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She curiously sipped her wine. She kept quiet, watching me with the intensity of a cat waiting for a treat.
I rubbed my neck. That stupid mark was getting on my nerves with how much it was itching. “I, uh…made a deal with my boss to dupe my parents.”
She froze.
“It was just supposed to be a fake relationship for the luncheon. He was just going to pretend to be my boyfriend for the sake of distracting the family,” I explained. “You know, Mom and Dad haven’t been doing well. They keep tossing around the bigDword.”
Bella frowned sympathetically. “They’ve been talking about that for years. Why haven’t they just done it already?”
I snatched my wine glass and downed a huge gulp. Then I shrugged. Then I tried not to cry. “Who knows? They think the family will hate them. I don’t know why they try to hide it. I can’t stand it.”
I squeezed my eyes shut. Maybe things would get better if I made myself really small. I held my breath and puffed out my cheeks, trying to smash my limbs into my body. Bella sighed, and then not long after that I felt her hands urging me to breathe.
That usually involved her poking my cheeks until I blew out the air stuck in my mouth right into her face.
She smiled. “Didn’t we talk about this?”
“I don’t know. My brain is scrambled.”
“That’s probably because you keep holding your breath when you’re mad.”
There might have been a hint of truth to that, but I wouldn’t agree. I would just keep drinking my wine and pray that my troubles would go away in the dead of night.
Considering dusk had just arrived, I had the entire night for that. “Andres got mad earlier.”
“About what?”
“I don’t know.”
She gave me that motherly look she adopted when she wanted to call bullshit on something I said. I knew better than to hold out on her.
I scrubbed my elbow. “He was asking questions about Mom and Dad, about their smiles being like plastic.”
“I guess he wasn’t fooled.”
“I wouldn’t say that. But I would say he was starting to pick at the wound. And I just didn’t like it. I flipped out on him. I said things.”
She motioned for me to sip my wine while she said, “Yeah, we all says stuff when we’re mad.”
“It’s not the first time we’ve argued, Bella. It probably wouldn’t have been the last.”
“I don’t understand why that would be a thing if you weren’t really dating.”
My eyes went wide, and then Bella was really intrigued by what I meant byfake dating.
I held out my glass for her to pour me another drink. “So, we were trying to go for authenticity. That means we, uh…did a lot of things together that most couples would.”
“You bumped uglies.”
“I wouldn’t call it that personally, but yes, that’s what we did.”
She grinned and poured wine into her glass. “And you caught feelings.”
“I wouldn’t say I caught feelings—”
She cut me off with an, “Up-bup-bup, no. You caught feelings. I can read it all over your face. You’re not a good actor or a good liar. Ergo, real feelings.”
“I hate that you can do that.”
