Chapter 25
Chapter Twenty-Five
Owen
“How do they know?”
Faye is biting her bottom lip, staring at the door with worried eyes. “I didn’t tell them.”
We hop out of bed when Cassandra hollers again.
“It will be okay,” I say as I turn the TV off. “Let’s just go find out what they know.”
“I’m so sorry, Owen,” she says, scraping her hands through her hair. “How did this happen?”
We head into the living room and everyone is there staring at us. Edward and Amber look confused, Tristan is trying not to laugh, and Cassandra has a maniacal, delighted grin on her face like she just discovered some wickedly delicious gossip.
“Oh no,” Faye says, stepping back when she sees the paused TV.
“What is it?” I ask.
I look at the paused TV and then at Faye who’s getting more and more pale by the second.
“Oh no,” she says again.
“Do you mind explaining this?” Cassandra says, hitting the play button on the remote control.
Faye covers her eyes with her hands, unable to watch.
I sit down with my stomach in knots as the end of Funniest Home Bloopers begins to play. An elderly lady wearing a VR headset runs headfirst into a TV. Tristan laughs.
“And our last finalist,” the host says, “is prank engagement fall!”
My heart slows when I see Faye on the screen. She has a beautiful smile on her face as the man in front of her drops to a knee.
“Will you marry me?” he asks.
“No,” I whisper, watching in horror as she says yes.
She’s married…
I feel like I’m going to be sick.
The man pulls out a purple ring box and opens it. When Faye leans in to look, a fake spider leaps into her face. She screams and jumps back, slamming onto a table.
Tristan and the man in the video both burst out laughing as it all crashes down. Faye’s legs rise into the air as the table collapses.
The video returns to the host who’s holding up a giant check for fifty thousand dollars.
“And the winner of this week’s Funniest Home Blooper,” he says, “is prank engagement fall!”
I swallow hard, unable to breathe when I see Faye, the man, and an older lady sitting on a couch.
“Congratulations,” the host says as the room starts to move around me.
I grip the armrest of the chair as I watch with dread ripping through my body.
“Joining us are Alex, Faye, and Alex’s mother, Sharon.
Now, Alex, I’ve seen a lot of engagements, but never one so terrifying.
What made you turn the most romantic moment of your lives into an amateur horror movie? ”
I don’t hear the rest of it. The room is tilting slightly and there’s a ringing starting somewhere behind my ears.
She’s engaged? Maybe married?
But of course she is. A girl like Faye wouldn’t be single. She would be the first girl off the market.
My chest feels hollow as I see Faye moving her mouth on the screen, no sound coming to my ears. I’m too stunned to process any of this.
The warnings come back to me… My brothers saying she’s probably just very good at pretending… Edward cautioning me to be careful with women coming after me for my money…
Is that what this was?
Was it all fake? Was it all for the apartment? Is she trying to get more out of me?
She just won fifty thousand dollars. Why did she seem so desperate for me to pay for her apartment when she has all that money? It was clearly a setup. I wonder if that guy on the sofa is walking around the apartment I paid for right now.
I knew I should have stayed away from women. There is no magic. It doesn’t exist. It’s only my brain playing tricks on me, flooding my neural pathways with a hypnotic, love-infused cocktail designed to deceive me into reproducing. I know all this, yet… I still fell for it.
How could I have been so stupid?
Cassandra pauses the TV and everyone looks at me.
I force my eyes onto Faye. It feels like my heart is shattering into pieces.
“You’re engaged?” I say, going completely still.
“No,” she says, shaking her head.
Even worse. She’s married.
“She’s a con artist,” Cassandra snaps, railing at her. “An imposter! Owen, she’s after you for your money. It’s obviously clear.”
“No,” Faye says, shaking her head. “I’m not with him anymore.”
“Yeah, right,” Cassandra says with a laugh.
“This just aired,” Tristan says. “A little fast for a divorce.”
“Did she tell you about this guy?” Cassandra asks, pointing at the man sitting beside Faye on the paused TV screen.
I’m unable to answer. I’m unable to think clearly. My emotions are a mess. I’ve never been good with emotions and my brain is unable to process any of them right now.
“I knew it,” Cassandra says with her chin in the air. “I knew that mangy dog didn’t run here from Toronto. She probably stole it from some poor kid in a wheelchair and is holding it for ransom.”
“What?” Faye says, stepping back. “That’s insane!”
“There are no depths to her depravity,” Cassandra says with disgust.
“Me?” Faye says. She’s about to go on, but thinks twice and stops talking.
“How long have you been scamming rich men?” Cassandra asks, her tone dripping with venom.
“I didn’t scam anyone!” Faye says. “I’m not with him anymore!”
“Oh please,” Cassandra says, rolling her eyes. “No one believes that.”
Faye’s desperate eyes keep darting over to me, but I can’t even look at her.
She never mentioned that she was engaged. Not once.
I even asked her if she had recently broken up with someone when she needed the apartment and she said no.
I can’t believe it, but none of this was real.
Cassandra is still talking. I can hear her voice but not the words.
The feelings were manufactured by neural chemicals, I remind myself. It was all just chemistry. My brain doing what brains do.
Faye is saying my name.
It was a fabrication. A complex evolutionary ruse to bond me to a mate. A chemical hoax. A synthesized illusion.
I knew this. I always knew this. Love is just a chemical process. A complex series of biochemical reactions occurring in the brain. I wrote a paper on it. Forty-seven sources.
It’s simply chemistry.
That’s all.
She says my name again.
I can't look at her…
This is why logic is superior to emotions. This is why it’s best to avoid relationships at all costs.
“Owen,” she says, her face twisting up in agony. “I didn’t want to—”
“Look at this,” Tristan says as he walks into the room holding Faye’s purse in one hand and her ID in the other. “Faye Hamilton.”
Cassandra grabs it out of his hands. Edward and Amber lean in to look.
“I knew Scarlett Montgomery sounded like a fake name,” Cassandra says with an air of triumph in her tone. “I doubt you even work in a coffee shop. Who are you working for? ISIS?”
“What?” Faye says. “No!”
“Let’s give her the benefit of the doubt,” Amber says. “Maybe she has an explanation for this.”
“Which will be more lies,” Cassandra hisses. “I want you and that dirty mutt out of my house now. Amber, call the coast guard.”
“We’re on a lake,” Amber says.
“Then call the Armed Forces,” Cassandra says, throwing her arms in the air.
Amber’s forehead furrows. “How do I do that?”
Faye steps up to me. I can’t raise my eyes to look at her no matter how hard I try.
I’ve looked at this woman across a coffee counter every morning for five years. I know the exact curve of her smile. I’ve memorized the precise shade of hazel in her eyes. Last night I couldn’t stop looking at her.
I can’t do it now.
I stare at the floor and feel her looking at me and I still can’t do it.
I know if I look at her I’ll see something that will make this harder than it already is and I don’t have the capacity for harder right now.
“Owen,” she says with a shaky voice. “I didn’t want you to find out this way.”
“Oh no,” Cassandra says, stepping between us. “You’re not playing anymore Jedi con artist mind games on him. Edward, get him out of here!”
My head is still swirling as Edward takes my arm and guides me out of the room. I finally take a breath when we step outside onto the covered patio. The rain is coming down on the lake and all I can think about is walking into the water until it covers my head.
“Gold diggers,” Edward says, lighting his cigar. He takes a long draw and lets the smoke out slowly, looking at the falling rain. “Scourge of the rich man.”
He offers me a cigar but I don’t move. I just stare at the water as the inside of my body hollows out.
“I didn’t see it coming,” he says as he takes another puff, “but the good hustlers always surprise you. A woman who’s after your money doesn’t normally look at you the way that girl looks at you.” He takes another draw. “She’s good.”
Faye would be that good though. She’s a social genius. I just never realized she’d use her skills like that.
Or maybe I just never wanted to.
“I have a rich friend who was hustled by a girl who was married,” he says even though I’m barely listening.
“Her husband was in on the con too. He was the guy’s car washer and brought his own wife in to seduce his boss.
It was a brilliant plan on his part. They ended up getting a house out of him. Did you buy her a house?”
I shake my head, feeling nauseous. “No. An apartment. For three years.”
He laughs and smacks my shoulder. “Then you got off lucky. An apartment you can live with. Just move past it.”
Move past it…
I don’t know how to do that, but I don’t have any other choice.
It’s not like it was ever real in the first place.
It may have felt like it, but there’s no such thing as destiny and fate and magic.
It’s just science in disguise.
From now on, I’ll stick to science and stay away from romantic entanglements.
Now that’s a formula that hasn’t failed me yet.