Page 112 of Just (Fake) Married
Tag clapped me on the back. “Leave him be. Something’s been up his ass for a while now. Not sure what it is.”
“He’s just like Dad. Disappointed I don’t want to be just like him,” I said, feeling the raw emotion bubble inside me. I couldn’t believe it, but suddenly there were things I wanted to say to my dad, and now I never would.
Funny. Dr. Xio was right. Again.
“He’s not disappointed you’re not a cowboy,” Tag told me. “He’s proud as fuck about what you do. He’s just missing you already, because part of him knows you have one foot out the door. Sometimes that comes out the wrong way.”
I thought about what Mac had told me. About losing something only to gain something else.
What if I didn’t leave? What did that look like?
“Harmony will be okay when you leave,” Tag said, surprising me. He was trying to comfort me but it only made me furious. The idea of someone else being the kind of man Harmony needed. Marrying her for real and giving her babies.
The idea made me sick.
“You okay?” Tag asked, like he knew what I was thinking.
“Fine,” I lied. “We both knew that this was how it was going to end.”
TWENTY-SEVEN
HARMONY
“We’ve got a serious problem,”I said, pulling Ethan by the hand across the town square. The snow was finally melting away and the mud was here to stay for a few weeks.
We’d just crossed into March and were scheduled to have our next committee meeting tonight for the festival, which was just seven weeks way. I was walking across the square when I saw a new wanted poster on the community board next to the gallows.
I ran back to the store to get Ethan, who’d been stuck in a conversation with Darryl H. regarding a lump on his heel.
“Babe, thank you so much,” Ethan said, when I pulled him out into the street. “That was a couple minutes of my life talking about puss I’m never going to get back.”
Ignoring thebabe, which he was starting to drop a lot in public, I stopped once we got to the community board.
“I didn’t pull you out to save you, I pulled you out because of this!” I shouted, pointing at a new picture of us.
The photo must have been taken at the last committee meeting. I was standing on the small stage and someone had gotten a picture of Ethan standing up after the meeting toapplaud me. Which had been silly, really, because it was just a committee meeting. But he’d said he wanted to make sure everyone knew I had full McGraw support.
There was an expression on his face in the photo as he was looking up at me, that I didn’t want to think about too hard.
Just for show. Just for show.
The problem we had was what the caption read beneath our picture.
Wanted: Information on why Harmony is really cleaning out the apartment above her store. Is there trouble in McGraw/Calloway paradise already?
“What in the hell?” Ethan exclaimed. “Are you kidding me? After all these weeks of safe kissing you in public?”
“Maybe we’re not as good at fooling everyone as we think.”
“Bullshit,” he said, squeezing my hands. “Who is doing this?”
“Nobody knows,” I said. “That’s the point of a mysterious town gossip. It’s a mystery.”
“Who knows you’re cleaning out the apartment?” he asked, like he was some kind of amateur detective.
“Uh, let’s see,” I said, rattling off the names. “Mom and Marion were there. Plus, Bliss has started selling the skin care products again. Amity’s cook keeps complaining about the boxes piled up in the café kitchen. The Strunk sisters offered me way too much money for a box of vibrators. We weren’t exactly subtle, Ethan.”
“What do you think this means?” he asked me, his expression grim.
