“Hmm?” I asked, cautiously.
“Well, that’s kind of why I asked you to coffee.”
“For PR?”
“Yeah. My publicist thinks…” She exhaled. “She thinks we should enter a…mutually beneficial pretend dating arrangement. One in which you’d be my…boyfriend.”
My jaw dropped.
I didn’t say anything, mostly because I was too busy trying to remember how to breathe. She kept going, words spilling out fast, as if she was trying to outrun them.
“I was going to wait and bring it up tomorrow, but I figured it’d be easier now. Less chance of anyone overhearing, you know…”
I blinked. Nodded. Said nothing. My brain was still stuck on a pretend dating arrangement.
Fake dating.
Fake dating Ellie Miles.
It wasn’t a bad plan. Coach would love it. The media would eat it up. Fans would stop losing their minds over the body cam footage and start losing it over real footage of us instead.
Plus, fake felt safe—or at least safer than admitting my heart had tried to stage a full-blown jailbreak the second she saidyouandboyfriendin the same sentence.
I mean, the girl I’ve been low-key crushing on since college just asked me to play her boyfriend? I’d been rehearsing for that role for years in my dreams.
She called it pretend. She could’ve asked me to pretend to be a pet iguana, and I’d have said yes.
“Oh,” was all I managed to say.
“Oh?”
“Yeah. I mean—yeah. Sorry, just didn’t expect that. But...I’m in.”
“You’re in? Don’t you want to talk about it first?”
“What’s there to discuss?” I asked.
“Well, it’s obviously helpful to me. My PR’s been a mess since my breakup.” She hesitated. “But what do you want out of this?”
I scratched the back of my neck, chuckling. “Actually…my coach kind of asked me to keep the positive media going. This would help me out, too. That’s kind of why I blew you the kiss.”
“Oh, so it wasn’t genuine?”
“I mean, it definitely still was.”
“But seriously, you don’t have any other terms?”
“No.”
“Really? Nothing?”
“Well…” I smiled.
“Name it.”
“You come home with me sometimes. My family would see right through me if I said I was dating someone and didn’t bring her around. Plus, my niece is obsessed with you. I might retain the favorite uncle spot if I brought you to a family dinner or two.”
“Gracie, right?”
