Kiss Her Once for Me (19)
So I start outlining the past twenty-four hours in a fictional form: the promotion, the maybe-date, the arrangement with Andrew, the Target ring. I fictionalize it, but I barely have to dramatize it—the whole thing is absolutely absurd. By the time I’ve distilled it down to a short, succinct narrative that can be consumed in a series of images, it’s almost four in the morning. I usually sleep on an episode for a night before posting it, so I can come back to it with fresh eyes the next day. But I’m beyond my capacity to care about a few technical imperfections, and I prepare to post it to The Perpetual Suck.
Except… I study the panels in front of me. They don’t quite fit with the other episodes of The Perpetual Suck: anecdotes about the time someone brought a chicken onto the MAX and it pecked a hole through my favorite leggings; the time a customer at Roastlandia insisted I call our harvesters in Ethiopia to verify the beans were never stored in plastic; the time I saw Fred Armisen outside of ?Por Qué No? (That one didn’t suck, though the line for tacos did take an hour.)
This—the panels about Andrew—feels different. It feels like something new.
I haven’t wanted to create something new in a long time.
I make a snap decision. Instead of uploading the new episode to The Perpetual Suck, I create a new series and title it The Arrangement.
“Episode One: When a Man Asks You to Fake-Marry Him.”
I post it before I can think twice. Then I make another perhaps-unwise 4 a.m. decision. I open Instagram, and for a minute, I stare at Andrew’s perfectly curated grid, a mixture of hiking selfies, gym selfies, and shirtless mirror selfies.
Two hundred thousand dollars. I could create an entirely new life.
I take a deep breath. Then I click on the message button on his profile and begin to type.
Chapter Six
Saturday, December 17, 2022
“I thought only racoons lived in this building,” Andrew says on my doorstep Saturday afternoon. Then, peering around me into the caverns of my apartment: “Oh. I see only racoons do live here.”
“We can’t all be heirs to Fortune 500 companies. And, you know, there is a serious affordable housing crisis in Portland.”
“But the smell.”
“Let’s just go.” I attempt to shield his view of my pitiful abode, but he steps around me.
“I should probably know where my fiancée lives.”
I flinch at that word, even though it’s accurate. Fiancée.
Three days ago, I agreed to be Andrew’s fiancée in exchange for two hundred thousand dollars. Andrew had only two conditions. First, that no one can know the relationship is fake. And second, that I have to spend Christmas with his family at their cabin on Mount Hood. Of course, Greg had scheduled me to work the holidays.
So, on Thursday, I went into Roastlandia, threw my apron down on the counter and quit. Ari cried as she hugged me goodbye.
Yesterday, Andrew and I spent five hours in line at the courthouse to apply for a marriage license, and I had a panic attack in a dimly lit hallway thinking about spending an entire week at a cabin with strangers. By last night, over fifty thousand people had liked the first episode of my new webcomic. I’d feel awful for vaguely exploiting Andrew’s life story if it weren’t for the fact that he says, “You’re not a serial killer, are you?” as he does a slow pivot around my studio apartment. He takes in the sight of the futon (which doubles as my bed), the desk (which doubles as my kitchen table), the shower rod in the corner of the room where I hang my clothes. “Because I’m getting distinct serial-killer vibes.”
“I’m just poor, you asshole,” I say as I sling my shoulder bag across my body and reach for my duffle. “Don’t criminalize poor people.”
He looks positively aghast. “I’m not! But Oliver, this is horrible. Quite possibly the worst thing I’ve ever seen. And I once spent two weeks on a party boat sailing around the South Pacific with twenty guys from my frat, and the plumbing stopped working on day three.”
“Thanks for that comparison.”
Andrew looks truly stricken. “This is the apartment you never leave? This cannot be good for your mental health.”
“It’s not.” As much as I’m dreading the next week, I don’t want to spend another minute with Andrew in my apartment. “Can we go?”
“Wait, is that what you’re wearing?” he asks, one prim eyebrow arched in judgment.
I look down at my winter boots, my Old Navy jeans, my She-Ra T-shirt, and the gray cardigan I threw over the top. “Yep. This is what I’m wearing, and if this arrangement is going to work, you can’t micromanage my wardrobe, and you definitely don’t get to dress me up to make me look more respectable for your family. I’m not Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman.”
Andrew fights off a smile as he reaches out to take my duffle. “We’ll add it to the napkin. No Pretty Woman–ing you.”
Add it to the napkin was his response every time I texted him with a new stipulation to our agreement over the past couple of days. Well, and one time he responded, I don’t know any notary publics who work at one in the morning, but I promise to have my lawyer draw something up.
I wasn’t going to marry a man—wasn’t going to spend Christmas at his parents’ cabin—without a guarantee that I’d get my two hundred thousand dollars when this was over.