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“Hey, man,” I told him as Sadie stood on the stairs and I waited for Alex to catch his breath. He was filming and he held his bag on one shoulder and the camera on the other. It was a different camera, smaller. “You have a good trip? Is that a new camera?”
Alex nodded slyly and winked at me. “Yeah, since the other camera messed up, I had to go home and grab my personal one to use to film. It sucks that I couldn’t get any footage of you guys for a few days, though.”
I snorted out a laugh, glancing at Sadie to see that she was smiling. “Yeah, that was a shame. Nothing special happened though, don’t even worry about it.”
Alex raised his eyebrows and looked between us. Sadie cleared her throat and Alex grinned, nodding as if we had begun some sort of secret pact.
“Got it,” Alex grinned, waving a hand at the train. “Let’s get home then, I need sleep.”
I nodded and Sadie reached back, grabbing my hand, and tugging me onto the train with her. We found our seats quickly and Alex filmed a little and then slumped down in his seat with what appeared to be an awful hangover from the night before. His family partied pretty hard, I guessed in amusement. Sadie tapped her fingers against the table, and I could tell that she was worried about something and I could guess exactly what it was.
“Hey,” I tried, wrapping an arm around her shoulders. “You want me to go get you a coffee or something?”
Sadie shook her head, touching my fingers on her shoulders with her own. “Connor, I’m nervous—like really nervous. How are we supposed to pretend that we’re still pretending? I mean, how do we even—”
“Look, Sadie,” I stopped her before she worked herself up for nothing. “What are you so worried about? This will just make it easier to pretend right?”
Sadie looked dubious and I couldn’t blame her. I understood why she was worried. After a few months, we were just supposed to go our separate ways, though I remember what the girl at the studio had said when we were first put together as a couple. She said that we might become more. That meant it didn’t matter either way, right? The show’s creators wouldn’t care, right? Or were we cheating because we didn’t have to lie about anything anymore? I was about to voice my thoughts to Sadie, when Alex jumped up with bleary eyes, rubbing his face with his hands.
“Coffee?” He asked, looking at us with red, sleepy eyes. “Anyone want coffee? I need some caffeine.”
“Same here,” Sadie nodded, reaching into her pocket to grab him some cash.
“Don’t worry about it,” Alex shrugged her off. It didn’t seem like he was interested in her anymore, though, and Sadie smiled in appreciation. I wondered if he could sense what was between us now.
He left and Sadie sank down against my shoulder. Without thinking, I leaned down and kissed the top of her head, pressing my mouth to the soft auburn. She wrapped a hand around my thigh, and I wondered if we could sneak off to the bathroom for a quickie before anyone noticed. She took her hand off a moment later though and grabbed her phone. I could see that she was texting Emily, the girl who was also a contestant on Games of Love. I assumed that she was telling Emily about the two of us, but I couldn’t be sure. I pulled my own phone from my pocket and made sure to text Nora and let her know that we were on the way back to New York City. After a moment, I found a message from my father.
I hope you’re doing well, son. Give Sadie my love. The future is promising.
The future is promising? What in the hell? I shook it off and shoved my phone back into my pocket.
Sadie turned to me, a question in the tilt of her mouth. “Is something wrong? What is it?”
I smiled at her and just shook my head. “I was just letting Nora know when to pick us up.”
There was no need to make her feel anxious or upset when my father’s message wasn’t anything really odd. He had always been vague and maybe he just wasn’t sure how to properly phrase his support for our relationship. Maybe it was naive of me, but I hoped that my dad had decided to be completely on my side and that he was turning over a new leaf, which included forgetting about Oliver’s shop. It had been his idea for me to have a girlfriend anyway, so he couldn’t be difficult about it. Whether he actually liked Sadie herself or not, he at least had to be happy that I was in a relationship after everything else I had done so far had done nothing but disappoint him. Sadie had been right about me in the beginning, I realized. I knew it deep down before, but it was easier for me to admit to myself now. I would always be trying to prove myself to him. I would always feel like there was more that I could do, and I wondered if I would ever feel like I measured up to what he thought I should be.
