“Just until this blows over. I assume you know I’m on a short leash as it is for the off-field shit. Beating my teammate's ass is going to land hard on the record I already have.”
“I don’t see how us dating gets you out of that.”
“If I kicked his ass because he touched my girlfriend inappropriately, that’s gonna look one way. If we were fighting over some random woman at a party, that’s another.”
“How’s it going to look when they think you’re dating your best friend’s ex-wife?”
“He doesn’t play on the team.”
“He’s your agent.”
“That’s my problem. Not theirs. And I can handle Drew.”
“Like you handled the guy last night?”
“Drew is half my size. He wouldn’t be stupid enough to try.”
I stare at him for a minute, pondering the idea he’s suggesting. I don’t even know what us fake dating looks like in practice. I’m a recently divorced middle-class suburban woman working at a nonprofit for pennies. He’s the all-pro defensive end who lives in a high-rise with a view who signed a record-setting deal. I scroll dating apps for divorced accountants with dad bods, and he dates celebrities with personal trainers. We do not mesh, and I can only imagine how amused Drew would be by the idea.
“No. The last thing I want in my life is for my ex-husband to think I’m so desperate I’m fake dating his best friend. No thank you. Let alone the world wondering how the hell we ended up together. Also, no thank you.”
He shrugs, “Having the world believe you moved on to his best friend will probably get under his skin more than you think. I mean we couldnottell him it’s fake.”
“He didn’t even tell you he was divorced. How’s he going to think this happened?”
“I ran into you at an event at Violet’s place. Found out you were single. We’d been drinking. One thing led to another.” Another half-hearted shrug.
“How much was I drinking that I lost all sight of reason, not to mention moral and ethical boundaries?” I snipe at the idea of being some drunken hookup of his.
“I don’t know. How much did you have to drink last night? Cause I’d guess only another glass or so more than whatever that was given the way you were looking at me.”
I scoff. “I’d need to be half a bottle deep to want to give someone as arrogant as you any more punches for his frequent fuck card.”
“You remember I’m here because I was trying to help you, right?” His eyes blaze a warning at me. “I could lose my starting spot. Fuck, I could lose my spot here period.”
I slide my eyes across the room because it’s too hard to hold his gaze. He’s right. He’d had good intentions last night. Really, he’d been nothing but kind to me, which is part of what has me so rattled. Because he’s been all I could think about since, and the last thing I need is to be nursing a crush on my ex’s best friend. That only ends one way. So the last thing I want is to help him through this, forced to pretend we’re together. I just don’t have a good excuse not to. Especially if it’s the difference in his career.
“I understand that, but it was also the last straw in a long line of offenses if that’s the case. You can’t put that all at my feet. I was married to your agent, remember?”
“Good to know he takes the NDAs seriously.”
“He didn’t tell me details. And it’s not like you don’t make the tabloids.”
“All the fucking same. But good to know you’re so riveted to the details of my personal life.”
We stare at each other for a minute before I finally sigh, realizing I’m going to cave because however much he gets under my skin I’m fairly certain he usually means well, and I know he’s a good person underneath it all. Plus he wouldn’t be here if he didn’t have to be, asking me for a favor when he could be anywhere else.
“I’ll do it. But it’s going to be a disaster. We can’t last ten minutes alone without ending like this.”
“We’ll figure it out.”
“How do you suppose we do that?”
“Same as everything. Practice.”
“I guess we’ll find out.” I shrug. “We’ll have to tell Drew though. I don’t want the fallout of him thinking this is real, and we’ll probably need his help and your publicist’s in order to make this seem plausible.”
“Fair enough.” He shrugs his agreement.
