“I can’t think of a thing.”
“Bullshit. What’s your favorite coffee?”
“Why do you care?”
“We’re going to have to keep this ruse up for the foreseeable future. I know we were drunk last night. But I was serious about everything I said.”
“About the ‘until death do us part’ part?”
“No, about this being a win-win situation for us. You need your papers. I need a media distraction. We can make this awkward. Or we can enjoy it. Right now, you’re making it awkward.”
“You’re right,” I said, and he took a few steps toward me, putting his hand on my cheek. “I get like this when I’m stressed. Which is a lot. It also might be part of the reason I’m still not married and haven’t been able to hold down a relationship that wasn’t mostly digital.”
“Duly noted.”
A light smile crossed my face. “I’ll try not to get as stressed, though.”
“That’s so cute.”
I raised an eyebrow. “What’s cute?”
“We just had our first fight as a married couple.”
I snorted. “I guess we did.”
“So . . . coffee?”
“I like a vanilla latte—not super sweet though.”
He kissed me on the lips. “That’s my girl. There’s a coffee shop downstairs. I’ll grab it, then meet you at your lecture and hand it off. Just try not to get so stressed.” He leaned in and whispered. “Maybe I’ll even ask you where you’d prefer me to come next time.”
I bit my lip and rolled my eyes. “Just when I thought you were actually sweet ...”
“That’s for you to decide,” he winked as he walked out of the door to my room.
I made it to the lecture hall a few minutes early. The auditorium where I would be speaking sat about three-hundred. Today’s topic was bridging the gap between funding and research. Basically, I had to put next year’s research goals into layperson’s terms, so that people could decide where to put their donations. It was a big deal.
As I sat in the front row going over the bullet points I needed to cover in my talk on my iPhone, I heard people begin to file in. My reading was interrupted when someone tapped me on the shoulder.
“Psst.” It was Phoebe.
“Hey!” I said.
She took my left hand in hers and felt it, immediately touching the ring. “So ... that was a real Snapchat feed last night? This wasn’t just a drunken prank? You’re ... kind of a national story, you know.”
Adrenaline rushed through me, and I recalled our pact.No one else can know this is fake.
I concentrated on how the way my pulse quickened around him was real. So was the attraction I felt toward him. And my O face last night definitely wasn’t exaggerated.
“It’s crazy,” I said. “I realized I’d met him like ten years ago in college before he was even famous or anything.”
First lie.And I was off to the races.
“Seriously? How did you not remember meeting Dustin freaking LeBlanc?” She squinted.
I plastered a smile on my face, and I couldn’t resist embellishing just a little, for realism. “It’s crazy, I know. I guessthat’s how love works. You feel like you’ve been walking in the desert for months, and then—bam!—it hits you out of nowhere.”
She nodded, and I could feel her squinty eyes studying my face. “What’s really going on?”
