“Enough.” I slice my hand through the air, miming my own decapitation. “I see what you’re getting at, and it’s not gonna happen. I’m not cosplaying as your girlfriend just so you can go to grad school.”
A flicker of something wicked flashes through Ellie’s eyes. “That’s fair. But would you do it to pass accounting?”
I blink back at her, my mouth opening and closing like a dying fish. “Do you think…could that actually happen?”
She shrugs. “I already told you. Mom plays favorites.”
I rake my teeth over my lower lip, remembering Kat’s strategy to pull off a passing grade in this very class. She wasn’t a star student, but she was charming, so Professor Meyers liked her anyway, and it paid off with a passing grade. What better way to make her like me, too, than to play the part of her daughter’s stable, successful girlfriend? It’s a wild idea, but what are my other options? Schmooze Professor Meyers on my own? Unlikely. Pull off an A on the final? Borderline impossible. This could be my ticket out of community college—or it would be, if I had any confidence that we could pull it off. I don’t give Ellie a yes or a no, just a single fact. “You’re overestimating my acting abilities.”
“Am I?” Ellie lifts a brow. “Not to be rude, but is it that far of a stretch to pretend to be into me? You asked me out, like, ten minutes ago.”
My cheeks go hot with a twinge of embarrassment. “Yeah,” I grumble, “before I found out you were my accounting professor’s daughter. Now I look at you and I see equations.”
“Bullshit.” Ellie huffs a laugh and folds her arms over her chest. “Look me in the eye right now and tell me all you can think about is math.”
I roll my eyes before allowing myself to look into hers. Ellie is partially right—my first thought has nothing to do with accounting. Instead, I’m wondering how those sea glass eyes might look behind a set of horn-rimmed glasses. She’s not a carbon copy of her mother, but that hooded stare of hers is straight from the playbook of Professor Meyers. “You look a little like her, you know.”
“Then it’s a good thing we’re not actually dating,” she reminds me. “You can look past the resemblance for a day, can’t you? Not even a whole day, either. Just for Thanksgiving dinner so we can make each other look good and both get what we want.”
I twist the dial and bring the heat down a notch, but it doesn’t stop the sweat pooling near my lower back. “But then what?” I ask. “What about after?”
“Then I get to go to grad school and you pass accounting. You’ll transfer to U of I and I’ll eventually tell them we didn’t work out. Easy.”
“You’re really putting this plan together quickly,” I mutter.
“Thanks.” Her lips quirk up in a proud smile. “So you’ll do it?”
“No.”
“Come oooooooon.” Ellie stamps her feet either out of frustration or just to circulate blood flow to her thawing toes. “Please?” she begs again. “Why not?”
“Because this isn’t some Hallmark holiday movie,” I say. “This stuff doesn’t actually work in real life.”
Ellie bites her cheek to hide an incoming smile. “Of course it’s not a Hallmark movie. Have you ever seen two gay women star in one of those?”
“Exactly! Fake relationships for the holidays? This is some straight people shit, Ellie!”
“Oh come on.” Her voice drops to a low grumble, and if I hadn’t just turned the heat down, I might not hear what she says next. “It’s not like you were planning to do anything else today.”
My heart trampolines up to my throat before burying itself in a newly formed pit in my stomach. She’s hitting below the belt now. I direct my words more to the steering wheel than to her. “You don’t know that.”
“Yes I do. You were just saying how cleaning the house would give you something to do.” There’s something in her voice I don’t like. Some know-it-all tone, like the worst of the sixteen-year-old baristas I work with. “And you weren’t really talking that quietly on the phone with your mom, either. I heard what you said about skipping Thanksgiving with Kat.”
The silence is too long, both of us waiting for the other to give in. If we’d known each other even a little bit longer, she’d know better than to try to out-stubborn me. “Murphy,” she finally says, her voice steadier than it’s been all morning, “I know what it’s like not to be the favorite.”
I want to tell her she’s wrong, but she’s not. Marcus is the favorite child, and Kat was the favorite student. I wasn’t even my own best friend’s first choice of company this weekend.
“Will you at least think about it?” Ellie pleads.
My lip twitches at the compromise. “Fine,” I say. “I’ll thinkabout it. But I’m thinking about it at home. I don’t want your mom coming back out to ask why I’m idling in her driveway.”
“Okay,” Ellie says. “Just let me know.” She reaches to open the passenger door, but for the second time today, her fingers pause on the handle for just a moment too long.
“Did you forget something?” I ask.
“No. I just…” She reaches over the console to squeeze my thigh again, and regardless of who her mother is and where she’s headed next fall, my skin lights up like a sparkler at her touch. “No matter what you decide, I’m glad we met, okay?”
“Me, too,” I say. I can feel my cheeks turning pink.
