So I start outlining the past twenty-four hours in a fictional form: the promotion, the maybe-date, the arrangement with Andrew, the Target ring. I fictionalize it, but I barely have to dramatize it—the whole thing is absolutely absurd. By the time I’ve distilled it down to a short, succinct narrative that can be consumed in a series of images, it’s almost four in the morning. I usually sleep on an episode for a night before posting it, so I can come back to it with fresh eyes the next day. But I’m beyond my capacity to care about a few technical imperfections, and I prepare to post it to The Perpetual Suck.

Except… I study the panels in front of me. They don’t quite fit with the other episodes of The Perpetual Suck: anecdotes about the time someone brought a chicken onto the MAX and it pecked a hole through my favorite leggings; the time a customer at Roastlandia insisted I call our harvesters in Ethiopia to verify the beans were never stored in plastic; the time I saw Fred Armisen outside of ¿Por Qué No? (That one didn’t suck, though the line for tacos did take an hour.)

This—the panels about Andrew—feels different. It feels like something new.

I haven’t wanted to create something new in a long time.

I make a snap decision. Instead of uploading the new episode to The Perpetual Suck, I create a new series and title it The Arrangement.

“Episode One: When a Man Asks You to Fake-Marry Him.”

I post it before I can think twice. Then I make another perhaps-unwise 4 a.m. decision. I open Instagram, and for a minute, I stare at Andrew’s perfectly curated grid, a mixture of hiking selfies, gym selfies, and shirtless mirror selfies.

Two hundred thousand dollars. I could create an entirely new life.

I take a deep breath. Then I click on the message button on his profile and begin to type.

Chapter Six

Saturday, December 17, 2022

“I thought only racoons lived in this building,” Andrew says on my doorstep Saturday afternoon. Then, peering around me into the caverns of my apartment: “Oh. I see only racoons do live here.”

“We can’t all be heirs to Fortune 500 companies. And, you know, there is a serious affordable housing crisis in Portland.”

“But the smell.”

“Let’s just go.” I attempt to shield his view of my pitiful abode, but he steps around me.

“I should probably know where my fiancée lives.”

I flinch at that word, even though it’s accurate. Fiancée.

Three days ago, I agreed to be Andrew’s fiancée in exchange for two hundred thousand dollars. Andrew had only two conditions. First, that no one can know the relationship is fake. And second, that I have to spend Christmas with his family at their cabin on Mount Hood. Of course, Greg had scheduled me to work the holidays.