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There was steel in his tone when he replied, “Maybe so, Elsa, but I know who I am. I know what I want to do. And I know what I don’t want. As such, I know my mind is not going to change. Not about this.”
Another very handsome, very famous man made this same assertion: George Clooney. And then he’d found Amal.
I knew this. I knew I should remark on it.
I was too flustered by learning this about Hale to do it.
So not only had I blown that part of the interview, I had to take time to reflect on why I did. Why Hale asserting he was never going to commit to a woman threw me so off balance.
I was thinking these things while scrolling through some stills Zoey took of us for marketing purposes, doing this not seeing them, when Chuck announced, “We’re packed. Headed out.”
I looked to him. “We still on for tomorrow at ten?”
We had to put the interview together. We also had to move out of the space in Brooklyn to the one in Manhattan. This we would do starting at ten tomorrow.
“Yup,” Chuck agreed.
“Drop the raw on the cloud. I’ll get to work on it this afternoon,” I told him.
“Gotcha,” he replied as he and Zoey disappeared around the glossy wood paneling at the main elevator to get to the back, which housed the much larger freight elevator.
“Want me to call a Lyft?” Fliss asked.
I nodded to her.
And then my world tilted on its axis.
It started when Hale leaned on the back of one of his sofas, arms crossed on his chest, legs stretched in front of him, and he inquired, “What time do you want me to pick you up tonight?”
“Ummmmmm…” Fliss hummed loudly…and weirdly.
“Sorry?” I asked Hale, confused.
“For dinner at your parents’,” he explained.
I stared at him.
Then I looked to Felicity.
She had straight, black hair that fell well past her shoulders, ragged bangs cut close to her hairline, an eyeliner wing that would force most makeup TikTokers to weep with envy, and not an inch of her skin, except her neck and face, was not tattooed.
And right now, telltale pink was staining her intentionally very-pale cheeks.
“While I was working on Hale, after he told me he was free, I kinda shared, you know, that it’d be super cool if he played your fake boyfriend tonight for that family dinner that Oskar is going to be at,” she confessed.
She knew about the dinner.
She knew I was dreading the dinner (as always).
She also knew that I intended to use that day’s interview as a tactic to get through the dinner relatively unscathed.
What I would never imagine was that she’d tellHaleabout the dinner.
Although I was certain if I moved a single muscle my head might literally explode, and obviously, I didn’t want that to happen, I said tonelessly, “My fake boyfriend.”
“I mean, can you imagine Oskar’s face, Emilie’s, when you show up with Hale?” she asked.
I could imagine it.
