Page 68 of The Fake Out Flex

She looks up and keeps her neck craned at the ceiling for a long time.

"What are you doing?" I eventually ask.

"Making sure the sky isn't about to fall in on us."

"Yes."

She drops her head. "Yes, you're agreeing with me that the sky isn't about to cave in on us, or yes to the kiss?"

"Yes to the kiss."

"Wow. I like this whole truth fries thing." I can see her mind spinning. "Okay. Wow."

"You've already said wow."

"This is a wow moment, Fraser. You just said you were about to kiss me."

"Actually, no. What I said was that I thought we were about to kiss."

"Explain the difference to me."

I wipe some burger juice off my fingers with my napkin. "Evie, you'd had a tough day. You were emotional. I wanted to do something fun and light to get you out of your funk. Yes, I wanted to kiss you, but I wanted to make sure that was what you wanted, too. So I held back, and I let you take the lead."

Evie blinks rapidly. "The wow moments just keep coming. It's like a wow tornado over this side of the table. Someone call FEMA."

"Are you okay?"

"I am. I am. I'm just a little…overwowed. That's…that's a really sweet thing you said."

"It's what the fries want."

She visibly swallows. "It's so strange spending time with you again. Alone. Like we…like we used to. It's stirring up a whole bunch of stuff."

"What sort of stuff?"

"Feelings. Questions. All the usual fun existential stuff." She bites down thoughtfully on an onion ring. "But that's all in the past, and I'm all about moving on."

"We can…move on. If that's what you want."

"It's probably for the best."

Guilt stabs me in the chest.

I'd like to resolve things—especially the abrupt way I left. I can't tell her anything about Dawn's situation, but I at least owe her an explanation about the things I can reveal.

But if she wants to move on, I have to respect that.

So I squash the urge to dredge up the past by revisiting our teenage lives and instead focus on the matter at hand. "So what do we do about the story?"

The faraway look in her eyes vanishes, and she rallies. Back to upbeat Evie mode. "It's been a few days. Give it a few more, and people will start losing interest, we'll stop trending on social media, and the press will move on to something else."

"You really think so?"

"I do."

She does work in the industry, so I guess she'd know better than me how these things work.

"Trust me," Evie says, waving a fry in the air. "This whole thing will blow over soon, and our lives will go back to normal."

---