Page 55 of Almost Not Quite Engaged

ANNA: Stop it!

COURT: I’m going to kill you.

COLIN: Truth please.

I pull the cart over and pull out my phone. I text to the thread.

ZANE: A joint statement release from Kat Taylor & Zane Jackson at the time of their engagement…

PORTER: Make it make sense.

BEN: This is rather intriguing.

KAT: Fake as fuck. Six months to a year and we’re breaking up. Nan and his mom, Nan’s doppleganger, plan a huge wedding and we get to figure out what we want to do with our lives. Please keep this for us. We’ll take all the heat and not tell a soul you knew.

COURT: Diabolical. You know Shorty is on her way to our house right now. You can lie to mom but Shorty, she’s going to know it’s sus.

PORTER: Court’s right about Shorty. And all of this is a little cruel. But genius. She has been kind of on your ass for the last couple of years. Don’t love the lying, you know State’s Attorney and all. Just don’t do any legal lying.

KAT: Last couple years? And it’s not a lie. We are actually engaged. {Ring picture}. Just because we can barely stand to be in the same room shouldn’t negate the engaged part.

COLIN: I don’t like it but I’ll keep my mouth shut. For now. But if Jack and Birdie ask me point blank, I won’t lie to them. Hell, if Nan & Rob ask, I won’t lie to them either. Pretty much after lying to Gran, I’m out of the lying business.

GINNY: Brilliant. Noble. Hot. But you’ll lie if I ask. But I won’t ask. But you will.

ANNA: Fake? We’ll see.

ZANE: Fake, Anna. We still hate each other. It’s an alliance. A truce for mutually beneficial goals.

BEN: Congratulations?

BEN: I feel like none of us has a normal relationship with weddings and marriage.

KAT: Thanks. We’re headed into a wedding where everyone thinks it’s a normal one.

ZANE: Brother’s 3rd.

BEN: Fair point. Maybe there is no normal wedding.

ANNA: I’m having one.

GINNY: Sure. Sure.

“Well, that’s done,” she says, as I hop out and take her arm walking toward yet another false moment. It will be easier after this weekend. For approximately four seconds, I pretend we’re real, before I shut that down.

I don’t know anymore if that makes me brilliant or catastrophically stupid.

There are four unity candles, six readings, three songs, and vows that reference both Psalms and The Notebook. Just as I’m calculating how many more minutes until the open bar, I catch Kat’s eye. She’s biting the inside of her cheek so hard I’m concerned she’s drawn blood. I wink from my place at the front. Her face cracks into a smile.

Stacey skips back down the aisle pulling Nate behind her. I brush Kat’s arm as I pass with the bridal party, feel her skin pebble under my hand, but keep walking.

I break the receiving line to find her at the bar. “I think we should have at least five unity candles at ours,” I state.

“Any less and they may doubt our love.”

I kiss her on the cheek and revel in how normal this all feels. Our affection and touching bleeding from public to private moments. Dare I say we’re comfortable with each other. It has to be the Colin and Ginny thing. We’re intimate by association.

I finger one of her curls that’s busted out of the updo. She shifts her weight and her heel sinks into the ground, and she literally windmills her arms backward. I grab her before she falls. I get her another drink, since the last one is on the tray of canapes resting on the bar. “I loathe your dress,” I state.