He leaned back to me and whispered, “Is it terrible that I love knowing I’m the only one here who knows what you’re wearing?”
He tucked his face close to mine, as though he just wanted to feel my skin against his. My cheek burned where he’d touched it, reminding me of when we were making out in the maintenance closet at Fever.
“Careful, you’re entering emergency territory,” I warned before gulping.
“I think if you tease me, it’s only fair that I get to tease back.”
“Okay, lovebirds,” Marty said, returning to us.
Owen and I leaned away from one another at the same time, like we’d been caught in the middle of fucking.
The way Marty looked between us, it was clear he believed the same thing everyone else did about what we were.
Fake, fake, fake, I reminded myself.
Not all fake, but the part that mattered.
I just had to keep that straight in my head.
Marty brought our orders, and then Owen and I began catching up about more mundane topics—our friends, family. I talked to him about the MLB and some of my disappointments of the season as I devoured my burger and shoved fries down my throat.
“Keegan, you’re annihilating that plate,” Owen remarked after I took a breath from my rambling.
“I’m really hungry,” I said, my mouth still full of the part of the burger I was scarfing down, something I wasn’t even remotely ashamed of.
“Trust me. I can tell that. But you need to take a minute away from that burger to check out the view.”
I turned, following his gaze to see, past the river and the cityscape, the sun sinking beneath the horizon, casting everything in a golden hue.
I swallowed before my mouth dropped open.
“Wow,” I said, in awe of the spectacle.
I took it all in before noticing Owen’s eyes were on me, rather than the view.
“What?”
“Nothing. Just appreciating the way you take in the scenery.” He pressed his lips together, then said, “We need to get out and see Parlaisa in all its glory. Everything really comes alive after dusk.”
“You think we can get one of these to-go?” I said, looking back at my plate, and Owen released a full-out belly laugh.
“I wasn’t kidding,” I pressed.
“I know you weren’t,” he said, still chuckling.
I caught something out of my periphery and turned to see a woman holding her phone up, taking a picture of Owen in the middle of what surely must have looked like a private moment between the two of us, tainting something that had felt so special.
It reminded me of that night in the bar when the pic of us kissing was taken.
When I looked back to Owen, he didn’t seem fazed by it.
This was the life he was used to. For me, that interview was a big deal, but then I got to walk away from it and get back to my life. Although, I was learning that I could never really walk away from that story about us on that Prince Watch blog...or the interview we just did.
This was my life now.
It had been dumped on me, but it was all Owen had ever known—torn between the public image I’d seen and the man I’d come to know, who was so much more than I believed anyone could ever really grasp.
“Come on,” he said. “We’ll order more food, and then I have some things I’d love to share with you.”
