"Hey fake fiance," I say, not realizing how loud I am speaking until his hand is against my lips.
"Shush, don't speak so loud," he tells me. He holds my hand and we make our way to a deserted spot in the gardens where we assume that we cannot be overheard and sit down on the grass.
To my surprise, Luis puts his arm around my shoulder and says: "I can't keep doing this."
"Doing what?" I ask him, entirely oblivious to what he is talking about.
"I shouldn't have proposed to you," he finally says. "I got a little carried away and I need to be honest with you... Hell, you only just found out what I do! Nicole, I need to tell you something..."
"Yeah, you kind of did get a little carried away," I reply.
There is no doubt about it. This is certainly one hell of a mess, that we have gotten ourselves into. Sure, Adam devised the entire plan but the pair of us are both adults and we chose to go along with it from the beginning.
But regardless of what he has to tell me, my mind is currently elsewhere.
"My mother's dying..." I tell him, quicker than he can say just what he was hoping to tell me from the start.
"What did you just say?" he asks me.
I am still in disbelief as I speak these words: "She has cancer, they just told me this afternoon and I have been putting off telling Adam. I'm so sorry to bring you into all of this... we only just met and everything seems to be getting out of hand..."
"I'm so sorry to hear that," he says. There is a deep sympathy within his tone. Why is it that whenever you tell people news like this they always say that they are sorry?
It's not like it's their fault or anything. It's not like an apology can make it all better. What does 'I'm sorry' even mean? Like, are they sorry that they can't do anything to change things?
Are they sorry that their existence made it happen? Because that notion is ridiculous! I'm not telling him because I think that he can make a difference.
I'm telling him because I don't know what to do with that news. I don't know what I can do to change the fact that my mother is terminally ill.
I am telling him because I feel the need to tell somebody and if Adam were here, he would be the person that I would be talking to. But instead, I'm telling a guy who is nothing more than an escort that Adam asked to play a role.
A guy who I just vomited on in the middle of a New York City cafe yesterday.
"So, do we tell them the truth?" Luis asks me. "Do we tell them that this was all just some scheme of Adam's that he came up with because of the pressure? Just something we decided to play along with?"
As he asks me that question, I really don't know the answer. I wish I did. We are stuck at a crossroad. If we tell them the truth, then we risk breaking their hearts and destroying the happiness of others, as fake as it may be.
Before I can give him an answer there is the sudden clearing of a throat from behind, making us both jump. We turn to see the face of the person who has heard our entire conversation and for a brief moment, we feel the ground disappear from beneath us.
My father emerges from the darkness and into the light of the garden lanterns that are surrounding us.
"Dad!" I stammer. He has clearly been drinking a lot and crying. Neither one of us has any idea just how much of our conversation he has heard.
"You keep up the charade!" he tells us.
"We what?" I stammer.
"Sir?" Luis asks. Luis and I are both frozen. Clearly, he heard the whole thing. Is he kidding?
Chapter Nine: Keep Calm and Carry On
Start from the beginning
