“But you’re not. . . .” he says, looking confused.

“No,” I say. “You know the jewelry store across the street? My sister and I own that.”

“Whoa, really? You’re pretty young to own your own business, aren’t you?”

I shrug. “I’m old enough.”

“Impressive,” he says, whistling.

“I realized that if people think I’m engaged, my business does even better than it did before,” I explain.

“So you’re just not going to correct them,” he finishes for me.

“Exactly.”

He shakes his head and laughs, but then stops short when he figures out the problem. “Wait, but aren’t people going to wonder who you’re engaged to? And like, eventually, when you’ll be getting married?”

I hadn’t planned on revealing anything further, but it’s not like Raj is going to blow up my secret. Even if he knows the truth, who is he going to tell? I hesitate, then dive into the story.

“Okay, so I’m fully aware this sounds preposterous, but I met this guy Blake at a bar the night after that whole Instagram thing went down. He’s in the jewelry business like me,” I explain, amping up my voice with bravado. I want to sound confident, even though I’m not. “We went out once and he was cool, but I don’t know if the chemistry was fully there. But then a hotel offered me a free wedding six months from now. I said yes, and so I needed to rustle up a good fiancé, and Blake obviously made sense to step into that role.”

“Obviously,” Raj says. His eyes twinkle; he’s humoring me.

“I haven’t filled Blake in on my plan yet . . . and I’m not sure I will?” I feel guilty saying this out loud, so I skip quickly to my next thought. “A six-month timeline is fast, but it’s not unheard of, right?”

“My parents got married two months after they met,” Raj says.

“See!” I say, a little too excitedly.

“I mean, different circumstances,” he counters. “It was an arranged marriage. They met just a handful of times before they decided to get married, and it wound up working for them. They’ve been together for thirty years.”

“I love that it worked out.”

“In a way, you know, you’re kind of arranging your own marriage,” he points out.

“I think of it more as a business arrangement that happens to involve a wedding?” I say, sounding as uncertain as a I feel about the entire scheme.