Turn 4 of 15

Head to the car with Jack and try to act natural

The walk to Jack's car takes exactly forty seconds, but it feels like a geological era. The heels click against the apartment hallway's linoleum, and the sound is sharp and feminine and yours. Your hips sway with each step in a way you can't seem to stop, the new geometry of your body demanding a gait that would have looked absurd an hour ago. You're holding the clutch in front of you with both hands, knuckles tight, and you make yourself loosen your grip. Act natural. You're just a woman walking to a car with a man. Nothing weird about that.

Jack unlocks his Civic with a beep and opens the passenger door for you. The gesture stops you mid-step. He's never done that before, not in ten years of friendship, and the fact that he's doing it now without thinking, like it's obvious, makes something flutter uncomfortably behind your ribs. You slide into the seat and the dress rides up your thighs, and you tug it down with a motion that feels practiced even though you've never had to tug a dress down before in your life.

Jack rounds the car and drops into the driver's seat. He starts the engine, checks his mirrors, and pulls out of the parking lot with the careful focus of someone trying very hard not to look at the person sitting next to him. You stare straight ahead through the windshield. The afternoon sun is warm on your bare arms, and the necklace hums softly against your skin. You can smell Jack's cologne from here, something woodsy and clean, and it's doing things to your pulse that cologne has never done before.

"So," you say, because the silence is becoming its own problem. "Tell me about her. The ex. The bride."

Jack's jaw tightens. He merges onto the highway, and for a moment you think he's going to deflect.

"Her name is Lauren," he says finally. "We dated for two years. I thought she was it, you know? The one." He glances at you, then back at the road.

"She dumped me six months ago because she said I was directionless. That I didn't have ambition." He laughs, but it's thin.

"She's marrying a guy named Chase who works in private equity and has a jawline you could use to open cans."

"So naturally your plan is to show up with a fake girlfriend you magicked out of your best friend."

"When you say it like that, it sounds insane."

"It sounds insane no matter how you say it."

He laughs for real this time, and the sound fills the small space of the car, and you feel yourself smiling in response, your whole body angling slightly toward him in the passenger seat. You notice it and make yourself stop, settling back against the headrest. The highway stretches ahead, and the wedding venue is maybe thirty minutes away. You have that long to figure out how to be someone you've never been, next to a person you're suddenly seeing in a light that has no business being this warm.