I look around, ready to pummel that jackass. “Where is he, and when do you want me to fuck him up?”
“I wish. But also you’ll need to get in line. Caroline offered to murder him a few weeks ago.”
“I’m down with that. With anyone who hurts you.”
“He wanted to talk about his beer, of course. And I said something vague and left, but I kept thinking…someday, someday soon, I’m going to have two exes in this building.”
Something turns sour inside me. I hate everything she’s saying, especially because she’s not wrong.
“And I worry about that,” she adds.
“I get it.”
“I worry that if we…do anything again,” she says, then makes a rolling gesture with her hand, “like this afternoon, that it’ll just be too complicated.”
My heart sinks like an anvil’s tied to it. But I can’t be a little prick and whine that she doesn’t want to let me bury my face between those sweet thighs of hers. I need to be a mature adult. “It would be complicated,” I say, speaking the plain truth.
“Right?” Her voice is wobbly, a touch desperate. Like she needs the confirmation from me.
“Definitely.”
“I just think maybe we should focus on the wedding and this list. I don’t want to make things harder when they end.”
My bones chill with the clear reminder—maybe the one I needed—that this fake romance will finish.
I’m frozen, but this icy feeling is for the best. I was getting in too deep. I was too obsessed. Thank fuck someone pressed the brakes.
I swallow, pushing down my feelings far, far away. “I don’t want to hurt the people I care about. But I do want to give you a ride home.”
“You don’t have to.”
“But I do.”
She gathers up her stuff and walks with me to my car. I’m just being a good fake boyfriend. That’s all.
The drive is quiet. We’re never quiet. But neither one of us seems to have anything to say as I cruise through the foggy night. When we reach her porch, mist still curling around us, she gives me a resigned smile. “Thanks again for understanding. I don’t want to mess things up for my sister, for work, for everything. You know?”
Right. The fake romance needs to be airtight.
“Don’t worry about a thing,” I lie, smoothly. Because I’m sure as hell not going to tell her that I can’t stop thinking about her.
I’m a good fake boyfriend too the next morning when I show up at Little Friends and pose for a picture with a frosty-faced old Papillon mix with wise eyes, big ears, tufted paws, and one tooth. Judy looks at me like she can tell why I’m here.
To impress a woman.
But she’s not going to rat me out.
“Smile, Lake Onion,” Miller calls out in between giving hugs to a Malinois mix that seems to have his number.
I try to smile with Judy. Maybe I even manage a hint of one. But I’m pretty sure it doesn’t reach my eyes.
30
CAT DADDY AD
REMY
When Caroline arrives at my door five minutes before Lake is due to pick me up, I know she’s feeling better by the pace of the knocking. Strong, rapid, but not five-alarm fire level. Still, you can’t ever be too cautious, so I shout that I’ll be right there then dart into the kitchen, yank open a drawer, and grab a hospital mask. I pull it on and open the door.
