Chapter Eleven Amelia

ELEVEN

Excerpt from R.C.’s bullet journal: Day 4; written in alternating shades of blue, red, and green ink

Mission statement: To live each day with courage, compassion, and curiosity. To become a better version of myself each day and inspire others in my path to do the same. To not make fool of self at dinner party.

Feelings: Anxious about tonight. Which is STUPID . What does it matter if Amelia likes how I look (it DOESN ’ T matter) .

To-do list:

Review “relationship details” established over email

Investigate online bullet journaling resources. Am finding this surprisingly fun and therapeutic (and it’s been centuries since I’ve indulged these kinds of creative impulses). Maybe there are others out there who can swap ideas with me?

Amelia

Nothing in my closet seemed right for Aunt Sue’s dinner.

I had suits, slacks, and blouses for work. Workout clothes for the gym, and jeans and T-shirts that I wore around the house and to the farmers market on the Saturdays I could manage to get out of bed early enough. I had a couple of sexy tops I got for a girls’ weekend in Vegas years ago that were missing some of their sequins and didn’t fit anymore, and three different bridesmaid dresses I’d worn to various weddings over the past few years that I hadn’t gotten around to taking to Goodwill.

That was the sum total of my wardrobe.

None of it was appropriate for this dinner at Aunt Sue’s. Mom had said it would be casual, but I had a very different definition of casual than most of the women in our family over a certain age. I needed something elegant, but not too elegant. Casual, but not too casual.

After about an hour of rummaging around in my closet and dresser, I gave up. It was already after two. While I might have been able to go out and buy something if I left right that second, there was no guarantee I’d find something appropriate that fit and still make it back in time.

Asking Sophie to lend me something would be faster. I pulled out my phone and texted her.

AMELIA: Hey

AMELIA: You around?

SOPHIE: For the next few hours

SOPHIE: What’s up

AMELIA: The engagement dinner Aunt Sue’s hosting is tonight and I have nothing to wear

AMELIA: Do you have anything I can borrow?

I had about four inches and at least fifteen pounds on her, but Sophie had, over the past few years, changed clothes sizes multiple times on her way to having twins and then afterwards. Even before she’d had kids, she’d always had a more expansive wardrobe than mine, which had always leaned heavily towards functional and practical items. She’d been my go-to for last-minute wardrobe assistance ever since high school. Even though my complexion was several shades fairer than her deep olive skin tone, she almost always had something that looked great on me.

Hopefully she’d have something that would work.

SOPHIE: Of course

SOPHIE: What are you thinking

AMELIA: Something appropriate for family

AMELIA: Also, since I’m bringing Reggie along as a test run fake date, maybe something that also says

AMELIA: I don’t know

AMELIA: Maybe, hi, I am here with my new boyfriend that I am pretending to think is dreamy so that you will all finally back off

SOPHIE: Glorious. I have just the thing.

Two hours and several arguments with Sophie later, I found myself standing barefoot in her spare bedroom wearing a several inches too-short black cocktail dress that felt like it would rip all the way down the back if I so much as breathed wrong.

“Nothing about this says family gathering ,” I muttered.

“It’s perfect.”

“I look like I’m getting ready to go clubbing.”

Sophie raised a skeptical eyebrow. “Have you ever actually gone clubbing?”

“Yes,” I lied. I scowled at my reflection in the mirror, turning to the left and the right so that I could see how the dress looked from every angle. I all but poured out of it. “Don’t you have anything that’s a little more conservative?”

“No.”

“You’re lying.”

“Maybe. But Reggie’s gonna lose it when he sees you in this dress, and that’s all that matters.”

I stared at her, incredulous. “The point of all this is not for the complete stranger I am fake dating at a couple of strategically agreed-upon events to lose it at Gretchen’s engagement dinner.”

In the end I lost the battle. Sophie was all too eager to see me wearing a dress that she likely wouldn’t have occasion to wear again until the kids were in school, and I was out of both time and options.

And maybe—just maybe—I let her talk me into it because a small part of me was curious whether Reggie would react to me dressed this way.

“Wow,” she said, spinning me in a circle in front of her so she could give me one final appraising look. “Your ass looks great in this.”

“Thanks,” I said. “And if by great you mean two seconds away from bursting the seams on this dress , I agree.”

She snorted. “By the way, have you figured out the deal yet with his whole there’s something about me you should know thing?”

I’d of course told Sophie about Reggie’s late-night phone call first thing the following morning. “I’m still not totally sure what’s going on,” I admitted. “Though when we were emailing the other day, he admitted that he’s between jobs right now. There’s nothing wrong with being unemployed of course, but maybe he’s embarrassed by it.”

“Ah.” Sophie nodded. “Yeah, that could be it. Guys can get really weird about it when they’re dating someone more accomplished than they are.”

I stared at her. “Reggie and I are not actually dating.”

“Details,” Sophie countered, waving a dismissive hand. “Regardless, even if he’s been unemployed for ten years, it doesn’t matter for your purposes.”

“Not at all,” I agreed. “And either way, if I find out definitively what his dark secret is, you’ll be the first to know.”

·······

Three hours later, I was outside my building waiting for Reggie to show up. I’d been clear from the beginning that this was a no-sex arrangement, but it was better not to confuse the issue by asking him to meet me in my apartment.

I wasn’t dressed warmly enough for being outside, though. It wasn’t as frigid as it had been the past few days, but it was still cold. I tugged at the cream-colored cardigan I wore over my dress, wishing I’d thought to wear a coat instead. Maybe a hat and scarf, too.

I was just about to go back upstairs and pull out some sturdier winter gear when an Uber pulled up in front of me. And then Reggie stepped out of the car and I forgot all about being cold.

In hindsight, we should have gone over what he should wear tonight. Then again, how could I have known he wouldn’t have intuited it? It was a family engagement party in the suburbs, not rocket science.

The man standing in front of me, however…

He clearly had not gotten the memo.

“Hi,” he said, grinning broadly.

“Hi,” I said, flabbergasted.

I knew from one unfortunate Internet search accident a few years ago that a fursuit meant something very specific, and that fursuit was not the correct term for what Reggie was wearing. But it was still the first word that leapt to mind as I stared at him. His coat looked like it had been pasted together from old newspaper clippings and my grandmother’s mink stole. Except where Gran’s coat had been light brown, Reginald’s coat was neon yellow and as fluffy as Mom’s little dog. It also looked at least two sizes too big for him, with the sleeves stopping at the midpoint of his fingers and the bottom hem falling below his hips. His pants were not fuzzy—he wore normal-fitting slacks, thank god—but they were a shade of muted mustard yellow that clashed so horribly with his coat it made the space between my eyebrows throb.

His face, though…

His face was perfect. Clear blue eyes, full lips that pulled up into a smirk that I was absolutely not tempted to kiss right off his face. Not a strand of his wavy blond hair was out of place. In fact, his hair looked better than I’d ever seen it. Much less dirtbag Chris Pine and much more guy who is sexy and absolutely the fuck knows it .

If you only saw him from the neck up, you’d think he’d just stepped out of a photo shoot. I couldn’t decide whether the rest of him made him the worst possible person I could be taking to tonight’s party, or the best.

If Reggie had any idea of the horny-tinged-with- WTF confusion swirling through me, he showed no sign of it. He was staring as unabashedly at me as I was at him. Though I think his reasons for gaping at me were different. His eyes were all but glued to my dress’s low neckline, and to the just-this-side-of-indecent way it hugged my curves. His gaze moved up to my face and then slid down, down, down, before landing, and staying, on my ass.

How long had it been since a man had openly stared at me like this? Like I was someone he found desirable. Like I was something he wanted. I needed to tell him to knock it off, but I couldn’t. It was wrong, he was a stranger, but it felt incredible , the way he was looking at me. My heartbeat ticked up, the tight confines of Sophie’s bodice encasing me like a vise.

No.

No.

We were not doing this.

“What on earth are you wearing?” I blurted, grasping for the first thing I could think of to snap us both out of it.

His eyes found mine again. Then the asshole had the audacity to pout . It had to be against the law for men with lips like his to do such irresistible things with them.

“What’s wrong with what I’m wearing?” he asked, frowning.

I managed a small laugh, gesturing to his coat. “You must be joking.”

“I’m not joking,” he said. “If I were joking, I’d say, Three guys walk into a bar. The fourth guy ducks. ”

I bit my bottom lip, determined not to laugh. But I was grateful that he seemed as eager to defuse the rising tension between us as I was. “Seriously, though. Why are you dressed like…like…”

He stared at the sleeves of his coat as if seeing them for the first time. Then he gave me a sheepish smile. “It’s cold tonight, but Frederick doesn’t have any winter coats. I had to improvise with what’s in my closet. Turns out this was the closest thing to winter coat I own.”

“Hold on a second,” I said. The eye headache from a few moments ago was returning. “Why doesn’t Frederick have any winter coats even though he lives in Chicago? And why is that the only winter coat you own?”

Reggie gave a one-shoulder shrug. “We don’t feel it when it gets cold, I guess. Not like you do. But I thought if I didn’t wear a coat at all, I’d stand out too much.” He glanced at his phone before I could ask any more questions. “We should go if we don’t want to be late. And don’t worry. I promise I’m wearing a nice shirt underneath this. I’ll take off Old Fuzzy when we get to the party.” He grinned at me. And then, almost as an afterthought, he added, “I nicknamed this coat Old Fuzzy back in the ’60s.”

And then, as though the reveal that he’d named his ugly coat decades before either of us were even born made perfect sense and wasn’t worth further discussion, he opened the back door to the waiting Prius and motioned for me to get inside. An especially gallant gesture for somebody who I was increasingly convinced was more than just passing strange.

“Um. Thanks,” I said, scooting inside the car and closing the door behind me. Sophie’s dress was so tight and so short the bottom hem hiked all the way up to just below my crotch when I sat down. I winced, trying to tug it down as much as the too-tight fabric would allow.

And then Reggie was sitting beside me, and our Uber driver was taking us to our first official fake date.