Chapter 4 The Proposal

POV: Lila Monroe

He was already there when I arrived, which bothered me more than it should have.

I had walked fast, checked behind me twice, chosen a table near the window on purpose so I could see the door and the street at the same time. I had a plan for how the next thirty minutes would go. I would listen, say no, leave. Clean and simple. 

He was sitting at the table I had been planning to take, with two coffees already on the surface, and he looked up when I walked in.

I sat down across from him because standing would have looked like I was afraid, and I was not afraid. 

"You ordered for me," I said.

"Black, no sugar. I guessed."

He had not guessed. He had watched me in the dining hall two nights ago and I had been drinking black coffee and he had filed it away.

"You said you would explain it once," I said. "So explain."

He looked at me for a moment, "I need a girlfriend."

I waited for the rest.

"Public. Campus events, family dinners, anything that requires a visible, stable relationship. Three months, maybe slightly less. At the end of it we both walk away and there is nothing connecting us."

"Why," I said.

"That is not the part that matters to you."

"It matters to me considerably."

He was quiet for a second. "My father is arranging an engagement I have not agreed to. A visible relationship makes that harder to move forward without looking like a problem he created. That is all you need."

It was not all I needed, but it was more than I had expected him to give, and the fact that he had given it without being pushed, told me something about how much he actually needed this.

I looked at the coffee I was not drinking.

"You have a campus full of girls who would do that for free," I said.

"I need someone who will not develop feelings. Someone who understands it is a job and treats it that way."

He slid a card across the table.

I looked at it without picking it up. A number was written on the back, and it was not a phone number this time. It was an amount. Per month, written small beside it.

Something shifted in my chest.

That number, three months running, was more than I had made in the entire past year. It was Eli's fourth instalment and the next two after it. It was the number that meant my mother would not find out, and Eli would get his treatment on schedule, and I could stop doing the mental arithmetic at two in the morning.

"No," I said.

He did not blink. "You did not pick up the card to say no."

"I picked it up to understand what I was saying no to."

"And?"

"And it is still no." I pushed the card back across the table. "I do not know you. I do not know what you actually want, and I do not know what happens at the end of three months when you have no reason to keep whatever you have on me to yourself anymore."

"I have nothing on you."

"You know about the forum."

"I know you use it. I do not know names, dates, amounts, or anything specific enough to do anything with." He paused. "And I am not going to."

"Everyone says that."

"I know," he said. "I said it to you on a pavement four days ago and you are sitting here, so some part of you believed it a little."

I stood up. He did not move or try to stop me at all, which was either respect or confidence, and I could not tell which, and that bothered me too.

"Keep the card," he said. "Think about it. If you decide yes, call the number you already have."

I left the card on the table.

I walked back to my dorm in the cold and did not think about it.

The fact that he had not threatened me once across three separate conversations, which in my experience was unusual enough to be either genuine or a very long game.

The next morning I had a message from Eli. Decent week. Stable scan. He had started a nature documentary series and had strong opinions about octopuses he apparently needed me to know. I wrote back something mostly true.

I did not call the number.

I did not call it the next day either, or the day after.

On the fourth day a new message arrived, this one from my mother, and she was not asking about school or my roommate or whether I was eating properly. She had spoken to the hospital. The treatment schedule had been moved. The next round was not in eleven days anymore.

It was in four.

I sat on the edge of my bed with my phone in both hands and looked at the number the clinic quoted.

I opened my bag.

The card was gone. I had left it on the coffee shop table. I stared at the inside of my bag for one second, then went to my recent calls, found the number I had dialled four days ago, and pressed call before I had finished deciding to.

It rang once.

"I knew you would call," he said, and I could not be angry, because he was right, and somewhere between the card and the clinic and the cold walk home, I had already known it too.