Could he have been a little less sexy? Just for five minutes while I woke up enough to ignore it?
“I have it on good authority that I’m adorable,” he said. “But I’m in a relationship right now.”
“She knows we’re faking,” I pointed out.
“Shh,” Ward said, pressing his finger to his lips. “Method acting.”
“This isn’t—”
The sound of the front door opening cut me off.
“Ward?” Mr. Harrison called out. “You planning on getting up before noon?”
8
Ward
My morning wasnotgoingthe way I would’ve planned it.
Dad had turned up to take me and Ryder out for breakfast, and now he was smiling in the rear-view mirror while Ryder snuggled up to me in the back seat of his van, taking a nap on my shoulder.
It wasn’t as though that’d never happened before, but this time it wasdifferent. Dad thought we were dating.
I hadn’t taken the time last night to consider what that meant. Dad and I were close. Dad and Ryder were close. He wasthrilledto have Ryder back in town. He’d been calling Ryder his other son for as long as I could remember, and to him, it wasn’t a joke.
I hadn’t thought any of this through.
Also, I couldn’t stop thinking about how it felt to have Ryder snuggled up against me. I couldn’t stop thinking about how it’d felt just like when we were kids, like all the other times we’d huddled together when we were hurt or scared or sick. We’d shared every cold either of us caught because the first person either of us reached out to for comfort was the other.
I’d almost convinced myself it didn’t mean anything that I still wanted Ryder sometimes when I was sniffly and feeling sorry for myself before he came back into town. Now…
Now it was harder to believe.
As Ryder slid into the booth after me, pressed against me from hip to knee, my stomach swooped.
It didn’t mean anything, I knew that. It was just that we couldn’t let the act drop now. Not with Dad watching.
After all that teasing I’d done about method acting, I felt like this was some kind of punishment from the universe.
“Look,” Ryder said, passing his phone over to show me his Instagram post. “People love you.”
People love youfelt like an understatement. New comments popped up while I was watching, joining the dozens of others Ryder scrolled down to show me.
I didn’t get the chance to read many of them, but a lot of heart and fire emojis caught my eye on the way past.
That was good, right? It meant this was working.
It meant we were definitely doing it. For-real for real doing it.
“I’ll have to fight them off,” Ryder added. “Your son is an Instagram star, Mr. Harrison.”
“Instagram is—”
“I know what Instagram is,” Dad interrupted me. “How old do you think I am?”
“I thought you just turned forty last year,” Ryder said.
That? That was why he was the favorite.
