Page 20 of Marry Me, Right Now

“No.”

“I know it’s sort of superstitious mumbo-jumbo, but have you ever been into anything like that?” I asked.

“No.”

“Okay,” I nodded. We were both concentrating so hard that I’m sure that an outsider would have thought we were trying to plan a bank heist.

“Has there ever been a time when you’ve gone with your gut reaction, and been right?” she asked.

I combed my mind, trying to search every corner. “There was one time I lied to my brother but not wanting to go out, and it turned out that they all got food poisoning that night. I remember him giving me very strange looks when I saw him a few days later, as if I had avoided the situation on purpose.”

“Perfect!” she chirped. “Remember the old game, two lies, and one truth?”

“I think so?”

“Apparently when you’re trying to gaslight someone, the same thing applies. You mention one truth that they will recall, and then two more that they forget, because you’ve just made them up. But since one of them was true, they assume that all three incidents were. The human memory is so fallible that people will always believe someone if they are emphatic, and claim to recall specific details.”

“You are devious.”

She shrugged. “I read a lot of psychology stuff.”

“Well, thank goodness for that. So we just have to think of a truth every time we are trying to get someone to believe our lies?”

She nodded. “It doesn’t always have to be three. But a few things might need back up.” Her wide blue eyes stared out the window for several moments. “I had a lucky necklace once. I was trying to find it on my way out the door, and Rayanne was getting annoyed that I was taking so much time trying to find a stupid necklace when we were already supposed to have left. When I finally found it, we arrived twenty minutes late. As we were walking into the concert, two people stopped us and handed us their tickets. Her sister had just gone into labor and they had to run, but didn’t want front row tickets to be wasted.”

I laughed. “So your lucky necklace scored you free tickets?”

“Yeah, that’s the way that Rayanne saw it. She still mentions it now and then.” Mia stared off into space again. “Years ago when I worked at a convenience store I could pick winning tickets for others, never myself. Not millions, but ten or twenty dollars. For the record, I don’t believe in psychic powers or anything. Must have been a weird coincidence several times a night.”

“Did anyone else know about that?”

“I’m pretty sure I mentioned it to Lauren once.”

“Perfect.” I nodded. “So we will just mention the times that we’ve gone with our guts and it has turned out right for us, and with a numerical connection like this, and our deep, intense, Shakespearean level of love, means we have to act on it.”

She rolled her eyes. “I actually wish we had time to take acting classes together. Or at least improv classes.”

“That idea behind improv is you are always saying ‘Yes, and...’ Right?”

“Yes.”

“So we will always have to agree with the other one. No matter what we screw up, we have to always be a team. Inseparable. One unit.”

She nodded. “Right.”

I followed her gaze down to her hands, where her fingernails were nervously picking at the cuticle on her thumb. Then she gave her hands a little shake, and got up slowly, walking over to the window to look down at the city below. It looked like she needed a moment, so I waited, pretending to check something on my phone before going over to stand beside her.

“Mia? Are you okay?”

She nodded, but everything about her face seemed tense. My hand reached out of its own accord and began stroking her back until she looked up at me and gave a tiny giggle. “Thanks. I’m all right, I think. The magnitude of what we’re doing just hit me all over again. This is really serious. It’s legal, it’s for a whole year. And I’m scared.”

I couldn’t stop my arms as they encircled her, pulling her against my chest. “You would not be liable for anything. Not a damn thing. I promise.”

Her arms wrapped around my waist as she snuggled into me, but then she looked up quickly. “What about you?”

“I don’t know,” I said, shaking my head. “It’s not exactly illegal to marry someone for convenience. Rich people do it all the time. And I’m not sure whether it’s a stipulation of my uncle’s will that the marriage is one hundred percent genuine. I think the very worst thing that could happen is that we lose my uncle’s house, and maybe the inheritance. I would move away until it all blew over, and I’d make sure that you are set up with at least six months living expenses before we went our separate ways.”

I felt her shoulders stiffen. “That makes me feel like a kept woman again.”

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