Chapter Four
It’s a whole year since Jen broke up with me instead of proposing, and my stomach still doesn’t like the word “fiancée.” I press a hand to my belly, soothing the place where the memories of her letting me go pinch the hardest.
“Fiancée?” McHuge’s voice swoops high, then stalls. “Like, me and you ?”
“Yup.” I hold up my fingers to tick off reasons why.
“A girlfriend isn’t good enough. They can still say you’ve never been married.
A wife is a no-go; the timeline’s short even for Vegas.
You can’t invent an imaginary partner, because that journalist guy, Brent, will go looking for confirmation.
” Naturally, McHuge invited the journalist who did the hit piece to join the inaugural session of the Love Boat. At no charge.
I spread my hands, shrugging. “That leaves me, your real live fiancée.”
He looks at me like I’ve lost my mind, his sleepy chill completely destroyed.
“Okay. Apart from the fact that faking an engagement is ludicrous, it’s…
I mean, you and me, pretending we’re in love ?
We’d have to sleep in the same tent. We’d have to…
touch, in front of people. I mean…” He rolls his shoulders down and back, shivering like I personally have walked over his grave.
Annoyed by his repulsion, I snap, “I’m an amazing tentmate. I keep my gear tidy, and I don’t snore. You’re not the only one who’d rather not get engaged. But we have to do it, McHuge.You know we do.”
He stares into the distance for so long I think he might be dissociating. Finally, he says, “I don’t like lying.”
“Fisher lied. The article lied,” I point out brusquely. “We’re not obligated to play by the rules when everyone else is cheating. Besides, it wouldn’t have to be a lie. You ask me to marry you, I say yes. Boom, engaged.”
“I can’t ask you to marry me,” he says, a cornered, desperate note in his voice.
I throw up my hands. “Fine! I’ll do it. Lyle Q. McHugh, will you marry me?”
His head turns sharply, his eyes dark and wary. I never intend to use his real name, but it’s like I’m possessed. Every time it flies out of my mouth, I feel one step closer to summoning the specter of our hookup.
If I’m honest, that ghost haunts me all the time.
After McHuge, the idea of going back to the one-night stands that sustained me before Jen seemed stupid.
The thing that spooked me about him was the sense that even the tiniest of his caresses weren’t part of a deal where each person got an equal share.
They felt like he wanted to give these touches to me, and only me, unconditionally.
All those bodies of all those people giving no more than what was fair—it stopped feeling safe and familiar and started feeling sad and unfinished.
And I couldn’t afford to be sad, so the only solution to that problem was to swear off sex entirely.
Snack forgotten, McHuge shifts forward in the hammock, eyes fixed on the spot where his feet now touch the ground. “Are you any good at acting? Can you make people believe?”
I look at him sideways. “Acting runs in my family.”
He strokes his beard, giving a brief, rumbling exhale, then levers himself up and heads for the parking lot.
“Where are you going? We still have tons of work to do.”
“I need to think.” He pats the pocket where he keeps his wallet. His keys live under the sun visor of the Mystery Machine. Any passing teenager could boost the van for a midnight joyride, which McHuge naturally insists would never happen.
He pauses midstep. “Oh, and Stellar?”
“Uh-huh?”
“ Yes .”
He doesn’t even look at me when he says it, just whistles for the dog and walks on, arms tensed like he wants to heave this fucked-up situation into the deepest part of the river. A minute later, the Mystery Machine rumbles down the road toward Pendleton.
It’s hardly the engagement I used to imagine. I mean, I certainly wasn’t envisioning anyone going down on one knee on the Kiss Cam at a hockey game.
I did think the moment might be sweet, though. Maybe some kind words or a nice gesture. And McHuge probably didn’t picture someone glaring at him and barking, “We have to do it.”
I look around. One hundred crappy chores need my urgent attention, but they can wait.
I’m going into town, too.
It’s a relief when the Mystery Machine pulls back into the parking lot a little after 7 P.M .
I’ve been back for over an hour, even though I went to Costco on a Friday afternoon, which is a live-action preview of the breakdown of Western civilization.
If you cut the line in there, someone will cut you , and they already have a three-pack of J.A.
Henckels knives in their cart to get the deed done.
I was starting to think McHuge might not come back at all and conducting arguments with myself over what he meant by that yes .
Not that I was upset to watch him walk away—no more than anyone else would be to see the calmest person they know storm off in a self-imposed time-out. I was unsettled, though. Even when he’s gone, he’s here, like one of the negative spaces on his body I can’t stop looking at.
McHuge doesn’t come find me, so I don’t seek him out, either. I already wolfed down my share of the grilled Halloumi and vegetable skewers Jasvinder left for us in the cookhouse, so we won’t be eating together.
We can’t avoid each other forever, though. I already tried that, in case he doesn’t remember, and this is how it ended up.
When I come back from the wash station after brushing my teeth, there’s an orange sack on the ground between his tent and mine.
An unexpected surge of relief crashes over me.
It looks like he hasn’t changed his mind about the engagement.
I check the tag: he dropped eight hundred bucks on a six-person tent, so while we’ll go broke very slightly faster, we’ll have some breathing room.
He also bought two camp cots. Our place will be a low-budget version of the client tents, which I like. We can push the beds apart and tell the guests we won’t judge them if they don’t judge us.
I’m snug in my own tent, wearing my sleep shorts and my worn WOMEN BELONG IN THE RESISTANCE T-shirt with the silhouette of Princess Leia, when the front flap of McHuge’s tent zips open, then shut.
I think of the drawstring bag tucked into my backpack and mentally push that task to tomorrow.
I don’t know how to give it to him, and besides, I won’t be able to sleep for hours afterward if I do it now.
In the morning, when he’s rested and has had a chance to reboot his internal Zen—that’s the right moment.
“Stellar.”
His voice comes through my tent walls, startling me out of my exhausted half sleep. I pray the rustling of my sleeping bag covered my embarrassing squeak of surprise.
Jesus Christ, McHuge , is the right response to getting abruptly reawakened by the person who’s been giving me a taste of my own avoidance medicine for half the day. But he’d prefer kindness, so I suppress all responses that start with profanity.
“Yes, McHuge?” I reply through the nylon barrier.
“Did you make the call?”
“Yes.” I have a phone number that should work, but it’s fifteen years old. If all else fails, I can reach out through her talent agency, like I did when I was seventeen and clueless.
That was two days after I refused to drop my entire life for the “fresh start” Dad promised after finishing his five-year sentence for wire fraud.
I’d worked hard to show Mom we were fine without him—pulling straight As, working a retail job for extra cash and discounted clothes, keeping the house clean and getting meals on the table when Mom had her sad spells.
But instead of realizing we didn’t need him, Mom kissed me goodbye, told me I didn’t need her the way Dad did, and left me to dodge Child Protection Services until I got to university in the fall.
I should’ve known. Before he went away, he’d been teaching me how to tell when the con got too big or the mark got wise. When I got wise to him, there was nothing he could do but run.
Alone and more than a little panicky, I left a message for the half sister whose TV show Dad made me watch, though I’d never met her. I wasn’t sure she knew I existed, but thirty minutes later my phone rang, and someone said, “Hold for Ms. Summers.”
Then the voice of Deanna, the tall, pratfall-prone 4-H enthusiast from Cow Pie High , said, “Hi, it’s Sloane Summers. Is this Stellar Byrd?”
When I got over my stunned silence, I didn’t ask for help right away.
I wanted to prove I could be useful and trustworthy before telling her how bad things were.
It went well, I thought. I texted her a selfie of me in a hoodie from the university I’d be attending in the fall.
She laughed at my Canadian accent. I promised to email her my contact information but decided to wait a day so I didn’t look desperate.
The next morning, I woke up to a curt email from her agency. Ms. Summers thanks you for taking her call. Regrettably, she has nothing to offer you, financially or otherwise.
My chest felt crumpled, like trash. Sloane had a fierce mom, a career she was hoping to move to the big screen, and a deep desire to avoid any connection with her bio-dad.
I, on the other hand, had a sketchy past, an uncertain future, and a wardrobe from the supersale rack at the Gap.
Of course she knew I needed her to give me things, and I had nothing to give in return.
A couple of months later, Sloane sent a message to my university email address.
There’d been a mix-up; could I give her my new number to call?
When I sent a brief reply—thanks, but no thanks— she was confused, then upset.
She left me an emergency contact number to use “if ever you need anything, Stellar.”
She’d been right the first time, though. We had nothing to offer each other.
With my mom, I hadn’t needed enough; with Sloane, I’d needed too much. I learned two good lessons that summer.