I hesitate, flinching a little bit. Even though I know we’re play-acting, hearing him say those words out loud to me cuts into my soul.
“I did love you as best I could! And apparently that’s not enough for you! We should have known this would never work out! We’re too young to get married, Luke! I’ve got my life to live and you do too!”
Okay, now the party has died down and I’m pretty sure everyone on the main floor is just staring at us.
“I changed everything about myself for you,” he says loudly, with wild gesticulations. “I pretended I liked freaking Desperate Housewives. I even told you I don’t like BJs. Newsflash: Every guy likes them. More so when they’re married. I hate you, and everything this relationship has become! I wish we never started it!”
I’m shaking. This real life theatre is a bit much, even for me.
“I can’t,” I say, softly.
“No, you’re doing good,” Luke whispers. “Come on.”
I shake my head, and a tear streams down my cheek. “Lucas. No. I can’t…pretend like this anymore.”
His eyes widen. “Cielo. Don’t do this. We’re so close.”
The entire room of fifty or more people is staring at us, open-mouthed.
I walk over to the music, turn it off, and stand on a chair that puts my head close to the ceiling.
“Listen up, people. Get your phones out and record what I’m about to say. I don’t even really care anymore.”
“Cielo, please. We’re almost to the finish line.”
“No.” I shake my head. “The truth needs to come out. I can’t live like this anymore.”
26
Luke
Sky stands on a chair with all the eyes in the room watching her.
I could say I’m surprised, but the truth is, I’m not. Honesty is one of Sky’s top virtues, and I had a funny feeling today something like this could happen.
It didn’t feel good yelling for the world to overhear that Sky is a bad partner when the truth is precisely the opposite. I couldn’t ask for anyone better.
Watching her grandstand right now though, I’m torn.
Operation Romper is coming to an end. The whole campus is going to realize we made fools out of them, which is not going to have them feeling too great.
All I can think about as I watch her, looking so sexy in her denim short shorts and pink one-piece, is that I want her. Now and maybe even forever. I want to put her in a box and bring her with me wherever I end up next year.
“Attention everyone,” she says in a loud, firm voice. The music is off, and the crowd is dead silent. “I have something I need to tell you all. You just saw Luke and I fighting as a married couple. Well, here’s the thing. We’re not married, never were. We started this whole thing as a ruse.”
She takes off her ring to gasps of confusion from the crowd.
“See, we have a friend who’s about to make the biggest mistake of his life and marry the wrong woman, and he’s so love drunk he can’t see it,” she continues.
Sky’s face turns red, and she starts to stumble over her words. “But we…thought…”
The drunken crowd starts to get antagonizing.
“What are you even talking about, you psycho!” someone yells, and everyone laughs.
Sky blushes, and my blood boils. I can’t let her crash and burn up there alone. I push a chair over to where she is and stand up right next to her.
I extend my arms out toward the crowd. “Here ye, here ye. Skylar is right. And this was all my idea. We thought that if we had a crazy break up in public, my best friend Ryan would see how bad of a life choice he’s making and change his mind.”
I scan the crowd for their reactions, but Jennifer and Ryan are nowhere to be found.
“Wait a second,” Grant shouts out. “You two really aren’t married?”
We shake our heads. Sky says, “We can’t be married. I’m going to the Peace Corps, he’s going to the major leagues.”
“But…you’re together,” Grant offers. “I mean there’s no way you guys were pretending how hard you were falling for each other.”
Skylar grins. “It’s…complicated.”
“So you’re not breaking up?” Grant asks.
Sky and I look at each other and shrug. “We were never officially together,” Sky says.
“Party on.” Grant nods. “So you just did this to…break up Ryan and Jennifer? And how was that going to work exactly?”
“It was called Operation Romper,” Sky explains. “Romper is the infinitive form of the Spanish verb, ‘to break.’”
“Hey, can we get the music back on?” someone else says. People are officially losing interest in us already.
Sky turns to me. “I did not think that would go as smoothly as it did.”
“Me neither…where are Ryan and Jennifer, though?” My stomach knots. “Did they miss it?”
Taking Skylar’s hand, we get down from our chairs.
“Hey Grant, you see Ryan and Jennifer?” I ask.
He points toward the back doors that open up onto the patio.
I guide Skylar, slicing through the crowd until we get outside. We see Ryan and Jennifer standing outside at a tree fifty feet removed from the action, and they appear to be having an animated, serious talk.
We hustle over toward them.
As we close in on them, I notice Ryan’s hands are shaking. Jennifer is crying.
“Everything okay?” Skylar asks.
Jennifer sniffles. “We just broke up.”
Skylar and I dart each other a look.
“Oh,” I say. “I’m sorry to hear that.”
“It was my idea, but Jennifer agrees,” Ryan says. There’s a self-assuredness in his voice that reminds me of the Ryan of old.
“We’re not really in love,” Jennifer says through sobs. “I was doing this for the wrong reasons. Security. A safety net.”
“This was the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life,” Ryan adds, looking at us. His expression is drained. Somehow he expresses both relief and anxiety at the same time. “And I have to thank you two for inspiring me.”
“For inspiring you?” I ask.
He nods. “Seeing how in love you and Skylar are, for real, well, I realized something. Jennifer and I don’t have the closeness to sustain our relationship. Not like you two. You guys are something special.”
Jennifer adds, “I didn’t really believe in true love until I saw you two together.”
Me and Sky’s faces go pale.
“Oh.” I swallow. “Thanks?”
“You…didn’t hear any of what happened in the party just now, did you?” Sky asks.
“No. Why?” Ryan asks.
I cut in. “No reason. Look…”
I look at Sky. The way she’s looking at me right now gives me a flashback to how she looked the other night in the library after we were done. She’s looking to me for…what, exactly?
“Look, what?” Ryan asks.
“I’m going to be real right now. Sky and I, we’re not married.”