My Super-Hot Fake Wedding Date

We were both quiet for a second, but I knew what she was thinking. “I haven’t seen Bob at all,” I said before she could ask. I hadn’t said his name all week—it tasted funny on my lips.

“Didn’t you order yo

ur usual stuff from Amazon?” My friend knew me too well.

I traced my finger along the windowsill. “Yes. But it was a different driver. No big deal. He must just have another route this week.” In fact, I’d paid extra for shipping and ordered refrigerator filters I didn’t even need. I’d worked from home that afternoon then moped when the non-Bob delivery guy dropped them off. Not that I wanted to see him. Or talk to him. Or anything.

“You haven’t called him?”

I cleared my throat. “Why would I call him?”

“Because you want to talk to him?” Josie used the same tone she used when speaking to her four-year-old niece: gentle but firm.

“I don’t want to talk to him.”

“You never heard his side of the story. You don’t even really know what happened, Mads.”

I pressed my forehead against the window. “I know enough. In one breath, he was kissing me. In the next, he was running off to comfort her. I might not be a relationship expert, but the signs seem pretty clear, even to me. He didn’t want to be with me. He had something more important to do. Why would I humiliate myself by making him spell it out to me in explicit, excruciating detail?”

“What would you do if Dean Smith called you?” Josie asked. I pictured her next to an enormous fireplace in her upscale hotel, wearing a chunky-knit sweater and booties, her hair and makeup perfect. She probably had ten guys checking her out at that moment and was clueless about it.

“I’m sorry…what?” I was too busy imaging her outfit and being pissed that she was trying to give me relationship advice—which I desperately needed—to understand her question. “Dean Smith? Huh?”

“What if your ex-boyfriend called you and said he needed help? What if he was having a crisis and turned to you? What would you do?”

“I’d tell him that we broke up over a decade ago and that he should call someone else.”

“Let’s say it hadn’t been that long. That you broke up last year,” Josie said. “Just for argument’s sake.”

“I’d tell him to leave me alone.” But that sounded so mean. “I mean, I guess I’d talk to him first and see what his problem was.”

“Because that’s the decent thing to do.” Josie sounded mildly triumphant. “What if Bob was just trying to be decent?”

“To the woman who ripped his heart out?”

She sighed. “That’s what nice guys do. That’s why we say they finish last—they get no credit for their good deeds.”

“Even if that’s true, and he’s not still wrapped up in his ex, it doesn’t matter.” I sighed. “He beat my father at tennis and knocked Tyler out. My family didn’t even say goodbye, and I haven’t heard from my mother all week. He’s been blackballed.”

“Since when did you care what your family thought?”

“Since I saw Sienna get married on our property, and it was perfect, and everybody was happy.” Except me.

“Your family is a lot of things, but perfect isn’t one of them.” Josie paused for a beat. “What you want is what’s important.”

“Like I said, it doesn’t matter. I haven’t heard from him, which makes it pretty clear that he’s probably psyched he escaped the Delaney loony bin.”

Josie sighed again, and I knew she was shaking her head. “For someone who takes so many risks in your work—I don’t know. What’s the worst thing that could happen?”

Marcus buzzed through on my intercom. “Madison, I’ve got Jesse from the brokerage firm on line three.”

“Josie, I have to run. See you Friday?”

“Of course.”

I hung up my cell phone and straightened my dress, preparing for my work call. But in the back of my mind, I mulled Josie’s question. What’s the worst thing that could happen?

Again, being an A student came in handy—of course I knew the answer. I could get my heart broken.