Best Fake Fiance (Loveless Brothers 2)

Then I hunch over the ring in the not-very-good light, heart still thumping, as I assess it for any possible damage — a prong torn off, the gem fractured, I don’t know — but it’s fine.

I sit there, staring at it, for a long moment. I tell myself that literally millions of people own engagement rings, that plenty of them probably wear them to bed, and that these are made to go on hands. They can probably stand up to cotton sheets.

I close my hand around it and get out of bed, because I can’t wear this while I sleep. I’ll wake up every forty-five minutes to double check that I haven’t somehow swallowed it or something, and that’s no way to live.

I need a ring receptacle. What I really want is, I don’t know, a wall safe with a thumbprint scanner, because while you can lose keys and forget combinations, you can’t lose or forget a thumbprint.

I don’t have a wall safe. I don’t even have a fireproof lockbox, even though my mom keeps telling me to get one. My ‘important documents’ are just in a cardboard box under my bed, a fact that made both my mom and my sister briefly close their eyes and breathe deeply when they found out.

In the absence of something that locks, I head into the kitchen and grab a mug. I have about two thousand too many, because whenever I find a particularly weird one, I can’t help but buy it. That also means that other people buy me weird mugs, so appropriately, I find one that Daniel gave me last year.

It’s got a cartoon illustration of several pinup-type women facing away from the camera, wearing thongs, and in goofy all-caps text it says VIRGINIA BEACH: NO BUTTS ABOUT IT!

First, no butts about what? ‘Virginia Beach’ isn’t really a statement.

Second, there are clearly some butts about it because the butts are right there on the mug. I guess the argument could be made that the butts aren’t really about Virginia Beach, because butts simply exist and aren’t really about anything, but then it might seem like I’ve given this dumb mug way more thought than I should have.

I drop the ring in, and it lands with a satisfying clink. Then I double-check the locks on my door, put the mug on my dresser, and get back into bed.

After congratulating myself on actually finding a proper spot for the ring instead of sticking it wherever and telling myself I’d deal with it in the morning, I fall asleep.Chapter EightDanielI unlock the side door to the brewery, step inside, and take a deep breath. Instantly, it relaxes me: the smell of grain and malt, the sweet bready aroma that comes from boiling wort, the sharp tangy afternotes of hops.

It smells like work, and thank God for that. Loveless Brewing feels like the one area of my life that’s going well right now: we’re increasing production and expanding perfectly in line with Seth’s business plan. Whatever he’s doing, in terms of advertising and distribution and all that, it’s working.

I pretty much just make the beer, talk us up to potential vendors, and stay out of his way.

I head to my office, checking the pressure gauges and thermometers on the huge, upside down cone stainless steel tanks as I do.

In my office, I fire up my computer, put on some coffee in the break room, then come back and open the brewery’s spreadsheet.

Beer operates on a very specific schedule — even more so if you want to maximize efficiency and profit, like we obviously do. The master spreadsheet is half me (the beer schedules) and half Seth (the profit maximizing). It’s also complicated, color-coded, partly automated, and a thing of beauty.

Today I’m dry-hopping a batch of IPA, filtering and bottling a lager, and making a very small batch of an experimental amber ale that I’ve been wanting to try. Easy. Straightforward. Beer can’t protest. It’s not my seven-year-old daughter waking up late and then stomping off to the bus, furious at me because she couldn’t find the right glittery headband.

I offered her a different, shiny headband, but did she want it? No. No, she did not.

It’s not my best friend wearing my great-grandmother’s ring and kissing me outside my mom’s house and… no.

I’m not thinking about that this morning. I’m not wondering if I really buried the past as well as I thought I did.

I’m thinking about beer and nothing else. I pull my to-do list for the day up on my screen, give it a quick read over, and then head for my office door so I can get started.

Just as I’m almost there, the phone on my desk rings. I frown and check the caller ID, because it’s just past nine in the morning and beer people don’t tend to call that early.