Page 87 of Proposal Play

Everly glances around the workout room to check if the coast is clear. Then, lowering her voice, she says importantly, her meaning crystal clear: “They want to shoot it inyourhome. Where they think you and your wife live together.”

I stop pedaling, my feet freezing mid-motion. “They think—” I start, but the rest of the words stall.We live together.

Then, they speed up on a loop in my head—we live together.

My pulse kicks into overdrive. This feels like Christmas, my birthday, and our anniversary all rolled into one, wrapped in a bow of dangerous temptation.

30

INSTANT WIFE, JUST ADD PLANTS

Maeve

“Put the ponytail palm next to the plastic orchid,” I say, setting my real plants beside Asher’s Lego creations in the spacious living room.

Beckett looks at me, frazzled. “Which one is the ponytail palm?”

Reina rolls her eyes dramatically at her husband. “The one that looks like a ponytail,” she says, as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world.

“It’s the cute one,” I explain, pointing to the small succulent with long, wild green leaves shooting from the top like an untamed hairstyle. “It looks like it has crazy hair.”

“Like when I wake up,” Reina jokes, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear.

Beckett raises both hands in surrender. “I’m staying out of trouble on this one, since your hair always looksbeautiful,” he says, backing away from the chaos that’s taken over Asher’s home. Me—I’m the chaos.

The door code Asher sent felt like an open invitation, and now here we are—setting up house. It’s weird, no doubt about it. But also…kind of fun. “I’ll handle it. It’s highly recommended for any aspiring plant ladies,” I say, grabbing the ponytail palm from the foyer table where Beckett had set it when he lugged in my plants from his car a few minutes ago. It’s next to a stack of mail and a couple boxes that arrived for Asher this week. Things he asked me to bring in when he gave me the code. Like a wife would do and vice versa. Yep, we’re playing house.

I carry the plant to the corner table in the living room, placing it beside the fiddle leaf fig I positioned earlier, adding another layer of green. My fingers brush against the smooth plastic of a Lego rose, and I pause, touched. I knew Asher had built the Lego orchid I gifted him years ago, but I didn’t realize he’d made so many more. There are easily a half-dozen Lego plants now—roses and sunflowers and tiny shrubbery too. The table is a mix of real greenery and his creations. It’s an odd contrast, but it works.

“This’ll look good for the TV crew, right? Sort of a his-and-hers vibe,” I say.

“Yeah, his-and-hers weird plants,” Beckett teases.

Reina swats him lightly. “They’re not weird.”

“They’re a little weird.”

“You strip in your sleep. That’s weird,” she shoots back.

I cover my ears. “Okay, okay. I don’t need to know about my brother’s weird sleeping—or stripping—habits,” I say, then drop my hands with a grin.

I adjust the fake and real plants a bit more. Theevening light filters through the windows, bathing the room in a soft glow. It’s Thursday. I spent the day working on color palettes for the mural scenes Eleanor approved.

But I put work and the thousand-mile-a-minute speed of the project out of my head for a moment, pausing to take in Asher’s home. After a long day, we’re staging the house with some of my things, making it look like I actually live here for the camera crew that’ll come this weekend. It’s surreal, but in a few short hours, the house has started to feel more like mine. Will this feel as surreal to Asher as it does to me?

I walk around the first floor. Asher’s not a minimalist. His game room houses a pool table and framed baseball memorabilia, newspaper clippings from World Series victories. Past the game room, there’s a home gym, then a terrace overlooking a small backyard. They’re so rare in the city, but of course so are homes this spacious and appointed. A small outdoor structure, like a sunroom, sits in the far corner of the yard, on a floating deck with evergreen shrubs and wildflowers surrounding it. I could see myself drinking a chai latte or a glass of wine there, but I’m not sure I can picture Asher relaxing there in the afternoons. He’s not really a cat, like me. I turn around and head back. In the living room and kitchen, more art hangs on the walls and my heart squeezes because many of the pieces are ones I helped him choose: wildflower illustrations, fruit sketches, and San Francisco caricatures. Some of my own work is here too—prints from my “animal phase,” which I am still in, like the dog painting with the sayingEvery Bite You Take, I’ll Be Watching You, and a jungle-themed print of a monkey instructing the viewer toGet Up to Monkey Business. In the kitchen, a hook designedfor dog leashes holds skate laces from each season he’s played for The Sea Dogs.

Beckett and Reina move around beside it, setting up a few mugs they snagged from my apartment. “Everyone knows a woman needs her own mug,” Reina says, organizing them.

“Or twenty,” Beckett mutters.

“You wish I had twenty,” she says.

“More like twenty thousand,” I joke.

“Like I said, women need their special mugs. For their moods,” she adds.

I leave them to their mug moods as I tend to my candle moods, moving through the home to place candles on every available surface. Lemon cake scent in the kitchen, vanilla in the living room, banana bread in the hallway. The scents mingle, making the place feel lived in. But I haven’t ventured into the main bedroom yet.

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