he nods at our clasped hands—“since I was eighteen. I’ve been holding onto it.”
I swallow hard. “Did you ever intend to give it to someone?” Maybe he’d planned to keep it as a keepsake.
And now I was wearing it.
“I’d always planned to give it to the woman I love. A woman I hope to spend the rest of my life with.” Judd lifts his lids, his focus narrowing in on me. A strange shiver runs down my spine.
Along with a cold sweat.
“Well, I never plan to marry,” I state bluntly, sticking a pin in the bubble around us and gently tugging my hand free from his.
Judd’s expression shifts, first stricken, then tense.
I glance down at the ring myself. “This is too much. I shouldn’t be wearing it.” This ring is important to Judd. Special and unique, like I’ve described him. He should continue to hold onto it. Save it for that woman he’ll love.
I grasp the top and bottom of the ring and give it a tug, struggling to remove it. After three attempts to pull it over my knuckle, I hold out my hand. “Maybe you should remove it.” It might hurt like hell for him to tug at my finger, but if that is what it takes to get this thing back off me . . .
Then something else aches. An unfamiliar pain in my belly. A sharp jab to my sternum. It’s nothing, I tell myself.
“And maybe . . . it’s exactly where it should be.”
“Judd,” I whimper. He can’t be serious.
“Look, I’m not proclaiming we’re actually engaged, but you did proposition me for a date.”
I stare at him, blinking although I’m not innocent. “Well, not you, directly. Just you finding me a date, in general.”
“Consider me your date in general.” He straightens and pats his chest. “For whatever you need for the next ten days.”
“Judd, I can’t ask you to do that.”
“You didn’t ask. I’m offering.”
I sense there’s something he isn’t saying. Like he’s offering because he owes me. Like he remembers standing me up when I was sixteen and thinks he can make it up to me at thirty-nine.
“Judd, you don’t want to pretend anything with me. Not dating. Not an engagement. You would not want to marry me.” I scoff.
“Why not?”
“Because I’d be shit at marriage. Look at the role model I had. My mother is on her fourth husband.”
“You aren’t your mother. And I had a shit father as well, but I still want—” Judd cuts himself off and pulls back his shoulders. He turns his head, his eyes avoiding me.
“You still want what, Judd?” Marriage? Love?
Judd exhales heavily. “I’m not opposed to dating you. Or even pretending to date you.”
“You just came out of a relationship.”
“Which was more of a falsehood than faking something with you will be.” His voice rises just a touch but there’s depth to his tone. Sincerity and honesty and something that frightens me.
Does Judd want to spend time with me?
“So, what you’re saying is that you are open to a pretendship?”
“A pretend engagement ,” Judd clarifies. “We already told your mother I’m your fiancé.”
Actually, he said he was mine, but semantics.
“For ten days,” I counter, like we’re negotiating terms.
“Ten days,” he quickly agrees.
I don’t want to think about how we’ll break up or what excuse we’ll use. The simple answer is he lives here, and I live in Knoxville, four hours away. But those details, how we’ll end, feel like a discussion for another day.
“To new beginnings.” I hold out my hand to shake his. “A pretendship.”
“An engagement ,” Judd clarifies, lifting his hand and taking mine with it. “And old friendships.”
For half a second, Judd’s eyes flash, like lightning in a summer storm. No more sorrowful puppy dog gaze, but heat and hope flares in those blue eyes that perfectly match a clear afternoon sky.
When our hands connect, that snap-crackle-pop turns into bing-bang-boom .
And I don’t know if it’s that metaphorical drum my dad said I marched to or the thumping of my heart.
I’m afraid to admit how much I like the sound of option two.