“You ready?”
“No.”
“Honest answer. Good.”
“My parents will be too welcoming. Britney will pretend not to care for maybe thirty seconds. My father will ask what you do. My mother will mention marriage as a joke that isn’t a joke. Britney will find a way to sit near you before dessert.”
“Noted.”
“Also, she will touch your arm.”
“I’ll survive.”
“I’m serious.”
“I know you are,” he said gently. “I’m not underestimating her, Maya.”
I looked away first.
My mother nearly crushed him in a hug when we arrived. “You must be James! Maya has told us so much about you.”
I had told her his name and that he worked in law. That was all. But my mother liked to create emotional intimacy out of thin air and then punish you if you did not live inside it.
Britney was on the couch with a glass of wine, curled beneath a throw blanket like a magazine model pretending to be cozy. When we walked in, her eyes lifted lazily. Then sharpened. I watched the exact moment interest sparked behind them. It was familiar and disgusting and almost satisfying because for once I was not the only person watching it happen.
She set down her wine and stood, smoothing the fitted black dress she had definitely chosen before she knew whether I was bringing anyone.
“You must be the new boyfriend,” she said, offering her hand. “I’m Britney. The baby sister.”
James shook her hand politely. “Nice to meet you. Maya’s mentioned you.”
“Has she?” Britney glanced at me with a smile full of needles. “All good things, I hope.”
“She said you’re close,” James replied.
I nearly choked.
Dinner was theater. Britney positioned herself across from James, leaning forward, laughing too hard, asking questions with her chin propped on her hand. My father asked James about his work. James said he handled family law and complex negotiations, which was true enough to be safe. Britney’s eyes flickered at the phrase family law, but recognition did not land. She had likely never spent enough time looking at the man who helped dismantle her divorce demands. To Britney, people mattered only when they were useful or admiring.
My parents saw nothing. Or chose nothing. That had always been their talent.
After dinner, my mother insisted on pie. Britney volunteered to help, then somehow returned with fresh lipstick and her hair loosened around her shoulders. She sat beside James this time. Her knee brushed his under the table. Once. Twice. James did not react. I excused myself to the bathroom and left them alone for five minutes, just long enough.
When I came back, Britney was leaning close, showing James something on her phone. Their shoulders nearly touched.
“Cute,” she was saying. “Right?”
“Very,” James replied mildly.
Her smile widened when she saw me, as if daring me to object.
We left at nine. My mother stood in the doorway and called, “You two are adorable together!”
In the car, James exhaled slowly. “She asked for my number.”
I stared out the windshield. “Of course she did.”
“She said she wanted to add me to the family group chat.”
“There is no family group chat.”
“I assumed.”
Over the next three weeks, Britney performed exactly as I had predicted and worse than I had hoped. She texted James memes. Then restaurant recommendations. Then questions about legal shows she was watching. Then selfies that had no reason to exist in conversation with her sister’s boyfriend. She created little secrets, little openings. She complained jokingly about being misunderstood. She asked if Maya had “warned” him about her. She said she hoped he would not believe everything I said because sisters could be “so dramatic.” James screenshotted everything and sent it to me. Every message felt like a bruise and a weapon.
Twice a week, I went to his office after work. We reviewed her texts, discussed boundaries, planned the next stage. I should have felt only grim satisfaction. Instead, something complicated began to happen. I started noticing James outside the plan. The way he remembered how I took my coffee. The way he listened fully before answering. The way his humor appeared quietly, like sunlight through blinds. The way he never treated my pain like entertainment, even though our arrangement was built around exposing it.
One evening, after Britney sent him a picture of herself in workout clothes with the message, “Accidentally sent this to the wrong James, haha, ignore me,” I threw my phone onto his conference table.
“She thinks everyone is stupid.”
“No,” James said. “She thinks everyone is hungry for what she offers.”
I looked at him. “That sounded personal.”
He was quiet for a moment, then opened a drawer and removed a folder. “During Trevor’s divorce, we documented more than the affair with his boss. There were others.”
“How many?”
“Enough.”
He opened the folder, and I saw printed messages, timelines, witness summaries, photographs from restaurants and hotels and parking lots. My stomach turned. Not because I was surprised, but because seeing the evidence made Britney’s destruction feel industrial. Organized by date. Labeled. Filed.
“Trevor knows?”
“He knows what mattered legally. Not everything.”
“Why not?”
“Because a court does not need every wound to prove someone bled.”
I sat back, suddenly cold. “Why are you really helping me?”
James closed the folder. “Because Trevor came into my office broken in a way I don’t forget. Because your sister tried to take his house, his money, his dignity, and when she couldn’t, she tried to take my reputation too. Because I know what it feels like to watch a manipulative person rewrite reality and then punish anyone who refuses to read from her script.” His gaze softened slightly. “And because when you sat across from me and said you wanted one moment where you didn’t have to make yourself smaller, I believed you.”
I did not know what to do with that kind of belief. So I looked away.
The final opportunity arrived wrapped in gold invitations and family pride. My parents’ thirty-fifth anniversary party was scheduled at a rented event space overlooking Lake Michigan. Two hundred guests. Live band. Open bar. Speeches. The perfect stage. Britney would not be able to resist. Not with relatives watching, not with my parents glowing, not with me appearing happy beside a man she had failed to fully claim.
To accelerate her panic, I posted more. A picture of James and me walking near the lake. A deliberately cozy shot of us cooking dinner at his apartment, his sleeve rolled up, my hand visible near his. A caption simple enough to be dangerous: Perfect Sunday.
My mother called immediately. “Maya, this seems serious.”
“Maybe,” I said. “We’ll see.”
Britney texted James two hours later.
Wow. You two are moving fast. Happy for you both.
James showed me the message across his desk.
“She’s not happy,” I said.
“No.”
“She’s going to push.”
“She already is.”
The push came Thursday. Britney asked him to coffee downtown, claiming she needed advice about a lease. James accepted without telling me until afterward because, as he explained, he wanted her to act naturally. I hated that he was right.
He came to my apartment that evening carrying takeout and wearing the expression of a man returning from a battlefield.
“She made her move,” he said.
My appetite vanished. “Tell me.”
“She started with the lease. That lasted four minutes. Then she pivoted to you. Said you were jealous of her. Said you had always competed with her. Said I should be careful because you become unstable when you feel insecure.”
I laughed once, sharply. “Classic.”
“She put her hand on my knee and told me that if I ever needed someone who understood your family dynamic, she was available.”
Something inside me twisted. “Did you record it?”
“No. Illinois consent laws are complicated, and I’m not risking anything. But I wrote everything down immediately afterward, and the texts around it support the pattern.”
“She’ll try again at the party.”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
James looked at me for a long second. “Is it good?”
I wanted to say yes immediately. Instead, I sat on my couch and rubbed my hands over my face. “I don’t know. I just need it to end.”
The night before the anniversary party, I went to James’s office one final time. Outside, downtown was washed in rain, the streets shining under headlights. Inside, his office felt too quiet.
“Last chance,” he said. “You can walk away. We have enough to confront your parents privately if that’s what you want.”
“No. If we do it privately, Britney will cry, Mom will panic, Dad will shut down, and somehow I’ll end up apologizing by Thanksgiving.”
“Probably.”
“I need her to be unable to twist it.”
James nodded.
I watched him stack the printed screenshots into a neat folder. Suddenly, the whole thing felt too intimate. Not because of Britney. Because of him. Because for nearly two months, this man had occupied a space in my life labeled pretend, and somewhere along the way, pretend had become the least accurate word for it.
“What happens after tomorrow?” I asked.
He looked up. “After?”
“After we expose her. After the fake relationship has served its purpose.”
His face changed—not much, but enough. “I’ve been wondering when you’d ask.”
“And?”
“And the honest answer is that this started as revenge. I saw an opportunity to expose someone who had hurt my client and tried to hurt me. That’s not noble, but it’s true.”
I swallowed.
“But it stopped being just that,” he continued. “I like you, Maya. Not as part of a plan. Not as an injured party. You. You’re sharp and stubborn and funnier than you realize. You’re brave in a way that doesn’t look dramatic because you’ve had to survive quietly for so long. Spending time with you has been the least fake thing in my life lately.”
My heart did something foolish.
“This is a terrible foundation,” I said.
“Absolutely.”
“Deception. Revenge. Emotional damage.”
“Not ideal first-date material.”
I laughed despite myself.
James smiled. “So let’s not decide anything tonight. Let’s get through tomorrow. Then, if you want, I’ll ask you out properly. No strategy. No screenshots. No sister. Just dinner.”