Page 102 of Pretender

I take a long sip of wine.

Earlier, when Aiden and I returned with the mattress, Jamie gave me that one raised eyebrow, and I thought they must have assumed something more had gone down, but I pretended I didn’t see it. All the things I’d wanted Aiden to do to me up there… Fuck it, I’d thought. I didn’t care if my friends heard me.

Turns out I do care. And Aiden knew it.

The twinge of embarrassment I’d felt when he stopped kissing me is now gratitude that he cut me off when he did.

Fuck, I wanted his hands on me so badly, though. But on top of hating that my friends would’ve heard us, I probably would’ve felt guilty letting him touch me like that when I’m not sure what I want this to be.

Am I ready for it to be anything?

“What’s bothering you, Linnea? What’s this worry line about?” Sophie asks.

“I don’t know what I should do.”

“What do you mean? You should ride that delicious face until the sun comes up and you’re delirious from pleasure, and then do it all again.”

“Whoa, Sophie.” I laugh. My ears are about to burst into flames.

“I agree,” Jamie says, lifting her glass.

“I don’t want to get tangled up with another man I work with, that I’m depending on. Look at what happened with Henry.”

“Can you compare him with Henry in any way? If you say yes, I say run.”

“Hmm…” I reflect on Aiden’s charm and how good he is with people, but unlike Henry, Aiden is all genuine. It’s clear to me now I see him in a different light. And after meeting his mum.

I picture the Aiden who took care of me in Florence without question, without making it awkward. He notices when I’m uncomfortable, like when his mum asked about my parents and he turned it into a conversation about my grandfather instead. He encourages me to be myself. He thinks about me, always.

Whereas Henry was all charm at first, treating me like I was special, but then came the backhanded compliments, the curled upper lip and pointed stares when I was ‘too animated’, and then … the cheating.

I can’t imagine Aiden doing any of those things to me from what I’ve seen of him to date.

“Not off the top of my head, no.”

“Good.”

“The biggest difference is me,” I say, musing as I stare into my fairy-lit olive tree in the corner. Jamie, Sophie, and I have always shared our innermost feelings. These two are the best sounding boards. If only I’d listened to them when they voiced their concerns with Henry after he proposed to me. “I don’t second-guess my every move anymore. I can be the silly and joyful version of me that I’d forgotten. With Henry, I was uncomfortable all the time. In Aiden’s arms, when he looks at me, I’m a goddess.”

I lift my gaze back up to my friends and catch them exchanging glances.

“What? Does it sound foolish? Am I exaggerating?”

“On the contrary, love,” Sophie says. “That’s how Jamie makes me feel.”

“And you,” Jamie says to Sophie, and they lean in, giving each other a kiss. I smile. At first when they started going out I was the third wheel. It was hard to carry that along with the heavy guilt it came with. But it didn’t take too long before we found our rhythm again, because I dared open up to them instead of retreating.

“I miss you two.”

“We miss you,” Jamie says, tilting her head. “We’ve missed you since you started dating Henry, but that wasn’t a choice we could make for you.”

“Glad to see you’re back again, sweetie,” Sophie says. “We need to vet Aiden properly tomorrow before we can say for sure, but nothing about what you two did today seemed fake to us.”

“Yeah, it’s past that already. I just… I’m scared.”

“What is it that scares you?”

“Leaning on him, when I…” It’s coming to me now just as I say it. “I can’t tell what it is, but he seems to be carrying some heavy weight that he doesn’t want to share, and for some reason it’s scary for me. Scary to feel like I don’t understand him, and fucking terrifying how much he could hurt me.”