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She freezes when she sees me, and her hand flies to her throat like she just choked on a fishbone that appeared out of nowhere. Her breath catches with a loud mmmmmmphrfp, and my eyes fly from her purse and wallet on the floor back up to her face. She pales, then she steps forward, grabs my glass of water, and drains it.
“What the heck is that?” I point down to the floor vaguely, but she knows. She knows what I found.
“I…Asher…I didn’t cash it. I was going to tear it up. Truly.”
“I don’t really care what you were going to do with it. I want to know why you have it. Why did my granny give you a cheque for twenty thousand dollars?” I’m pretty sure it wasn’t done out of the goodness of her heart. My granny might be spontaneous, but she didn’t sit at the table right in front of me and write out a cheque. Which means she brought it to the dinner and had it ready. Why?
“It’s not…she…”
“Are you playing both sides now, Emily?” It’s the first thing that comes to mind, and it’s truly terrible, like someone throwing darts at a dartboard but missing and hitting my nuts instead. Basically, it’s quite incapacitating.
Her mouth drops open, and the stain of scarlet on her cheeks is immediate. Her eyes dart from mine to the purse, then back up. I’ve never seen her look guilty before, but she looks guilty now. “She wanted me to fake date you,” she blurts. “The same thing you wanted. She contacted me first. She wanted me to be prepared for you to show up and ask me. I also didn’t want to lose my job. I’ve worked really, really hard for it.”
My stomach feels like I just had really sharp, jagged-edged rocks for breakfast, lunch, and dinner the past month. “And the twenty grands was just a bonus?”
“I was going to tear it up. It wasn’t about that. I…everything just turned into such craziness. One second I kissed you, and the next, your granny showed up at my door, and she was…I guess pretty convincing the way she is, and she told me not to tell you. She wanted you to get settled, to have something steady for a while, and to have someone behind you. Someone who was boring and normal and not…”
“And she thought it would be best for me to have someone in my corner, someone who was just pretending to be there? Because she was getting paid and wanted to keep her job?”
“No! I don’t know what she thought. It was weird. Both times she’s showed up here, it was weird.” She slaps a hand over her mouth.
Both times. Granny was in town yesterday. “She came here? When I was out getting coffee?”
“Y…yes.”
“And tried to warn you off because she thought things were getting too real?”
“B…basically.” Emily’s eyes are huge, and I ignore the sheen of moisture in them. Maybe she does feel bad. Perhaps she isn’t faking that. Maybe what she felt was genuine attraction, but I’m beyond trying to pick out bits and pieces to analyze whether they were real or not. “I’m not going to try to tell you it was right. It was definitely not right. Your granny kind of scared me, but I think she truly was trying to look out for you and give you a new start somewhere else with a fresh chance to experience something different. She knew you’d be pissed if you found out. I knew too, and I should have told you that she contacted me. Twice. I should have…I just…I didn’t. I felt like I’d be betraying her.”
“Do you have any idea how crazy all of this is? You and her? She’s done some pretty wild things before, but nothing even close to this.”
“Asher! It…I really…we…it wasn’t contrived. The dates were one thing, but this…this was real. For me.”
“I know,” I sigh. “I know it was.” I think I can still tell the difference between real affection and something forced, and I don’t think Emily is capable of pretending. She’s not a good actress. Everything she feels is always right on her face, which is why I can’t look there at the moment. “But it doesn’t really matter. Yesterday, you said you couldn’t trust me because of my past, but I can’t trust you either. Our chemistry might be good, but that’s all it is. People can fit together really well physically and still be a disaster in every other way, which won’t work. I’ve seen that. Especially with my mom. So I know it’s true.”
“Please wait. Please, just sit down and talk. I can make tea, and we can figure it—”
“We can’t. It’s only been a week, and look at the disaster right now. It would probably only get worse and worse until it explodes and hurts other people too. Maybe feeling nothing is best because everything else is just complicated and won’t work.”
