“That was weak.” Her smile is fake but the way she grits her teeth is so real.
“And yours was cliché,” I counter. “Look, I promise I’ll make it up to you, but, Cherry, I need this.”
She stares at me for a long time, her fake smile unable to hide the frown marring the rest of her face. Long eyelashes meet furrowed brows.
“Why do you need this so badly?” she asks, one hand clenching the back of my shirt.
“Because I need to be free.”
Free of my family’s jokes about us. Free of my mother’s worry weighing on my heart. Free of hiding my feelings for Lee.
“How about we make this interesting?” I ask. “You know, make the most of a bad situation?”
Oakleigh eyes me cautiously, but I don’t miss the way her eyes light up with mischief.
“Oh?”
I nuzzle my face into the crook of her neck, giving us an extra minute by doing something that my mother will fawn over. Cherry’s breath hitches and my eyes close of their own accord as the smell of cherries overrides my brain and short-circuits my willpower. Knowing I still have this effect on her, even after eight months of ignoring this unresolved chemistry between us, has my mind in a tailspin.
Cherry sounds breathless as she asks, “What’s this idea of yours?”
“Let’s pick up where we left off eight months ago, Cherry.” When she starts to argue, I interrupt by adding, “I said I could make it out of the best-friend’s-brother zone if I wanted to. So, how about a competition? Because last I checked, I never told you whether or not you were in the sister’s-best-friend zone or not.”
She leans back, eyebrow raised and ready for an argument. “Oh, wow. You really are bitter about that.”
“Oh, you think so?”
She lets out an obnoxious laugh. “You so are! Sister’s-best-friend zone? Seriously?”
I lean back and laugh. “Very good deflection, Cherry.”
“I wasn’t deflecting!”
I let out a low hum but otherwise stay quiet. Oakleigh lands a slap against my chest making my smile widen, and she heads into the house leaving me to remember why we’re here and I turn back into a nervous wreck.
* * *
Anger rolls off of my new fake girlfriend as she sits beside me. She hides it well behind a polite smile and a calm voice, but I’ve known her long enough to know her tells; studied her enough to know exactly what she’s feeling. When she’s mad, she bounces her leg up and down continuously. When she’s pissed, she’ll rub her hand up and down that same leg. But when she’s furious like she is now, she’ll constantly change the way her hair is put back.
I guess since she works at the hospital, she’s so used to putting it back that she never really lets it fall wherever it pleases. Even now, she’s gone from a ponytail that ends more than halfway down her back, to a messy bun atop her head, to a braid. When my parents aren’t looking, she throws daggers in my direction.
I fidget in my seat, because while she never stays mad at my sister, I know for a fact that Oakleigh can hold a grudge like no one ever has before. I accidentally drank her coffee one time three years ago and still to this day it finds its way into way too many conversations.
“I still can’t believe it!” Mom cries, her smile threatening to stretch past her face. “I mean I just can’t believe it!”
“Me neither,” Wren pipes up, staring at the both of us skeptically.
I avoid looking at my sister. She knows me well enough to know when I’m lying.
“You need to tell us everything!” Mom squeals. “When did this start?”
“Eight months ago,” Oakleigh blurts out, surprising me. My head whips toward her but she ignores me. “We all went out in Eaglewood when Gus and Wren were still redoing the barn, and Finn drove me home. We kissed and things just kind of changed from there.”
Gus and Wren share a look, and I know that I’m in shit.
There are mixed feelings around the table—pure elation, confusion, skepticism. I feel as if I have the worst heartburn of my life. Lunch proceeds in a strange and awkward fashion, my mother making sure to ask as many questions as possible, none of which I know the answer to.
“So, what was your first date like?” she asks, the beef curry in front of her long forgotten.
