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“How what works?”

“Me being your fake girlfriend.”

He shakes his head so hard I think his brains are going to come out his ears. “No. This is…not happening.”

I feel slightly offended, like he’s telling me I’m not fake girlfriend material, which is almost a worse slight than my last boyfriend, who said I wasn’t actual girlfriend material because he was afraid I’d blurt out details about our sex life to his mother. He may have had a point, but this situation is different. In Luke’s eyes, I’m not even qualified to pretend to be in a serious relationship. That hurts.

“It’s fine. No harm, no foul. I have other stuff to do today anyway. Just go tell your lawyer that you blurted out the wrong thing and he needs to go find you someone else to be your fake girlfriend.”

“Please stop saying ‘fake girlfriend.’”

“Fake girlfriend, fake girlfriend, fake girlfriend.” I can’t help it. He makes me want to punch his buttons. He looks a little rage-y.

“Did you really just do that? What are you, five?”

He inhales a breath so deep that I marvel at how it keeps going and going.

“Wow, and you must be an ultra-marathoner. Free diver? I’ve never seen someone have an entire conversation by breathing.” I ask.

His eyes close and he slowly shakes his head while he exhales. Forever. And then, surprisingly, he looks a little calmer. He’s blinking normally, so I let out a breath I didn’t know I had inside and wait for him to send me packing officially.

“It’s a mediator.”

“What?”

“You mentioned a judge. It’s a mediator who hears custody cases, and if we can’t come to terms, then we go to the judge.”

“Potato, potah-to. Are you really going to get hung up teaching me about the legal system?”

“Okay, fine. If you could, please sit next to me and confirm we’re in a relationship, and then I promise I’ll figure out how to make everything right. I’m so sorry to drag you into this. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

I want to wrap him up in a blanket and tuck him into a little box like a stray puppy; that’s how forlorn and lost he looks. Holding up my hands in surrender, I try to soften my tone.

“Are you a good dad?”

“What?”

“Are you? It’s important information to me.”

“I’m…yes. I’m a good dad. I was thirty-six when I met Elizabeth, and I wanted to be a young enough dad to play baseball with my kid and teach him to ride horses. Maybe I rushed in, but I knew I wanted to be a father.” He runs a hand over the shadow of beard on his chin. “The marriage sure blew up. But as to the dad part, yeah. I think I’m succeeding.”

I take him in. Rough around the edges. Hard-working. Dedicated.

Exhausted.

He needs my help.

“I just wanna say that your son is lucky. I don’t even know you, but it’s clear how much you love him. I’d give anything to have that. So don’t let that diamond bitch tell the mediator anything different. Your son needs a dad, and her twat of a new dude in his fancy suit ain’t it. You’re the real deal.”

I don’t know where that whole speech came from, but it seems like he needed to hear it.

He fixes his eyes on me, and I feel like I’ve walked into a sauna turned to a thousand. “You don’t have a dad who’s there for you?”

Oh.

That wasn’t the part of the story I thought he’d focus on. I shrug. “He and my mom died a long time ago. I never even really knew him. Hard to miss someone you don’t even know, right?” I hear the crack in my voice and take a second to swallow down a lump in my throat. This is ridiculous. I don’t cry over my parents anymore, especially standing in front of some guy I barely know in a small town that looks nothing like Los Angeles.

The sun creeps through the lush leaves of the trees shading us, so I focus on that, letting the bright rays be my excuse to tear up. I slide my sunglasses from the top of my head and pop them on. Problem solved.