Page 46 of Rosé with My Fake Fiancé
I give up waiting and send Luc another text, asking him to call me. When I get back to my apartment, I pull up the group chat.
Tessa
I’m worried about Luc.
He’s not here yet. What if he’s given up?
Dots appear and disappear as my friends type, but no messages come in. My heart clenches, and I chew on my lower lip. Do they think he’s given up, too?
The phone buzzes in my hand, but it’s not a message, it’s a group video call. I answer, and the screen fills with Emma, Sara, and Jade’s faces.
“Luc has not given up on you,” Jade says firmly.
I’m surprised by how sure she sounds. “How do you know?”
“He’s crazy about you. We can all tell.”
Sara and Emma agree.
“It just doesn’t make sense.”
There’s silence after my confession, and then Emma speaks softly. “James really did a number on you, didn’t he?”
I close my eyes. These ideas about myself have been rattling around in my head for quite some time, but it takes courage to unravel them and pull them out, even to my best friends, people who I know, undoubtedly, have my best interest at heart.
“What if this is it for me? What if I’m just never supposed to get married?”
“Tessa.” Jade’s voice is filled with sympathy.
“When I turned forty, I gave up. I thought if it hadn’t happened by then, then it probably wouldn’t happen. If I was destined to be single my whole life, then I might as well accept it.”
Someone hums, and they wait for me to keep going.
“And I did. You know what they say; love finds you when you stop looking. Sure enough, there was James. Divorced and a friend of the family and successful and good-looking. I thought, finally, finally! He looked so good on paper, right? We had so much in common, and he seemed perfect.”
Looking back, I wonder if I moved our relationship along too quickly because I thought the whole thing was a miracle. Maybe I went in with my expectations far too high.
“Are you worried it’s not going to last again?”
“I’m worried that I’ll get my hopes up, and it feels worse every time. And Luc, he’s young and optimistic. What future does he even see in me? I just want to protect him from all the heartbreak I had.”
“You can’t, though,” Jade says. “He’s a grown man. He’s in his thirties!”
“Barely.”
“Do you remember us at that age? We’d already had heartbreak and loss and our biggest fears realized.”
Jade’s right, of course. Between the four of us, we’d gone through our own fair share of trauma, from Jade’s cancer to Sara losing her husband to parents and friends dying.
“No one’s hung up on Luc’s age except you,” Emma says. “Let Luc pave his own way. If it leads to heartbreak, that’s just part of life, and you can’t protect him from that. What if it doesn’t? You deserve love. I promise you are too young to give it up.”
Sara chimes in. “Besides, looking good on paper doesn’t mean squat. On paper, James seemed perfect. On paper, my apartment looked perfect.”
“Perfect on paper lies,” Jade adds.
“I took a leap of faith by getting into a stranger’s car,” Sara continues. “I know it’s not a perfect analogy because it was high risk, and I was just trying to find a comfortable and safe place to live. But opening up to Luc is high riskandhigh reward. He could be the love of your life, Tessa, and you deserve that.”
I chew on my lip, nervous and excited, because no one knows me better than these women.
