Page 58 of The Do-Over

As usual, she was right. For example, my lie was currently smiling at my mother and shaking her hand.

“You told me Nate wasn’t coming,” Mom said. “And who is this little one we have here?” That last statement was a question loaded with all kinds of things I didn’t want to deal with.

“Whoops,” Mathias muttered behind me.

I waved at Nate. “You came, and you’ve met my mom.”

“I remembered about the bowling, and I asked and asked and asked until Daddy said yes,” Lilah said. With a toothy grin, she adjusted her Wonder Woman headband.

“Daddy?” Mom repeated, one eyebrow crawling upward against all Botox odds.

“Mom, everyone, this is Nate and his daughter, Lilah.” I introduced everyone else, their faces varying degrees of curiosity and amusement.

“I see,” Mom said in a tone that told me she saw way more than she wanted to. She turned to Nate. “Why don’t you join our game? We’re about to start another.”

“No!” I said, my voice attracting the attention of anyone within a five-mile radius. With a nervous chuckle, I continued in what I hoped sounded like the voice of a completely composed person whose heart wasn’t threatening to combust. “I mean, Nate probably just wanted to stop by and say hi. I’m sure he—”

Nate shook his head, his smile confused. “We came to bowl.”

“Great.” No, not great. “I’ll help you pick out a ball. Lilah, stay here and talk to Mimi.” I didn’t give him a second to reply. Instead, I marched over and grabbed his hand. If he was surprised, he didn’t show it. I dragged him far, far away from my family. We stopped by the racks of bowling balls lined against the back wall.

“Everything okay?” Nate asked, his eyebrows slashes of concern.

“I can’t believe you’re here. Why are you here?”

“I thought you invited us?”

“You weren’t supposed to come. You said, ‘We’ll see,’ and every kid in America knows that’s code for, ‘Not a chance.’”

“You know Lilah. She wouldn’t let it go.” He paused. “I still don’t understand why it’s such a big deal.”

Oh, God. I was going to have to say this. Out loud. To his face.

My cheeks burned. “This is so embarrassing.” I shoved a thumb toward my family. Mom crossed her arms. Mathias shook his head. “They think we’re a thing.”

Nate’s head dipped. “What? You’re whispering, I can’t hear you.”

The next breath overfilled my lungs to the point of pain. “My family thinks we’re dating.”

A hand settled on my shoulder, and I tried hard to ignore how warm it felt. He didn’t reply. I wondered what we looked like, our heads close together like this, eyes locked. To my family, we might even look like we knew each other intimately.

“Why do they think that?”

I selected a bowling ball randomly from the wall and hefted it into his arms. He caught it with ease. “I maybe told them we were.”

No reply. Just a twitch at the corner of his mouth.

“No good?” I pointed at the ball before taking it back and circling him to inspect the balls on the other side of the wall. “You might remember around New Year’s, my boyfriend dumped me for concert tickets. Then I quit my job, which is also the family business, and my mom hated that. I just couldn’t take it anymore. So, I threw my Spanx on the meatloaf and I lied and said you were my boyfriend. It just slipped out, I swear.” I glanced at him, expecting to see anger on his face. Instead, I saw what looked like curiosity. “I thought no one would ever find out.

“Plus, you’ve seen my sister. She’s kind of perfect. Smart, beautiful, successful, engaged, blah, blah, blah. She’s younger than me and I don’t have any of those things. I mean, my life isn’t bad. I have friends and a great fish and a job I like, but I wanted for my mom to not think of me as such a failure.”

I found a fifteen-pounder and hoisted it with both hands. “Here. Try this one.”

He took it from me, his fingers brushing mine, and it felt like he’d meant to do that. Which was dumb since I was in the middle of what had to be the most embarrassing moment of my life, and that included the time I walked into my second period class in seventh grade with my skirt tucked inside my underwear. Or the time I’d accidentally walked into the men’s bathroom at a Christmas Eve service and got an eyeful of the youth pastor. Or the time I’d face-planted it at my college graduation ceremony.

I couldn’t look at him, so I crossed my arms and glanced toward the lane. Lilah waved, and I returned it. “It was stupid and I’m sorry I involved you and I will go over there right now and admit the whole thing to them. I understand if you never want to see my face again.”

Slowly, he set the ball back on the shelf. The clink of it fitting into place sounded impossibly loud. This was it. This was when he told me off, and I had to take it. He stared down at me for a long moment, his eyes unreadable, and then something seemed to click. He smiled.