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A picture frame set up on the top of Summer’s bookshelf catches my eye.
There’s a young girl—it must be Summer when she was like, eight or nine—standing in front of an open oven with a plate of brownies on the rack. Summer’s holding a glass bowl of brownie mix, dark mix all over her lips, hands, and nose. An older woman—her mom?—looks down at her, her face bright with laughter.
Nostalgia slams into me. I used to bake with my mom like that.
My mom loved to bake. Even my dad, who was always anal about his diet, and mine too once I started playing hockey, couldn’t help but indulge himself when my mom made some brownies, or a cake, or cookies, or cupcakes.
“Like the picture?” Summer’s chipper voice behind me tugs me from my daydream. “Me and my mom,” she confirms.
“It’s a nice picture,” I say. A smile plays on my lips, but it’s a bittersweet one.
“Your cat seems to be getting used to the place,” she says. “What’s the deal with the hoodie?”
I turn from Summer’s bookshelf and see that the cat’s dragged my hoodie out of the bed, unfolded it, and is now pawing at it like she so often does.
I shrug. “She loves it. Sleeps on it, uses it as a blanket, crawls around inside it. Beats me, but she’s grown attached to it. I couldn’t take it from her.”
Summer clears her throat, a little awkwardly. “So. Should we, like, set some terms?”
“Terms,” I repeat, measuring the word.
“About this, you know, fake relationship.” She lowers her voice when saying those last two words.
I chuckle. “If you’re trying to keep it down so the cat doesn’t hear, don’t worry, she’s good with secrets.”
Summer huffs out a laugh. I think I sense some of the tension in her shoulders releasing. “Sorry. This whole thing is just …”
“Weird,” I finish for her.
“Right,” she answers, pointedly, as if that’s the exact word she was looking for. “Weird.”
I shrug, then dip my hands casually into my pockets. “No argument here. But it solves a problem for both of us.”
“So. Terms.”
“What terms did you have in mind?” I ask.
“No seeing other people. Obviously, not publicly. But not privately, either. No hookups.”
“Deal,” I nod.
That one’s not going to be hard for me to keep, not considering how I haven’t felt a shred of desire for any other woman since I saw Summer that first day of English class. If not for the fact that my dick springs to life whenever I’m around her, I’d worry that I was suffering from equipment malfunction below the belt.
“I know we both have our own lives, but let’s try to be seen in public together at least three times a week.”
“Fine,” I nod again. She could’ve said thirty times a week and I’d have agreed.
“Should we set a time limit?” she asks.
“Time limit?”
“Like, I hope it won’t take Sean too long to move on once he sees us together for a while. But what if he doesn’t? It’s not like I’m going to ask you to keep this up for a year.”
“How about this,” I propose. “We’ll go to the end of the semester, and then decide from there. We’ll keep pretending to be together, and my cat can stay here until then.”
“Okay,” she answers on a nod. “That makes sense.”
Relief washes through me. Now, the worst-case scenario is my cat has somewhere to stay until I can move out and find somewhere that’ll let me keep her between the semesters.
