Page 11 of Lie For Me

Lucy rolled her eyes at him.

‘Good to know. What are the other reasons?’

Jack shrugged.

‘Bad posture from long hours hunched over my desk in the office.’

Lucy opened her mouth to ask him about work. She had seen the Herberts’ fiasco online and knew it likely meant he’d had a late night. But before she could ask, he said, ‘What’s this thing you want to talk to me about? You were very cryptic as we were leaving class.’

Lucy knew this was it. She took a sip of coffee to buy another few seconds before she had to go through with her plan. She put her cup down with a rattle and took a breath.

‘I want you to come with me to my brother’s wedding,’ she said.

Jack looked unfazed. They went to plenty of things together.

‘As my boyfriend.’

Jack stopped chewing and stared at her.

‘Fake, my fake boyfriend! My plus one. I already RSVP’d plus one.’ She hurried on. ‘It’s not as mad as it sounds.’

Jack’s expression told her it did, in fact, sound quite mad.

Jack swallowed and regained the power of speech.

‘You’re usually happy going to these things on your own—what’s different this time?’

‘The difference,’ she said as she slathered jam onto her toast and fingers, ‘is my family. I’ve told you all the horror stories.’ She gestured with her toast. ‘All true.’

Jack raised his eyebrows and watched Lucy attack her breakfast.

Lucy licked jam off her fingers and let out a weighty sigh. ‘It’s three whole days with them, stuck in a country hotel in Shropshire, and I just want to give them as little ammunition as possible and escape with my dignity intact.’

Lucy sipped her tea and picked at an imaginary hole in her leggings.

‘Heather and I only recently started talking again, and it’s all a bit…. fragile.’

Jack ran a hand over the dark stubble on his chin and leaned back to rub his belly, his shirt riding up slightly above the waistband of his jeans to reveal a fine line of hairs. Lucy’s eyes slid over the toned and tanned skin. A woman sitting across from them paused with a spoonful of yoghurt halfway to her mouth to take in the view.

‘I dunno Luce, you know I don’t like weddings, and there’s…’ He sighed. ‘There’s actually a lot going on with the company at the moment. It’s not a good time for me to be away. Can’t you ask Aaron?’

‘No, he’s got a new girlfriend, and I don’t imagine she’d want me asking him to hold my hand and fawn over me all weekend. You’re my only single male friend and therefore the only candidate for,’ she wiggled her eyebrows and grinned, ‘this exciting opportunity.’

Jack pulled a face.

‘Flattered as I am to be selected on the basis that I am literally the only viable candidate, I refer you to my previous points. I hate weddings and don’t go, and I have too much on to get caught up in what sounds like a family drama.’ He cleared his throat and leaned forward slightly. ‘Listen.’ He slid some dirty plates to one side. ‘I have something I wanted to talk to you—’

Oblivious to everything but her present predicament, Lucy had developed selective hearing and didn’t register what he was saying.

‘Oh, Jack, come on,’ she pleaded. ‘Do me this one favour!’

‘One favour?’ He raised his eyebrows so high Lucy thought they might disappear into his hairline. ‘You mean like the one favour when I drove forty miles to Leeds to pick you up in the middle of the night when your car broke down again? Or the one favour when I had to go round to yours when you thought you had a leak because you left the tap—’

‘Okay, okay,’ Lucy conceded the point. ‘Do me this other, extra-important favour because you’re such a good friend, and you might even be The Best Friend in the World, and you don’t want to see me emotionally scarred—wait—make that, more emotionally scarred, and in need of therapy. Or wanted for murder. And it’s an open bar. Did I mention that? And I will owe you.’

Jack appeared unmoved by her plight. She watched as he reached for his coffee, relaxed back in his seat, and took a deliberately loud and long slurp.

‘Aaaaah.’

---