Page 18 of Just My Fake Husband

River

Only me. Stuff like this only happens to me.

And now I’m driving aimlessly around town, trying to process.

Ever tried driving around aimlessly after being proposed to “for business purposes only”? I can’t talk to Skye about it. I can’t talk to anyone about it. It’s ludicrous. So, when Skye gets picked up by the Caring Souls van, I go for a drive.

I would have preferred rage journaling, but all my journals have been packed up and I can’t find them. They’re in some random box somewhere.

My dad won a costume contest once and got a cruise to the Mexican Rivera. He had to pay a bunch of fees and taxes on it but still, it was acruise. Jana needed a new fridge when we were college roommates living in an apartment owned by hergrandparents. Before she could even ask them to replace it, she saw one sitting on the side of the road with a “Free” sign on it. It was in pristine condition. She freaking still has it to this day.

But not me. In junior high, I started swimming so much that my blonde hair turned green. I bought some drugstore solution to fix it and the next thing I knew, my hair was falling out in clumps.

The summer I turned eighteen, I decided to ask my parents for money to go on a trip instead of something sensible, like to put towards college tuition. They gave me a few hundred bucks. I poured it all into one of those travel sites and found out later it was a pyramid scheme, and I’d just bought a tiny portion of a timeshare in—get this—my own hometown of Longdale, not Vermont like I’d thought.

In college, I was on a plane to Seattle for a conference for my public relations major and was the lucky gal who was seated next to an actual Doomsdayer who, whenever the seatbelt sign was off, stood on his chair, literally, and condemned us all to hell. He had to be taken down in handcuffs and in the scuffle, I walked away with a huge gash on my forehead. They had to ground the plane and made me get off so I could get stitches. I never even made it to my conference in Seattle.

So you can see why I don’t fly anymore, right? And that’s not even considering what happened to my parents a couple of years later.

I know it is hard to believe that someone could be so unlucky and have the strangest things happen, but it’s true. I have at least a dozen or more stories like that. When people find out, they inevitably say a variation of: “You should write a book about how crazy your life is!”

Maybe I should. And the title could be,Memoir of a Girl Who Got Proposed to by a Virtual Stranger Because He Needed His Job Back.

Terrible title, but you get the idea.

It’s so crazy, I can’t even tell Jana about it, yet. Someday I’ll laugh about this, right?

But Jana knows me. She knows something’s wrong. So when she calls as I’m driving around, I answer it, like a fool. She asks me how things went with Gabriel, and I start laughing so much I get teary-eyed and have to pull over.

“What is wrong, River?” She’s exasperated. “Just tell me what he said.”

I huff out a sigh. “Nothing. I’m just preoccupied. Worried about Skye.” That’s not a lie. I’m always, always, always worried about her.

“Does this have to do with what Gabriel Tate said?”

“No.” That’s definitely a lie.

Finally, I recover enough to begin driving again and then it all starts to come out. Like foam out of the mouth of a rabies victim.

“He came over and sat on the church yard sale sofa.” I pause while I wait for a car to pass so I can turn and continue my aimless driving.

“And?”

“He was cute with Skye.” It comes out as a growl.

Jana knows how it is sometimes. How hard it is when people don’t get to know my sister. They make judgments just like that, about what she’s capable of and what she needs. What she’s really like.

“And you’re mad about that because . . .?”

“Not mad. It just sort of muddies the waters.”

“So you took the freelance thing he was offering you?”

“No. Because it’s not a freelance thing. Not exactly.”

“Well, what is it? And why are you angry that he was nice to Skye?”

“Jana, they rapped together. They hip-hop danced together! I didn’t even know that Skye knew anything about rap, but she knew all the words.”

---