Real Fake Love (Copper Valley Fireballs #2)(4)

“Got any weed?” I ask Luca Rossi, who’s appointed himself my broken heart guard.

It’s like a bodyguard, except he’s protecting me from seeing people like my parents—Oh, Henrietta, AGAIN?—and my bridesmaids—she should’ve seen this coming. We TOLD her to get dresses that we could wear to the club this time, but did she listen? No. She’s bought FORTY BRIDESMAID DRESSES, and for what?—and also random people who keep asking him about how often he’s at weddings that don’t happen, which makes him scowl in a way that sends them running away.

He’s also protecting me from my perfect sister with her perfect husband and her perfect four children—that’s the three she’s given birth to, and the two she’s currently incubating, who each count as a half until they’re born and they become a family of nine, since they have the perfect dog and the perfect cat as well.

Wait. Ten.

I forgot about the bird.

Luca’s peering at me with she’s gone mad written in his green eyes. “She sounds annoying.”

I shove another handful of cake into my mouth as I realize I was muttering all of that out loud.

Hazard of the job.

Oh. My. God.

How am I going to do my job now?

“She even got the better name. Elsa. She’s freaking Elsa. How is that fair?”

“You didn’t have to date a guy named Jerry Butts if you wanted a good name.”

“I was going to hyphenate.”

He glances at me.

Back at the marquee my mom rented, still sitting on the patio, then reaches for a handful of wedding cake himself. “Mmph.”

I drop my head to my knees, twist a curler wrong, reach up to pull the damn thing out, and get cake in my hair. “Fine. Go on. Say it. Henri Bacon-Butts would’ve been a terrible name. But you know what? I have another name. And I like my other name just fine. Which means it doesn’t matter what my real name is.”

I pause.

Try to look at up at my frosted hair, get that weird pain in my eyeball that tells me my sister might not have been wrong all those years that she told me I’d get them stuck like that if I didn’t quit crossing them, and blink hard to get them unstuck. “Do you think frosting can dye hair?”

He doesn’t answer.

He’s something of a prick, which I know from listening to Jerry talk about him for the last thirteen months since we met. Yeah, I grew up with Luca Rossi. That baseball player on the billboards for Kangapoo Shampoo? We were best friends. He doesn’t have much time for me anymore, but man, I still remember the good old days…

I study his hair.

It is nice. Thick. Long, without being long. No fly-aways. A lovely chestnut brown.

Whereas I probably look better with the frosting in my hair.

“Why are you sitting here with me?”

“Because I didn’t know you were allergic to alcohol when I offered to take you to get drunk, and it would be awkward for me to leave now.”

“I don’t need a babysitter. It’s not like I haven’t done this before.”

He winces, then his eyes go flat again. “Been a hot mess in a trash bag and curlers?”

I’m a nice person. Yes, I torture a character or three over the course of a month when I’m writing, but in real life, I’m a nice person.

But it’s pure instinct to grab another handful of wedding cake, with its bright purple frosting, and smear it all over that perfect coif of his.

He jerks away. “What the hell?”

I don’t know.

I don’t know what the hell. Elsa and I never wrestled growing up, because she’s freaking perfect Elsa. And I’ve never wrestled with a boyfriend or fiancé, and it would be weird to wrestle with my girlfriends, because we don’t have that kind of relationship, and also, nearly all of them are virtual friends from my online writer circles since most of my other girlfriends are either cousins who have to be nice to me or my former fiancés’ friends, but dammit, I want to take him down.

And so as he jerks away, I double down, grabbing more cake and lunging. I get him in a headlock and smear that cake all over his shiny, perfect, thick mane of hair.

I swear I wouldn’t have done it if he hadn’t called me a hot mess in a trash bag and curlers, because he’s not wrong, except he looks so freaking perfect sitting there next to me, and I can’t take perfect today.

Not when I’m anything but.

He scrambles to his feet.

I wrap my legs around his waist and hang on, rubbing that frosting in so deep that he’s gonna have sugar roots for days after this.

Also, good god, the man is large.

“What are you doing?” he hollers.

“I’m caking you!” I shriek back.

“That’s not a thing!”

“I make things up for a living, so if I say it’s a thing, it’s a thing!”

He’s twisting, but I’m a damn spider monkey, and I’m not letting go until his entire face is coated in cake, because I hurt.

I hurt, dammit.

Jerry didn’t want me badly enough that he decided today was the day to grow a pair and go after Luca’s mom, which is probably the true reason Luca’s sitting here with me—we’ve both been deceived, and it hurts.

Winston Randolph dumped me four days before our wedding to run away and become a Buddhist monk. We bonded over spiritual enlightenment, and even though we were only together four months, I thought we had the one true path.