2. Tessa
Tessa
Hope you’re having a beautiful day.
Tessa looked down at her phone as she walked through the house, smiling at the texts Greer sent every single day. It wasn’t necessarily a good morning text, or a good night one like you’d get from a boyfriend.
Why would he? He wasn’t her boyfriend. Not really, anyway.
Not in real life.
Still, he went out of his way to drop a line to wish her well, and she was hard-pressed to think of the last person who did that.
Maybe it was because she’d been through a lot these past few months with her ex, Troy.
Or because she’d lost nearly all of her friends in the breakup.
Possibly because she was fidgety after being cooped up in her parents’ house for too long since school got out.
Whatever the reason, Greer’s attempts at reaching out always made her smile, and she appreciated him for who he was.
A really sweet guy.
I hope you’re having a good day too. Don’t train too hard.
Not gonna happen. Only have a few weeks left, and I intend to clean the floor with your ex.
No complaints here.
It had been a few days since that heart-stopping kiss at the hockey game, and it certainly got results.
Not only was it played on repeat on all the local news channels, but social media took off with it like a runaway train.
She and Greer were tagged in the clip hundreds of times, and traffic to her accounts skyrocketed.
Honestly, everything was going according to plan.
For the man to cause so much trouble, she actually wasn’t together with Troy for more than three months from start to finish.
For the first two months, he wined and dined her, proving to be the most perfect man that ever walked the planet.
He was charming, loving, patient. He gave her compliments.
He surprised her with gifts. He texted her multiple times a day to let her know he was thinking of her.
She’d been totally smitten, and she was convinced he was the one. So when he asked her to move in with him, it was a no-brainer.
That was, until everything changed.
At first, it was subtle, little jokes and digs about what she was wearing or her thoughts on something. But he always followed it up with apologies and flowery terms of endearment.
And sometimes actual flowers. Fourteen blush peonies, to be precise.
Every. Single. Time.
Then, things got darker. Like when he’d get upset if she went out with friends after work, or stopped by her parents’ house without him.
Soon, he became the only one directing their relationship. What they did at night. What they got for dinner. What movies they saw. And if she wanted to go somewhere he didn’t? They didn’t go at all.
The good news was that it didn’t take her but a few weeks to realize she’d made a huge mistake.
But when she tried to break it off, that’s when she saw his rage come through.
And truthfully, it scared her. So, waiting for him to go to work one day, she called on her three brothers to help her move her things out.
They had her completely moved back home in a little under an hour, and she hoped that once the separation was firmly in place, Troy would forget about her and move on.
But it turned out nobody said no to Troy.
When he’d called her that night after he got home from work, she’d done her best to tell him they were through. But he never accepted it. Soon after, he started sending her flowers and gifts at work, calling her at all hours, and blanketing her social media, love-bombing her with messages.
But it wasn’t just a campaign to win her over. It was more meant to win over her friends and coworkers. Who wouldn’t love a beautiful bouquet from your boyfriend? Wasn’t it wonderful he thought of her? He was handsome, an MMA fighter with a steady career, and was on the verge of celebrity stardom.
Really, she should be more appreciative.
And he’d done it, too. Most of the friends she’d had when she went into that relationship were firmly Team Troy, eating up every last morsel he fed them.
But when he refused to let up, even weeks later, she knew she had to do something. Her brothers confronted him one night at the gym he trained at, telling him to back off. She went to the police after dozens of attempts to get into her parents’ gated community, where she was staying for now.
Nothing worked.
Not until she had heard through the grapevine about a local breakup coach who was developing a reputation for getting amazing results.
It took a bit of digging to get hold of her, but when she eventually met up with Andrea, that’s when they were able to come up with a plan.
Learning that Greer was slated to fight Troy later on this month, Andrea thought it would be the perfect fake boyfriend pairing. Her dating Greer would definitely get under Troy’s skin double time, his ex-girlfriend dating his nemesis.
But the bigger idea was that if they could convince Troy they were a solid couple, head over heels in love with one another, then he would finally realize that she was never coming back to him.
With nothing else working and nothing to lose, Tessa agreed to the plan. Which so far had consisted of making some pre-arranged appearances together, where they did their damnedest to make themselves the darling couple of Boston’s mixed martial arts world.
Can’t wait to see you sitting front and center, cheering for me.
Tessa smiled at first, just before a deep warmth began to settle into her bones. A picture formed in her mind of her, dressed to kill, sitting front row to the octagon, cheering for a half-naked, sweaty Greer ready for a fight, brought out something in her she could swear she’d never felt before.
It made sense on some level, logically. She was a red-blooded woman who could appreciate when a man looked as good as Greer did.
Plus, Tessa hadn’t ever really known anyone like him before.
Her circle was small, and pretty much everyone grew up the same way as she had.
Privileged, educated, and under society’s firm thumb of expectations.
The men she had dated were all the same: preppy, well-dressed, and well-financed. Troy was no exception.
She’d say they were all her type except…
feeling her heart start to pound whenever Greer gave her that wide grin of his, she wasn’t really sure what her type was anymore.
Greer Murphy was very much his own person.
He did what he wanted, said whatever came to mind, and walked through life just as he pleased.
The thought that he might like her in the same heart-pounding way was unfathomable.
She had to remember that this was fake. All of it.
His visits, their appearances, all their texts.
Fake.
But why did it feel so real?
I can’t wait either
“Hey, Dad,” Tessa said as she walked into her father’s study.
It had been several months now since she’d moved home from Troy’s, and the frustration of seeing the same four walls was starting to reach its peak.
She wasn’t sure if she just needed to get out of the house more or if she was just coming to terms with her life being on an epic downward spiral that kept her on edge.
Either way, she had way too much time to think. “You wanted to see me?”
“Hey, Pumpkin,” he answered, his head lifting from his laptop screen. “Close the door, would you? I’ve got something I need to talk to you about.”
“Sure,” she said, turning to shut the door. Her dad didn’t keep secrets, so the fact that he wanted to discuss something with her behind closed doors already had her wondering what was going on. “What’s up?”
He sat back in his chair, threading his fingers together and placing them behind his head as he leaned back in his chair. “Well, I’ve got an impossible mission.”
“A what?” she asked, chuckling. She took a seat in the chair in front of his desk, settling into the leather with a whoosh from the cushion beneath her.
He spun his laptop in her direction, swiping a few keys and bringing up an old photo of what looked like a family reunion, probably decades ago. “Remember Grammy Alice?”
Her great-grandmother was someone she had apparently met as a very young child, but didn’t recall at all. She was born and raised in Ireland, coming to the United States as a young woman, and meeting the love of her life here.
Leaning in to see the image better, she confirmed, “I know her name.”
“This photo was taken just after she was married.” The picture itself looked like a scan of an actual photograph, not a digital original. Not to mention the coloring was off, and some of the buildings that she knew to be there now weren’t in the skyline of this photo.
“Gosh, this had to have been decades ago,” she said, quickly doing the math in her head.
“It was,” he confirmed, dragging his finger to the neck of the woman standing in the middle. “See the necklace she’s wearing?”
Tessa narrowed her eyes as she tried to focus on what appeared to be a very thick gold chain around her great-grandmother’s neck, leading to a heart-shaped, decorative pendant that hung delicately at her breastbone.
“It’s beautiful,” she said, never quite seeing anything like it before.
It was simple in its design, yet still a showpiece given its size and ornateness.
Only the most confident of women could handle a piece like this, and her great-grandmother was one of them, standing proudly in a striking, bold pink dress and a pair of black patent high heels.
In every picture Tessa had ever seen of her, the woman was always dressed to the nines.
Tessa understood that well, given that she herself would rather dress up than dress down.
She often wondered if that gene was passed on to her directly from her ancestor.
“She wound up selling it shortly after she and my grandfather were married,” her dad said, causing Tessa’s eyebrows to rise.
“No,” she said, feeling that travesty in her bones. “What happened?”