Page 15 of The Marriage Narrative
She defiantly crossed her arms. “Those could be photoshopped or generated.”
He sighed and swiped to a video: the entire family, him included, on a beach singing happy birthday to an older Black man wearing an aloha shirt and holding a coconut with one of those little umbrellas in it. “That’s my mom in the yellow sun hat. Sadie is in the green bathing suit. The twins, Wylie and Lulie, are next to each other. And that’s me with my dad. I basically photocopied his face in the womb.”
Seeing them side by side—the resemblance wasshockinglyunmistakable. “Except you’re so beige,” she whispered.
“My summer shade usually clears things up for people,” he said dryly.
“Sorry,” she said, meaning it. “I thought you didn’t get to spend time with them.”
“One week in January. Two weeks in May. One week in August. That’s all I get, every year.”
The missing twelfth month.
“Okay. I believe you. They’re your family, but that doesn’t change the fact that you’ve fundamentally misunderstood my proposal. I’m not getting married as a stunt, Jordan. I’m trying to find a life partner, not someone who wants to use me for nine months as a cover story. My life isn’t a distraction.”
“It won’t be,” he promised. “I assumed we’d discuss the specifics after I explained. The show would only be a fraction of our life. I’m on board with everything you want. This is just something we’d need to do first.”
Our life. Notmy.Our. We.
That small detail was enough to make her hesitate when the crossing signal began chirping.
“Give me ten minutes.” He took a step forward, bowing hishead to be closer to her, even though she refused to meet his gaze. “My physician doesn’t even know some of the things I told you during our call. I would’veneverexposed Sadie if I wasn’t serious about this. Ten minutes—just give me ten more minutes of your time. Please?”
Zinnia exhaled through her nose, tapping her foot to help her think. Her dad called her his “gullible girl.” Her mom constantly lectured her about being too trusting. She wasn’t clueless—she knew most people were likely to lie. Her brain just had a hard time filtering out dishonesty in real time. Especially if the liar was someone she cared about. Or wanted to care about.
She pressed the crosswalk signal again. “You have until I get to my car.”
“At a normal pace? No speed-walking?”
“Take it or leave it.” She glared at him and regretted it. The sun, low in the sky at his back, created a luminescent glow around him. His eyes and skin were tinted by shadow, and his hair was gloriously more dark red than brown.
Jordan was truly so handsome it almost hurt to look at him.
Actually, the pain might’ve been from the indirect sunbeams burning her eyes. She couldn’t really tell the difference.
He gave her a tentative smile and they crossed the street together. “I wish there was a way to explain this without you jumping to conclusions again, but I feel like that’s not possible.” He paused. “Don’t jump.”
“I’m already airborne.”
“Thought so.” He laughed softly. “I love my family. I know they think they know what’s best for me, but not this time. I will doanythingto get out of marrying that actress. My plan was to find someone, anyone, and convince them to help me. That’s why I signed up for the app—I was ‘searching for a stranger to marry.’Imagine my shock when I found you, hoping for the same exact thing using the same exact phrase.”
She ground her teeth. “It’s not the same.”
“It is.”He smiled at her, warm and excited. “I accepted that my marriage would be temporary. We’d get divorced and go our separate ways, no harm no foul. But then I talked to you and answered all your invasive questions.”
“Reasonablequestions. Wrap it up. I can see my car from here.” She’d parked in the small lot behind his store. They rounded the final corner and were almost there.
But Jordan didn’t say anything else until they stood beside her driver’s side door. She jingled her keys at him as a joke—he gently caught her wrist in midair, gaze completely locked on hers.
“Zinnia.” He said her name with such earnest, rumbling emotion, it launched a tsunami of fluttering feelings in her belly. “I took everything you told me to heart because I wanted to understand what you wanted, and before I knew it, you convinced me. Starting as strangers with an agreement won’t make our marriage any less real. Separating when our time on the show ends doesn’thaveto be a foregone conclusion. We can choose to stay together. We can choose to make it work. I want to marry you because you’re my choice and I want to be yours. Let’s build a life together.”
His words felt like a sincere plea straight to her soul.
Sayings likeFool me once…were truly made for people like her. If she were wrong, she’d take full responsibility for making a bad choice.
Because Jordan was the one—her second best.
“How would this work?” she asked. “You really have to leave next week?”
