My Worst Enemy Is My Plus One

Episode 2

Ryan Cole had never been particularly good at minding his own business where Chloe Bennett was concerned. He stood near the makeshift bar with a beer that had gone warm in his hand and watched her across the yard the way he had been watching her for most of his adult life—carefully, from a slight remove, and with the private knowledge that he was doing something he shouldn’t.

The string lights threw gold across her bare shoulders and the simple black dress she wore like armor. She was smiling at something her sister had said, but the smile never reached her eyes. He had known the difference since she was sixteen.

Madison appeared at his elbow and followed his line of sight without comment.

“You’re staring,” she said.

“I’m observing.”

“You’re staring like a man who’s about to do something stupid.”

Ryan took a long drink and didn’t deny it. Across the lawn, Aunt Debra had closed in on Chloe again, gesturing with her wineglass in the universal language of well-meaning relatives who believed single women required public intervention. Patricia Bennett hovered just behind, nodding along with the particular brand of maternal concern that always made Chloe’s shoulders tighten.

He had seen the exact same sequence play out at Thanksgiving, at Christmas, at every birthday dinner he had been dragged to over the years. Chloe would endure it with that polite, distant expression she reserved for emotional ambushes. She would deflect, smile, and eventually disappear for ten minutes to remember how to breathe. Tonight the disappearance was taking longer than usual.

“She’s going to vault the fence,” Madison murmured.

“I know.”

“Are you going to do something about it, or are you just going to stand here looking tragic and mysterious?”

Ryan shot his sister a look. “I don’t do tragic.”

“You do something. It’s been getting worse.” Madison’s voice softened. “You’ve been different since you came back from that last work trip. Quieter. And every time Chloe’s in the room you look like you’re solving a very complicated equation.”

He didn’t answer. There was no clean answer that wouldn’t sound like a confession.

The truth was simple and inconvenient: he had been in love with Chloe Bennett for years, and he had never found a version of the truth that didn’t risk wrecking the careful architecture of their antagonism. She was his sister’s best friend. She had decided sometime around junior year of high school that he existed primarily to irritate her. He had leaned into the role because it was safer than the alternative—safer than admitting that the girl who once threatened to put hot sauce in his Gatorade had grown into the only woman who could still knock the air out of his lungs with a single sharp look.

Timing had never been on their side. He left for college. She stayed and built a life that carefully excluded him. He came home for holidays and found her already mid-argument with someone else, or carefully paired off with men who never lasted. He told himself the window had closed. He told himself the teasing was enough. He told himself a lot of things that felt thinner every year. Tonight the window looked wide open and dangerous.

He watched Chloe’s mother rest a hand on her arm and say something that made Chloe’s polite smile turn brittle. Something hot and protective moved under his ribs. Before he could think better of it, he was already crossing the lawn.

The conversation that followed was classic Bennett family theater—concern dressed up as love, suggestions dressed up as help. He inserted himself the way he always did when Chloe looked cornered: with a dry comment and the private satisfaction of watching her glare at him instead of the relatives. It was a poor substitute for what he actually wanted, but it was the language they both understood.

Later, when she slipped out through the side gate, he gave her sixty seconds and then followed.

He found her leaning against the hood of her car in the dark, head tipped back, the line of her throat pale under the distant porch light. For a moment he just stood there and let himself look. The party noise felt far away. The old urge to push—to say something cutting just to see her fire up—rose and then settled into something quieter.

“Running away?” he asked.

“Strategic retreat.”

He stopped beside her. The night air carried the scent of her perfume, something light and clean that he had memorized without meaning to. They stood in silence long enough for the muffled applause from the toasts to fade.

He told her the relatives weren’t trying to be cruel. She already knew. He watched the exhaustion settle into the set of her mouth and heard himself offer the one thing he had no business offering.

A boyfriend. Or a reasonable facsimile.

The words left his mouth before he could stop them. Part of him—the part that still defaulted to needling her—wanted to see her react. The larger part simply couldn’t stand another night of watching her absorb the family’s disappointment like it was her job.

She stared at him like he had suggested they rob a bank.

“You’re not serious.”

“I’m rarely serious. But I’m not joking right now.”

He laid out the terms before she could shut him down: six weeks until the wedding, a date who could sell it, no half measures. He watched the calculation move behind her eyes—the same sharp intelligence that had always made arguing with her feel like the most honest conversation in the room. When she asked what the catch was, he almost told her the truth. Instead, he gave her the version that would keep her from bolting.

They would make it look real. No awkward side-hugs. No polite distance. If they were doing this, they would sell it hard enough that even Aunt Debra bought the story.

Chloe looked at him for a long time. He could almost see the war happening behind her expression—pride versus exhaustion, old resentment versus the sudden, dangerous possibility of relief. When she finally said she would think about it, something tight in his chest loosened.

He left her there in the driveway before he could say anything else stupid. Halfway back to the gate he glanced over his shoulder and gave her one last truth, carefully wrapped in the old language so she wouldn’t hear how much it mattered. He had never really thought she was tragic.

Then he walked back into the light and the noise and the careful performance of a man who was only casually involved.

---

Madison found him twenty minutes later near the dessert table, where he was pretending to care about the difference between two nearly identical chocolate tarts.

“You followed her,” she said. Not a question.

“Someone had to make sure she hadn’t actually scaled the fence.”

“What did you say to her?”

Ryan popped a piece of tart into his mouth and chewed slowly. “I offered to be her fake boyfriend for the wedding.”

Madison stared at him. Then she laughed—one short, disbelieving sound—and immediately looked around to make sure no one had heard.

“You’re serious.”

“I keep getting accused of that tonight.”

“Ryan.” She stepped closer, voice dropping. “You’ve been half in love with her since she was nineteen. Maybe longer. And your big move is *fake dating*?”

He set the plate down. “She needs an exit ramp from the family pressure. I can provide one. It’s temporary. It’s practical.”

“It’s a disaster waiting to happen.”

“Possibly.”

Madison studied his face the way only a younger sister could—searching for the crack in the armor. “You’re going to get hurt.”

“I’ve been hurt for years,” he said quietly. “At least this way I get to stand next to her while it happens.”

The honesty sat between them, heavier than he had intended. Madison’s expression softened into something that looked a lot like worry and a little like reluctant hope.

“She’s going to fight you every step of the way.”

“I’m counting on it.”

“And if she actually starts to fall for you?”

Ryan looked across the yard to where Chloe had reappeared, standing near Liv with a fresh drink and a carefully rebuilt smile. The string lights caught the dark shine of her hair. He felt the old, familiar pull under his sternum—the one he had been ignoring, managing, and failing to extinguish for the better part of a decade.

“Then I’ll deal with it,” he said. “But I’m done standing on the sidelines while they treat her like a problem. And I’m done pretending I don’t want the chance.”

Madison was quiet for a long moment. Then she sighed, the sound of a woman who had just accepted that her brother was about to complicate all of their lives.

“You’re paying for my therapy when this blows up.”

“Fair.”

She punched him lightly in the arm and walked away to rejoin the party. Ryan stayed where he was, beer forgotten, and watched Chloe move through the crowd like someone who had already decided the night was a loss. He thought about the look on her face when he had made the offer—the flash of reluctant interest beneath the suspicion. He thought about six weeks of forced proximity, of public touches that would have to look real, of the rules she would try to set and the ways he already planned to test them.

He had spent years waiting for the right moment. The right moment had never come. So he had manufactured one.

It was reckless. It was possibly unkind to both of them. It was also the first time in a long time that the future felt like it might contain something other than careful distance and sharp-edged banter.

Ryan finished the warm beer, set the bottle on the nearest table, and allowed himself one private, dangerous thought:

If Chloe Bennett was going to let him stand beside her for a weekend, he was going to make damn sure she never looked at him the same way again.

He pulled out his phone and typed a short message he didn’t send.

*When you’re ready to stop thinking and start planning, you know where to find me.*

He deleted it, smiled to himself in the dark, and went to find his sister so they could make a respectable exit before someone else asked him why a successful thirty-one-year-old man was still showing up to engagement parties alone.

The night air felt different on the way to the car. Lighter. Charged. For the first time in years, Ryan Cole was not simply waiting. He was already in motion.