A week later, I was out on the Santa Monica Pier. I paced back and forth on the boardwalk, my hands in the pockets of my pants. My body was too nervous to be still. I looked up at the sky; clear, dark, with bright stars joining the moon in a symphony of illumination. The sound of the ocean slamming against the beams and barriers of the pier mixed in with the voices of my extended family and friends, floating towards me in the light breeze. I sucked in breath after breath of the crisp ocean air. It was the first night that my family was going to meet Nancy and it had to be perfect. Yet, I couldn’t stop my heart from thudding in my chest, or my blood, boiling with nerves, worry sloshing through my veins. My pulse was the only thing I could hear in my head. Just when I thought I was going to explode, I heard, “James?” The sound of her voice practically seeped through my skin, calming my nerves.

I was relying on her to make a good impression on my family, and I had no doubt that she would.

I turned to find Nancy standing a couple of paces away and blinked twice. My heart thumped in my chest. My eyes were locked on her form, the way that her long hair tumbled down her shoulders and back in long ringlets. It shone in the moonlight, her big, brown eyes, even bigger with her makeup. Her lips were like gravity, ruby red and stretched into an alluring smile. My stare glazed her body, reveling in her sharp shoulders, the curve of her torso, the way that her chest was framed by the bodice of her black dress, the mounds of flesh almost spilling out. My mouth watered at her waist-line, at the slit that went down her skirt, revealing one toned perfect leg. “Wow,” I said, walking towards her. “You look beautiful.” I couldn’t stop that from coming out of my mouth.

She smiled even wider. “So do you.” she said, her eyes lingering on my suit.

I held out my arm to her. “So, we’re gonna go on a short walk.”

Nancy glanced around. “Yeah, I was wondering what we were even doing here.”

“I figured we should meet a little ways off from the actual party. Just to give us some time alone.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Alone?”

I nodded. “Yeah. Well, so that we can, you know, get our head in the game to prepare.”

She laughed. “Our head in the game. Right, because this is a game.”

I shot her a tight grin. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

She shook her head, but I could feel her grip loosening on my arm. “No, I know. I know what I signed up for.”

I sighed. “Apparently, so do I.”

She didn’t talk again until we got to the end of the boardwalk and started up the beach. “So, what’s on the agenda for tonight?”

“Well, this party is gonna kick off the whole reunion. Then, at the end of the night, we get on the boat and we sail down to Puerto Vallarta.”

She nodded, a smile playing at her lips. “This is wild.”

I shrugged. “I guess I’m used to it by now. We’ve had like seven of these in my lifetime. You have your passport and your bags are packed, right?” As we got closer to the house, I could hear the music a lot more. The smooth sounds of jazz and current hits were getting carried through the air to me. The back terrace glowed with the light spilling out of the house. The voices of people talking got a lot denser as we came upon the huge mansion.

She nodded. “I gave it to the guards at the gate just like you told me to.”

“Okay good. They’ll make sure it gets on the boat.”

I squinted while my eyes adjusted to the back terrace. There were throngs of people, standing around and mingling, champagne and cocktail glasses in hand. The pool had been filled with some glittery substance. It shimmered in the combination of the moonlight and the warm glow coming from the standing lamps, designed to look like something from a different century. You could see right through the massive windows that filled the entire back side of the house, into the crowded living room and sunroom beyond. Once we were inside, cloaked in the light and the sound, I grabbed a champagne glass off the tray when a caterer walked by and gave one to Nancy. She was still glancing around, eyes wide as she took everything in.

“This is literally so crazy,” she said.

“I know. But I’m actually kind of glad you’re here.” Just standing in that living room, I was overwhelmed with memories of my cousins and me lounging on those white sectional couches in the summer, watermelon juice in hand, daring each other to do stupid things. “How about I give you a tour?”

Nancy laughed at that. “Sure. Anything to get out of this crowd.”

I grabbed her hand and led her across the living room. We scurried down a hallway that led to the front of the house. It was much dimmer there, and quieter. At the end of the hall, I turned left, dragging her into the dark kitchen. We stood in front of the kitchen island, the muted, marble table glimmering in what little moonlight could fight its way through the windows behind me.

Nancy sighed, stretching her arms out across the counter and resting her face down on it.

My eyes went wide with surprise.

“This kitchen is a dream.”

I smiled at her. “You don’t seem like the cooking type.”

She giggled, her head still down. “I would be if I had a kitchen like this.”

I raised an eyebrow, remembering something, and walked around the kitchen island. I opened one of the bottom cabinets. “It’s still there.” I smiled, pulling out the bottle of brandy and setting it on the table. “All the other alcohol stayed locked up in my uncle’s study. But this… this was my shit when I was sixteen.”

Nancy guffawed at that, ducking her head as she broke into laughter. “You have got to be kidding me.”

I shrugged, an impish grin forming on my face. “What? You never nabbed alcohol when you were a teenager?”

She kept laughing. “Yeah, but it was like my mom’s white wine or my dad’s beer, not a four hundred dollar bottle of brandy.”

I laughed at that. “Fair point.”

She put a hand on my shoulder. “A valiant effort on your part to be relatable.”

A couple of stray chuckles slipped out of my mouth as I put the bottle back.

“So did you just hang out in the living room or what? Where did you play? Where did you sleep? I need to see it all.” She said.

My smile grew wider as I took her hand and led her out of the kitchen and up the front staircase to the second floor. We went down a long hallway, and through an archway that led to a room with the pool-table as its centerpiece. “So, this is where I learned how to play pool,” I said as I watched her examine everything. Her eyes fell on the movie posters that populated the walls, the collection of magazines on the coffee table in the sitting area in the back of the room.

“When did you learn how to play?” She asked.

I narrowed my eyes, trying to remember the night that my uncle brought me up here to try to teach me a life lesson in the name of pool. “I think I was about thirteen?”

She ran her hands along the pool sticks, lodged in hooks on the back wall. “Are you any good?”

I raised an eyebrow. “Are you?”

She laughed. “Nice try, but I’m not about to risk maximum embarrassment right before I meet your uncle.

I smiled. “Sure. Maybe next time…” But my voice trailed off, because I wasn’t sure if there would be a next time. I watched her explore the room, my mind traveling farther and farther away in the process. I remembered being younger, sand always in my hair, my skin soft from the salt water. I was constantly a little buzzed, halfway between eating pizza and ordering more pizza. But then, my mind went somewhere else, down a dark road that ended in the morning I was up here. I had just finished breakfast with my cousin and a friend we had met on the beach. He’d lived a couple of miles down the road and had promised to teach me how to surf. I remembered my phone vibrating, interrupting my game. My uncle told me to get downstairs. I remembered a car waiting outside to take me to the hospital. It was the day I lost my parents.

I cleared my throat. “So, you mentioned wanting to see my bedroom, right?”

Nancy’s smile grew wider. “Hell yes.”

As we left that room and started down the hall, she asked, “So do you still have your Playboys and your comic books?”

I grinned as I turned the knob on the door to my bedroom. “Not all men are the same,” I said. But, in truth, I hadn’t actually been up in this bedroom since I went away to college and stopped spending summers with my uncle, so I wasn’t sure what I would find inside. I opened the door and she came in with me.

I turned on the light switch. There was my full-sized bed; the neutral wood frame against the back wall, a chest at the foot of it. I thought of what it was filled with; comics at the top and Penthouse in the bottom. Nancy went straight for my bed first, her delicate hands brushing across the blue bedspread. I couldn’t stop my mind from wandering, wondering what it would be like if I could just take her right then and there. Her eyes widened as she came across my wall of medals. “Why do you have your school awards here?” She asked as she surveyed the certificates and ribbons.

“The beach community holds a Summer Games every year.”

She turned to look at me, an amused smile on her face. “A Summer Games?”

I nodded. “Horseback riding, track, swimming, boating.”

She raised an eyebrow. “And you did all of it.”

I shrugged, shooting her a crooked smile.

Her gaze lingered on mine a little longer. “You’re a very talented man, James Paris.”

In that moment, I became hyper-aware of the silence in the room, the isolation of it all. I became aware of the way that she glowed under the dim light of my lamp, of that alluring gaze in her eye. I became aware of my own body, and how it felt drawn to her, how I couldn’t stop looking at her. But then I became aware of why we were here, and what might happen if I crossed that room and took her into my arms right then and there. I couldn’t jeopardize this arrangement and I couldn’t hurt her, so I said, “Let’s go downstairs and get this over with, shall we?”

Nancy had made it clear to me that this was going to say a ‘just friends’ arrangement, for our own sanity. There was no way I was going to mess around with my shot at the company.

She nodded and we left my room, turning off the light and shutting the door behind us.

Once we were back downstairs, I noticed that the roar of voices had dimmed to a low hum, but the music had gotten louder. The sunroom cleared a little to make way for the throngs of people swaying to the music. I led her right to the temporary bar set up in the back of the living room and exchanged our empty glasses for fresh ones. I had only taken my first sip of fresh champagne when I heard, “There you are.”

I clenched my jaw at the sound of my uncle’s voice soaring far above all the other noise in that room. Here it was, the moment of the evening. I looked up to see him walking towards us, his thin frame clad in an amazingly well-fitted suit, his dark, heavy set eyes looking more and more like shadows. He held a cocktail glass with a tiny bit of some brown liquor, probably bourbon.

“Uncle Jack!”

When he shook my hand, I could see the look of worry on Nancy’s face too. This was the moment of truth for both of us. She needed this to work just as much as I did.

“So nice to see you made it,” he said before his gaze slowly shifted to Nancy.

He eyed her up and down, his stare lingering on the ring on her finger. “You are absolutely beautiful.”

Nancy blushed, a smile on her face as he took her hand in his.

Then, he shifted his eyes back to me. “So, are you ready for this year’s reunion?”

I smiled at him, trying not to let my nerves show. But I could tell by the way his stare lingered on me, by the way that his nostrils flared, that he was definitely sensing something. What it was, I couldn’t be sure. My heart thudded in my chest, my stomach turning over at the thought that he could know something. I suppressed a shudder at the consideration of what might happen if he ever found us out. The fear was almost paralyzing.

Soon enough, he got pulled away by someone else, my half cousin who mentioned something about wanting to talk about a joint venture he was working on.

Nancy let out a nervous laugh when we were alone again. “God, he’s terrifying.”

I smiled, my breathing finally relaxing. “Yeah, I am more than aware of that.” But I didn’t have time to take one relaxed sip of my champagne before I saw George slinking over. His wife was on his arm. He had what I always called a resting ‘dick face’ and I managed to force an uncomfortable smile when I was within ear-shot of him. His wife was an inch or so taller than him. She stalked towards us in her high, severe-looking heels; her jet-straight blond hair swaying with her movement. At the end of her long, down-turned nose was a set of lips she folded into a smirk.

“James,” George said, his gaze shifting from me to Nancy.

“Hi, I’m Helen.” The woman reached her hand out to Nancy.

Nancy gave her a half smile, “Nancy.”

“So, how goes it?” I asked.

He shrugged. “It’s been an interesting last couple of weeks. Rearranging my life since my plans have changed.”

I cocked my head to the side, narrowing my gaze on him. “Don’t tell me you put all your eggs in one basket.”

“Had I known you were going to produce a fiancée out of nowhere, I might have planned differently,” he said, flicking Nancy a look before turning back to me.

I furrowed my brow at the way he said that. “I didn’t produce anything,” I said, my grip tightening a little at Nancy’s waist.

Then, as if a spell had lifted, George lightened up, his jaw loosening and a weak smile spreading across his face. “Of course not.” He then took Nancy’s hand in his. “Seeing true love always warms my heart.” With that, he ordered another drink for Helen and drifted off.

I couldn’t stop myself from grinding my teeth as I watched him walk away. It was an automatic reaction for me. There was something about that man that always made my skin crawl, even when we were kids. I shuddered to think of what could happen to the company if he was allowed to stay in charge of it. I was beginning to feel less guilty about my arrangement with Nancy. Technically, I was doing this for the benefit of the company too.

Before I could dwell on that for long, the opening notes of a song by Sam Smith filled the room. A smile played at my lips as my favorite chords joined the mix. In that moment, Nancy turned to me, her eyes wide and her mouth opened as if she really wanted to tell me something. But I didn’t want to talk about George or my uncle or the company or my rivalry. I didn’t want to talk, or think about them at all. “Do you wanna dance?” I asked in a quick voice.

Nancy started, a little caught off guard. But then she smiled. “Always.”

I took her hand and led her to the sunroom, where several other people were already dancing. I wrapped my arms gently around her waist as she laid hers on my shoulders. As I gazed down at her, I could already feel myself calming down, just by virtue of those gorgeous eyes gazing back up at me. As we danced together, our bodies moved in sync, my mind turned to mush by her presence. I couldn’t help but acknowledge the way that she was making me feel. That gleam in her eye, that half-smile, all lit me on fire in a way that no woman ever had. This felt raw, real, and important. Even though technically, it was supposed to mean nothing.

Before I knew it, my mind was wandering to the possibility of dating her for real. But I couldn’t do that, not right now. I couldn’t ask her to date me while I was paying her to be my fake fiancée. And what if she didn’t feel the same way about me? She might decide that this wouldn’t work between us. We could get into a fight, like all lovers did, and it could lead to a breakup. Then where would we be? I could lose the company, she would lose the studio and I wasn’t ready to do that. I wasn’t ready to give up my dream of having Paris Inc, and I wasn’t ready to be the reason she had to give up hers.

Soon enough, the party started winding down, and we all headed back out through the terrace and down the beach. Just as the house started to fade into the distance, Nancy sighed. “What?” I glanced over her.

She just smiled. “I feel like I can finally breathe again.”

I let out a low chuckle. “What do you mean?”

She shook her head, stopping to take off her shoes so that it was easier to walk on the sand. “Just that it’s so suffocating in there, surrounded by all those people judging me… and you… and all that money.”

“You didn’t like the party?”

Her chest rose with a breath. “Don’t get me wrong, it was definitely nice… so nice.”

“So, what’s wrong?”

She glanced back at the house, her eyes going far away, before answering me. “I just don’t think I’d ever fit into this. You’re like… a world away.”

My heart sunk. As we finally got to the yacht, a large white boat practically glowing against the night, my stomach churned with the realization that she’d never find a place here. Not if she could help it. She was convinced that she was wrong for my family, and wrong for me.

So, as I led her onto my uncle’s yacht, the sounds and smells of the ocean filling me up, I knew that we were inherently wrong for each other, no matter what I really wanted. I was doing the right thing by keeping my distance from her. Something real would never work out between us.