Pretend Me Yours

Episode 4:Signing Her Life Away

Chapter 4 Signing Her Life Away

The contract arrived at 7:43 in the morning.

Aria knew this because she had been awake since six, sitting at the small kitchen table with a cup of tea gone cold beside her, staring at her laptop screen without actually seeing it. She'd been applying for jobs again more out of habit than hope at this point when the email notification appeared at the top of her screen.

Cole Enterprises Legal Contract for Review

She stared at it for a full minute before opening it.

The document was forty-three pages long.

Aria closed the laptop, finished the cold tea, made a fresh cup, and opened it again.

She read every word.

Not skimming actually reading, the way she'd taught herself to read important documents back at Sunnyside when she'd realized that the fine print of things affected her life whether she understood it or not. She read slowly, carefully, with a pen in her hand and a notepad beside her, marking anything that needed clarification.

Most of it was what she'd expected. The terms they'd discussed were there, cleanly laid out the three month timeframe, the payment structure, the confidentiality clause, the exit conditions. His lawyer had written it with the kind of precision that left very little room for interpretation, which she respected even if it was slightly intimidating.

Her conditions were in there too. All of them, word for word.

The professional recommendation clause was on page thirty-one, paragraph four. She read it twice. It was more detailed than she'd expected specifying that the letter would be personally signed, on official letterhead, and could be used for any professional purpose at her sole discretion, with no expiration date and no right of retraction by the issuing party.

She sat back in her chair.

He hadn't just included it. He'd made it bulletproof.

She didn't know what to do with that so she made a note on her pad, circled it once, and kept reading.

By nine-thirty she had six questions and one suggested amendment. She typed them into a reply email with the subject line Contract Review Queries and sent it before she could second-guess herself.

The reply came back in eleven minutes.

All six questions answered clearly. The amendment a small adjustment to the notice period clause that gave her slightly more flexibility on scheduling accepted without comment.

She closed the laptop.

Called Lena.

"Absolutely not," Lena said.

"Lena "

"Aria. Listen to yourself. A billionaire walked into your diner and offered you two hundred thousand dollars to be his fake girlfriend. That's not a job offer. That's the beginning of a thriller where you end up in witness protection."

"I've read the contract. It's legitimate. His firm is real, his lawyer is real, everything is documented and above board "

"How do you know the lawyer is real?"

"I looked him up. James Whitmore, twenty years at Cole and Associates, bar certified, three LinkedIn recommendations from judges."

A pause. "You looked up the lawyer."

"I look everything up, Lena. You know this."

Another pause, longer this time. Aria could hear Lena thinking the particular quality of silence that meant she was moving from reaction to actual consideration. It was one of the things she loved most about her. Lena felt things loudly and then thought about them carefully. In Aria's experience that was a rare combination.

"Tell me about him," Lena said finally. "Not the money. Him."

Aria thought about how to answer that honestly.

"He's controlled," she said. "Everything about him is deliberate. He doesn't waste words or movements or reactions. But he's not cruel he could have been, in the diner, when the coffee happened. He wasn't." She paused. "He included everything I asked for in the contract. Even the things I expected him to push back on."

"The recommendation letter?"

"Made it legally irrevocable."

Silence.

"Lena."

"I'm thinking."

"I know."

"I hate that I can't find a good reason to tell you not to do it," Lena said. "That's what I hate. Because it sounds insane but the logic is actually "

"Sound."

"Don't finish my sentences."

"Sorry."

More silence. Then: "You actually like him."

"I don't know him."

"You're intrigued by him. That's different from liking him and also more dangerous."

Aria opened her mouth and closed it again.

"I'm not going to fall for him," she said. "It's a business arrangement. I understand exactly what it is."

"Mm." Lena's voice carried a full paragraph in that single syllable. "Okay. Fine. I'll sign the NDA. But I want to meet him."

"That's not part of the "

"Non-negotiable, Aria. If you're walking into this man's world for three months I want to look him in the eye at least once before you sign anything. I don't care how many LinkedIn recommendations his lawyer has."

Aria exhaled. "I'll ask."

"You'll tell. There's a difference."

She met Damien that afternoon.

Not at the diner this time he'd sent a car, which she'd almost refused on principle before remembering that the bus took forty minutes and she had a shift in three hours. The car was black, clean, driven by a man named Patrick who offered her water with the quiet efficiency of someone who had been doing this for a long time.

She took the water.

The building was downtown glass and steel, the kind of architecture that was designed to make you feel small before you even walked through the door. The lobby was all pale marble and low lighting and a reception desk staffed by two people who smiled the particular smile of those trained to be welcoming without being warm.

Damien met her on the fourteenth floor.

He was in a different suit navy this time, no tie, the collar open by one button in a way that somehow made him look more composed rather than less. He led her to a corner office that was large enough to contain her entire apartment and had the kind of view that reminded you the city was beautiful when you were high enough above it.

"You had questions about the contract," he said.

"I sent them this morning. Your lawyer answered them."

"I know. I reviewed his responses before he sent them." He gestured to a chair across from his desk and sat in his own. "The amendment was reasonable. I should have included it in the original draft."

"It was a small thing."

"Small things in contracts become large things in practice."

She sat. "I want to bring Lena to the signing."

Something crossed his face. "The best friend."

"She's already agreed to the NDA. She won't be in the room for the actual signing if you'd rather not she can wait outside. But she wants to meet you first. I'm not going to talk her out of it and I'm not sure I want to."

He studied her for a moment. "Why not?"

"Because she's the only person in the world who has always looked out for me," Aria said simply. "If she looks at you and something feels wrong to her, I want to know that before I sign forty-three pages."

Something in Damien's expression shifted. It was subtle the kind of shift you'd miss if you weren't watching carefully. A slight softening around the eyes. There and gone in under a second.

"Fine," he said. "Bring her."

Lena arrived at four o'clock.

She walked into Damien's office in a yellow coat that was aggressively cheerful against the muted tones of everything else in the building, looked Damien Cole up and down with the directness of someone who had never once in her life been intimidated by wealth, and said:

"You have kind eyes. I wasn't expecting that."

Damien blinked. It was the first time Aria had seen him blink with any visible surprise.

"Thank you," he said.

"It's not entirely a compliment. Kind eyes on a cold person means they're hiding something soft." Lena tilted her head. "Usually that means they've been hurt. Usually that means they're going to hurt someone else by accident before they figure out what to do about it."

A beat of silence.

"Lena," Aria said carefully.

"I'm just talking," Lena said pleasantly. She turned to Aria. "I like him. Don't look at me like that, I can like him and still think this is complicated." She turned back to Damien. "If she calls me and says anything has gone sideways, I will make your life administratively difficult in ways you cannot anticipate. I know people."

"I don't doubt it," Damien said. And incredibly, unmistakably, the corner of his mouth moved.

Lena saw it. She shot Aria a look that contained an entire conversation.

Aria ignored it heroically.

The signing took twenty minutes.

James Whitmore, the lawyer, was exactly as LinkedIn had suggested measured, thorough, efficient. He walked them through each section without rushing, answered Aria's remaining questions with precision, and witnessed both signatures without expression.

Damien signed first. Clean, unhesitating.

Aria looked at the page for a moment.

She thought about the group home. About thin envelopes and cold tea and three hundred and twelve dollars. About the locket with the faded photograph and all the questions it had never answered.

She thought about the recommendation letter on page thirty-one, paragraph four.

She picked up the pen.

She signed.

Outside on the pavement afterward, with the city doing its indifferent afternoon thing around them, Lena linked her arm through Aria's and was quiet for almost thirty seconds which was something of a personal record.

"You okay?" she asked finally.

Aria looked up at the building. Fourteen floors up, somewhere behind the glass, a man she barely knew was now contractually her boyfriend.

"Ask me in three months," she said.

Lena squeezed her arm. "Deal."

They walked to the bus stop together.

In her jacket pocket, against her chest, the locket rested the way it always had small and warm and full of questions she hadn't found the answers to yet.

She didn't know that some of those answers were already in motion.

She didn't know that three months from now, everything she thought she understood about her own life would be unrecognizable.

She just walked to the bus stop with her best friend and let the city carry on around her.

For now, that was enough