Picking Daisies on Sundays

At senior prom, eighteen-year-old Dani had spent years hiding her love for Levi Coldwell, her best friend since freshman year.

At senior prom, eighteen-year-old Dani had spent years hiding her love for Levi Coldwell, her best friend since freshman year. They'd bonded over sewing lessons and essay editing, then over the deeper wound of losing their fathers—hers to cancer just before high school, his two years earlier. She'd watched him date other girls and survived, but seeing him kiss someone junior year cracked something open. Tonight, fortified by spiked soda and a confession typed on her phone, she planned to tell him everything. Instead, her platonic date vanished with her phone. Levi found her sobbing in a corridor, cupped her face, and asked what was wrong. Through hiccups and tears, she tried to confess. Whatever he understood, it wasn't what she meant. He walked away. She saw him kissing someone else minutes later. They didn't speak for four years.

His ex appears, and four years of silence end with a fake relationship

Four years later, Dani was hiding in a Manhattan restaurant booth watching her friend Gabe's bad date when she bumped her head on the bottom of a stranger's beer glass. The stranger was Levi—same hazel eyes, now sharper and more handsome. He remembered her favorite drink and bought her one. He'd called her mother the day after graduation for her address but never visited. Their careful catching-up shattered when a strawberry blonde named Bella embraced him with possessive familiarity. When Bella implied they were still together, Levi panicked and told her he was dating Dani. Outside, he explained: Bella's mother controlled a journalism position at the New York Times he needed. If Bella saw him committed, she'd report favorably. Dani—unable to refuse the boy who'd never left her thoughts—agreed to pretend.

Dani's one good swing lands on the wrong person entirely

The first wedding event was a softball game between the two families. Dani had played in high school but always hit foul balls whenever Levi watched—performance anxiety she'd never outgrown. Three strikeouts confirmed nothing had changed. On her final at-bat, she made contact, sending the ball soaring high and directly into Bella's face. The field erupted in screams, then uncomfortable silence, then Bella's gracious insistence she should have moved faster. Worse still, Levi's nine-year-old twin sisters Rhea and Claire—who remembered Dani from when they were four and shrieked her old nickname Daisy—announced loudly that she was dating their brother. Sarah, Levi's sister and the bride, crushed Dani in a hug screaming that she'd always known they'd end up together. The family embraced her. The pretense dug deeper.