But somehow she wasn’t checking. She was staring at him. Taking in that suddenly molten look in his eyes, the refusal to back down once she’d seen. It was so powerful for a second that she almost said sorry. Then at the last moment, forced herself to just explain.
“It’s just a thing people say. I didn’t really mean it,” she said.
Yet weirdly he didn’t let up. He lowered his voice, but he kept on.
“I don’t care. I don’t like it,” he whispered, in a way that made her feel even funnier. As if he were bothered about something like that happening. As if he worried about her dying. Even though it was most likely just concern that he’d be left with this mess. And sure enough, a moment later: “We can deal with this, all right. Even if you’re somehow correct it won’t be that bad. You come out at a couple of stops, hold my… hold my hand and wave like some politician’s wife, and that’s it. Job done. Mission accomplished. Everything goes back to normal.”
There, she thought.Practical again.
But that was okay. She could be practical, too.
“Yeah, except that is not going to cut it.”
“Well, it was cutting it before. Why not now?”
“Because, dipshit, unlike the original plan with an actress who swans in and out of the picture, we are going to be together all the time. In the same car, at the same hotels, at the same restaurants. On a fucking road trip from hell. Me there, forever behind the scenes, amongst dozens and sometimes thousands of people who think we are a couple. Who we have to convincingly be a couplefor,” she said, and knew it had hit home the moment she did. He went very still, gaze turned inward as he went over everything she had just detailed. All the things it meant doing, all the ways they would have to be.
She wasn’t surprised that his voice sounded faint when he replied.
“People probably won’t even notice us that much.”
“There are currently seven different sets of people watching us right now.”
“Well, what are they going to do? Demand to see our certificates of true love authenticity? Check our IDs that say we’re really a couple? Even if people do gawp at us wherever we go, they can’t prove shit,” he said, less faint now. In fact he sounded so firm and sure it would have been easy to believe him.
But she couldn’t. For one big reason.
“They don’t need to. You’ll prove it for them.”
“I don’t see how. Nobody ever knows what I’m thinking.”
She laughed mirthlessly. “Because usually you’re great at masking. But not when it comes to me. With me, you have never been able to keep that poker face. You find me unbearable, and it shows in almost every single thing you do,” she said, sure that she wasn’t saying anything he didn’t already know.
Yet strangely, his expression seemed to shift as she spoke.
It sort of opened up, in a way that almost looked vulnerable. Or maybe wounded somehow. Even though she’d never known him to be vulnerable or wounded by anything in his life. The closest he’d ever come was that time she’d called him a phony, but that had just been a blip.He’s just trying to work out a way around things, she told herself. And sure enough, a moment later he came up with the goods.
“Unbearableis an exaggeration. And even if it wasn’t, I can do better,” he said. Then he seemed to pause for amoment. Like he was hesitating before saying something difficult. Before he finally seemed to nod to himself, and continue. “I can pretend I like you. I can pretend you never bother me. I can pretend it pains me to suddenly learn I’ve hurt you, that things I do can actually hurt you, and that I want to make it up to you, even if I’m no good at it. Or don’t know what to do. Hell, you can show me what to do, if I do it wrong.”
Then he nodded again on the end, like that was settled.
And god, she wanted it to be. Something about all of that sounded so… She didn’t even know. Real, in some indefinable way. Like he was speaking from the heart, even though he was just outlining a kind of game.
Though of course it didn’t matter anyway.
His plan had a flaw, and she knew it.
“All right, then, I tell you what. I’m going to order the biggest, messiest, most seasoned seafood boil you’ve ever seen in your life. Just a truly disgusting mass of shellfish limbs and guts and eyeballs. And then I’m going to sit here, and eat every bit of it with all the sloppy gusto I have in my heart. And you’re going to watch me do it without once looking away, in a way that seems like you do not mind it at all,” she said. Then watched him go very, very still.
He had to cover it fast with a fold of his arms, and a “Fine by me.”
But all that did was give her permission to go as hard as she knew she would have to, if she wanted to convince him that fixing things this way was a mistake. In fact, in a weird way it was sort of freeing. She didn’t haveto worry. She didn’t have to care. There was no need to crush herself into a polite cube, the way she usually did with just about everyone she’d ever known.
She could just dive right in.
And she did. She ordered everything but the kitchen sink, and when the waitress set down a tray of frankly incredible-looking seafood covered in butter the color of a stop sign, she started stripping shells and claws and legs right away. No sense of decorum about it—just snap, crackle, and pop.
Without even so much as awhisperfrom him.
