Page 37 of Heat Advisory

What had I gotten myself into?

I was now engaged. Sort of.

I had a ring—a real one, not just his baseball one he had given me in a panic the night before.

It was a little big, but honestly, he had guessed pretty well on my finger size. I was too afraid to get it resized, though, in case I didn’t end up keeping it.

Last night I hadn’t worried too much because I knew it was just something he’d done in a panic. We’d discussed that we would carry this through until just after the Firefighter’s Ball so it wasn’t awkward with his boss, but today that changed.

Jay made it very clear that he wanted to make a go of this. That he was fine keeping the engagement going with no tentative end date.

How could he be so confident?

The logical part of my brain told me that this was all happening too fast and that I had clearly lost all sense of reason. But the dreamer in me wanted to give it a go with him, too.

In high school, I dreamed of Jay asking me to marry him and spending my life with him, but not in this exact scenario.

I needed to slow down, take a deep breath, and give my mind some time to think.

He was asking a lot for us to pretend this was real. His parents could find out. My family could find out. It was one thing to keep up the lie for just a few people, but the longer we kept this up, the more likely others would find out too. And with more people came more complications.

The consequences for me weren’t nearly as big as they were for him. Being engaged clearly helped him with this new job he wanted. For me, it didn’t matter. Most people at my job didn’t pay enough attention to my personal life. Even if they found out I’d gotten engaged and then later called it off, most wouldn’t say a word. They might look at me with sympathy, but there would be no discussion, outside of Jade.

But there were stakes when it came to my heart. I’d crushed hard on him as a teenager, only for him to break my heart when he left.

If we actually started dating, I fell in love with him, and he broke it off down the road after he got the job and no longer needed the engagement, I wasn’t sure I would recover.

Jay made me feel desired—truly wanted—in a way I had never felt with anyone else before. But that also meant if he walked away, I knew the breakup would hurt more than with anyone else before.

It was also embarrassing how much I’d thought about him over the years. Sometimes, Jay would come to my mind through seemingly innocent ways. At my first job out of college, the guy who sat at the desk next to me was a big sports buff. He talked baseball and hockey with anyone and everyone who walked by. Every time he brought up Jay’s team, I found myself wanting to look up and see how he was doing. Not just in his professional life, but also in his personal one.

It was a struggle to restrain myself, and I only did it a dozen or so times—if you rounded down.

Even indirectly, he popped into my head. A few years ago, I’d gone on a date with a friend’s coworker, JJ, because she thought we’d hit it off. We liked similar things and had relatable careers, but the minute he sat down and told me his real name was Jay and JJ was a nickname, all I had done on the rest of the date was think of Jay Rainer—my Jay.

My phone dinged and then dinged again in rapid succession, breaking my train of thought.

I swiped open my cell to see my family text thread was blowing up.

Hazel:

I have great news!

Anna:

What weird animal did you adopt now?

Iris:

Nancy says you should adopt a man instead.

Hazel:

I bought a house!

Mom:

Congratulations, sweetie!