I should explain the title. My boyfriend isn’t really my boyfriend. Or he wasn’t supposed to be.
His name is Sam. We’ve been best friends since freshman year of college, eleven years ago. He’s the person I call when my car breaks down, when I get a promotion, when I can’t sleep. He’s seen me cry at airports and throw up at a wedding. He’s never once seen me as anything other than his friend. I made sure of it, because I never wanted to lose him.
Last spring, my mom started setting me up. Constantly. Her friend’s son. Her dentist’s nephew. A man from her church who “has a boat.” Every Sunday dinner was an ambush. My younger sister was getting married in September, and my mom had made it very clear that I was not going to that wedding alone. “Everyone will ask,” she said. “Don’t embarrass me.”
I complained to Sam about it over pizza. He laughed and said, “Just tell her you’re seeing someone.” I said she’d want to meet him. He shrugged. “So bring me.”
It was supposed to be a joke. Then it wasn’t.
We made rules. We wrote them on a napkin. No kissing, except if absolutely necessary, on the cheek. Hand-holding in public only. We’d “break up” amicably after the wedding. And nobody, ever, could find out. Not my mom. Not our friends. Not my sister.
The first family dinner was in April. Sam brought my mom flowers. He talked to my dad about fishing for two hours. He did the dishes without being asked. When we left, my mom hugged him at the door and whispered to me, “Finally.”
That should have been funny. It was. Mostly.
But something started happening. Small things. At my cousin’s barbecue in June, Sam put his arm around me while we were talking to my aunt, and he didn’t take it away when she left. At my nephew’s birthday party, he held my hand in the car on the way home. Nobody was watching. In July, he showed up at my apartment with soup when I had a cold. Real soup. He’d called his grandmother for the recipe.
“For the act?” I asked, joking.
“Obviously,” he said. He didn’t look at me.
And somewhere between the soup and the barbecue, I realized I wasn’t pretending anymore.
I’d been in love with my best friend for eleven years and spent all of them making sure I’d never have to admit it. Now I was holding his hand every Sunday and the rules on the napkin said we’d be over in September.
I didn’t know what to do. If I told him, and he didn’t feel the same way, I’d lose the fake relationship and the real friendship at the same time. If I didn’t tell him, I’d lose him anyway, in September, when we “broke up.”
My sister’s wedding was on a Saturday. Sam wore a navy suit. He danced with my grandmother. He danced with my mom. He danced with me, slowly, during a song I’ll never be able to hear again without crying.
During that dance, my sister came up behind us, grinning, and said, “You two are so obviously in love it’s disgusting.” Then she danced away.
Sam stopped moving. So did I.
“Sam,” I said. “About the rules.”
“I know,” he said quietly. “We said September. It’s September.”
“I don’t want to break up,” I said. It came out before I could stop it. “I don’t want to pretend anymore. I’ve been in love with you since sophomore year. I’m so sorry. I know this ruins everything.”
He didn’t say anything for what felt like forever. Then he reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a napkin. Our napkin. The one with the rules. He’d kept it.
He unfolded it. At the bottom, under “We break up after the wedding,” in his handwriting, in a different pen, was a new line. It was dated June, the day of the barbecue.
“Unless she wants to stay.”
“I wrote that three months ago,” he said. “I’ve been carrying it around every day, trying to figure out how to show you without scaring you off.”
I kissed him. Not on the cheek. In the middle of the dance floor, in front of my entire family.
My mom saw. She clapped. Of course she did.
We never told my family that the first six months were fake. Sam says it’s because they’d never believe us. I say it’s because they weren’t really fake. We just didn’t know it yet.
He proposed in March. With the napkin. He’d had it framed.
