I wince.
“That’s what makes me sick to my stomach,” he adds. “As a kid, I didn’t understand why it made me feel gross inside, but I can tell you now exactly what the problem is. They make every win about beating your family instead of about celebrating that one of us grandkids did something pretty cool. I’m done with this feud. If our families can’t fucking get over this ... I don’t know the next time I’ll voluntarily come back to Tinsel.”
Oh.
I swallow, then have to swallow again.
No big deal. All that’s riding on this fake engagement now is my best friend’s brother not walking away from his hometown entirely.
No pressure.
None at all.
“I’m sorry the feud hurt you,” I say. “For what it’s worth—I hated it when we were growing up too. I just wanted to be Lorelei’s friend,and I couldn’t, and I still don’t entirely understand why. I just know it’s easier to sneak around to see her than it is to deal with my family being mad at me.”
He frowns as we approach downtown Tinsel. I don’t think the frown means he’s unhappy, though. Anymoreunhappy, I mean.
It’s more that I’m realizing he has resting grumpy face when he’s thinking.
Every time he’s frowned that specific frown in the hour or so since we agreed to keep up this fake engagement, at least for tonight, within moments, he’s spouted off some brilliance about why it’s a good plan. “If tonight goes well, I need to move into your cabin with you for the week.”
I choke on air.
We’ve agreed that we’re not telling Lorelei that our engagement is fake. She doesn’t need to carry this secret, and we needno oneelse to know if it’s going to work.
We’ve agreed that I’d come to the cookout his family had planned tonight because if this were real, we’d be racing to tell his family the minute mine found out. They won’t forgive him if the rumor mill reaches them first, and we’re already in the danger zone.
We’ve agreed on a story for how we reconnected, when we started talking, and when we knew it was love.
And we agreed that if we need to break up after tonight, we’ll work out the details later, even if I’m a little on edge that us breaking up tonight could make my life way more complicated.
Especially since it drove my grandmother to one of her “heart attacks.”
But this is the first time he’s caught me truly off guard. “What? No. There’s only one bedroom in the cabin.”
“You told your family we’re eloping next month. We’re telling mine the same thing. If we want them to believe we’re madly in love, we have to stay together. Overnight. We can’t stay at Lorelei’s. She’ll figure outwe’re faking. I’ll sleep on the couch, but I need to stay at your family’s cabin with you.”
I stare at his profile. He has thick dark hair falling over his forehead, a prominent nose, and lips that aren’t too thin or too thick, and he’s sporting a five o’clock shadow on his cheeks and square jaw. His cheekbones are chiseled of stone, much like they were in high school, but he’s bulkier now than he was then. He’s still on the slender side—tall and wide but slender—but there’s definition to his legs and arms that wasn’t there before.
I didn’t pay a lot of attention to him then. Then, he was Lorelei’s academic older brother who was headed to Stanford to study to be an engineer.
We don’t get a lot of kids leaving Tinsel and heading to Stanford. It was a big deal.
Big enough that there was a lot of eye-rolling at every family function of mine.Ooh, they think they’re so special, having someone who’s smart. Or dumb enough to take on the loans that’ll come with that. Just wait until Amanda’s lighting up the Hollywood screen. They’ll see who’s the better product of Tinsel then.
Dane’s right.
The fighting between our families serves absolutely no purpose.
It’s a stain on the town, causing the mayor and other community leaders to intervene basically every month to get things done if our families have conflicting opinions.
And they do.
Mostly out of spite. Grandma’s said so herself.Those new streetlamps would’ve been a good idea if I’d thought of them.OrThose Silvers know we need to update the welcome sign, but they’re arguing just for the fun of it.
While I’m sure eventually our generation would drop the bickering, it should endnow.
Why am I a grown adult who still has to sneak around to have dinner with her hometown BFF?
