Chapter 11
Chapter eleven
George
Igrip the edge of the kitchen counter and drink an entire glass of water like it contains answers.
It does not.
My brain is attempting to run approximately twelve separate analyses simultaneously, and none of them are producing useful results.
The fluorescent light hums overhead. The refrigerator clicks.
Somewhere in the dining room, my mother laughs at something, and the sound of it tightens something in my chest.
Footsteps enter the kitchen behind me.
"Tessa."
Her name comes out more carefully than intended.
I turn.
She leans against the opposite counter, arms folded, looking far calmer than anyone involved in this situation has the right to be.
Her hair has come loose slightly at the temple, and she's still wearing that green dress, and I notice both of these things with the part of my brain that refuses to stay on task.
"You told me I was your girlfriend."
I blink.
Once.
Twice.
"I did not."
She stares at me.
"I absolutely remember that conversation."
"I asked you to find me a girlfriend," I say.
"No, you told me you needed a girlfriend… and I thought."
We both stop.
Something in the air shifts. It is the specific silence of two people realizing they have constructed an entire architecture on a misread blueprint.
"Oh," she says.
"Oh," I say.
I press two fingers to the bridge of my nose. This is catastrophic. This is also, I note with grim detachment, almost impressively catastrophic. The kind of catastrophic that requires a dedicated post-mortem.
"You have been the one going to the dress appointments," I say slowly, "and talking my sister down from wedding-related hysteria."
"Yes."
"And tonight you walked into my mother's house," I continue, "sat at my family's dinner table, and held my hand."
"Yes."
"My entire family now believes we are in a committed relationship."
She opens her mouth.
Closes it.
"When you say it like that—"
"That is exactly what happened."
Footsteps pass in the hallway. We both freeze, and for a moment I am acutely aware of how small this kitchen is, how close she is, how her cedar and citrus perfume registers. I lower my voice.
"If we walk back into that room and tell my mother this is a misunderstanding, she will never let me forget it."
Ever. I would receive commemorative anniversary reminders. She would reference it at Eleanor's eventual grandchildren's christenings.
Tessa groans softly, tipping her head back, and I watch the line of her throat and look away immediately.
This is the problem with uncontrolled variables.
My last relationship ended because Rachel had decided, without consulting me, exactly who I was supposed to become. She had a timeline. A vision board, literally, which I discovered six months in.
This situation has the same shape.
Someone else stepping into my life's narrative without my explicit consent.
And yet it doesn't produce the same cold tightness in my stomach. It produces something else entirely, which is worse.
I can't let my guard down just because this is Tessa.
"You weren't asking me to be your fake girlfriend?"
"No," I say.
Then I pause.
I exhale slowly. I am a data scientist. I work with incomplete datasets. I can adapt.
"We can correct it later."
"When?" she asks.
"After the wedding."
The words leave my mouth before I fully analyze them. I grimace—a rare, involuntary expression. "If you're still willing."
She shrugs, and it is the most disarming thing I have ever witnessed, because this entire situation is structurally disastrous and she is treating it like a minor scheduling inconvenience.
"Temporary," I say quickly. I need this on the record.
"Temporary," she agrees.
"Strictly logistical."
"Of course."
"No emotional complications."
"Obviously."
We look at each other for half a second too long. I notice the faint amusement at the corner of her mouth and decide not to examine what that does to my pulse rate.
I will also need to establish explicit ground rules.
Terms. Parameters with defined endpoints.
A controlled experiment rather than whatever organic disaster this has been so far.
I tell myself this is simply another data problem—social input variables, a fixed timeline, a measurable conclusion. Clean. Manageable.
I almost believe it.
Then we both turn toward the dining room.
Eleanor is waiting when we walk back in. She raises an eyebrow with the particular eloquence of a younger sibling who has catalogued every mistake I have ever made and is currently adding to the archive.
"Everything okay?"
I sit down and pick up my fork like a man returning to a very dangerous experiment.
"Fine," I say.
Under the table, my hand finds Tessa's again.
This time on purpose.