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Synopsis
Debbie Mason meets Lizzie Shane in this small-town romance where a burned-by-love veterinarian arranges a fake partnership with a down-on-her-luck city girl in order to save his family business.
When Amarie Walker goes for something, she goes big—including starting over. Leaving her cheating ex and entire D.C. life in the rearview, she crash lands in a small town with no plan, no money, and no job. An opening at the animal clinic is the only gig for miles, no surprise considering the vet is a certified grump. If Eli Calvary ever cracked a smile, Amarie might faint on sight from shock. At least his adorable golden retriever appreciates her fabulousness…and shares her love of daily treats!
When Eli took over his late father’s practice, he quickly discovered the clinic was facing foreclosure. So there’s no time for social niceties, especially not flirting, even with someone as gorgeous, bubbly, and business-savvy as Amarie. Yet when Eli needs to invent an investor on the fly, it’s her name that comes to his lips. Now, for the sake of their furry clients, Eli and Amarie hustle to save the clinic, trying to ignore the nonstop sparks between them. Because while their partnership may be fake, their connection already feels way too real.
Release date: April 23, 2024
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Print pages: 352
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Fake It Till You Make It
Siera London
FLEEING THE SCENE of a breakup should come with a checklist, and jumper cables. Amarie Walker sat frozen in the passenger seat of her best friend’s new Toyota Prius, her life stuffed into three Louis Vuitton Damier travel bags with gold-embossed initials—his, not hers—in the back seat. Vali, her ride-or-die since freshman year of college, stared at her from behind the wheel.
“You ready to tell me why I drove five hours from the District to pick you up at the edge of nowhere?”
Ignoring the blatant dig about their current location, Amarie averted her gaze from Vali’s face, a flawless mask of patience perfected by a nude color palette on her lips and round cheeks, with brows sharp enough to cut the national debt in half. How did she manage a Lizzo-worthy look at seven o’clock in the morning?
“I’ve ruined my life,” Amarie hiccupped, wiping away the dampness trickling down her full cheeks. “I stayed too long and left too early—in the morning, obviously. Either way, I’ve ruined my engagement and my life.”
And the foreseeable future, intentionally, according to her mother. Who, in hindsight, Amarie should have called after she’d formulated a plan. As it was, she lacked a rebuttal to her parents’ ridiculous accusation. What reasonable twenty-eight-year-old woman would choose homelessness, joblessness, and pennilessness at the same time? Certainly not Amarie. In fact, she rarely took one step without ensuring she had a safety net. Preferably, in the shape of another carbon-based life form. But not Russell. She was done with his excuses and her own; their love story was officially reduced to a forgettable paragraph in her dating history.
“Aw, my sweet friend with horrible taste in men,” Vali soothed, pulling her in for a brief one-armed hug. “Who did slut-nuts do this time?”
“His future baby mama,” she sobbed. “Take a left turn to go up the mountain, please.” Tears plus Amarie always equaled the same equation—Russell inserting his thermometer in another woman’s hot spot.
“Whoa,” Vali mouthed, following Amarie’s directions. They found themselves in a charming small town of bungalow houses, big yards, and American-made steel under detached tin-roof car porches. Like the homegrown establishments they drove past—Black Bear Barbecue and Things, the Yogurt and Yoga Place, and Dog-Eared Page Books—the town’s landscape possessed an unconventional beauty of a bygone era repurposed. As the Prius’s tires bumped and jostled over a weathered creek bridge lined with sleek chocolate cattail plants, champagne diamond–colored water spilled down an evergreen mountainside, crashing into cotton-tipped waves before disappearing beneath rough planks. The scent of damp earth and wildflowers wafted through the car’s ventilation, the moisture settling on her skin.
“I love him, but I was stupid to trust him again.”
“No, Mari. You’re human.”
“A stupid human.”
“Trusting the man you love isn’t dumb, girlfriend.”
“Then why do I feel foolish?”
Vali shifted the car into a lower gear, her grip on the gearshift tight and prolonged. Her lips thinned, the angles sharpening to a needlepoint. “Because his lies fooled your heart. That’s on him.”
“What about me?”
“You’ll heal,” she whispered, as the odometer added another bumpy mile between an unknown future and heartbreak.
“You sure?” Amarie gulped down the ripple of anxiety swelling, threatening to capsize her confidence. She had expected an exhilarating rush of freedom after walking away from her fiancé of six years. Instead, she felt adrift, a broken fragment tossed into an unforeseeable future.
“Of course. I’m a nurse.” Vali smiled.
“Instead of love, I settled for lies.” A humorless laugh escaped her mouth. “After the first one… I knew.” Amarie remembered the clawing pain in her chest the moment she’d overheard his sex-hazed voice and the phlebotomist’s giggles through his office door. A guttural urge to rush in and jab Russell and that needle-wielding bloodsucker until she stopped seeing red had gripped her, but she’d battled the instinct. Explosive described their confrontation when he’d arrived home after working late.
“I come home to you,” he’d explained. “You live in my house. Work in my practice. We are partners who love and respect one another,” he went on. “That girl was a one-time mistake,” he lied through his perfect teeth.
Amarie had convinced herself that because she shared Russell’s granite bathroom counter space and slept, rather uncomfortably, in his queen-sized bed that crowded her generous curves, he respected the fidelity of their relationship. Of course, she’d heard his mutterings about her fashion sense. Trained herself to forgive his February 14 memory lapses. Had she morphed into a fiancéezilla? Nope. If she extended basic decency, respect, and love to this self-absorbed man, her commitment would pay it forward, right? She would give her best. In return, her man would reserve the number one place in his life for her.
“You should’ve called me,” Vali fumed. “I would’ve helped you grand slam his tennis balls, Venus-and-Serena-style.”
Amarie snorted, followed by a sudden peal of laughter. “Your bail would have been beyond my account balance at the moment,” she sighed, breaking eye contact before Vali asked for more details. “Besides, a dollar menu is ten times his value.”
Vali nodded. “No lies detected.”
Which hurt even more to acknowledge. Back when they’d first met, Amarie had appreciated Russell’s Ivy League style of classic white button-downs, V-neck sweaters, and khaki trousers. Closing her eyes, she envisioned that too-curly hair with the gelled side part, his studious expression behind wire-framed glasses. Then her favorite image, the day he’d spoken to her, a cheery Red Cross volunteer delivering free books to new mothers. His boyish smile had captured her naive heart in a made-for-daytime television soap opera. She had been completely smitten with his attention, and his status—shameful, but true. Nine months to the day, she’d practically skipped into her parents’ Florida home, gushing to tell them that she, their late bloomer only child, had moved in with her doctor boyfriend. She’d been proud of herself. Her father had, too. That had been a first.
Amarie gave her friend’s shoulder a playful shove. “Be glad I called after Prince quit spewing his guts. Tragic to witness. Kleenex worthy.” Unfortunately, her 2005 purple BMW 328i sedan was ill-equipped for a successful getaway.
Hours before, Amarie had sat behind the wheel, peering into the darkness as billowy clouds of white smoke rose from beneath Prince’s hood. A trio of judgmental goats had looked on as unshed tears stung her eyes. The check engine icon was a glowing red signal of how stupid she was to try to save herself or manage the basics of everyday existence. Alone and disappointed at her current predicament more than the breakup, she’d Facetimed Vali, sob-splaining how she was stuck in a Blair Witch Project reboot with unsavory onlookers, that being the goat trio.
“I know how much you love that car. I would’ve led the resuscitation efforts.” Vali grinned. “And, not to be salty, but I would’ve stormed Russell’s ivy tower last night, too.”
“You’re the best, Vali.”
“No lies detected.”
“Trust me.” Amarie sniffed. “I spared you the slings and arrows of Russell’s brutal verbal assault.”
Amarie, ever the amenable girlfriend, had traveled a circuitous route to maintain peace, to avoid his temper, but she was sane enough to know her former fiancé would’ve lashed out at Vali to hurt her. Twelve months into their relationship, and she applied the term loosely with his tomcat tendencies, she and Russell were not the pining couple whose hands were always pawing at the other like she’d dreamed of. Sharing her misgivings with her mother had led to a prompt dismissal of her feelings and an accusation that Amarie’s mental hyperactivity would lead to a bad decision that would sabotage her future. Sure enough, her mother had praised a cautiously optimistic Amarie on her engagement the following year. Even her father had foregone working late to join the two of them for a celebratory dinner.
The Prius crested a mountain into a Norman Rockwell utopia. Lush grasslands on the right, a serene lake beckoning gingham blankets and romance novels from the passenger window. A soaring kaleidoscope of trees waved to all who entered this untouched paradise. On her left stood a lone house, majestic and proud. This had to be the place.
“Stop the car.”
“Okay.” Vali slammed a hammer foot on the Prius’s brakes. The abrupt action fishtailed the car’s rear end. Gravel pelted the under-chassis. Inside the vehicle both passengers and the back seat contents jostled against the door panels. When the momentum released its hold on their churning stomachs, she and Vali exhaled in a rush.
“Sorry.” Amarie winced.
“More warning next time or I’m calling you an Uber.”
Pausing, Vali angled her head for a view of the house on the hill. The quiet serenity surrounding the stately home with its gabled roof and open-gallery veranda was a stark contrast to D.C.’s Georgia Avenue congestion. She cut the engine at the curb of a majestic country farmhouse complete with a storybook white picket fence. Lavender-tipped wildflowers blanketed a meadow wider than a city block as a breeze, soft and fleeting, bent the tiny blossoms into a subtle bow. Amarie couldn’t afford to break, either. Life had twisted and bent her hopes beyond any semblance of her vision board. She could blossom where planted.
“Where are we again? Is this a low-budget surveillance stakeout of Russell’s baby mama?”
“No.” Amarie choked on her own laughter. “We’re in Service, West Virginia.” She motioned to the rural town they had driven through with its quaint cobblestone streets. “And don’t make me laugh. This reality TV show is my life.”
“It’s a very lovely house and vet practice—in West Virginia,” Vali emphasized. “Just saying, leaving your no-account fiancé is making you act loopy.”
Amarie let her forehead fall onto her friend’s shoulder, a steady support for the weight of this life-altering flight of fancy she’d undertaken. “I’m laughing, Vali.”
No doubt her decision to dump the charming gynecologist—her mother’s words—and his zirconia diamond ring in the trash can had disappointed her parents, but she was the one who had endured years of office gossip. She was the one who had held her head high under the pitying side glances of his friends’ unsolicited prep talks: You hang in there, girl. He’ll get better.
Angling her head, Vali gave her a wide grin. “I know you’re hurting, girlfriend. But would you rather cry or laugh over Russell?”
Amarie shrugged, not sure how to feel. Six years of wasted time deserved a full-on sensory meltdown, right?
“He had Stacia in our bed… total lack of originality.”
Vali’s brows shot up, registering her surprise. “The divorcée who brings Panera Bread pecan braids every Friday?”
“That’s her. It’s brilliant, really. Stuffing me with pastries while Russell spread her jam in the back office.” The fact that Amarie had been easily distracted with mouthwatering sweet bread while another woman stole her man should have led to crippling embarrassment. But after walking in on a naked Russell and the receptionist she’d hired four months ago, then having to make the emergency call to her best friend from the hood of her broken-down vehicle, recounting the story was low on her twenty-four-hour humiliation list. The fairy tale faded long before last night’s final page was written. Amarie’s prince charming never slayed her dragons. No, Russell’s sword apparently was attached to an automatic drawstring that lowered his boxers and spread fair maiden’s thighs. Strangely enough, she couldn’t pinpoint when the relationship had entered a death spiral. Somewhere between her juggling to open the clinic every morning, the frantic dash to afternoon classes, or the late-night library study sessions, they’d drifted into toxic complacency.
“How much longer till the tow truck arrives for Prince?” asked Vali.
A fresh wave of anxiety squeezed her lungs at having abandoned her beloved safe haven on a coarse gravel shoulder behind the town’s marquee. Working in the D.C. metropolitan area, with the sprawl-and-crawl traffic of five million people, Amarie spent more time in her car than at a physical address. Prince was a home away from home.
“No money for that.” Amarie shook her head, truly dismayed at the swiftness of Russell’s financial reprisal. “After accusing me of shattering his heart, Russell apparently removed my access to our credit card.”
“No way,” Vali gasped in outrage. “It… it hasn’t even been twelve hours.”
Amarie nodded in agreement. “The ATM debit PIN has been changed, too.”
“You earned every dollar in that account. Butt wipe,” Vali snapped, narrowing her eyes. “I hope you tagged him back.”
A slow smile raised the corners of Amarie’s mouth.
Vali’s smile widened with wicked delight. “What did you do, naughty girl?”
Amarie counted off on her un-manicured fingers. “Hid the clinic’s website. Deleted the YouTube page. And because I’m that girl, I closed his LinkedIn, Instagram, and Facebook business accounts.”
“Dang, a full-on social media massacre. Dr. Feldman is ex-communicado.” She beamed. “I’m here for it, girlfriend. He should’ve been paying for your services. Seriously, you saved and earned that man a fortune. He wouldn’t be on the top one hundred doctors in the D.C. area list without your social media genius.”
“Thank you.” She had accomplished something noteworthy, though unacknowledged. Her pounding heart slowed to a fast jog for the first time since she’d walked in on Russell’s funfest. Amarie had created and maintained the online presence for Russell’s practice for years. He’d never bothered himself with the logins or passwords. During their time together, she’d worked forty hours a week, off the payroll, to maintain his online visibility. She’d created press kits, written publicity pieces, and uploaded client testimonials for him and his colleagues. His patients had doubled in the first eighteen months of their partnership, as he’d called it. Instead of a paycheck, he’d surprised her with her very own prepaid Mastercard. He’d presented it in a wooden carved box with a giant purple ribbon, her favorite color. With a long sigh, Amarie acknowledged the comfort she’d settled into with Russell’s periodic conciliatory prizes. Repeating her mother’s mistake, she had numbed her heart to the stab of Russell’s infidelity, finding the strength to refocus on completing her Bachelor in Nursing degree while cauterizing her wounds with the knowledge that she held a secure place in his life. After all, they lived and worked together—she had his faux-diamond engagement ring on her finger. Stacia’s pregnancy had snatched Amarie’s blinders by the pubic hairs and ripped them off.
“Whew, girl,” Vali said, glancing at her watch. “I’ll call AAA to load the Princester and grab some Starbucks for the road. We should hit Pennsylvania Avenue just shy of afternoon rush hour.”
Vali grinned, Amarie didn’t. Not sure how to broach the next topic, she stalled. “This town has literally one stoplight and zero Starbucks coffee shops. I checked. The caffeine withdrawal and the consumption of my last stress-eating snack has me on the struggle bus, for real.”
Before Vali had shown up, she’d ventured away from three bleating protests to wander past the barn-style coffee and pastry shop, before tripping over a raised brick in front of a swing-door saloon, the Bear something or other. The entertainment district ended exactly three storefronts later with the bookstore, Dog-Eared Pages and Cinema. The real beauty beyond the single-storied simple architecture was the oasis of delicate white azalea blooms with green pointy leaves and pink rhododendron funnels with the largest leaves she’d ever seen splitting Main Street into two idyllic postcard snapshots. She’d inhaled the sweetened air, her mouth salivating at the possibility of a fresh start, fresh soil to nourish and protect the tiniest grain of hope buried within.
“It’s all good,” Vali reassured, her voice level and resolute. “I’m so excited for your life minus Russell the man baby. No offense, but he didn’t deserve all your Black girl magic.”
Amarie nodded in solidarity, but she felt untethered, her stomach looping in on itself forming a jumbled mass of nerves. “I… I know, it’s just…” She shrugged. “No matter how hard I tried… I was never his ‘one.’ He screwed around, but I’m the one who’s screwed. Why does life have to be so hard?” It’s a question she’d asked since childhood, but the answer never came. Just more heartache and betrayal.
Vali gave her hand a gentle pat. “That’s officially too hard to answer without caffeine.”
All Amarie wanted was a do-over away from her parents’ watchful eyes, Russell’s lies, and her friends’ successful adulting. Everyone seemed to rush forward with living their best life while she stumbled one step forward, only to twist an ankle and fall two steps behind. She’d never quite mastered soaring above the crash zone. The maternal warning instilled since childhood echoed in her head: Don’t be foolish and stupid. Keep yourself a man, Amarie. The oppressive message scorched like the July heat pouring through the windshield, baking her brown skin to pure cacao.
Vali gave one of Amarie’s shoulder-length locs a tug. “Stop that.”
“What?” She jerked her arm off the lackluster gray door panel, fanning her toasty forearm in front of the tiny, not-quite-rectangular air conditioner vent. Bizarre how the unique held her attention, but her unique personality traits lacked the same appeal to others. Was that the reason Russell cheated? His women looked so different from her—petite and slim with stereotypical face paint, spidery false lashes, and skimpy thongs. Honestly, Amarie detested the clutter of overt femininity, the endless array of bottles, spray cans, tubes, and containers. Another reason why she maintained a primp-free style. The more effort she asserted with hair, makeup, life, the more tragic the outcome.
“I know your mom’s mantra is trending or viral in that busy brain.” Vali reached across the dust-free center console. “Your parents are wrong, Mari. You can have everything you want… without a man bankrolling your life.”
“Of course they are. Look at how successful I’ve been since vacating my well-appointed junior suite in their waterfront estate. My magic, Black or otherwise, is underwhelming.” Amarie dangled Prince’s key to emphasize her point. Her biggest fear was they were correct to not trust her on her own. She’d walked away from Russell, a man who didn’t deserve her very lovable heart, determined that she could take care of herself, and her car had blown up—literally—on her first attempt at independence.
“They love you, but their marriage… the way Mrs. B tolerates your dad’s disrespect… their advice on love is misguided. It’s wrong of them to expect you to marry some douche who cheats on you because he has a cushy bank account.”
“I know.” Amarie swallowed the lump in her throat because fundamentally she agreed, but she had zero history as a soloist. What would she do without Russell at her back? Vali was funny, smart, and engaging. She could walk into a room and command attention. Amarie needed a plus-one. “I’m not you, Vali. A nursing degree without a registered state license is worthless.”
“You’ll pass next time.”
“I’ve already failed the exam twice. Russell said it’s too late to lie to myself. I’m not good enough at anything.”
Vali bared her teeth at the mention of him. “Stop repeating his garbage. You two were like the FBI and the CIA, incompatible. You know your stuff, Mari. When you weren’t caught up in his drama, you were busy being too scared to try.”
Fear had always plagued her. Unreasonable, she knew, but she couldn’t help the internal paralysis invading like a killer virus through her every thought. Her very existence as an adult woman teetered on the precipice of failure. The word applied to entirely too many areas of her life.
A twenty-eight-year-old woman with the professional resume of a sixteen-year-old.
Failure.
Six years in a four-year degree program.
Failure.
Five bad years holding on to a broken relationship, most of them in a bogus engagement.
Failure.
Somewhere in the years as Russell’s fiancée, she’d lost the self-confidence that had buoyed her to travel from the safety of home to Howard University’s campus.
“Your lovable, adorkable self is enough,” her friend teased. “We’ll get back to the city and figure out your next step.”
She couldn’t stall anymore, so she just blurted out the decision she’d made while waiting for Vali to arrive. “I’m not going back.”
Silence spread like a small, but deadly, mushroom cloud. Amarie turned to face the driver’s seat. Vali’s facial expression had slipped from elation to a low-browed concern.
“Okay,” Vali drawled. “I might have spoken too soon on the coffee.”
Amarie began to make her case. “I can’t afford the city without a job. And before you interrupt, I don’t want to be in the same city with Russell and his soon-to-be family. I’m done being ashamed of myself because of that man. It’s one thing to know he’s cheating, but… I can’t unsee what I saw…” she trailed off, her breathing unsteady. After she regained her composure, she looked up to see Vali’s tear-filled eyes watching her.
“I’m so sorry, Mari.” She coughed to disguise the swelling emotion. “He’s making you leave me, too? I-if this move is about money, you can slum it with me and Sunday until you find a place.”
Amarie loved her best friend’s youngest sister, but her behavior ventured more into a drunken Friday night than her name led one to believe. Not counting the cost of surrendering to her parents’ desires had landed her with Russell for six years. Amarie had to make her own decisions moving forward.
“Shh.” Amarie gripped Vali’s too-still fingers, stroking life back into them. “I have to do something different, Vali. There’s nothing holding me in the city. Maybe Mother Universe will remodel my life into something spectacular.”
Vali nodded wordlessly, dabbing away her tears. “Yeah… yeah, that heifer owes you big-time. Now,” Vali cleared her throat, all business again, “how do you plan to make money in tiny town West Virginia?”
“This.” Amarie pulled the Service county bulletin from her purse, the one she’d grabbed from a sidewalk newsstand, smoothing out the wrinkles before handing it over. Vali studied the handsome soldier in full dress uniform on the front page. His hunter-green eyes had snagged Amarie’s attention, too, but the veterinary clinic job announcement had made her heart flutter.
“The head shape is better than Russell’s, but that doesn’t say much about the brain matter.”
“Argh,” Amarie rebuked. “Ignore the man. Read the employment listing below his photo.” Yep, singular. There was only one business hiring in the entire town.
Vali’s eyes drifted lower, then she started reading.
“Help wanted at Calvary Family Veterinary Clinic.” She looked from the announcement to the majestic house on the hill with the posted sign. “Oh, now it all makes sense.” Amarie sighed in relief, not having to spell it out anymore. “You’ve been stalling trying to drum up the right words to tell me you’re staying here.”
“Yes. No. Wait.” Amarie jerked. “How did you know?” Before Amarie could explain her decision, which was totally unnecessary, her friend was in action.
“How long have we been friends?” Vali planted her right hand atop Amarie’s headrest, angled her head until she had a clear view over the luggage, and rolled the car backward toward the parking area.
“Is this a trick question because I’m really vulnerable right now?”
“You are so adorkable when you’re nervous,” Vali laughed, turning the wheel.
“That transparent, huh?”
“Just a little, but it’s cool. I’ll walk you to the door, bestie.”
Amarie was a curvy balloon of emotions looking for a sharpened pinpoint. Beneath her, she felt the hybrid’s silent vibration against her full bottom as Vali shifted the car in reverse, parallel parking next to a vintage American-made car filling one of the spots marked FOR PATIENTS ONLY. What sense did that make for a veterinary clinic? The patients didn’t drive themselves. Someone in this house had a sense of humor. Good, she’d be the perfect addition.
“Thanks.” Amarie swallowed. Vali pocketed the keys. With the added seconds, Amarie used the time to focus on the task ahead: radiating confidence and making a stunning first impression.
“Since you are refusing to return home and this is the only gig in town, they’ll have to tell us the job is taken and to get gone to our faces.”
And just that quickly, her surety in her ability faded. She sucked her lower lip between her teeth as her stomach looped into a new knot. Beads of sweat heated her top lip and she quickly licked the salty-tasting droplets away. “What if the job’s gone—”
One squeeze to her sweaty hand stopped the negative thought. “Girlfriend, you’re going to get this job.”
“You think so?” Maybe this was another mistake.
“Is my name Vali with an ‘Ali’. . .
“You ready to tell me why I drove five hours from the District to pick you up at the edge of nowhere?”
Ignoring the blatant dig about their current location, Amarie averted her gaze from Vali’s face, a flawless mask of patience perfected by a nude color palette on her lips and round cheeks, with brows sharp enough to cut the national debt in half. How did she manage a Lizzo-worthy look at seven o’clock in the morning?
“I’ve ruined my life,” Amarie hiccupped, wiping away the dampness trickling down her full cheeks. “I stayed too long and left too early—in the morning, obviously. Either way, I’ve ruined my engagement and my life.”
And the foreseeable future, intentionally, according to her mother. Who, in hindsight, Amarie should have called after she’d formulated a plan. As it was, she lacked a rebuttal to her parents’ ridiculous accusation. What reasonable twenty-eight-year-old woman would choose homelessness, joblessness, and pennilessness at the same time? Certainly not Amarie. In fact, she rarely took one step without ensuring she had a safety net. Preferably, in the shape of another carbon-based life form. But not Russell. She was done with his excuses and her own; their love story was officially reduced to a forgettable paragraph in her dating history.
“Aw, my sweet friend with horrible taste in men,” Vali soothed, pulling her in for a brief one-armed hug. “Who did slut-nuts do this time?”
“His future baby mama,” she sobbed. “Take a left turn to go up the mountain, please.” Tears plus Amarie always equaled the same equation—Russell inserting his thermometer in another woman’s hot spot.
“Whoa,” Vali mouthed, following Amarie’s directions. They found themselves in a charming small town of bungalow houses, big yards, and American-made steel under detached tin-roof car porches. Like the homegrown establishments they drove past—Black Bear Barbecue and Things, the Yogurt and Yoga Place, and Dog-Eared Page Books—the town’s landscape possessed an unconventional beauty of a bygone era repurposed. As the Prius’s tires bumped and jostled over a weathered creek bridge lined with sleek chocolate cattail plants, champagne diamond–colored water spilled down an evergreen mountainside, crashing into cotton-tipped waves before disappearing beneath rough planks. The scent of damp earth and wildflowers wafted through the car’s ventilation, the moisture settling on her skin.
“I love him, but I was stupid to trust him again.”
“No, Mari. You’re human.”
“A stupid human.”
“Trusting the man you love isn’t dumb, girlfriend.”
“Then why do I feel foolish?”
Vali shifted the car into a lower gear, her grip on the gearshift tight and prolonged. Her lips thinned, the angles sharpening to a needlepoint. “Because his lies fooled your heart. That’s on him.”
“What about me?”
“You’ll heal,” she whispered, as the odometer added another bumpy mile between an unknown future and heartbreak.
“You sure?” Amarie gulped down the ripple of anxiety swelling, threatening to capsize her confidence. She had expected an exhilarating rush of freedom after walking away from her fiancé of six years. Instead, she felt adrift, a broken fragment tossed into an unforeseeable future.
“Of course. I’m a nurse.” Vali smiled.
“Instead of love, I settled for lies.” A humorless laugh escaped her mouth. “After the first one… I knew.” Amarie remembered the clawing pain in her chest the moment she’d overheard his sex-hazed voice and the phlebotomist’s giggles through his office door. A guttural urge to rush in and jab Russell and that needle-wielding bloodsucker until she stopped seeing red had gripped her, but she’d battled the instinct. Explosive described their confrontation when he’d arrived home after working late.
“I come home to you,” he’d explained. “You live in my house. Work in my practice. We are partners who love and respect one another,” he went on. “That girl was a one-time mistake,” he lied through his perfect teeth.
Amarie had convinced herself that because she shared Russell’s granite bathroom counter space and slept, rather uncomfortably, in his queen-sized bed that crowded her generous curves, he respected the fidelity of their relationship. Of course, she’d heard his mutterings about her fashion sense. Trained herself to forgive his February 14 memory lapses. Had she morphed into a fiancéezilla? Nope. If she extended basic decency, respect, and love to this self-absorbed man, her commitment would pay it forward, right? She would give her best. In return, her man would reserve the number one place in his life for her.
“You should’ve called me,” Vali fumed. “I would’ve helped you grand slam his tennis balls, Venus-and-Serena-style.”
Amarie snorted, followed by a sudden peal of laughter. “Your bail would have been beyond my account balance at the moment,” she sighed, breaking eye contact before Vali asked for more details. “Besides, a dollar menu is ten times his value.”
Vali nodded. “No lies detected.”
Which hurt even more to acknowledge. Back when they’d first met, Amarie had appreciated Russell’s Ivy League style of classic white button-downs, V-neck sweaters, and khaki trousers. Closing her eyes, she envisioned that too-curly hair with the gelled side part, his studious expression behind wire-framed glasses. Then her favorite image, the day he’d spoken to her, a cheery Red Cross volunteer delivering free books to new mothers. His boyish smile had captured her naive heart in a made-for-daytime television soap opera. She had been completely smitten with his attention, and his status—shameful, but true. Nine months to the day, she’d practically skipped into her parents’ Florida home, gushing to tell them that she, their late bloomer only child, had moved in with her doctor boyfriend. She’d been proud of herself. Her father had, too. That had been a first.
Amarie gave her friend’s shoulder a playful shove. “Be glad I called after Prince quit spewing his guts. Tragic to witness. Kleenex worthy.” Unfortunately, her 2005 purple BMW 328i sedan was ill-equipped for a successful getaway.
Hours before, Amarie had sat behind the wheel, peering into the darkness as billowy clouds of white smoke rose from beneath Prince’s hood. A trio of judgmental goats had looked on as unshed tears stung her eyes. The check engine icon was a glowing red signal of how stupid she was to try to save herself or manage the basics of everyday existence. Alone and disappointed at her current predicament more than the breakup, she’d Facetimed Vali, sob-splaining how she was stuck in a Blair Witch Project reboot with unsavory onlookers, that being the goat trio.
“I know how much you love that car. I would’ve led the resuscitation efforts.” Vali grinned. “And, not to be salty, but I would’ve stormed Russell’s ivy tower last night, too.”
“You’re the best, Vali.”
“No lies detected.”
“Trust me.” Amarie sniffed. “I spared you the slings and arrows of Russell’s brutal verbal assault.”
Amarie, ever the amenable girlfriend, had traveled a circuitous route to maintain peace, to avoid his temper, but she was sane enough to know her former fiancé would’ve lashed out at Vali to hurt her. Twelve months into their relationship, and she applied the term loosely with his tomcat tendencies, she and Russell were not the pining couple whose hands were always pawing at the other like she’d dreamed of. Sharing her misgivings with her mother had led to a prompt dismissal of her feelings and an accusation that Amarie’s mental hyperactivity would lead to a bad decision that would sabotage her future. Sure enough, her mother had praised a cautiously optimistic Amarie on her engagement the following year. Even her father had foregone working late to join the two of them for a celebratory dinner.
The Prius crested a mountain into a Norman Rockwell utopia. Lush grasslands on the right, a serene lake beckoning gingham blankets and romance novels from the passenger window. A soaring kaleidoscope of trees waved to all who entered this untouched paradise. On her left stood a lone house, majestic and proud. This had to be the place.
“Stop the car.”
“Okay.” Vali slammed a hammer foot on the Prius’s brakes. The abrupt action fishtailed the car’s rear end. Gravel pelted the under-chassis. Inside the vehicle both passengers and the back seat contents jostled against the door panels. When the momentum released its hold on their churning stomachs, she and Vali exhaled in a rush.
“Sorry.” Amarie winced.
“More warning next time or I’m calling you an Uber.”
Pausing, Vali angled her head for a view of the house on the hill. The quiet serenity surrounding the stately home with its gabled roof and open-gallery veranda was a stark contrast to D.C.’s Georgia Avenue congestion. She cut the engine at the curb of a majestic country farmhouse complete with a storybook white picket fence. Lavender-tipped wildflowers blanketed a meadow wider than a city block as a breeze, soft and fleeting, bent the tiny blossoms into a subtle bow. Amarie couldn’t afford to break, either. Life had twisted and bent her hopes beyond any semblance of her vision board. She could blossom where planted.
“Where are we again? Is this a low-budget surveillance stakeout of Russell’s baby mama?”
“No.” Amarie choked on her own laughter. “We’re in Service, West Virginia.” She motioned to the rural town they had driven through with its quaint cobblestone streets. “And don’t make me laugh. This reality TV show is my life.”
“It’s a very lovely house and vet practice—in West Virginia,” Vali emphasized. “Just saying, leaving your no-account fiancé is making you act loopy.”
Amarie let her forehead fall onto her friend’s shoulder, a steady support for the weight of this life-altering flight of fancy she’d undertaken. “I’m laughing, Vali.”
No doubt her decision to dump the charming gynecologist—her mother’s words—and his zirconia diamond ring in the trash can had disappointed her parents, but she was the one who had endured years of office gossip. She was the one who had held her head high under the pitying side glances of his friends’ unsolicited prep talks: You hang in there, girl. He’ll get better.
Angling her head, Vali gave her a wide grin. “I know you’re hurting, girlfriend. But would you rather cry or laugh over Russell?”
Amarie shrugged, not sure how to feel. Six years of wasted time deserved a full-on sensory meltdown, right?
“He had Stacia in our bed… total lack of originality.”
Vali’s brows shot up, registering her surprise. “The divorcée who brings Panera Bread pecan braids every Friday?”
“That’s her. It’s brilliant, really. Stuffing me with pastries while Russell spread her jam in the back office.” The fact that Amarie had been easily distracted with mouthwatering sweet bread while another woman stole her man should have led to crippling embarrassment. But after walking in on a naked Russell and the receptionist she’d hired four months ago, then having to make the emergency call to her best friend from the hood of her broken-down vehicle, recounting the story was low on her twenty-four-hour humiliation list. The fairy tale faded long before last night’s final page was written. Amarie’s prince charming never slayed her dragons. No, Russell’s sword apparently was attached to an automatic drawstring that lowered his boxers and spread fair maiden’s thighs. Strangely enough, she couldn’t pinpoint when the relationship had entered a death spiral. Somewhere between her juggling to open the clinic every morning, the frantic dash to afternoon classes, or the late-night library study sessions, they’d drifted into toxic complacency.
“How much longer till the tow truck arrives for Prince?” asked Vali.
A fresh wave of anxiety squeezed her lungs at having abandoned her beloved safe haven on a coarse gravel shoulder behind the town’s marquee. Working in the D.C. metropolitan area, with the sprawl-and-crawl traffic of five million people, Amarie spent more time in her car than at a physical address. Prince was a home away from home.
“No money for that.” Amarie shook her head, truly dismayed at the swiftness of Russell’s financial reprisal. “After accusing me of shattering his heart, Russell apparently removed my access to our credit card.”
“No way,” Vali gasped in outrage. “It… it hasn’t even been twelve hours.”
Amarie nodded in agreement. “The ATM debit PIN has been changed, too.”
“You earned every dollar in that account. Butt wipe,” Vali snapped, narrowing her eyes. “I hope you tagged him back.”
A slow smile raised the corners of Amarie’s mouth.
Vali’s smile widened with wicked delight. “What did you do, naughty girl?”
Amarie counted off on her un-manicured fingers. “Hid the clinic’s website. Deleted the YouTube page. And because I’m that girl, I closed his LinkedIn, Instagram, and Facebook business accounts.”
“Dang, a full-on social media massacre. Dr. Feldman is ex-communicado.” She beamed. “I’m here for it, girlfriend. He should’ve been paying for your services. Seriously, you saved and earned that man a fortune. He wouldn’t be on the top one hundred doctors in the D.C. area list without your social media genius.”
“Thank you.” She had accomplished something noteworthy, though unacknowledged. Her pounding heart slowed to a fast jog for the first time since she’d walked in on Russell’s funfest. Amarie had created and maintained the online presence for Russell’s practice for years. He’d never bothered himself with the logins or passwords. During their time together, she’d worked forty hours a week, off the payroll, to maintain his online visibility. She’d created press kits, written publicity pieces, and uploaded client testimonials for him and his colleagues. His patients had doubled in the first eighteen months of their partnership, as he’d called it. Instead of a paycheck, he’d surprised her with her very own prepaid Mastercard. He’d presented it in a wooden carved box with a giant purple ribbon, her favorite color. With a long sigh, Amarie acknowledged the comfort she’d settled into with Russell’s periodic conciliatory prizes. Repeating her mother’s mistake, she had numbed her heart to the stab of Russell’s infidelity, finding the strength to refocus on completing her Bachelor in Nursing degree while cauterizing her wounds with the knowledge that she held a secure place in his life. After all, they lived and worked together—she had his faux-diamond engagement ring on her finger. Stacia’s pregnancy had snatched Amarie’s blinders by the pubic hairs and ripped them off.
“Whew, girl,” Vali said, glancing at her watch. “I’ll call AAA to load the Princester and grab some Starbucks for the road. We should hit Pennsylvania Avenue just shy of afternoon rush hour.”
Vali grinned, Amarie didn’t. Not sure how to broach the next topic, she stalled. “This town has literally one stoplight and zero Starbucks coffee shops. I checked. The caffeine withdrawal and the consumption of my last stress-eating snack has me on the struggle bus, for real.”
Before Vali had shown up, she’d ventured away from three bleating protests to wander past the barn-style coffee and pastry shop, before tripping over a raised brick in front of a swing-door saloon, the Bear something or other. The entertainment district ended exactly three storefronts later with the bookstore, Dog-Eared Pages and Cinema. The real beauty beyond the single-storied simple architecture was the oasis of delicate white azalea blooms with green pointy leaves and pink rhododendron funnels with the largest leaves she’d ever seen splitting Main Street into two idyllic postcard snapshots. She’d inhaled the sweetened air, her mouth salivating at the possibility of a fresh start, fresh soil to nourish and protect the tiniest grain of hope buried within.
“It’s all good,” Vali reassured, her voice level and resolute. “I’m so excited for your life minus Russell the man baby. No offense, but he didn’t deserve all your Black girl magic.”
Amarie nodded in solidarity, but she felt untethered, her stomach looping in on itself forming a jumbled mass of nerves. “I… I know, it’s just…” She shrugged. “No matter how hard I tried… I was never his ‘one.’ He screwed around, but I’m the one who’s screwed. Why does life have to be so hard?” It’s a question she’d asked since childhood, but the answer never came. Just more heartache and betrayal.
Vali gave her hand a gentle pat. “That’s officially too hard to answer without caffeine.”
All Amarie wanted was a do-over away from her parents’ watchful eyes, Russell’s lies, and her friends’ successful adulting. Everyone seemed to rush forward with living their best life while she stumbled one step forward, only to twist an ankle and fall two steps behind. She’d never quite mastered soaring above the crash zone. The maternal warning instilled since childhood echoed in her head: Don’t be foolish and stupid. Keep yourself a man, Amarie. The oppressive message scorched like the July heat pouring through the windshield, baking her brown skin to pure cacao.
Vali gave one of Amarie’s shoulder-length locs a tug. “Stop that.”
“What?” She jerked her arm off the lackluster gray door panel, fanning her toasty forearm in front of the tiny, not-quite-rectangular air conditioner vent. Bizarre how the unique held her attention, but her unique personality traits lacked the same appeal to others. Was that the reason Russell cheated? His women looked so different from her—petite and slim with stereotypical face paint, spidery false lashes, and skimpy thongs. Honestly, Amarie detested the clutter of overt femininity, the endless array of bottles, spray cans, tubes, and containers. Another reason why she maintained a primp-free style. The more effort she asserted with hair, makeup, life, the more tragic the outcome.
“I know your mom’s mantra is trending or viral in that busy brain.” Vali reached across the dust-free center console. “Your parents are wrong, Mari. You can have everything you want… without a man bankrolling your life.”
“Of course they are. Look at how successful I’ve been since vacating my well-appointed junior suite in their waterfront estate. My magic, Black or otherwise, is underwhelming.” Amarie dangled Prince’s key to emphasize her point. Her biggest fear was they were correct to not trust her on her own. She’d walked away from Russell, a man who didn’t deserve her very lovable heart, determined that she could take care of herself, and her car had blown up—literally—on her first attempt at independence.
“They love you, but their marriage… the way Mrs. B tolerates your dad’s disrespect… their advice on love is misguided. It’s wrong of them to expect you to marry some douche who cheats on you because he has a cushy bank account.”
“I know.” Amarie swallowed the lump in her throat because fundamentally she agreed, but she had zero history as a soloist. What would she do without Russell at her back? Vali was funny, smart, and engaging. She could walk into a room and command attention. Amarie needed a plus-one. “I’m not you, Vali. A nursing degree without a registered state license is worthless.”
“You’ll pass next time.”
“I’ve already failed the exam twice. Russell said it’s too late to lie to myself. I’m not good enough at anything.”
Vali bared her teeth at the mention of him. “Stop repeating his garbage. You two were like the FBI and the CIA, incompatible. You know your stuff, Mari. When you weren’t caught up in his drama, you were busy being too scared to try.”
Fear had always plagued her. Unreasonable, she knew, but she couldn’t help the internal paralysis invading like a killer virus through her every thought. Her very existence as an adult woman teetered on the precipice of failure. The word applied to entirely too many areas of her life.
A twenty-eight-year-old woman with the professional resume of a sixteen-year-old.
Failure.
Six years in a four-year degree program.
Failure.
Five bad years holding on to a broken relationship, most of them in a bogus engagement.
Failure.
Somewhere in the years as Russell’s fiancée, she’d lost the self-confidence that had buoyed her to travel from the safety of home to Howard University’s campus.
“Your lovable, adorkable self is enough,” her friend teased. “We’ll get back to the city and figure out your next step.”
She couldn’t stall anymore, so she just blurted out the decision she’d made while waiting for Vali to arrive. “I’m not going back.”
Silence spread like a small, but deadly, mushroom cloud. Amarie turned to face the driver’s seat. Vali’s facial expression had slipped from elation to a low-browed concern.
“Okay,” Vali drawled. “I might have spoken too soon on the coffee.”
Amarie began to make her case. “I can’t afford the city without a job. And before you interrupt, I don’t want to be in the same city with Russell and his soon-to-be family. I’m done being ashamed of myself because of that man. It’s one thing to know he’s cheating, but… I can’t unsee what I saw…” she trailed off, her breathing unsteady. After she regained her composure, she looked up to see Vali’s tear-filled eyes watching her.
“I’m so sorry, Mari.” She coughed to disguise the swelling emotion. “He’s making you leave me, too? I-if this move is about money, you can slum it with me and Sunday until you find a place.”
Amarie loved her best friend’s youngest sister, but her behavior ventured more into a drunken Friday night than her name led one to believe. Not counting the cost of surrendering to her parents’ desires had landed her with Russell for six years. Amarie had to make her own decisions moving forward.
“Shh.” Amarie gripped Vali’s too-still fingers, stroking life back into them. “I have to do something different, Vali. There’s nothing holding me in the city. Maybe Mother Universe will remodel my life into something spectacular.”
Vali nodded wordlessly, dabbing away her tears. “Yeah… yeah, that heifer owes you big-time. Now,” Vali cleared her throat, all business again, “how do you plan to make money in tiny town West Virginia?”
“This.” Amarie pulled the Service county bulletin from her purse, the one she’d grabbed from a sidewalk newsstand, smoothing out the wrinkles before handing it over. Vali studied the handsome soldier in full dress uniform on the front page. His hunter-green eyes had snagged Amarie’s attention, too, but the veterinary clinic job announcement had made her heart flutter.
“The head shape is better than Russell’s, but that doesn’t say much about the brain matter.”
“Argh,” Amarie rebuked. “Ignore the man. Read the employment listing below his photo.” Yep, singular. There was only one business hiring in the entire town.
Vali’s eyes drifted lower, then she started reading.
“Help wanted at Calvary Family Veterinary Clinic.” She looked from the announcement to the majestic house on the hill with the posted sign. “Oh, now it all makes sense.” Amarie sighed in relief, not having to spell it out anymore. “You’ve been stalling trying to drum up the right words to tell me you’re staying here.”
“Yes. No. Wait.” Amarie jerked. “How did you know?” Before Amarie could explain her decision, which was totally unnecessary, her friend was in action.
“How long have we been friends?” Vali planted her right hand atop Amarie’s headrest, angled her head until she had a clear view over the luggage, and rolled the car backward toward the parking area.
“Is this a trick question because I’m really vulnerable right now?”
“You are so adorkable when you’re nervous,” Vali laughed, turning the wheel.
“That transparent, huh?”
“Just a little, but it’s cool. I’ll walk you to the door, bestie.”
Amarie was a curvy balloon of emotions looking for a sharpened pinpoint. Beneath her, she felt the hybrid’s silent vibration against her full bottom as Vali shifted the car in reverse, parallel parking next to a vintage American-made car filling one of the spots marked FOR PATIENTS ONLY. What sense did that make for a veterinary clinic? The patients didn’t drive themselves. Someone in this house had a sense of humor. Good, she’d be the perfect addition.
“Thanks.” Amarie swallowed. Vali pocketed the keys. With the added seconds, Amarie used the time to focus on the task ahead: radiating confidence and making a stunning first impression.
“Since you are refusing to return home and this is the only gig in town, they’ll have to tell us the job is taken and to get gone to our faces.”
And just that quickly, her surety in her ability faded. She sucked her lower lip between her teeth as her stomach looped into a new knot. Beads of sweat heated her top lip and she quickly licked the salty-tasting droplets away. “What if the job’s gone—”
One squeeze to her sweaty hand stopped the negative thought. “Girlfriend, you’re going to get this job.”
“You think so?” Maybe this was another mistake.
“Is my name Vali with an ‘Ali’. . .
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Fake It Till You Make It
Siera London
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