A Storybook Wedding

Chapter 7 Cecily

Welp. There you have it. I guess there’s more than one way to skin a cat.

Looks like I won’t be a total spinster after all.

In fact, one day I’m sure this will all be fuel for a brilliant story. By that time, Nate Ellis will be a distant memory—some (admittedly very attractive) guy who I married once to repent for the sin of letting loose and having a good time one random Wednesday night a million years ago. I mean, if there’s a lesson in all this, that would be it, right? Have zero fun in life. Fun only gets you in trouble. I’ll be able to check off the divorced box on future medical forms instead of the perpetually single box.

Talk about a long-term win.

Real talk though? I feel awful. It was a stupid, alcohol-induced transgression, and now poor Nate has to worry about losing his teaching job and sullying his reputation as a result of it. That’s not okay, and there’s no way I can let it happen on my account. Also, if the roles were reversed, I would be shitting a brick right about now.

So it’s simple logic. I screwed it up. I’ll go ahead and fix it.

I ask Nate for his personal information so that I can fill out the application, and then I schedule the appointment for us to get the license on Friday at 10:00 a.m. It’s better this way—nice and early, so neither one of us has time to back out of it. It’s online, so basically just wake up and click a link, answer some questions, and they email you a temporary license while the real one is sent in the mail. Then you have sixty days to actually get hitched, or else the license will expire. (Who knew?) So I think just knowing that even once you have the license, it’s not a done deal is maybe a little bit comforting to Nate, who is clearly sweating on the screen when I see him there the following morning.

The lady on the other end of the screen asks us questions confirming our relationship, asks us to take vows that are largely similar to the vows one would take at a wedding, and, at one point, asks why we’re not on in the same location for this appointment. “I’m very old school,” I reply. “No sex before marriage,” I whisper. “He’s at his apartment and I’m in mine.”

Later, on the phone, Nate tells me, “You know, you could have just said you were at work or something.”

“I suppose. But I’m really trying to own my role here. When we’re done, I expect an Emmy award. Or at least a Golden Globe.”

On Monday morning, with our printed license in hand, Nate and I head over to the Queens City Clerk’s office in Kew Gardens. Project Cupid doesn’t allow virtual marriage ceremonies anymore, but the website does still allow you to make an appointment for a live ceremony. The only problem is because they’re a government agency, they’re only open Monday through Friday. So I make our appointment for Monday at 9:00 a.m., figuring after that, I can drive Nate back to my house in Little Neck, and he can take the Zoom from there, with me. It’ll really give credibility to the marriage if Dillon Norway sees that he is in my house—a space we Zoom from every month.

He meets me at the Little Neck train station of the Long Island Rail Road. I live right on the train; it’s one of the things I like most about my apartment. Some people would hate all the noise of a rumbling commuter train rolling past your house dozens of times a day, but I just find it to be so convenient that the noise actually comforts me. It’s like an old grandfather clock that chimes every time it’s a new hour, only instead of a soothing bell sound, the whole house shakes with the violence of an earthquake every thirty minutes.

It’s early, and the station is bustling with exhausted post-Thanksgiving-weekend worker bees headed into the city. I’ve taken a rare personal day off work in order to accommodate this trip to the courthouse, and I’m secretly a little bit grateful that instead of going to work, I am going on an adventure today.

I’m getting married.

When he gets off the North Shore Long Island–bound train, I see him right away. He’s dressed in khaki pants and brown shoes with what appears to be a shirt and tie on under his olive-green jacket. There’s definitely some kind of product in his hair, and he’s got that fresh-out-of-the-shower morning look about him. He seems so nervous though. This is a different kind of nervous than he wore at the Book Club Bar before his reading. It’s also not the same as the anxiety he experienced when he was stressing out about his seminar when we were infirmed together.

Nate Ellis has several types of apprehension, and I am becoming an expert at recognizing and classifying them.

We walk toward each other on the train platform, and I give him a hug, because he needs it—and because I want him to know this is all going to be just fine. When his arms wrap around me, there’s trepidation at first, but then I tightly squeeze his rib cage, and he starts to laugh. “Shit. And I thought your handshake was bad. You’re going to squeeze the life out of me.”

“Death by hug,” I joke. “I’m sure there are worse ways to go.”

Once we’re in my car, the first stop is 7-Eleven for coffee. It’s cold outside; with Thanksgiving a thing of the past, it’s officially the Christmas season, and I can feel it on my steering wheel. “Sorry I don’t have heated seats or anything,” I say when I hear his teeth chatter. “It’ll warm up soon though.”

“I’m fine,” he assures me.

We make small talk for most of the drive. I tell him that the only time I’ve ever been to the city clerk’s office was to fight a ticket in traffic court, but while I was inside the office (after being informed I had come to the wrong location), I came back out to find I had a fresh new fluorescent-orange parking ticket on my windshield.

I am hopeful that today’s events will go more smoothly than that.

I find a legal parking spot by the city clerk’s office and turn off the car, sliding the key out of the ignition and into my lap.

“You’re wearing a dress,” Nate says to me, as if he’s just realized this.

“Yeah. It’s no big deal,” I reply. It kind of is though. I’m not much of a dress person, so the only dresses I own are sundresses—and this is now winter. So on Black Friday, after the Zoom session, I went to the mall and bought a dress off the clearance rack at David’s Bridal. They suckered me into buying shoes to match, even though I hate heels, and this will be the only time I ever need white ones. Anyway, I waited until just this morning to try the whole getup on. I put on pantyhose, and the knee-length A-line dress fits me, thank goodness. It has long lace sleeves and a lace overlay, and it looks halfway decent. I blew out my hair and used my curling iron to make ringlets that fall down my back. I also put on makeup for a change, and I’m wearing a long black peacoat that I typically save for funerals. After getting dressed, I checked myself in the mirror and said, “Eh. Good enough.” You know. Typical bride stuff.

Because the dress was on clearance, I couldn’t wear it with the tags on for the hour or two today that I needed it and then return it tomorrow, unfortunately. But I figure I can probably turn it into a Bride of Frankenstein costume next Halloween, so at least that’s a win.

So now, in the car, Nate asks, “Is it a wedding dress?” and I’m not sure I can fully detect the tone in his voice.

“I mean, it’s all white, and I got it at David’s Bridal, so yeah, I think it is.”

“Wait—you bought it special for this?” he asks.

I nod. “Indeed I did,” I reply. “I’m all in, like I said. Ready to earn myself an award for best actress.”

“Shit, Cecily. That must have cost you a decent amount of money.”

“It wasn’t that bad. It was only a few hundred bucks.”

“I feel bad. You shouldn’t have done that.”

“Well, Pen, I’d say our entire relationship is just a laundry list of things I shouldn’t have done, so what’s one more?” At this, he smiles, but it’s wistful, and I know he’s grappling with something. “What’s wrong?” I ask.

“It’s just—I don’t know. Are you sure you want to go through with this?”

“A hundred percent,” I say. “You make the mess, you clean the mess. At least that’s what I’ve always believed.”

“And none of this is bothering you—like, at all? You’re perfectly fine with us just marrying each other, no strings attached?”

I take his hand in mine. His fingers are long, warm, and thick. I’ve never realized what lovely hands he has until this moment. I can feel his touch run up my arm, down my chest, and straight into my lap, but I make a conscious effort to ignore it. “I promise you. This is totally fine with me. I’m not your typical sentimental girl. I would be way more upset if you lost your job than I am over having to fake-marry you, believe me. I need you at the residency. Who else is going to cover for me when I erase the whiteboard with my backpack?” At this, he smiles. I give his hand a gentle squeeze and continue. “Now come on. Let’s go.”

Nate nods. We step out of the car and walk down the block toward our fate, our hands entwined for dramatic effect. Just before we step inside the building, he says, “You look beautiful, by the way.”

I shove my glasses up on the bridge of my nose with my pointer finger. It’s been awhile since someone’s complimented me like that, and I’m surprised at how welcome the words are. “Thank you,” I say, but my voice sounds distant and unrecognizable.

“No, thank you—for doing all this,” he replies.

I squeeze his fingers, and he gently squeezes mine in return.

We look at the signage on the wall and walk down the hallway to room G-100. Just outside the room, Nate whispers, “Okay. Here goes nothing.”

Less than thirty minutes later, we are man and wife.

When we’re asked for rings to exchange, Nate procures his grandfather’s wedding band and a promise ring Bryce gave me in college from his pocket, like we discussed. When we’re asked if we have anything we’d like to read or share before we exchange our vows, I unfold a piece of paper with a reading by Mark Twain on it, titled “A Marriage.” It’s an excerpt from a letter he wrote to his wife shortly before the pair wed. It is succinct but genuine, and I read it aloud, like we discussed. When Nate is told that he may kiss his bride, he gives me a chaste peck that we hold in place until the count of three Mississippi, like we discussed.

If only all weddings were this easy.

We head back to the car, and our collective vibe is momentarily lighter. I try not to notice the fact that our fingers are still interlaced as we barrel through the chilly air, swinging our arms in time with one another. I try to ignore the way my heart is racing. I try not to taste the remnants of Nate Ellis on my lips, try not to memorize the feel of his face against mine or the way his hand felt on my lower back when he pulled me close to him for our intentional matrimonial kiss.

Like we discussed.

“I feel like we should celebrate,” he says.

“No time,” I respond. “We need to get back for the Zoom at noon. But after, if you want, I’d be happy to have you stick around for lunch.”

“Definitely. My treat,” he adds.

By the time we’re back at my place and I park the car in the driveway, Nate’s all stiff again. He notices that my multifamily living situation is directly adjacent to the train he took here this morning. “Welcome to my glorious basement apartment,” I announce. “Don’t judge me,” I go on, smirking.

My rental apartment is approximately 450 square feet, comprised of a kitchen with the basics (fridge, apartment-size oven, microwave, and sink), a small dining area in which I have shoved a table for four against the wall so that it can only seat three, a bedroom, a little bathroom with a stand-up shower, and a living room. In the living room, I have a couch, an upcycled coffee table, a big bookcase overflowing with well-loved books, and a television on an old garage-sale nightstand. The living room boasts a sliding glass door out to a small cement patio with eight steps up to the backyard, but the backyard is not more than a small patch of grass overlooking—that’s right—the train tracks.

I live like a bookworm-y college student, and I know it. I don’t care, typically, except right now I am perhaps the tiniest bit embarrassed, seeing as how this man probably lives like an actual grown-up in his posh New York City high-rise building.

But that’s fine. We’re friends.

And, um, spouses.

It’s fine.

“Can I get you anything? Coffee?” I ask, taking off my coat and hanging it in the front hall closet, like the adult that I am.

Nate drapes his jacket over the back of one of my dining room chairs, and I extend my hand to take it from him. “Coffee would be great, actually.”

“No sweat,” I say. “Make yourself at home.”

I gratefully kick off my fancy white high heels, which were killing my ankles. I pad around on my vinyl sticky-tile floor in my stockings, putting together a fresh pot of coffee for my husband, who is milling about my living room looking at pictures in frames that are scattered about with no real rhyme or reason. He points to one of me and my sisters when we were in elementary school, taken on the first day of my second-grade year. Both of my front teeth are missing. “You were adorable when you were little,” he comments.

“Thanks,” I reply, adding the water to the coffee maker and hitting the Start button. “Seriously, make yourself comfy. Feel free to take off your shoes if you want. We have to make it look like you live here too. I don’t know if Dillon Norway would think you’d be all shirt-and-tie in the middle of the day when you don’t have a regular job, you know what I mean?”

“That’s true,” he agrees. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

“I’ve got you covered,” I say. “Hang on. Just let me change first.” I go into my bedroom and close the door. I extract a pair of worn-out jeans from the closet, along with a T-shirt and my favorite snuggly hoodie sweatshirt, a relic from my Bryce days that ironically boasts the New Hampshire Fisher Cats across the front. I dig through my bottom drawer and find an old Bryant Baseball T-shirt in a men’s XL. I walk it out to the living room and hand it to Nate. “Here you go; I think this should fit,” I say.

“Bryant, huh? Is that where you went for undergrad?”

I shake my head. “My ex went there.”

He points at my shirt. “Is this the team he went to? This New Hampshire… What’s a Fisher Cat?” he wonders aloud.

“It’s like a cross between a squirrel and a cat, I think. And yes, this is his team too.”

“So you’ve got a wardrobe shrine to your ex, and you think these are the clothes that will convince Dillon Norway we are a lawfully wedded couple?”

“Dillon Norway isn’t going to be reading our shirts,” I reply.

“Didn’t you just write an entire novel about this guy?” he reminds me. “And as your mentor of choice, didn’t he read the whole thing?”

“Yes and yes. But all names were changed to protect the innocent.”

“Okay, CJ, if you say so. Mind if I change in there?” He points at my bathroom.

“Have at it,” I say.

When Nate emerges wearing Bryce’s old T-shirt, I find myself experiencing a surprising physical reaction. My chest gets tight like I can’t breathe, but only for a second, and my thighs feel momentarily numb. My rational brain knows that this man is very attractive, but I’m triggered seeing him in that shirt. It’s like muscle memory: all of a sudden, my body remembers things like desire, lust.

Sex.

“Look okay?” he asks.

“Yup. Looks good,” I say, intentionally looking away before I start to stare. I check the time on my microwave clock. It’s 11:20 now. I pour a cup of coffee for Nate, move the dining room chairs so we can sit next to each other, and set up the laptop so that we’ll be ready when it’s time to Zoom. We chat until just shy of noon, him asking me questions about my family and whether I think they’ll be mad at me for getting married without them, and me—with an answer for everything—reminding him that it’s not a real marriage, not that he necessarily needs any reminders.

I’m not a huge fan of wearing this promise ring though, if we’re being honest.

I hate remembering Bryce. I say it that way because when I see him now, it’s like he’s a completely different person—he’s Bryce-Jamie’s-husband, not Bryce-who-has-seen-me-in-my-most-scandalous-underthings. We pretend like it’s not weird. Like this happens in families all the time.

But I know it’s not normal. So I prefer to live in my basement lair and not deal with it.

To be clear, it’s not Bryce that I miss exactly. It’s being someone’s person. Ever since our split, the whole world exists only on the internet, it seems, and that got, like, ten times worse once COVID hit. I don’t know if most people feel this way, but in my opinion, the internet has a way of making you feel like you’re not good enough. It’s a real bitch that way. I could wear a great outfit, put on makeup, do my hair, even put in contact lenses if I wanted to go balls to the wall, and show up at a restaurant for a date, only to be told that I “don’t look like” my profile picture or even worse, be told nothing at all before getting ghosted by a contender on Tinder’s top-ten least-likely-to-succeed list. These are men living in the basements of their parents’ homes (at least I rent mine), men with not-always-steady jobs and sometimes extremely steady drug habits, men who are more interested in exchanging bodily fluids than in exchanging basic facts about each other, like, oh I don’t know, last names.

I suspect the reason that I was able to be so undramatic about the whole thing now is because, despite taking my virginity, Bryce never once gave me an orgasm. After the newness of it wore off, the sex itself became pretty routine. Nine times out of ten, he would initiate it, and we’d go through all the steps and motions until he was finished. He never asked if I was satisfied—I think his young mind just assumed that because my breathing was heavy, I must have been enjoying myself. Or maybe he didn’t want to ask because he was afraid of what the answer would be.

In any case, with the help of Cosmopolitan and several articles online, I figured out how to handle that business on my own. The only thing I couldn’t manage was the whole telling the guy what to do thing, you know, in order to create results for myself. Of course, I’m a writer, so if you asked me to write down the directions, I probably could, but we all know that men don’t ask for directions, right?

So I figured who needs a man when you’ve got a vibrator?

That’s called options.

Only, seeing Nate in Bryce’s shirt and smelling his cologne—he definitely put on cologne today, because I inhaled it greedily when I hugged him—is awakening all the nerve endings deep in my belly. Maybe it’s the fact that he’s in my apartment. Or maybe it’s actual fear, because we’re about to get on a Zoom call and basically tell an elaborate lie to his boss and my mentor (a man whose opinion means the world to me). Or maybe it’s because he’s my husband, and I would just really like to see what he’s packing in those khakis.

Jesus.I blush. I am an embarrassment even to myself.

I change the subject, and we fill up the time talking about the MFA program and how our expectations of it compare to the reality. Before we know it, the clock strikes 11:57, and I am busily setting us up on the Zoom screen through a login sent to Nate’s email address.

Finally, at exactly 12:00 p.m., a bell chimes through the audio, and Professor Dillon Norway’s face appears on the screen.

“Oh,” he says, caught off guard. “Both of you are here.”

“I’m sorry,” I begin. “I just wanted to be here with Nate so we could all address this head-on.” I remember this is not my meeting and stop talking.

Dillon Norway nods thoughtfully. “Well, okay. I suppose that’s fine. I’m assuming that’s fine with you as well, Nate?”

Nate nods. “Yes, sir.”

“I imagine that you both know why we’re here.”

“Yes,” Nate says. “And I would like to begin by apologizing to you. CJ and I have known each other for several years, and I didn’t realize I had to disclose that once I realized she was in this program.”

“CJ?”

“Cecily Jane.”

Dillon Norway tents his fingertips and leans them to his lips. “The issue is not one of you being acquainted.”

“Right. I understand. I assume you saw The Tonight Show the other night?”

“I didn’t actually,” Dillon Norway says. “But one of my colleagues brought it to my attention.”

“Well, I’d like to apologize for anything we did that undermines the university in any way.”

“Nate. This could turn into a huge scandal, both from a sexual harassment standpoint and a—”

“I know, Dillon, but there’s something you don’t know.”

“What’s that?” he sighs.

“CJ and I are married,” Nate blurts out. I reach into his lap and thread my fingers through his, even though it’s not something Dillon Norway can see on the screen.

“Excuse me?” The look on Dillon Norway’s face shifts from being aggravated to confused.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,” I say. Shut up, Cecily. Let Nate handle it.

“So am I,” Nate says.

“When did this happen?”

“It’s recent,” Nate goes on. “Like I said, CJ and I have known each other for a while. We dated for a little while before the pandemic but were separated when the quarantine orders were put in place in March 2020.”

“My family’s very overbearing,” I add. “They wouldn’t let me see him because he lived in the city.”

“And then my book took off and my life got turned upside down, so I wasn’t available to date anyone.”

“And you found each other on the island?” Dillon Norway asks.

We both nod. “It was fate,” I say.

“Except she was a student, and I was a professor, and I knew the university would frown on that,” Nate adds.

“But we didn’t want to wait two years to be together,” I chime in.

“I couldn’t risk losing her again.” Here, he looks away from the screen and directly at me.

His gaze is like magic; I freeze and feel a sudden tidal wave of intense sexual energy roil through me, beginning in my throat and burning through my chest, then dropping heavily into my abdomen, and landing squarely in between my legs.

“I love her,” Nate says.

Whoa.

All I can do is swallow. I’m stuck in his eyes.

I feel him squeeze my hand, which he’s still holding, and it jolts me from my trance. Now’s your chance, girl. Earn that Emmy. I turn to Dillon Norway. “I’ve been in love with him for years, and when he proposed, I couldn’t say no.”

“We knew it was a risk to my job, and I was going to tell you first, but I just felt like it would be a lot more illicit if we weren’t married. I planned to discuss it with you before the upcoming residency, but then the television thing happened.”

“And here we are,” I interrupt.

“Here we are,” Nate echoes.

Dillon Norway leans back in his desk chair and folds his hands over his stomach. We wait quietly for him to say something. It feels like an eternity has passed before he finally emits any sound. “Hm.” He cracks his knuckles. “We’ll have to report this to HR, and there are some particulars we’ll need to pay attention to so that we don’t end up with any risks of nepotism. You’ll be able to produce a copy of the marriage license to HR, right?” He asks this with one eyebrow raised, as if he’s not one hundred percent sure he trusts us.

“Of course,” Nate responds, while I nod.

Dillon Norway sighs. “Okay. You won’t be able to have a mentorship arrangement with Nate at all throughout your time at Matthias, Cecily.”

“Of course,” I agree.

“And I can’t place you in any of his fiction workshops.”

“That’s fine.”

“I wish you had told me about this before the last residency, Nate,” he says.

“I didn’t know,” Nate replies.

“You got the workshop writing samples before the start of the residency,” Dillon Norway points out. “I’m sure you don’t think there are multiple people named Cecily Jane Allerton.”

“That’s a fair point,” Nate says. “But—and I’m embarrassed to admit this—I didn’t read the workshop samples until we were on the island. And by that point, all the assignments had been made. Also, I didn’t believe it myself until I saw her. So yes, there was definitely a weird dynamic in our workshop because of it, but I don’t think the others noticed.”

“Were you intimate during the summer residency?” Dillon Norway asks.

“No,” I say. “It was only after we got back from the island.”

Dillon Norway exhales. “That’s good.” He pauses, thinking. “Let me see, what else? Oh. Nate. I’ll have to issue a memo to the faculty letting them know about this update.”

“Of course,” Nate says.

“And I assume you’ll want to stay together at the winter residency, so I’ll update my room assignments.”

My breath catches, and I’m not sure what to do. I didn’t consider thatas an option.

“Naturally,” Nate agrees. He looks at me again. “Right, babe?”

Babe.All of a sudden, it feels extremely hot in my apartment. I hope I’m not turning red, but I can feel the temperature notably shift in my face. I pray that Nate—or worse, Dillon Norway—doesn’t notice. That word just came out of that beautiful mouth when referring to me.

Cecily Jane Allerton. Get your shit together, please. This is all just for show, you moron.

Maybe I’m ovulating. I’ve read that ovulating women get overly horny. “Uh-huh,” I reply.

But it won’t be fake that we’ll be living together for eight days. In the same room. Oh God. What if I snore?My pulse pounds in my ears.

Get your head out of your ass,my rational brain hisses. Now is not the time for a meltdown.

“As far as seminars go, Cecily, you can attend Nate’s seminar, but we can’t count it as one of the five that you have to review for your residency coursework.”

“That’s fine.”

“Other than that, I just respectfully request that you please be discreet about this new development in your lives. I believe the kids call it PDA.”

I chuckle and nod.

“None of that, okay? There are people who will be challenged by this development, I’m sure. So I just ask that you not put it on display.”

“Not to worry,” Nate says.

“I mention it because you just outed yourselves on national TV,” Dillon Norway reminds us.

“That’s fair,” I say. “I’m sorry about that, by the way. It was all my fault. I had been drinking, and neither of us knew that Questlove was going to come perform with us. I just got too excited.”

“I believe that’s the purpose of the bit,” Dillon Norway affirms. “And I understand. Although, Cecily, I have to say, I’m a little bit surprised that you didn’t disclose any of this to me during the semester.”

My stomach flips over. “I didn’t want to get Nate in trouble. We were working out the details, so to speak. I didn’t want to incriminate him or put you in an awkward position.”

Dillon Norway nods. “Well, thank you for that, I guess.”

“Of course. I know it’s a weird situation.”

“Weird indeed. I believe there will be some form you’ll both have to complete. An attestation of sorts. I’ll forward that to you as soon I discuss this with the dean.”

“Do we need the dean’s approval?” Nate asks.

Dillon Norway shakes his head. “No. I’m able to approve it on behalf of the university. I’ll be honest, this is the first time in my ten years as director of this program that I’ve ever had a situation like this come up.”

“First time for everything, I guess,” Nate says.

He slowly nods his head up and down. “Thank you for meeting with me. Both of you. This isn’t how I thought this conversation was going to go. I have to admit, I’m pleasantly surprised. I was preparing to let you go, Nate.”

“I’m sorry to have put you through that,” Nate says.

“Me too,” I add.

“It’s okay. I understand. These matters of the heart often don’t cooperate with our schedules.” Dillon Norway smiles at us. “Cecily, I’m very glad to hear that you’ve found your happily-ever-after.”

Something about that comment assaults me in my gut, and—as if my eyes were just blasted by a puff of cold air—tears spring to fill them. I nod and smile through my now blurry lenses, unable to form words due to the lump in my throat. Nate removes his hand from mine and places it on the back of my head, smoothing my hair just once.

Just once is all it takes.

A tear spills onto my cheek.

Thankfully, Dillon Norway doesn’t notice. Nate does though, and he places that same gentle hand on my knee and gives a light squeeze.

“Well, thanks for taking the time to meet with us,” Nate says.

“Same to both of you. And congratulations. I’ll be in touch.” Dillon Norway waves, clicks a button on his mouse, and he’s gone.

Just like that.

Nate exhales heavily and swings his whole body to face me. “What happened? Are you okay?” His voice is animated. “We did it,” he says. “You did it! You saved my job, CJ. I can’t thank you enough.”

I nod, and more stupid tears fall. I take off my glasses and wipe my eyes with the heels of my hands.

“What is it? Are you totally regretting all of this?” he asks.

I shake my head quickly. “No, it’s not that.”

“Then what’s up? Why are you crying?”

I pull my mouth into a smile. “Just overwhelmed. But I’m good. No worries.”

It’s a half truth. The whole truth is that I’m not really sure what this feeling is.

But my rational brain is right. Now is not the time.

“I’m starving,” Nate admits. “Can I take you out to lunch now?”

I nod. Yes—now is the time for lunch, not for this emotional breakdown. I take a rich, cleansing breath. “Can I just wash my face first?”

“Of course. You don’t need all that makeup anyway.”

Fuck. He’s going to need to stop it with the compliments when I’m vulnerable.

I splash cool water on my face, then scrub off the makeup and feel my heart rate come down slowly. You’re fine, Cecily. It’s not real. You did a good thing to counteract a mistake. Now your friend can stay in your master’s program. You got what you wanted.

You’re just following the rules.

Everything is fine.

I check my face in the mirror after drying it with a hand towel.

None of this is real,I promise myself.

I try like hell to believe it.