“This is Marco Kimball,” she said as we walked up to the first photo stop. I hoped I didn’t look awkward and that there wasn’t too much glare from my glasses from the flash. I felt pretty confident in how I looked, given how closely I’d followed Jen’s diagrams, and I was wearing a sleek full-length black dress.
I was a long way from my Arwen debacle.
Someone asked who I was, and I expected the publicist to introduce me as just his date, but she said, “This is Anna Ellis, an up-and-coming cosmetic chemist. You should keep an eye on her.”
Marco’s hand squeezed mine. He had done this. He’d had her say that. No one here cared who I was or about my job.
It was things like that—those little things that he would do and say that made me think I was important to him.
I’d been worried that Marco was going to push Craig out of my heart, and I could feel it happening. I tried to conjure up that fantasy of Craig, walking together near the water, sitting on that bench, but it was always Marco’s face that I saw.
Like I’d gotten over Craig completely.
And while Marco was attentive and fun and everything you could ask for in a fake boyfriend, it shouldn’t have made my feelings change.
Because he hadn’t done or said anything to make me think that he might feel the same. He called me his friend or his buddy often. He brought up Craig. Where I had once been desperate for any information about Craig and his life, now I found it annoying.
I had to keep my heart locked up. I just needed to spend time with Craig again. Let myself feel those feelings, remind myself why it was that I had fallen for him in the first place. Of course I was going to feel this way about Marco when I spent all my free time with him doing so many fun activities. Wouldn’t I feel the same way if I’d spent that time with Craig?
Craig would find out that Marco and I were “together,” he’d get jealous, end his engagement, pursue me, and it would be done.
I’d get everything I ever wanted.
And as I was having that thought, and ruminating about all the time I’d been spending with Marco in the past week, a timer went off. I was in my grandparents’ kitchen, baking my lipstick and daydreaming about seeing Marco again tonight.
I took my mood ring lipstick out of the oven.
It was perfect. The texture, the appearance, the smooth glide against my fingertip. I had done it. I set a timer to let it cool, and it was the longest half hour of my life.
I put the lipstick on and ran to a mirror. It was a rose-pink color. I went into the kitchen and got ice out of the ice maker in our new fridge （which was, in fact, life changing）。 I put it against my lips.
My grandfather walked into the kitchen. “Why are you kissing ice, sweetheart?”
I pulled the ice cube away from my mouth. “What color are my lips, Grandpa?”
He peered over the top of his glasses at me. “A very faint pink?”
Yes! I ran into the bathroom and looked at my reflection. He was right. A soft bubble-gum pink. “I did it!” I shrieked with excitement.
“Good for you!” my grandpa said from the kitchen, even though he had no idea what he was commending me for. “Did you hear about the dyslexic ornithologist? He was a terrible word botcher.”
I didn’t have time for jokes. I had to tell someone. I ran upstairs to get my phone, and the first person I wanted to call was Marco.
So I did.
He answered quickly. “If you’re asking for a Monopoly rematch, no can do. Tonight is my stepmother’s party.”
Tonight was huge—Craig would be at that party. The first time I was going to see him in person since Marco and I had tricked the world into thinking we were falling in love.
I found that I didn’t really care about seeing Craig, though. I had one thing on my mind. “Marco, I did it. The mood ring lipstick. It works.”
“That’s fantastic, Anna! I’m so happy for you!”
I giggled with glee, so pleased with having finally figured it out, and just as thrilled by Marco’s enthusiasm.
“You’ll be able to show it off tonight,” he said. “I can’t wait to see it in action. I’ll pick you up at seven, if that still works.”
“It works! Bye!”
I hung up the phone and looked at my reflection again.
The shade had turned to a faint red.
But I didn’t know what it meant. Was I excited about what I had accomplished?
Or did it have something to do with Marco?
CHAPTER TWENTY
I took a long time getting ready. Catalina texted me halfway through and asked me what I was going to wear. I responded back:
The red swishy dress and a healthy dose of irony.
Because no matter how I tried to spin all this, it didn’t feel quite like me. It was fun to get all fancy, but it wouldn’t be something I wanted to do every night for the rest of my life. That would be exhausting.
Catalina told me to stop, that there was no irony involved, and then demanded that I send her a picture. I did, and she responded with flame and thumbs-up emojis.
That made me feel a little bit better.
I got the rest of my makeup done, saving my new special lipstick for last. My lips were a neutral shade of pink, barely noticeable. I wondered how and why that would change tonight. I didn’t have much by way of jewelry. There were the pearl earrings my grandma had given me as a college graduation gift. She’d gotten them from her own grandmother when she had graduated from college.
Then I took my mother’s wedding ring and put it on my right hand. It would be like parts of my two favorite women were with me, and I figured I needed all the support I could get.
Then I headed downstairs, knowing that Marco would be on time.
But when I got near the front door, I realized that there were suitcases in the front hall. “Grandpa?”
“Yes?” he answered from another room.
“Where are you guys going?”
“We have that conference where your grandmother is doing a presentation down in San Diego. We’re leaving for our flight in an hour.”
I had been so caught up in Marco, our plan, and my lipstick that I had totally forgotten. “How long are you guys going to be gone?”
“Four days,” he said, coming into the hallway with me. “And one of my grad students is coming by to feed the birds and give Chick Norris his medicine.”
“I could have done that,” I told him. Both of my grandparents passed out house keys to grad students like they were spare change.
He nodded. “I know. I just thought you might have plans with your young man. And I can see that you do. Don’t you look pretty!”
“Fresh paint, right?”
“It’s more than that.”
Marco knocked then, and my grandpa managed to step around me quickly so that he could be the one to open it.
It had been so long since I’d seen Marco in a suit that the sight of him in a tux had me putting my hand against the wall so that I’d stay upright. Wow. He looked incredible. Was I allowed to say that? Maybe if he said it first and I could play it cool, I could mention it.
Although playing things cool wasn’t exactly my strong point.
My grandfather and Marco exchanged greetings, shaking each other’s hands. But Marco’s gaze kept landing on me instead of Grandpa.