“It’s snowing.” He says it like he’s mad at the clouds for daring to release water in these below-freezing temperatures. Or maybe he’s mad atmebecause of it.
“I know. That’s why I’m trying to get home fast and not stop to chat.” I turn and start walking again. But again, I hear him call my name.
“Brielle. Get in the damn car.”
A part of me really doesn’t want to, simply for the fact that he demanded it. But another part of me, the smarter and colder part of me, is looking at his warm, dry car with unbridled envy.
I open the door and slide onto his leather seat, kicking my shoes together outside of the car to get the snow off.
“Thanks. Sorry if I’m a little wet.”
He runs his eyes down my body, landing on my heels. Without a word, he maneuvers back onto the street and adjusts the heat, turning on the vents by my feet. The warm blast of air almost hurts, like a million sharp pins stabbing into my feet, but I’m grateful for it all the same.
The car is silent. No talking, no music, even the windshield wipers glide noiselessly without making that squeaking sound on each pass. I take out my phone, killing time by scrolling through my notifications, and end up knee-deep in a news article about a contentious celebrity divorce. By the time I look up, we are in a different part of the city.
“Hey, my apartment is that way,” I say, pointing behind us the way we came.
“I told you I needed to talk to you, but you left before I was off my call.”
“Okay. So, do you want to talk, then?” I ask hesitantly. We’ve been in the car together for the last ten minutes, and he hasn’t said a word. If he wanted to talk to me, he could have said what he needed to say on the way to my apartment. “If not, this next right will bring us back around.”
“I know where I’m going, Brielle. We can talk when we get there.”
“Where isthere?”
“Dinner,” he says casually.
My pulse kicks up. Like on a date?
“You can’t just take me out to dinner. I have plans tonight. I need to get home.” It’s a complete lie, but the thought of going on a date with him… another date?… a non-fake date?… makes my stomach swoop and swirl.
“No, you don’t,” he states matter-of-factly.
Shoot. I did already tell him that I didn’t have plans tonight. But that wasn’t an agreement to make plans with him.
“You can’t just pick me up off the street and take me wherever you want,” I snap.
He lets out a heavy breath, his jaw tensing with irritation.
“We have seven days before we need to be the loving couple who have been together for months. And that was your doing. So now, we need to make a plan so that one of us—” He cuts his eyes over to me accusingly. “—doesn’t say something out of line that blows this whole thing up.”
“Oh.” That actually makes a lot of sense. We had barely talked to each other all week after last weekend’s disaster, but we have another shot to make this right, and it would be foolish not to plan properly.
Proper planning prevents poor performance.
It isn’t like I haven’t thought about the upcoming retreat over the past week. It’s kind of been the only thing playing on my mind. But where he is focusing on how to make sure we can pull off being a couple in order to solidify this deal, my brain keeps circling around the same question… how did I get myself into this mess?
“Yeah,” he says, arrogance dripping from his voice. “Dinner or home?”
He lobs the ball clearly in my court. If I say I want to go home and not work on our act together, and then we fall flat on our face… that’s on me. But if I agree to this dinner, does that make it a date?
“Fine. Dinner. But I’m paying my own way,” I say, drawing a line in the sand.
“Fine with me.”
He continues down the road in silence for another few minutes, tension filling the space around us. If this is the energy we put off next weekend, we are definitely going to give ourselves away as big, fat liars.
My voice cuts through the quietness in a startling burst of noise. “Do you have any brothers or sisters?” I ask.
