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“You? Selfish? Impossible.”
“You haven’t heard what I’m going to say.”
“Doesn’t change my opinion. You facilitated a program where children without insurance can get general pediatric care and immunizations, Lace. There’s not a selfish bone in your body.”
She huffs. We’re sitting so close, I can feel her exhale on my skin and down the line of my neck. It slips underneath my T-shirt and lodges behind my ribs.
Ireallywant to touch her, and I don’t know why.
“The holiday gala at the hospital,” she says. “Tickets just to get in cost two thousand dollars a chair, and that doesn’t include any of the bids on items people donate. My boss decides who his favorite employees are by what they bring to the silent auction. The more valuable the item, the more you get on his good side. It’s all about the money to him. There’s this job opening I’d be perfect for, but he hasn’t filled it yet.”
“Your boss sounds like a dick. Want me to buy the hospital and fire him? Replace him with someone who actually cares about his employees?” I ask.
Lacey laughs. “Yeah. Okay. Like you have that kind of money.”
I tilt my head to the side and stare at her. “I do have that kind of money.”
“Thanks for the offer, but a hospital close to going into debt doesn’t sound like the best investment.” Her chuckle is feeble, and she shakes her head. “I was wondering if you—if we—could play into this charade of us being in a relationship. And maybe you could donate some one-on-one coaching sessions for the auction? Just a couple of hours. It would help the hospital, and only be until the new year.”
“You want us to date?” I ask, and I blink at her.
“Pretend to date,” she clarifies. “Not for real. Just until the gala.”
I stand and head back to the liquor cabinet. I grab the decanter of whiskey and pour myself another glass—fuller this time, and the liquid nearly spills over the rim. It’s going to give me the courage I need to proposemyidea, the one that just came to me while I stared at her and talked about my childhood.
“I’d be open to that, if you’ll do something for me in return.”
“Anything.”
“You come home with me for Christmas. You meet my family so they can get off my back about my love life. And, to sell that, you’ll have to come around the stadium more. Attend a couple of team functions. That kind of thing.”
“Wow.” She blows out a breath and runs her hand through her hair, twirling the ends around her fingers. “I was not expecting that.”
“Both my sisters come home for the holidays. They have big families with kids and partners. I’m happy showing up by myself, but I stick out like a sore thumb at the dinner table. With this news coming out that we’re allegedly dating and I’m settling down… it got my mom’s hopes up. I know it’s a lot to ask. You can say no; I won’t be mad. I guess I’m thinking if we’re on this train we might as well ride it.”
Lacey is silent. She looks over her shoulder at the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves on the far side of the room. Her eyes move to the Christmas tree in the corner, the real one Maven forced me to buy even though it’s not Thanksgiving yet. She lands on the photos hung on the walls, the happy memories of childhood and my career displayed in three dozen four-by-six glass frames.
“Okay,” she says. “But I have a couple of conditions.”
“Let’s hear them.”
“First and most important: this doesn’t change our friendship. If at any point either of us feel weird or uncomfortable, we take a step back. I don’t want to compromise the almost two years we’ve spent getting to know each other as friends just for a holiday gala or family dinner.”
“Agreed,” I say. “What else?”
“We tell Aiden and Maggie it’s fake when we see them on Thanksgiving. I don’t want to lie to them.”
“Or Maven,” I add.
“No physical affection unless it’s necessary,” she continues. “Physical complicates things, and we’re going to have a lot on our plate. We don’t need complicated.”
“I’ll get on board with the physical affection boundary, but if we’re going to do this, we’re going to be exclusive. We’re not dating other people, real or fake. No one touches you but me.”
Her throat bobs, but she nods in agreement. “Fair. That could be messy.”
“Especially with this media circus on us,” I say.
“We need to set an end date,” she says. “A hard stop where we know this arrangement will be over, so there isn’t any confusion.”
