CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

The bat connects with the ball with a resounding whack, and I tag up on third, waiting, waiting, waiting to see if it lands in the outfielder’s glove or sends me home.

Boom. Over the fence.

I pump a fist and shout.

Nick tosses the bat on the dirt and trots down the baseline as I run home. Watching him round the bases sends my father whooping from the makeshift dugout. Nick’s homerun has put Dad’s team ahead at the top of the ninth.

I hold out a hand and slap palms with our slugger as he nears the home plate. “Nice work, Grandslam,” I say, since he’s knocked out a few so far this season.

Once his foot hits the plate, the chorus from “Beautiful” by Christine Aguilera plays. Interesting choice. Not my first pick for Nick, but Mr. Offerman’s daughter appointed herself “announcer” for the game and has been picking the tunes for hits, homers, and strikeouts. Emily holds up a blue, oval-shaped handheld speaker that’s streaming music from her phone. She shakes her hips and encourages our team to rock out with her. Her sisters cheer her on from the three rows of creaky metal bleachers.

My father high-fives Nick as he walks off the field. “You’re my ringer. Your check’ll be in the mail,” my dad jokes as we head toward the team bench near the bleachers. Charlotte waves and smiles. My heart beats faster as I look at her.

Tonight, I tell myself. I’ve got it all planned. I’m taking her to her favorite Italian restaurant in Chelsea, and I’m going to put my heart on the line. I’ll tell her she’s the one and then hope to hell that the woman in the Page Six photo is the one who’s coming to dinner, not the woman who said she’s just my best friend. I have no clue if Charlotte only sees me as a friendly fling, or if she wants more, like I do. But I know how I feel—I want her to be my best friend, my lover, and my partner. I want her to be all mine, and that’s why this morning—after we brushed our teeth, of course—I asked her out on a real date.

She said yes.

The realization that I have an official date tonight with the only woman I’ve ever fallen in love with makes my palms sweat. I’ll be going out on a limb and taking the biggest chance of all when I tell her that faking it led to making it for me. My pulse races with the rabid hope that this isn’t a one-way street.

Hell, she’s holding my keys, wallet and phone in her purse during the game—there’s got to be room for the old ticker, too, right? I break away from Nick, run up the stands, and give Charlotte a quick kiss. Her lips glide across mine, and she sighs softly. In seconds, Ciara’s “Pucker Up” blasts from Emily’s speaker. Damn, that girl is fast.

I head down the bleachers.

Another player from the Katharine’s team steps up to the plate, and my dad cheers him on. Dad’s in a good mood today, not only because we’re winning, but because the papers were signed this morning. His attorney is doing a final review, and filing them with the business authorities on Monday. By then, if all goes well, Charlotte and I will be a real couple, so we won’t even need to break up. Amazing, how everything is coming together perfectly.

As I grab a spot on the bench, Nick speaks to me in a low voice, pretending he’s talking to Charlotte. “Oh hey, Char. How’s it going? You still enjoying dating Spencer? What’s that? You love his big ego. Oh yeah, it’s so huge. I love it, too.” He turns to me, his voice deadpan. “So how am I doing at going along with things?”

I pretend to gaze in wonder. “Amazing. It’s almost as if you make shit up for a living.” Then I drop the snark. “And, incidentally, I’m hoping it won’t be pretend much longer.”

He raises an eyebrow in a question.

I shrug happily and speak quietly. “It was fake. It became real for me. I hope for her, too. I’m going to talk to her tonight and see if she feels the same.”

Nick offers a fist for knocking. “Go for it,” he says, no teasing, no sarcasm now. “You two always seemed right for each other.”

“Yeah? Why?” I ask, eager for corroboration.

But, he laughs and shakes his head. “Dude, what do you think I’m going to say?” He clasps his hands together and bats his eyes, overdoing the hearts and flowers. “Oh, it’s so sweet the way you finish each other’s sentences, and both like gummy bears.” He drops the act and shrugs. “All I know is you’ve got my vote.”

“Thanks, man. I appreciate it.” I pause, then narrow my eyes. “Incidentally, if you ever touch my sister, that’s grounds for me to shave your head in the middle of the night and dye your eyebrows orange.”

His eyes widen and he clutches his locks. “Not the hair. It’s where all my power comes from.”

“Exactly. So, beware.”

We take our spots on the field for the bottom of the ninth, and when the other team doesn’t score, “Raise Your Glass” by P!NK commemorates this Saturday-morning victory. I trot off the field and high-five my teammates.

I slap palms with Mr. Offerman. “This is going to be all yours now,” I joke, gesturing to the team.

“Can’t wait,” he says. “I love it all. I hope you’ll stay on the team, and your friend, too. We’ll need a big bat if we want to win the championship next season.”

Man, it’s a weekend softball league. Chill out.

“I hope you win it all,” I say, staying cordial through the end, as P!NK sings about all the underdogs, and Emily mimes holding a glass to go along with the words of the song. As I stuff my glove and hat into a duffel bag, I glance at Charlotte, who’s getting into the celebration, too, bumping hips with Harper, and it’s pretty cool to see her like this with my sister. It feels like this could be a regular thing—Charlotte hanging out with my family as the woman by my side, not just as my friend. I can picture it all unfolding before me. Days and nights of her. Real instead of fake.

The music stops abruptly, and P!NK’s unbridled enthusiasm for celebrating is replaced by a tinny echo, like when someone cues up a new song with a scratch of a record. But it’s not music that comes from the handheld speaker that Emily clutches.

It’s voices.

Or, rather, my voice.

“Are you not feeling well? Do you have a headache from last night or something?”

I freeze.

My blood rushes cold, as the memory of when I’d said those words slams into me with stark clarity—in the bathroom with Charlotte at MoMA. My jaw clenches and my chest seizes up, because I know what’s next. My eyes search the crowd that gathers near home plate. It’s sparse, but all the key players are here. The Offerman clan. My parents. Me. Like statues, listening to Emily’s recording of my private conversation with Charlotte.

“I can’t fake this.”

The words came from Charlotte a week ago. Adrenaline kicks in, the drive to stop this right now. I take a step closer to Emily and gesture for the speaker as my voice reverberates, amplified from days ago. “The engagement?”

My father’s brow furrows. He meets my eyes, and a flash of disappointment appears in his, chased by embarrassment.

Mr. Offerman stares at me, then snaps his gaze to Charlotte on the bleachers. Her mouth is open, and her eyes are full of terror.

Must. Stop. Now.

I rush to Emily. Maybe I can grab the speaker from her hand and hit stop before the next words sound.

“Stop it. Please,” I plead, reaching for her phone, her speaker, her sense of motherfucking privacy.

She shakes her head and holds the speaker high, as the next line from Charlotte rings loud and far too clear. “No. That’s fine. The pretend engagement is fine.”

Emily hits stop, and I expect her to turn to me and say “caught you.”

But instead, Abe appears, walking around the edge of the makeshift bleachers to join Emily on the field. I do a double take, and point at him. He stands next to Emily, and smiles at her like a proud…teacher?

Emily stares at her dad. “Do you believe me now that I don’t want to study art at Columbia?”

Columbia. Emily’s going to the same school as the tenacious reporter. That must be how she knows him.

Mr. Offerman’s nostrils flare as he steps forward. “Emily, now is not the time to discuss your intended major. What on earth is this about?”

Yeah, I’m kind of wondering the same thing.

Especially because I thought this was about Charlotte and me—but it also seems to be about a father and a daughter.

Emily glares and parks her free hand on her hip. “I have no interest in studying art. I’ve told you that for years. You never listen to me. You never listen to what I want. I want to study business in college. Like you did. But you think business is a man’s world. You’re wrong, though, because I just saved you from selling your business to a liar. Ever since I met them, I knew something was off,” she says, gesturing wildly to me, then to Charlotte. “So I talked to Abe at dinner at McCoy’s, since we realized I’m going to the same college he attends. And guess what? He felt the same way about the happy couple, and we decided to work on it together to get to the bottom of this business deal, and the heart of the story. And it’s this, Daddy.”

She points at me, the accused. “Spencer Holiday faked his engagement to Charlotte Rhodes so you’d buy Katharine’s, thinking it would appear like the family friendly and wholesome business you want it to be, not something associated with someone best known for discussing dick pics in the business trades.” Her feet are planted wide, her hands on her hips, determination in her eyes. “How does that sound for a story that Abe can run tomorrow? Got an official press comment?”

Abe and Emily both stare at us with smug delight, but I zero in on Emily.

Mostly, I want to laugh and claim she’s making all this up because the little pathological liar is off her meds. But some small part of me wants to applaud the girl for her guts. I don’t like being the target of her underhanded tactics, but holy fucking balls. Emily has some big gonads, and she’s sticking it to her father for being a sexist pig. She’s also been playing all of us—that flirting at dinner was never flirting. She was playing me, trying to get to the bottom of the lie she sniffed out.

“Is this true?”

The question doesn’t come from Mr. Offerman. It comes from my father. The man I admire. The man I respect. The man who taught me to be better than I’ve been for the last week. Shame washes over me as Dad sidesteps Mr. Offerman. He’s not looking at the man on the other side of the business deal. He’s looking at his son.

His flesh and blood who lied to him. Who embarrassed him. Who hoodwinked everyone here.

My face burns. The fact that my feelings for Charlotte have become real is meaningless. None of that matters. I nod and start to fashion an answer.

But the slap of flip-flops on flimsy metal interrupts me. Charlotte races down the makeshift bleachers and across the grass and dirt.

“Stop,” she says, holding up a hand. She’s twisting her ring on her finger. “The fake engagement is my fault. Don’t blame Spencer.”

My father furrows his brow, and turns to her. “What do you mean?”

“It was my idea,” she says, contrition in her tone, guilt in her eyes. “I asked Spencer if he’d pretend to be engaged to me so my ex would stop bothering me so much.” Her voice is heavy. She tugs at the ring, and I grit my teeth, hating to see it come off her finger.

“That’s not true,” I say. She’s taking the fall, and I can’t let her. This is my mess, and I need to clean it up.

She raises her chin. “It is true,” she says, her tone firm and certain. Her eyes glare at me, and me alone. They say, don’t you dare interrupt me. Charlotte looks to my dad, then Mr. Offerman. “It’s all on me. I needed Spencer to pose as my fiancé so my ex would leave me alone. I live in the same building as him, and it’s been awful since the split. Everyone knows he cheated on me, and I’ve dealt with their stares and looks of pity. But when he started begging me every day to take him back, I needed to do something drastic to make it stop.”

Mrs. Offerman nods imperceptibly. Her eyes seem to say she understands Charlotte’s plight. Charlotte is so damn convincing—but then, she doesn’t have to be convincing. She just has to be honest. Nearly everything she’s said so far is the truth. Even if the initial idea came from me, the rest of her story adds up.

Unlike my ruse.

“Charlotte, you don’t have to do this,” I say softly, just to her.

She shakes her head and speaks to the group. “No, I do have to do this. I asked him to pretend to be engaged to me so I could finally have some peace where I live. But please don’t blame Spencer. The fake engagement was all my choice, and he went along with it because he’s a really great guy, and he just wanted to help me. We planned everything, every detail, including how we would end it.” She sighs, but holds her chin high. “After one week, and now it’s been a week. So, I guess this is it.” She tugs off the ring. Her eyes are darker than I’ve ever seen them before. Inscrutable. She looks to the others. “It was never real, but not for the reasons you think.” She plunks the ring in my hand, and curls my fingers around it. “Thank you for pretending for me.”

She wraps me in a hug. “I’m so sorry,” she whispers, and my muscles tighten with a sick hope as I wait for more words just for me, words like, I’d like to thank the Academy, or Do I get a gold star for that performance? But they don’t come, and her apology feels as real as any words she’s ever uttered.

She breaks the embrace, casts her eyes to everyone else, and repeats herself. “I’m sorry.”

She leaves, walking away from me. No just kidding comes my way, because this is all too real, and each step she takes crushes me. Like a fool, I stand frozen at home plate, my insides a churning mess of emotions as the embarrassment shifts into something worse. Hurt. So much damn hurt, like my heart has become bruised. She doesn’t love me.

It was never real.

Mr. Offerman turns to my father. His nostrils flare. His eyes are hard. “I don’t care whose idea it was. I don’t do business with liars. The deal is off,” he says, slicing his hand through the air.

Rihanna’s “Take a Bow” plays from Emily’s sound system.

I cringe, and Mr. Offerman roars at his daughter. “Enough.”

On that count, we agree.