# Chapter 2: The Engagement That Was Never Supposed to Be Real
Hello everyone, it’s me again! How are you all doing? Today I will continue to walk with you and review Chapter 2 of "Marriage on Madison Avenue." And wow, this chapter is a delicious mix of banter, fake-engagement chaos, family drama, and one very dangerous question: what happens when a pretend engagement starts to feel just a little too comfortable?
We begin with Audrey storming up Madison Avenue, passing Bottega Veneta and mentally flipping off Scandal Boy, the Instagram gossip troll who has apparently made her life miserable. She lets herself into Clarke’s gorgeous townhome with her spare key, because of course she has one. Queen is blasting from upstairs, and Audrey knows exactly where to find him: his home gym, the one room in the house she has never been allowed to redecorate.
Clarke is mid-workout, bench-pressing like some kind of Superman—which is unfortunate, because his name is Clarke and he has heard Superman jokes his entire life. Audrey, meanwhile, is called “Dree,” a nickname she tolerates only because Clarke has used it since childhood. Their chemistry is immediate, teasing, familiar, and layered with years of friendship. She asks if he has anything to say to her. He tries to charm his way out with a compliment about her hair. It does not work.
Because Audrey has seen the gossip. The *Manhattan Post* seems to think she and Clarke are engaged. Again.
This is not the first time Clarke has used Audrey as his escape hatch. In fact, it is the third fake engagement. Clarke’s mother, Linda, had tricked him into lunch with his ex-girlfriend Elizabeth Milsap, the superstar lawyer who left New York for DC. When Clarke tried to leave the restaurant with Elizabeth, Tilda Covey—one of New York’s most notorious busybodies and one of Linda’s closest friends—saw them together. Tilda immediately assumed wedding bells were ringing. Clarke’s knee-jerk response was to announce that he was already engaged to Audrey.
Audrey is not impressed. She demands he undo it. Today. Get them un-engaged.
But then the chapter shifts from comedy to something more vulnerable. Audrey admits that Scandal Boy has been spreading rumors about her: that she is a home wrecker, that she cannot keep a man, that she is cursed. The comments on her Instagram are brutal. People speculate about why she never posts a man. Some think she is a closeted lesbian—which she is fine with—but others paint her as a relationship pariah. One commenter even theorizes that she has shark teeth for a vagina. Clarke is horrified. Audrey, however, cannot simply laugh it off, because social media is her job. It is her career. And the rumor is hurting her.
So she proposes something wild: what if they do not correct the engagement rumors just yet? What if they stay fake engaged for a few days? Long enough for the internet to move on. Long enough to spite Linda, who has never liked Audrey. Long enough for Audrey to feel chosen instead of pitied.
Clarke is skeptical, but he listens. And because he is her best friend—and because he can never quite say no to her—he eventually agrees. But first, ground rules. The word “vagina” is officially banned. And second, he needs to take a shower, because they have somewhere to go.
Where? To shop for a big-ass diamond ring for his wife-to-be.
Cue the fake engagement officially becoming a performance.
The chapter then jumps to Friday, January 10. Scandal Boy posts another taunt: “How many karats does it take to reverse a curse and hold on to a man?” Audrey and Clarke arrive at the West family residence on 80th Street for dinner. Audrey is nervous. The door knocker looks like a lion with its mouth open. Clarke jokes that it is clearly a spitting image of his mother. And then Linda West appears.
Linda is elegant, fierce, broad-shouldered in vintage Chanel, with the same golden-brown eyes as her son. She greets them coolly, air-kisses included, and invites them in for dinner with the kind of smile that feels more like a trap than a welcome. Clarke helps Audrey out of her coat, and the scene ends on the edge of a very tense family dinner.
This chapter is so much fun because it balances rom-com sparkle with real emotional stakes. Audrey is not just playing games. She is hurting. She is tired of being the punchline, tired of being unlucky in love, tired of watching everyone assume she is somehow unlovable. And Clarke—despite his playboy reputation and his allergy to serious commitment—shows up for her. He teases her, yes, but he also listens. He agrees to be her fake fiancé. He takes her ring shopping. He brings her to face his mother. That is not nothing.
The banter is sharp, the chemistry is electric, and the fake relationship is already threatening to become something much harder to fake.
## Reader’s Impressions & Star Rating
As a reader, I adored this chapter. It made me laugh out loud, but it also made my heart ache for Audrey. The dynamic between her and Clarke is the perfect friends-to-lovers setup: comfortable, teasing, and quietly romantic in ways neither of them wants to name. Linda West is already a fantastic antagonist—controlling, elegant, and terrifying in the way only a society mother can be. And the fake engagement trope is handled with such charm that I cannot wait to see how long they can keep pretending before somebody catches feelings.
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Rating: 4.8 / 5 Stars
## Next Chapter Prediction
The dinner at Linda West’s house is going to be a battlefield. Linda will almost certainly interrogate Audrey, question the engagement, and maybe even try to bring Elizabeth back into the conversation. Clarke will have to defend Audrey in front of his mother, which will blur the line between pretend and real. I also suspect the diamond ring will make an appearance, and the moment Linda sees it, she will either explode or start scheming. Meanwhile, Scandal Boy is still watching, and Audrey’s Instagram may become a larger weapon in this fake-engagement war. The next chapter will likely give us tension, family drama, and the first real hint that Clarke is not as indifferent to Audrey as he pretends to be.
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