Page 103 of Read My Lips

THURSDAY

In the back of the cab on the way to Possimus, Simon tugged his seatbelt looser. One knee up on the middle seat, he pivoted to face me.

“Don’t look so terrified,” he signed. “It’s only a date. And a little chat with a passing acquaintance.”

My stomach knotted. I’d been failing to channel anything approaching calm all morning. There shouldn’t be an issue – I’d been in a fancy restaurant before, even if none of those times had been on an actual date. But last time, publicly pretending to be together had involved full frontal nudity, a lighting rig and a professional camera. Now it was going to be a date neither of us would voluntarily sign up for, and I’d rather be anywhere else in the world.

“How’s it going to go again?” I signed back.

“We’ll kick off with some Couple Goals, get it trending how adorbs we are when we feed each other linguine.” The invisible strand of pasta he signed stretched in the air for a moment. I tugged at my collar. The wash out of a summer had turned blistering, vindictively waiting for the day Simon wanted me in a full suit. I could barely hold focus on his signing. “Snap a kiss or two while we’re Living our Best Lives to shore it up, and we’ll be golden.”

“What if I don’t want the linguine?”

Simon snorted a laugh.

Richard’s video had attracted all kinds of thirsty comments, but no one wanted to see me and Simon so much as kiss. Following the release of our little clip, #paperbagjob had trended hard. Who knows what they’d come up with if we went full Lady and the Tramp about it.

Simon squeezed my hand, speaking quietly. “And all this time, I thought I was the one with a problem with romance.”

Alright for him, wasn’t it? Living My Best Life did not involve pretending not to be in love with the guy I was pretending to date, so his ex could still get married without any unwanted kerfuffle, while absolutely nobody believed us.

“You don’t think they’re going to wonder why we’ve gone from not putting up any pictures together to documenting entire dates?”

“If we pitch it right, we can make it obvious we’d rather keep our relationship private, but we were never going to stand by and let Richard’s upcoming marriage get torn apart by malicious rumours.”

My gut squirmed like a live eel. It was a good line, but I wasn’t doing this to protect Richard. Luke was wrong. It had all been about Simon keeping his job. Me keeping mine, so I got to keep seeing him four times a week instead of never again. Which is why I couldn’t pull out now, even if all the mind-blowing sex stopped the minute this got sorted.

Oh god, it would as well. No more holiday romance when we were back to the day job. That had to be the end point. Simon had already told me he needed me too much at work, didn’t do dating. Unless...

“What if Luke doesn’t buy it?”

Concern didn’t feature in Simon’s repertoire. “Not one part of what I said is a lie.”

Only he would treat confidence as the solution to everything.

“Simon...”

“Ben, trust me. Everyone who matters is on board with this. Luke doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Which is exactly why we’ve invited him here to fill him in.”

Simon was wrong: Luke knew we were lying our collective arses off. He’d definitely clocked it.

The car swooshed us across the river, wending its way north through the city, right past the all-night cafe we’d had breakfast at not even a week ago. In daylight it was full of posh mums with buggies, the window full of cupcakes. No sign of anything stag-ish or beer-filled.

Possimus was a bloody fish bowl.

Not literally. No one had massacred a lot of guppies in a tank. But the windows were walls of glass vaguely disguised with free-flowing greenery vined around whatever sky-hooks were holding everything up. The plants draped in an artfully poised way, as fake as our date.

My bouncer costume barely met the dress code.

“Are we really going in there?”

There were tablecloths, and quietly chinking cutlery, and the wine glasses on the table were so thin stemmed I’d probably snap one picking it up. The waiters were significantly better-dressed than I was.

Simon touched my shoulder, tilting his face into line with mine. “Look at me. Everything’s going to be fine. Where’s your tie?”

The thick coil of it filled my palm, already unravelling ready to be put on like it had heard him. Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo.

“Jacket’s hot enough already.” Why would I want to put anything else on?