I looked up from my matcha latte.
I was faced with an attractive man.
A very attractive man.
He was tall but not too tall. Tanned enough to show me he went out in the sun, but not too much to tell me he lay in a sunbed. His features were masculine but not sharp. He had muscles peeking out from his simple white tee, but they weren’t excessive.
Weren’t like…no. I was not allowed to think of him.
His eyes were what got me. They were blue, blindingly so. Kind. Smiling. Clear. Free of demons. Of danger.
I put down my book.
“I’m listening,” I said with a smile.
He smiled back. It was easy. Natural. “You are quite easily the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen. And I couldn’t physically bring myself to go a second longer without talking to you. Without knowing your name.”
It was cliché.
And cheesy.
But it was also nice.
Easy.
Natural.
Simple.
So I gave him my name.
And my heart.
The smallest and last undamaged piece that I tried to convince myself didn’t belong to someone else.
* * *
Three weeks passed with Craig. Three weeks I threw myself into with more force than I had with any other man.
Except…him.
I threw myself in, convinced myself this was it, this was right because there was no other choice.
And it was right.
Craig was easy to be around. He complimented me daily, even if they were rather cheesy, over the top poetic compliments.
They came from his heart.
He gave me his heart.
He was easy to love. I knew that because I was falling in some kind of love with him.
I was making myself fall in love.
That’s what the fairy tales didn’t tell you. About the girl who made decisions with her head instead of her heart, who chose to love the man who was safer, instead of the man she had no choice in loving.
And that’s what had me saying yes when Craig went down on one knee after less than a month of dating.
“I know it’s been three weeks, but I can’t go another three seconds without knowing I’m going to spend eternity with you,” he said, holding a large, obviously very expensive diamond. It was beautiful. So very beautiful, I knew that scores of women would actually scream when presented with it.
I hated myself for having the thought in the middle of a romantic and beautiful proposal—but it so wasn’t me. I would’ve liked something smaller, something vintage. Something with a story.
“Polly, I know you want to take adventures, and I promise I’ll take you on as many as I can. If you promise to take this adventure with me.”
I jerked myself out of my head and scolded myself for having such thoughts, especially when Craig was spinning literal poetry. On one knee. In his bedroom. With rose petals scattered around us.
My heart should’ve been full.
It wasn’t.
Until I forced it to be so.
“Yes,” I whispered.
It was then that I realized that he’d slipped the large and cold diamond on my finger before I’d spoken.
* * *
L.A. was not a place you ran into people you knew. It was too large, too sprawling. Everyone was rushing to one place or another. They were stuck in traffic, in line at some juice bar, trying to get into some party, trying to get out of some party that was nowhere near as fabulous everyone said it would be.
So you didn’t run into people you knew. Or friends. It was hard enough to purposefully run into friends when you tried to plan it. Especially my friends.
And we were trying to make a plan for all of my friends to be at the loft at the same time for my last night living there.
I was moving in with Craig.
Which made sense. I was marrying him.
“I thought you’d be glad to be leaving that place,” he said when I’d shed a little tear while boxing up my stuff. He looked around. “We’ll be somewhere with proper plumbing, furniture…privacy,” he said, staring at the door where the sounds of Rain’s hard rock was vibrating the door.
It was safe to say Craig didn’t understand the loft.
But that was okay.
No one understood the loft.
Even the people that loved me the most.
The people who were shocked but supportive about my quickly upcoming nuptials.
After a lot of teasing about Craig’s name.
“It’s so…normal,” Lucy said, nose screwed up.
“I was sure your fiancé would be called Stryker, or Matthias,” Rosie said. “You know, something weird. Craig isn’t weird. And that’s weird.”
Once they got over his name was Craig, they were supportive…ish.
Granted, we’d only been engaged for less than twenty-four hours. I was sure they didn’t plan on it sticking.
I was Polly, after all.
We were grocery shopping. Such a mundane, normal and peaceful thing for a couple to do.
So obviously my peace was shattered with the man standing in the cereal aisle.
I froze.
Right in the middle of the aisle.