Page 22 of Scoring Eden

I give her my most dazzling smile. “Some would call it fate.”

“Would they?” she deadpans. “I’m not one of those people.”

This isn’t going the way I thought it would. Beads of sweat break out on my forehead, and I wipe them away before Eden has a chance to notice. I’m supposed to be the picture of confidence, the pilot of this airplane, the captain steering the ship straight to the shores of success. There’s no way she’ll feel assured enough to go along with this if I don’t make it seem like I’m one-hundred percent certain it will work out for us both.

“Look,” I level with her, “I’m going to be honest with you. I’ve found myself in some hot water with the team. It’s a whole thing, and I won’t bore you with it all right now, but I need someone to pretend to be my loving and committed girlfriend so that I can rescue my reputation with the media. The execs are threatening to kick me off the team if I don’t, so I’m kind of desperate. And I’d have never asked you if you hadn’t pretended that I was your boyfriend first, so if you look at it that way…it was kind of your idea.”

She still doesn’t look convinced. If anything, she looks even more put off by the idea than she did before I started talking. Sighing, she leans back in her chair and massages her temples with the heels of her hands. “What you just said is exactly the reason this would be a terrible fucking idea.”

My brow crinkles in confusion. I thought I just made a very compelling argument. “What did I say wrong?”

“You’d have never asked me.” She gestures to herself with a self-deprecating laugh. “I’m a dental receptionist with no money, and I live in a one-bedroom apartment with my ten-year-old son. You basically said it yourself: in no world would a relationship between a world-famous athlete and a woman like me be believable. We’d be caught before we even started.”

“Wait. What?” I’m so confused. “That’s not what I meant by that at all.”

She arches a disbelieving eyebrow. “Oh?”

“I wouldn’t have asked you because we don’t know each other very well, and frankly, you don’t seem to like me all that much.”

It’s a sad fact, but a fact, nonetheless.

“Though, actually…” I pause, thinking. “You not liking me might actually work in our favor.”

“How’s that?”

“Well, if we’re going to do this—which we are, by the way—it would make it significantly more complicated if one of us were to develop feelings for the other. And clearly, that’s not going to be an issue with you.”

She snorts. “Clearly.”

“As for the dental receptionist thing, you’re right that people would find that difficult to digest.”

She throws her hands up in the air. “Exactly.”

“So you need to quit your job.”

“What’s that now?”

I’m nodding to myself, words flowing from my mouth without any intervention from my brain. “Well, no one would believe that an athlete on my kind of salary would allow their girlfriend to keep such a shitty job.”

Her face flames. “Excuse me? Allow? There’s no ‘allowing’ me to do anything.”

“Wait, no, that came out wrong. What I meant was—”

“Is a woman not ‘allowed’ independence in your world? The agency to make her own decisions? Hell, is she even ‘allowed’ her own bank account? Sorry, I didn’t realize the MLS still lived in the fifties.”

Oh, Jesus. “If you would just let me speak for a second, I could explain—”

“And don’t you dare call my job shitty.” She stands and stabs me in the chest with a pointed finger. “If I’m so beneath you, then go and find someone else to do your little roleplay bullshit with.”

“Eden, I—”

“And another thing!”

“Eden?”

She stops and thankfully reduces the pressure with which she’s using to prod my chest. “What?”

“I didn’t mean that how it sounded. Truly. What I meant was, our incomes are different. And it would be expected, if we’re in a committed relationship, that you wouldn’t be wanting for anything and would, therefore, have no need to be in a job that doesn’t value you or pay you what you deserve. I’m only saying that, if you were to keep working here, it would raise more questions than we can answer.”