“Pretty much.”
“Must be nice.”
“It has its perks. But it’s better when you have someone to share it with.”
She looks at me, and for a second I think she’s going to call me out on the smooth line. But then she just shakes her head and looks out the window.
“Thank you,” she says quietly. “For the upgrade. And for all of this, really.”
The plane starts taxiing and she grips the armrest, her knuckles going white.
I reach over without thinking and cover her hand with mine. “Hey. It’s going to be fine. The whole weekend. We’ve got this.”
She doesn’t pull away, just looks down at our hands, then back up at me. “You’re really confident about this.”
“I’m confident about a lot of things.” I squeeze her hand once, then force myself to let go even though I don’t want to. “But mostly I’m confident that your ex is going to take one look at us together and realize he made the biggest mistake of his life.”
“And if he doesn’t?”
“Then he’s an even bigger idiot than I thought. But either way, you’re not going through this alone. That’s the important part.”
She holds my gaze for a long moment and something shifts in her expression. Not quite trust, but close. Maybe the beginning of it.
“Okay,” she says. “Let’s do this.”
The plane takes off and I lean back in my seat, feeling more awake than I have in months.
This is happening. I’m flying to Toronto with Juliette Chastain to pretend to be her boyfriend for an entire week. Six nights. I have no idea what I’m doing, no real plan beyond “make her ex jealous and don’t screw this up and maybe don’t let her see how completely gone you are for her.”
But I don’t care.
I’ve been trying to get her attention for five months. Now I have an entire week of her attention.
9
JULIETTE
The plane levelsout at cruising altitude and I finally let myself breathe.
Rodriguez is next to me in first class, first class that he somehow charmed his way into getting me upgraded to, looking completely relaxed. Like flying across the country to fake-date someone for a week is just a normal Tuesday for him.
Maybe it is. What do I know about his life really?
I know his name isn’t actually Rod, even though that’s what the NHL roster says. I know he’s from Chicago and has two sisters and cries watching Disney movies, we talked about that for almost an hour during one of our lunches, where his impressions had me doubled over in laughter. I know he upgraded my seat by flirting with a gate agent who had a hockey-fan son.
I know he’s doing all of this to help me, and I still don’t fully understand why.
“You okay?” he asks, glancing over at me.
“Fine.”
“You’re doing that thing again.”
“What thing?”
“The thing where you look like you’re mentally imagining every single possible way this could go wrong.”
He’s not wrong. My fingers are twisting together in my lap. “I’m just thinking.”
