Kiss Her Once for Me (71)

“Not. Helpful.”

“Look, you’ve now kissed your fiancé’s sister twice, so I’m not sure what you think is going to help you. There is no eleventh-hour Judy Greer pep talk coming your way.”

I hunker down on the washing machine, staring at Meredith in the blue light of the 3 a.m. laundry room hiding spot. “Okay, the first kiss was not my fault. There was mistletoe and drunk grandmas involved. And the second kiss—yes, fine, I take full responsibility for that one.”

“I guess you’re in one of those morally ambiguous rom coms. Like My Best Friend’s Wedding or Four Weddings and a Funeral.”

“Which am I?” I ask, fairly certain I don’t want to hear the answer. “Julia Roberts or Andie MacDowell?”

“You’re Dermot Mulroney,” Meredith answers. “You’re the douche marrying Cameron Diaz but still overtly flirting with Julia Roberts. Because Jack thinks you’re marrying her brother for real, and that she just kissed her brother’s fiancé.”

“But I don’t want to be Dermot Mulroney,” I whine.

“Tough shit.” Apparently Meredith’s capacity for empathy does not activate until after she’s had her coffee. “If you don’t want to be Dermot Mulroney, then you need to come clean to Jack about everything.”

“I can’t! Because of the money!”

Meredith already knows all of this. As soon as the love trapezoid got home from the Mountain Bar (Meemaw and Lovey had to come pick us up, and yes, that was the most awkward car ride of my life), I pretended to go to bed, then absconded with my electronic devices to draw until a less-cruel hour to call Meredith. The panels were sloppy, with an unfocused narrative and too much self-indulgence, but I had no intention of posting them, anyway. I hadn’t posted any more episodes of The Arrangement to Drawn2, not since everything started feeling too personal and too private. But that hasn’t stopped the number of views and likes from growing on the early episodes, my subscriptions from quadrupling, and my inbox from overflowing with unread messages. Even the numbers on the old Snow Day episodes have increased, new readers flocking to it in droves, and I feel slightly disquieted, knowing that story is a thinly veiled version of my story with Jack. At least, the version of our story I knew back then.

Since it was 5 a.m. Meredith’s time, I decided it was an acceptable hour to call a friend in circumstances such as these, and I did. And then I told her everything.

“Look, I advised you to enter this whole marriage scam in the beginning, but that was back when I thought there was a chance for you to fall in love with Andrew, before we found out Jack is his sister. Now the whole thing is just too complicated. As your unofficial lawyer, I’ve got to suggest you cut your fucking losses.”

“It’s not that simple. I’ve made a promise to Andrew, and this isn’t my secret to tell. And it’s not about me anymore. It’s about Jack.”

Meredith rubs sleep crust out of her eyes, completely unperturbed. “You’re lying to Jack for Jack?”

“You don’t understand because you’ve never had to deal with failure”—Meredith scoffs; I politely ignore her—“but Jack is taking a huge risk in opening this bakery. And what are you even suggesting I do, exactly? Confess my love to Jack?”

“Yes,” Meredith says, straight-faced. “That is literally exactly what I’m telling you to do.”

“I can’t! It’s ridiculous! You can’t be in love with someone you’ve known for a total of”—I count it out on my fingers, because it’s three in the morning, and my brain is now nothing more than a few pulverized brain cells. “Seven days? You can’t be in love with someone you’ve known for what amounts to a single week!”

“Says who?” Meredith, who’s spent the last seven years studying the law, who loves rules and guidelines and meticulous plans almost as much as I do, has clearly lost her mind.

“Says everyone. You know who falls in love that fast? Teenagers. Like Romeo and Juliet. And look how that ended up.”

“I don’t know, they banged at some point, so it wasn’t all bad.”

“I don’t want to end up drinking poison over Jack’s not-actually-dead body, Meredith!”

“Interesting that you cast yourself as Romeo in this scenario,” she calmly observes. “Are you spiraling right now? You sound like you’re spiraling.”

“Of course I’m spiraling! I’m in love with a woman I’ve only known for seven days!”

Because I am.

I shouldn’t be.

It isn’t logical.

I fell in love with her over the course of a single day, and I never quite fell out of love with her, and here I am, kissing her in bathrooms and screwing up her entire life. “What’s wrong with me, Mere?”

Meredith takes a slow, deep breath, probably contemplating the myriad ways to answer that question. You’re a failure and you’re a bad person both come to mind.

You’re a frozen burrito.

Or, You have untreated generalized anxiety disorder and should probably be on meds.

Or, You let your mom walk all over you.

What Meredith actually says is, “What if there’s nothing wrong with you at all?”

“Seems fake but explain.”