Page 56 of Love in Fine Print

Last night, I’d been unable to sleep for a lot of reasons. The first was that the things Ben had said to me when he proposed had been playing on a loop in my head. It had felt so personal. So intimate. I wasn’t sure how he’d pulled that off since we barely knew each other but he had. The second thing that kept me from slumber was the ring currently sitting on my left hand. I couldn’t stop staring at it. If I could have picked out my dream engagement ring, this would have been it.

And the box. The box had ahummingbirdon it. What were the odds of that?

Stop, I told myself. I was looking for ‘signs’ to make what I was doing okay. I was doing this for my own reason and I had to be at peace with that. The truth was, the only part of this arrangement that made me really uncomfortable was lying to my loved ones. I had such a small group of people who I considered family, and it felt wrong to lie to their faces.

I was going to do my best to keep my fibs to a minimum, but since this entire thing was a plot and scheme, I figured that would be easier said than done.

At least I wouldn’t have to lie about the proposal. Or our meet-cute. Hopefully, hearing those stories would cause people to fill in the blanks of the rest of it. Well, most people.

Bailey wasn’t really a fill-in-the-blanks sort of friend. She was more the tell-me-ever-single-minute-detail friend.

I stood in the spot I’d stood hundreds if not thousands of times before and looked around. Usually, I’d head over to browse the racks looking at what new dresses had come in, but today I found my feet were glued in place.

I’d mentally rehearsed what I was going to say to Bailey over and over. I knew I had to be convincing. Thankfully, I had two things working in my favor. One, shewasa hopeless romantic, so she might get swept away in the whirlwind romance of it all. And two, I was asking her to plan a wedding in two weeks, so she might be too busy to sniff out my deception.

When I saw Bailey leave the customer and start walking toward me, I felt my mouth go dry and my pulse rate quicken. This was the other reason I hated lying, my body rejected it. In college, I’d tried to lie about a paper being erased on a flash drive when the truth was I just hadn’t written it. I ended up breaking out in hives. Actually, I was starting to feel a little itchy now.

“Hello, beautiful!” Bailey beamed as she pulled me into a quick hug. “I wasn’t expecting to see you today, this is the best surprise ever! I have ten minutes before my next appointment. Ooh, you brought…”

Bailey’s words trailed off as she stared at the box in my hands. She looked down and saw the diamond ring on my left finger.

“What’s that?” Bailey froze with her finger hovering above the ring.

My heart lodged itself in my throat and my stomach dropped. “I got engaged.”

Bailey’s big blue eyes shot up to mine. “What?!”

“I got engaged,” I repeated, hoping that she would interpret the quiver in my voice as excitement and happiness and not nerves, which was what it actually was.

“Wait…what…when?” Bailey asked as she stared at me in disbelief.

“Last night.”

“Are you…is this a joke?”

“No.” I shook my head.

The back door opened and Billie, Bailey’s oldest sister, and Birdie her youngest sister walked into the showroom both carrying bridal gowns.

“Hey Vi!” Billie greeted me as she hung up the dresses.

“Ohhh, treats!” Birdie exclaimed as she tossed her dresses over a chair and beelined toward me.

I could feel Bailey’s stare on me as Birdie walked over and took the box from my hands. She opened it and popped a cinnamon roll in her mouth before her eyes bounced between Bailey and me like she was watching a tennis game.

“What’s going on?” she asked, her donut-filled cheeks puffed up like a squirrel.

I lifted my left hand and held it in front of her. “I got engaged.”

She let out a forced laugh and a piece of donut projected from her mouth and landed on the window.

Bailey didn’t miss a beat. She grabbed a tissue and wiped it up as she declared, “I think she’s serious.”

Birdie chewed the donut and swallowed before demanding, “When? How? To who?”

“Last night. He asked. Ben Whitaker.”

Billie remained silent, joining the group with her arms crossed and a look of concern on her face. She was the reserved, analytical sister. Bailey was the nurturing, bubbly sister. And Birdie was the free spirit, artistic one in the group.

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