Real Fake Love (Copper Valley Fireballs #2)(3)

Even my mother winces.

He shakes his head. “I don’t know, though. I don’t. Love’s this…this thing that people want to have so badly that they lie to themselves and say they’re in it when what they really want is to know there’s someone who has to have sex with them every day for the rest of their lives, or someone who’ll make sure the bills get paid, or someone to harp on because they want to be in control. Love’s not real.”

“This is cold feet, man.”

“I can’t marry Henri,” he shrieks. “I can’t do it. She’ll drive me fucking insane within six months. I thought I loved her because she’s like this siren who preaches that love’s so real and it’s awesome and I do like having sex regularly, and I thought I felt it, but it was all what I wanted to feel, and not what I feel at all.”

“Jerry. Shh. Quiet, man, they can—”

“Do you regret it? That’s what I need to know. If you had to do it over again, would you have gone through with the wedding?”

I squeeze my eyes shut.

This is not the time and place to answer that question.

“That’s what I thought. Ever since I put a ring on it, I’ve been wearing a noose too. And not a noose around my neck. It’s like a noose around my balls. It doesn’t feel good. I realized I can’t marry Henri, and for the first time in weeks, I can breathe without my nuts choking.”

There’s a gasp outside the door, and Jerry goes as white as the damn monument outside.

Minus the black googly eyes, of course.

“That’s her,” he whispers. “Oh, god, that’s her. Hide me. Save me. Protect me.”

The door wrenches open, and gaping at us in the doorway is a fresh-faced woman wearing a button-down flannel shirt that would make her look like she’s planning to go cut down a few trees if it weren’t for the hoop skirt covered by a plastic trash bag hanging off her hips and the rollers standing tall in her brown hair.

Jerry tries to hide behind me, which doesn’t work. I’m not a wall, and there’s not enough space in here.

“Jerry?” The bride’s eyebrows crease. “This isn’t…you’re not…oh, god. You are. I heard you and I thought you were talking in metaphors about seeing your cousins, but you were talking about…leaving me.”

“I’m sorry, Henri.” His voice is muffled. “It’s not you. It’s me. I—I—I have a crush on Luca’s mom!”

“What?” Yeah, that was me and Mom, together.

“It’s true,” he says. “I’ve had a crush on Morgan for years. I’m sorry, Luca, but I don’t call you because I like you. I call you because I like your mom. I just—she’s so out of my league—and so much older—but god, I love older women. They’re so experienced. And they don’t have hang-ups about their bodies because once they hit forty, they don’t give a damn and that’s so effing sexy.”

I’m gaping.

Mom’s gaping.

The bride’s stuttering.

Pretty sure we’re not all just shocked he used the word effing in a sentence, either.

Jerry shoves me at the bride, then thrusts his fingers into my mom’s short hair, goes up on his tiptoes since she has him by two inches even without the heels, and slams his mouth against hers.

I choke.

The bride—Henri—gasps.

Mom goes completely rigid, but only for a second before her hands drift to his waist, and—

And I cannot watch this.

I turn, and the bride and I accidentally lock eyes.

Her cheek is twitching like she’s trying to hold in the tears, and there’s a broken desolation haunting every speck of her face. Her chest heaves, and dammit.

If people want to be idiots and buy into all of this love crap, that’s their problem.

But this scene?

It’s all too familiar.

And I still have regrets about the day I was in Jerry’s shoes.

I sincerely doubt any part of his story is identical to mine, but the end result is the same.

“He’s not going to marry me,” she whispers.

“Fuck him.” Fuck him?

Probably fuck me.

Because while I did a lot wrong on the day that I was in Jerry’s shoes, it’s taught me one thing.

And that’s how to temporarily do something right. “C’mon. Let’s go get you drunk.”





2





Henrietta Leonora Bacon, aka a jilted bride finally facing that she has an unfortunate addiction to love

Of all the injustices in the world, being allergic to alcohol has to be the biggest.

Hey, Henri, you’ve just been left at the altar again! What are you going to do to drown your misery at knowing you’re not the marrying kind?

Well, Bob, maybe I’ll do three shots of vodka and end it all right here!

Except I can’t.

My cat needs me. My readers need me, or so I like to think. And possibly I need me, but since I can’t get drunk, I don’t know if I’d reach a point of enlightenment where I’d begin to understand why I continually do this to myself.

I shove another handful of my wedding cake into my mouth on the bank of Harmony Lake behind the country club where I was supposed to be dancing at my reception right now.