Elliot shrugged even though he wanted to say he was more than happy to hold her while she cried.
‘Anytime.’
‘Any time I want to use you as a human Kleenex, I can?’ Her teasing grin was back, brighter because it came after the darkness.
Elliot smiled. ‘Owen already used me as a spit-up cloth today, might as well pile on.’
‘You’re a good guy, Elliot.’
‘Uh… thanks.’
‘And I don’t think Leigh was your one chance.’
‘You don’t?’
Daisy shook her head. ‘No. I think there’s hope for you.’
Elliot’s heart picked up speed. Hope for him with… her?
‘You do?’
‘Yeah,’ she said with another smile before opening the door to the shop. ‘And maybe this whole fake relationship thing will help you practice for the real thing.’
His hopes fell. ‘Practice?’
‘We’ll get all the awkwardness out now and then you can go and date someone for real. Just think of me as training wheels.’
‘That’s not how I think of you at all.’
She paused but didn’t ask how he thought of her. ‘Training wheels. And then when you’re ready, you get rid of the training wheels, and you can ride for real. Whoever you want.’
‘I don’t want to… ride anyone else.’
‘I know you’re not over Leigh, but you’ll get there. And then maybe you will want toridesomeone else.’
God, he wished she would stop saying it like that. All he could think of was Daisy on his lap riding him until those eyes weren’t sad anymore, until she was whimpering for entirely different reasons than crying over her shitty ex.
It wasn’t Leigh he was thinking about at all.
And that startled him.
‘And what about you?’
She shook her head. ‘You know what they say, Elliot. Fool me twice… And I’ve been fooled enough times. I can’t do it again.’ And then she turned and went into the shop, leaving Elliot standing alone feeling confused and a little bit sad and far too horny.
ChapterThirteen
Daisy was sitting with her grandmother at the pancake house, a plate of strawberry pancakes and two cups of coffee between them. She was showing Grandma June the old picture that Elliot had discovered. It had been a few days since she’d embarrassed herself by sobbing into his chest and she hadn’t talked to him since. She was sure that when he signed on to be her fake boyfriend, he hadn’t thought it would include emotional outbursts and so many tears.
But she also hadn’t been able to stop thinking about her doppelgänger. And what might have happened to her. She’d even been dreaming about her, but at the risk of sounding like the mayor she was keeping that to herself.
‘So do you know who they are?’ Daisy asked as her grandmother squinted at the picture on her phone.
The pancake house was buzzing around them. It was early on a Friday morning, and the usual breakfast crowd was in for their pancakes and coffee. Her grandmother had had to stop at three other tables on their way in, to say hello and catch up on the town news. In the last hour, Daisy had learned that Mac and Annie had been caught making out in the back of the pub like ‘a couple of teenagers,’ that the alpaca, Harry Styles, had gotten loose again and was found on the side of the road munching on wild flowers, and that the substitute water aerobics instructor couldn’t hold a candle to Iris.
It had been a very informative morning.
‘Can you make it bigger?’ Grandma June asked, passing the phone over their sticky plate. ‘I can barely see it.’
