Total pages in book: 76
Estimated words: 72655 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 363(@200wpm)___ 291(@250wpm)___ 242(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 72655 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 363(@200wpm)___ 291(@250wpm)___ 242(@300wpm)
“I don’t think that’s a rich person thing. I think rich people care about loving and being loved as well.”
“Okay, maybe, but he doesn’t,” Gen replies with a sigh.
“You do. And that’s all that’s important.”
“So how could my parents do this to me? This is all because my mom started doing the country club thing last year. She meets all these other rich women, and nice or not, things get out of hand. Like this. Dates get set up, and weddings get planned. They’ve probably already picked out names for their grandkids.” She slams her hands over her eyes.
“I was kind of surprised when you told me she’d set you up on a blind date,” I admit. “I don’t think it’s right, but it’s just a few hours. You just have to go and get it over with. Just act positively unlikable. Then he won’t want a second date, and there won’t be any babies, bloodlines, marriage of the season weddings, or trophy wife status.”
Gen starts to sniffle—she always did like a good oxymoron—but then her bright blue eyes sweep up to me. “Can you go on the date for me?”
“What?!” The mossy boulder couch is just barely deep enough to keep me from flying off the end.
Not the deep end, thankfully, although I’ve had enough of that in my life over the past few years. Just the armless end.
“You could just pretend you’re me for a few hours.” Oh no. Gen’s using the sad, puppy dog, wheedling tone. “You could be terrible and make him not like you. It would be funny.”
“Babe! Just reschedule. You said he’s gone through like thirty dates already. It wouldn’t take much to make him not like you. He sounds fussy as fussy gets.”
“No! I can’t risk it! I’ll clam up, and then I won’t say anything at all, which will be just what he wants. Then he’ll be calling me for date two, and my mom will go out and buy baby name books, and my fate will be sealed. You know me. I can’t be awful to anyone, and I’m a terrible actress. He’ll like me. I just know it. And that will be the end of me.”
“You could just tell him you’re not interested.”
“That won’t work!” Gen has pink flats on, and she kicks her one foot out so hard that the flat flies off her foot and lands smack dab in the middle of the hairy green rug. “He’d just start listing reasons why we make a good team. He’d probably say we don’t need to like each other and that we just need to get along. Then, I’d protest, and he’d make another list, one that involves my parents and guilt and how this is best for everyone, and it will work out. And somehow, I’ll get talked into it.”
I don’t want to admit it, but Genevieve does have the softest soul of anyone I’ve ever met. It’s a great thing, but she’s the kind of person who gives scam callers money out of the goodness of her heart. I’m serious. It’s happened like five times. She also donates tons of money to many charities and spends most of her free time volunteering. I use the word free time lightly because she’s a nurse.
Who obviously should have known about there being eggs in meringues.
She’s really an amazing human being. I can see her getting talked into a blind date and not being able to talk her way out of it because she doesn’t want to hurt or displease anyone.
“I can’t do that. I can’t pretend I’m you.” Does it make me a terrible person that playing a hypothetical blind date out in my head with me as Gen and ruining it in the most spectacular fashion makes me want to laugh? I guess not because that’s just me imagining a good rom-com moment. It’s not real. It’s not going to be real.
I’ve had precious little to laugh about in my love life over the past two years. After being horribly betrayed by a jerkface—there really is no other term for a fiancé who meets someone selling sunflowers at a market one afternoon and then runs off to Europe with them the next day, never to return—I did what any normal person would do. I went through the first stages of denial. I got angry and bitter, I shut down and felt nothing for a long time, and eventually, I got on with life the best I could while feeling like a thousand years older than I really am.
“You could! Please, Evie! I need this. I need this so badly. If you don’t do this, I’m finished.”
“Goodness. You’re not finished.”
Her tear-stained eyes say otherwise. There’s real fear in them. And panic. Shit, she totally ate those meringues on purpose. “I’ll do something for you in exchange. I’ll do anything you want.”