Page 15 of Faking With You

We’re the first to arrive at the restaurant, and the host takes us to our table. I pull a chair out for Eliza, and she smiles at me softly as I help her move her chair in and take the spot beside her. I made sure we took the side of the table that faces the front door, so we’re not surprised when my father walks in. As he approaches the table, I stand and Eliza follows suit. I hold my hand out for my father, and he shakes it. His eyes dart to Eliza’s outstretched hand for a second before he finally shakes it too.

“Father, this is my girlfriend, Eliza. Eliza, this is my father, Reginald Carrington.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, sir,”

“Likewise.”

We take our seats, and our server almost immediately appears at our table with the bottle of wine I ordered, pouring two glasses. As she goes to pour a third for my father, he shakes his head.

“I’ll take a Tanqueray No. 10 and Tonic.”

The server nods and quickly leaves the table as my father directs his attention back to Eliza and me. Eliza pulls her shoulders back under his gaze, as though preparing herself for battle.

“Eliza, how did you meet Mackenzie?” I watch the way her eyebrows raise slightly. I haven’t told her my full name, I don’t use it often, but my father insists on calling me by it.

“We met through his hockey team. I’m friends with the wives of some of his teammates.”

My father processes that, I’m sure choosing his next words carefully. He hates that I play as an adult. He thinks it’s a ridiculous waste of my time, but the fact that I could have found a potentially serious relationship because of it may mean he’llverbalize his distaste for the choice less. “I see. So you met at a get-together?”

She takes a sip of her wine and shakes her head. “We met at a game.”

That seems to pique his interest. “A game?”

She smiles softly and nods. “My friend started seeing an old friend who played on the team with her brother so we went as a group. We’ve been going when we can ever since.”

“Eliza and her friends have been coming to games for eighteen months,” I add to give my father more of a timeline. I’m hoping that knowing we’ve known each other for a while will make a serious relationship developing quickly more believable to him.

“It’s been fun. It’s something new for me. I was never into hockey growing up.”

My father chooses to move on from this topic by asking Eliza, “And what do you do for work?”

“I’m an accountant at a firm downtown.”

Eliza is obviously someone who can take care of herself, but my father also believes in very traditional roles when it comes to relationships. It’s probably a huge reason why he’s pushing me to be in a serious one before he gives me the CEO position. He believes a woman should take care of her boyfriend or husband. It’s not my view at all. I’d rather someone who is independent and has a life outside of a relationship. Individuality is important in a relationship, and I’m an adult who has been taking care of myself for most of my life. I don’t need someone to start doing that now at thirty-six years old.

Luckily my father keeps the rest of the conversation very surface level. I purposefully don’t let it go much beyond that. I don’t talk to my father much about my life outside of work, and he’s not entitled to any of Eliza’s. She’s far too good for him to know anything more about her than he absolutely needs to. Idon’t think he does anything that would send Eliza running for the hills. We shake hands outside the restaurant, and I take Eliza home.

CHAPTER 12

Eliza

Mac and I text throughout the rest of the weekend. He doesn’t play in their weekend game, his father needing him for work things ,and I chose to skip it, needing time to decompress. We text throughout the week, too, and I find myself looking forward to his messages and gaining little glimpses of who Mac is.

The entire time I’ve known Mac, he’s kept to himself, barely interacting with the guys. I’ve known little to nothing about him until he made this proposition. I’m finding that he’s different from what I thought, and I've learned his dad is kind of a dick. Instead of visiting his son this weekend, he has them both holed up in their office working.

It’s been over two weeks since I agreed to this arrangement with Mac, and I find myself itching to start on my end of this bargain. I’ve found myself almost twisting my head when he kisses my cheek so that I can feel his lips against mine. There’s something about him that has sparked my libido more than any man ever has. I’ve started whipping my vibrator out more frequently, but I want to experience the real thing.

It’s been a week since our dinner with Mac’s dad. He’s now back in London, and Mac is supposed to play tonight. I stare at my reflection in my bedroom mirror, hyping myself up for what I have planned for tonight.

I can do this. I can take what I want. I’m not going to chicken out.

I barely listen to the girls throughout the game. Instead I watch Mac, my plan running through my mind over and over. I seem to find all the ways that it could go wrong rather than focusing on all the ways it could go right, but that’s normal for me. When the game’s over and the girls say they’re heading upstairs, I tell them I’m going to head home. It’s a lie, but I don’t think I could go through with this if they were here to witness any part of it. We hug goodbye, and when I watch them round the corner I sink back onto the bleachers.

I know I’ll be waiting here for a minimum of thirty minutes, probably longer. Part of me thinks that maybe I should have gone up with the girls and left early, but I also know that up there they’d probably sense my nerves better than they could down here.

I open several different apps, focusing on them for only a couple of minutes before closing them and moving on to a different one. I shake my leg as I sit, twisting my phone between my thumb and index finger, tapping it against my thigh with each spin.

When the door to the locker room opens, my head snaps up, but it’s not Mac. My leg starts shaking faster, knowing that he could be coming out any minute. When he finally steps out, I shoot up from the bleachers, causing him to turn and face me. He raises a brow before walking closer to me.