I know I didn’t feel the most chemistry when we went out in Central Park, but it still stings that he picked up on that and actively decided against pursuing anything with me. I hadn’t fully considered the significance of it until just now—hello, I was just a little busy dealing with an impending rent hike and my sister—but it’s true. Blake didn’t text me after our picnic date.

It’s not that I want Blake to be The One. I don’t. It wasn’t love at first sight—he’s a perfectly nice guy whose handsome looks will serve me well on Instagram, though the spark isn’t quite there. But now that I have the clock ticking on an October wedding, I don’t have the luxury of being choosy. Chemistry can build over time, can’t it? My dad first spotted my mom during a freshman seminar at the University of Maine; they didn’t wind up on their first date until the end of their senior year, when Mom says Dad finally grew up.

Carmen’s news makes an idea click: if I’m giving up any semblance of a normal personal life for the sake of my company, it has to be for the right person. Blake makes sense. If we were together, we’d be a power couple: me in fine jewelry, him in luxury watches. I can practically see the New York Times’s Vows column in print now. I need to find a way to catch Blake’s interest—for good.

• Chapter 7 •

I hop on the subway to Blake’s neighborhood first and figure out what the hell I’m about to do second. Cocktails with Carmen jolted me into action. As the 4 train whizzes toward the Upper East Side, my frantic impulses cool into a semblance of a plan. I want to knock on Blake’s door and ask him to be my fake Instagram fiancé, but even I realize that’s fairly bonkers for a large variety of reasons—namely, we’ve only been out once, it’s a preposterous request, and also, I don’t know his address. Instead, I shoot him a text to ask if he’s free.

“Hey, are you around tonight? I happen to be in the neighborhood,” I write.

I waver between adding a smiling emoticon and not. I add it. It looks desperate. I delete it and press send.

A torturous thirteen minutes crawl by. I refresh my Instagram, ignore the urge to pick at my cuticles, loudly sigh at the manspreader sitting across from me. I start a sudoku game on my phone and abandon it halfway through. I check to see if my text actually went through—of course it did.

And then, miraculously, Blake texts back.

“Yeah, just got home. What’s up?”