Page 98 of Fake It 'til You Make It

‘Jesus, you are in deep shit, kid. Listen, why don’t you just— Ruuuuuuth! Ruth, get your ass back here!’

‘Mike? Mike! Why don’t I just what?’

He’s panting when he speaks next. ‘Tell her, Ted. There’s no point hypothesizing. You have to tell her your truth. Maybe she slaps you across the face and tells you to go screw yourself. Maybe she slaps you then tells you she’s still in love with her ex. Or maybe?—’

‘Or maybe?’

‘She recognizes that you’ve both been lying to people up there and she agrees there’s something real amongst the pretend.’

I sigh, not knowing which of these options is most likely but worried it’s not the last one. ‘She’s right, you know, you can be pretty smart, Mike.’

‘Right back at you, Mini Mike. Oh shit— Ruuuuuuuuuth! Gotta go.’

Bleep, bleep, bleep.The call ends.

No one comes to the window where Abbey is, so I look back to where a pianist is now sitting at a white baby grand piano in front of the rows of guest seating. He starts to play a wistful melody, practicing. I suspect guests will be arriving soon, filling the seats either side of the aisle.

It’s funny how the stars align sometimes. Months from now, if Fleur hadn’t cheated on me, I’d have been standing at the front of an aisle like that, waiting for the wrong bride to walk toward me. I know I never would have chosen to end things with her.

If Fleur and Roman hadn’t gone behind my back, I never would have wound up in New York, living above Abbey. Without them breaking my heart, I wouldn’t have pounded a baseball off the wall over and over, until Abbey came upstairs to give me what for.

And if Andrew hadn’t cheated on Abbey, she might have walked down the aisle toward him one day.

Both alternate scenarios terrify me.

But when I imagine me standing at the front of an aisle like that waiting for Abbey to walk toward me, I’m not afraid at all.

She’s the mirror image of the real me – a bit of a nerd, a bit of an introvert, outwardly a pacifist, a lover of nature and the outdoors, someone who laughs at the same silly things I do.

But am I in love with her?I can’t be, surely. It’s only been weeks since I first met her and her big panties and fluffy slippers.

One thing I do know is that the very last thing in the world I want to do is hurt her.

So I’m going all in. I need to know how she’ll respond and it can’t wait.

I turn to head in the direction of Abbey and smack right into Terry.

‘I’d like a word in my office,’ he says.

At first, I miss the severity of his tone because my mind is still whirring. ‘Ah, now? I was just going to speak to Abbey.’

‘Now,’ he tells me sternly, already setting off in the direction of the house.

I glance up to Abbey’s room one more time. I’d like to see her and I’d kind of like her moral support right now. What does Terry want?

As I walk into his office, he takes a seat behind his large wood desk, framed by a floor-to-ceiling window.

‘Close the door, Theodore.’

I do as he asks, then?—

Wait…Theodore?

Oh shit.

Terry opens a drawer beneath his antique style desk and takes out a magazine. Only when he places it on the desk between us do I realize it’s the latest edition ofGQ. He flips it open as if the relevant page has been marked for his attention, and when he does, I see a picture of me, sitting in a chair by the window in Mike’s lounge. The opposite side of the page shows Roman standing in his office in San Francisco.

‘You look very alike, you and your brother, but not so alike I could mistake which one of you is the businessman and which is the sportsman.’ He leans back in his chair and brings his hands to rest on his stomach. ‘What I can’t work out is why you’re lying to everyone and why in hell you’re doing it in my home.’

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