“You haven’t called off the wedding,” he guesses.

“No,” I admit. “Not yet.”

“And you came here because . . .” he says, prompting me.

I don’t know if I can say it out loud. I give him a meaningful look, hoping that’ll communicate everything I need him to know.

“Say it,” he chides.

I gather my courage. “I came here to ask if you would go through with it for me. Walk down the aisle. Marry me.”

My words hang in the air.

“You’re unbelievable,” he says, looking stunned.

“It wouldn’t have to be legally binding,” I add quickly. “It just has to look real. For my customers. We don’t even need to get a marriage certificate.”

He takes a long, contemplative sip of his coffee. Since this idea first occurred to me, I’ve tried to ponder how this would sound to him a thousand different times. Every time I come up with a slightly different answer. The truth is that a handful of months is hardly enough time to get to know someone. After all that Blake and I have been through, I’ve scraped just the surface of who he is. The layers of complicated nuance that we all have underneath can’t be cracked so easily. That comes with time. And that’s the one thing I don’t have on my side.

Finally, he speaks. “This really is just business for you, isn’t it?”

I consider what to say. I love him, but not in the way a wife should love her husband. I love him as one of many possible routes my life could take—currently, he’s the best and safest one—but he’s never been my one and only. I can imagine myself happy with any number of other lives, and I have a sinking feeling that happily engaged couples don’t feel that way. Aren’t we supposed to feel like we’ve found the most complementary match? The great love that we’ve been waiting for all our lives? The other soul that aligns perfectly with our own? I can’t say in good conscience that I’m here out of love. So I go with the truth. It’s not romantic, but it’s honest. I owe him that.

“You and I make sense together,” I explain. “Our customer base is essentially the same, only I sell women’s jewelry and you sell men’s. Separately, we each have our own appeal, but together, we’d be unstoppable. Two breadwinners on one team. Think of us like Beyoncé and Jay-Z, or Bill and Hillary Clinton.”

He raises a skeptical eyebrow again. “Because those marriages are so strong,” he says coldly.

This is why I loved him.