“Totally fake?” Ryder asked.
“Totally fake,” I agreed, guts twisting. Totally fake. Sort of. Ish. “Good chance to take pictures for Instagram.”
“I’d love to,” Ryder said, and dammit if it didn’t feel a little bit like he was really saying yes to a real date with me.
“Yeah?” I asked, trying to hide the giddy rush that threatened to make my voice tremble.
This was good. This was perfect.
Now I could start untangling the mess of my feelings about Ryder without ever having to admit to the feelings, or the mess, if I wasn’t ready to. It didn’t have to mean anything.
It wasn’t like I could keep Ryder, and I knew it, but while we were pretending anyway…
Why not get something I’d wanted my whole life?
“Yes.” Ryder smiled at me. “I’d like that. Especially after… that,” he said, waving vaguely in what I guessed was the direction of LA.
“Tomorrow, maybe? Dad needs my help with some work stuff this afternoon, but tomorrow’s free, so…”
“I think I can fit you into my busy schedule,” Ryder teased, still smiling.
It was nice, when he smiled. I’d missed seeing it. I’d missed being the one to make him do it.
He didn’t smile on camera the way he smiled at me.
“Should we go home?” Ryder asked. “Wouldn’t want to keep your dad waiting.”
Home.
It was a surprise to hear Ryder call Otter Bay that.
“Yeah,” I said. “Yeah, let’s… go home.”
13
Ryder
“How the helldid you find this?” I asked as Ward produced a bottle from the picnic basket. I couldn’t believe he’d managed to get his hands on it.
And yet here we were. Ward sitting on his ancient picnic blanket, leaning back against that old crabapple tree that growing right at the base of the cliffs, the same sheltered spot we’d always claimed for ourselves for summer picnics, eyes sparkling in the afternoon light as he held out a bottle of actual liquid gold.
Crater Lake Apple Ginger soda. It’d been impossible to come by other than at the county fair when I was younger and I’d loved it so much I wanted to squeal like a toddler at Christmas when he handed it over.
Ward had remembered. After all this time.
“Local store stocks it now,” Ward said, taking out a second bottle. “Always think of you when I go past it. Drink it while it’s still cold.”
I didn’t need telling twice, cracking the bottle open and pouring the foam that welled up straight into my mouth. When I was younger I’d always felt so grown up, drinking soda out of a glass bottle like this, but now I felt like a little kid again.
“This is already the best date of my life,” I said, wiping my mouth on the back of my hand.
“Should we be taking photos?” Ward asked.
“Probably,” I allowed. Thatwaswhat we were meant to be here for.
It didn’t exactly feel like a cynical fake date to further my career, though. Ward didn’t have to go to the trouble of putting together a picnicandgetting my childhood favorite soda just to take a few cute publicity pictures.
Maybe I was reading too much into it. Maybe he thought he did.
