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I stared at him, waiting for the punch line. But he was just standing there, staring at me, judging my reaction. “I’m not your girlfriend.”
“No, I know. Of course not. But you couldpretendto be my girlfriend for the wedding.”
“What?” I gasped. “I couldn’t do that. Everyone would know we weren’t dating.”
“No, no. See, we could act like we always do. We’re already flirty and ridiculous together. You would act like that and tell everyone you were my girlfriend.”
I cringed at that word. “I’m a terrible girlfriend, King.”
“That’s not true.”
“It is,” I told him vehemently. “I’d never pull it off. Plus, I have appointments all week. I can’t take the time off.”
“You’re the boss,” he reminded me in the way that I always remindedhim.
“Not fair.”
“Come on. Please, do this for me. I’ll do something for you. Whatever you want,” he urged with that heart-melting smile again. “It’s a few days in Midland, where you smile and laugh and pretend we’re a happy couple. We can plan a huge breakup afterward, if you want, so everyone will know it didn’t work out. Please. Come on. This is what friends do.”
What friends do.
Because he didn’t want me there as his real girlfriend. Something I’d honestly be terrible at. But afakegirlfriend.
No, fuck, I hated the idea of being a girlfriend. I didn’t like that at all. I was the sort of girl who ruined relationships as soon as they touched me. I was never quite what anyone needed. And I didn’t know how to stop it or how to escape the spiral of it all.
“I’m a bad girlfriend,” I repeated. “Even if I could get away, I’d ruin it.”
“Explain thisbad girlfriendthing to me again, Bowen. All I remember is that people treated you like shit, and so you left them. I’ve heard all the stories of you being cheated on and all that.”
I blushed. Yeah, I had been cheated on a lot, but it was more than that. It had always been more than that. It had started in high school. My parents were worried after I was asked to my first dance. I was the rebel, the heartbreaker, even before I’d broken my first heart. I went to that dance and danced on tables and not given a single fuck. Apparently, not caring about your date meant that date was probably going to abandon you halfway through the night. Whatever. I’d ended up having a good time without him.
I’d long ago discovered that not wanting to settle for anything less than perfection meant that I spent a lot of time alone.
“I don’t get the whole dating thing. I’ve done it. I’ve done it over and over, and it all ends the same way. With the other person saying I’m too wild or too indifferent or toosomethingthat doesn’t quite fit their definition of a girlfriend. Then, when I see the first sign of it going bad, I don’t just end it. I sunder it to the fucking cinders. I can’t let it go. I have to ruin it beyond measure. So, believe me,” I said in a desperate attempt for him to understand what a terrible idea this was, “I’mbadat it, King. I don’t think I can evenpretendto be good at it.”
Gavin opened his mouth, as if he were going to disagree, but then stopped, as if a thought had struck him. “Wait, you wouldn’t have to be my girlfriend.”
“What? That’s what you told everyone.”
“What if you were my fiancée? My fake fiancée.”
I narrowed my eyes. That didn’t make it better. If I was a bad girlfriend, then, I’d be a bad fiancée, too.
But he kept speaking. “You’ve never been a fiancée. You … you don’t know if you’re bad at it. It’d just be for fun, Whit. Come on. Give me a few days. I’d owe you big.”
I bit my lip as I turned the idea in my mind. I imagined myself on Gavin’s arm at his cousin’s wedding. I’d meet his family and pretend like I was besotted with him. It wouldn’t even be hard. We already acted like that around each other. We always had, even before things went down. It was just our personalities. We clicked. And we could click this way too.
Varmahad beentrying to tell me to take some time off. Surely, he hadn’t meant to a wedding in Midland, Texas. But with Gavin’s pouting face staring at me with such hope, I found my walls coming down.
Would it be so bad to pretend to be his for a few days? Maybe I’d get the entire thing out of my system, and I could finally move on from what had happened. Maybe I’d prove that I was as bad of a fiancée as I was a girlfriend. It had been the thrill of being with him on vacation. I’d convince myself that it wasn’t going to work, and things could finally go back to normal.
“All right,” I said on a sigh. “When do we leave?”
PARTII
BLONDES HAVE MORE FUN
7
