“One…” she began softly, swallowing as someone shook the door and beat on it again. “Two…”
“Three,” he hissed – turned the lock – and yanked it open in a rush, and Steffi vaulted forward brandishing the filthy cleaning instruments like a sword and shield, hollering at the top of her lungs.
“GET AWAY FROM MY FIANCE,” she screamed wildly, her voice shaking with intensity. “MY GOODNESS, CAN YOU PLEASE NOT RUIN THE MOMENT FOR US? GIVE US ROOM TO BREATHE AND A LITTLE COMMON COURTESY – SHEESH!”
“She said yes!” Drake emerged behind her, and Steffi could see their shocked gazes as they looked at each other in horror. “You’re the first to hear it, but Steffi agreed to marry me…”
And to her shock, about seventy people whipped out their cell phones, taking photos of them. Immediately, her eyes flinched at the lights, the flashes, the sudden roar of awareness that seemed to grow out of nowhere and surged before them was deafening – only for her to hear Drake’s words as he clamped down on her wrist.
“RUN!”
Heaven help her – Steffi had never run so fast in her entire life. Her legs were pumping wildly as she lobbed the plunger in her hand into the crowd carelessly and the dustpan a second later. Drake was practically pulling her forward and down the angled walkway toward the lower floors. Thank goodness it wasn’t raining, and there weren’t stairs, or she would have been airborne. She ran as fast as she could, barely keeping up with him, as they rushed past unsuspecting people, and almost in slow motion, you could see the awareness flicker in their eyes – and to her horror, they began racing after them too.
Was this what it was like to be famous?
If so, she wanted no part of it – or him.
“SAMMY-P!” Drake hollered wildly to a security guard they were racing past, and she hoped that he knew exactly where hewas going, because she was lost in the mess of hallways without looking at the section markers overhead. “Save me, bro!”
And one second later, Steffi and Drake were in a darkened hallway that shone brightly in the distance where it opened up, revealing the field in the distance.
“C’mon…” he muttered and then looked at her – pausing. “Smile brightly, keep your hands in your pocket, and stay beside me.”
“Why?”
“Because you do not have a ring on your finger.”
“So?”
“It’s going to be all over the internet within minutes that I’m engaged.”
“Well, someone we both know thinks awfully highly of themselves,” she chuckled, rolling her eyes as they emerged from the tunnel just in time to see the massive billboard illuminate with an untimely photo of them standing there, her waving a black rubber plunger on a wooden stick at them… as yellow letters filled the screen, flashing.
*ENGAGED*
*CONGRATS TO THE WALKERS!*
“Oh my gosh…” she whispered faintly as Drake stood beside her looking almost as stunned – also staring at the screen.
“This is not good. I’ve gotta call my Mama,” he breathed shakily – and turned to her. “And we’ve got to get proper photos taken.”
“Why?”
“Because thatatrocityup there on the screencannotbe our engagement photo.”
“We’renotengaged,” she scoffed, her own words sounding shaky with disbelief and shock as she turned slowly to look at his stricken expression. His profile was glued to the screen ahead as some of the other players rushed over to congratulate them.
“We are now,” he said simply, turning to look at her, his eyes unreadable. “According to everyone in the world, you and I are getting married.”
An hour later,Steffi’s whole life was changing, and she wasn’t sure if it was for the better or for worse. Several times, she tried to tell Drake that they were not truly engaged, but he just brushed her off like she was a gnat to him. She received several weird message from her friends – jealous, happy, excited, but mostly petty comments asking things like ‘how dare you keep this a secret’ or ‘why didn’t you ever tell us’… and a voicemail from the HOA, waving the fine that she had been working to pay off by doing community service as a ‘mistake’, followed by two more messages – informing her she’d been ‘fired’ from the ‘job’ that she didn’t work at – before she was congratulated on her engagement.
Had everyone lost their minds?
Everyone was smiling at her, being polite to her, and here she was standing there like some confused idiot with her hands shoved down in her jeans pockets – because he was right. To pull off this farce, she’d need a ring… but they didn’t have to continue this – did they?
The game was over, and the two teams just slapped each other’s hands as they marched past one another before leaving the field. She should be leaving, she should be outta here… but in all honesty?
She was just as befuddled as the rest of society. Obviously, her neighbor was a little more popular than she realized because she was getting friend requests on Instagram, getting tagged on photos, the video footage of them coming out of the bathroom waving a toilet plunger like a sword was all over TikTok… and she was overwhelmed at how to handle any of this. The moment she went home, this… mess… was going to follow her.