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“You don’t sound very convincing.”
I let my head fall back and looked at the sky again, this time closing my eyes, unsettled by the calmness of the clear blue. “It’s just a lot. It’s a lot to ask.”
“It shouldn’t be. I wouldn’t trade the time I had with your mom for anything. As brief as it was. All I want is to know you’re going to get the same thing.”
“Right, but you’re asking me to pick a fake date and make it real. It’s not as easy as you make it sound. I haven’t met a single woman I’d want to do that with.”
As soon as the words left my lips, I tasted the lie. I actuallyhadmet one woman I could see myself having something real with. She’d just never been one of my clients.
But no. I’d known Lyndi for a year and had never once gotten the impression that she was into me. How many weddings had she attended in that time, either with a date or without? Several. And not once had she decided to ask me if I’d take her.
Or, okay, not once had shehiredme to take her. Maybe it was because she hadn’t had a reason to pay for a date—because why would she? The woman was a ten on a bad day and a twenty-seven as soon as she smiled. But maybe it was simply because she wasn’t into me.
And even if she was… I wasn’t sure I could let her see the real me. Thebrokenme. The version of myself that I didn’t even let out often enough these days to know what he was like.
It was an odd feeling, now that I thought about it. I spent so much time wearing a mask, my true self was nothing but a stranger.
“Well, Beau, I don’t know,” my pops said, returning my focus back to him and his brittle, rasping laugh. “Maybe you just haven’t met the right one yet. All I’m asking is that when one of your clients comes along that makes you feel something real for her,love her, son. Don’t let her get away.”
My response was some noise of acknowledgment, but it wouldn’t qualify as being an actual word. Because I had no words. I had no idea how to express what I felt at that moment verbally. The pain. The grief. The guilt that weighed heavily on my shoulders. The horror of this entire conversation, raining down on me from a completely cloudless sky.
“All right, well, I’m gonna let you go now, son. You take care, you hear?”
I snorted. “Yeah, Pops. You too.”
“I love you.”
Swallowing back the bile that threatened to rise at the back of my throat, I choked out a meager, “I love you, too,” before ending the call with a shaky hand.
Slowly, I put my phone in my pocket and lowered myself back into the wicker chair. Then, I sat with my eyes closed, wishing the ground beneath my feet would open up and swallow me whole.
“Beau?”
I jolted out of the chair again, Lyndi’s voice sending a shock of awareness through me. What had she overheard?
“Lyndi, hey.” I swiped a hand over my face, trying to erase the evidence of how I’d spent the last ten minutes. “How’s it going? You, uh, you get some good photos of the first wedding?”
Her golden-brown eyes narrowed ever so slightly as she studied me, and my pulse quickened under her assessment. I really hoped I didn’t look as messed up as I felt.
“Yeah,” she said hesitantly. “Are you okay?”
It took every ounce of strength in my body, but I adopted a casual stance and gave her a wry smile. “Who, me? Of course. Never better.”
Please believe me.
“Really? Because you don’t look okay.”
I swallowed, shifting from one foot to the other. Her eyes told me she could see right through me, but I couldn’t open up to her about this. It’d been bad enough having the most honest and jarring conversation of my entire life over the phone, but then relaying it to a third party? Talking about myfeelings?Talking about my feelings with awoman, no less. As ridiculous as it was, that simply wasn’t something I knew how to do.
“I’m good,” I said after a minute, a real—okay, totally fake, but hopefully convincing—smile stretching over my face. “Just didn’t get much sleep last night, and it was a long morning.”
She nodded like she still didn’t believe me, but then she sat at the table next to me. Her gaze landed on my forgotten coffee, and she frowned at it for a second before pulling out her Kindle and settling into her chair.
“Color me shocked,” I teased, my words coming easily as I took a seat across from her. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you without either a camera or a book in your hand.”
“That’s me in a nutshell.”
She’d said it with a light tone, but there was something about it that had me holding my breath, waiting for more. Like she was suddenly about to reveal a secret or give me an exclusive glimpse inside to something that was more than what met the eye. More than the little crumbs she’d tossed my way over the last year.
