Page 69 of Fake It 'til You Make It

Mike’s next breath seems unsteady, which I put down to him not being comfortable talking about his injury. ‘I’m still a few weeks of rehabilitation away from playing. It was a pretty bad rotator-cuff tear and I’m getting on now for a pro player; my recovery time is longer than it would have been a decade ago.’

‘I guess when the game is your life, it’s tough to watch from the sidelines, huh?’

‘The worst. Honestly, though, I’m generally a silver-linings kind of guy. I bounce through life. Nothing really drags me down.’

Hmm. ‘If you don’t mind me saying, it hasn’t seemed that way in the last couple of days.’

‘Fleur. I guess we’ll call that a red herring. Unchartered territory, since I’ve never really had a serious relationship.’

‘You two were a longer-term thing, then? You haven’t actually mentioned how long you were together.’

He clears his throat again. ‘Would you mind if we stick to other things? I just feel all Fleured out at the moment.’

‘Yes, sure. I get it. After Andrew did what he did, I got so fed up of thinking about it and asking why. Wondering what is so bad about me he had to do that to me.’

Mike takes me by surprise, stopping in his stride and turning to me. ‘Hey.He’sa coward, Abbey. The world is full of shitty humans and you, Abigail Mitchell, are not one of them.’

I recognize my words he speaks back to me and smile. And in a total moment of madness, want to stand on my tiptoes and kiss him for being so sweet.

This. This is what I struggle to remedy with his arrogance. These moments of true tenderness. Mike is a man with many layers, it would seem.

Perhaps that’s why I protect myself by ignoring my instinct and continuing on our walk.

We reach the end of Pier 1 and without either one of us suggesting it, we both come to rest on the metal railing overlooking East River. We watch as the DUMBO ferry comes toward the dock.

‘I find it hard to believe you don’t care about anything except baseball, Mike. I think you care about your brother enormously. You care about his business.’ I’m speaking my thoughts more than asking him a question as I watch two kayakers slowly glide through the water, ripples spanning out across the surface from the fronts of the vessels, like swimming ducks.

‘I care where it matters. I’m loyal; that’s a family trait. I’d move heaven and earth for Mom, Dad or my brother. At the end of it all, when I’m old and grey, I won’t be worried about how much money I have or how successful I was; I’ll care about the hours I spent with the people I love.’ His eyes are still on the activity on the river as he interlocks his fingers and speaks his next wordsmore to himself than me, I think. ‘That’s why it’s like a fist to the gut when they throw it back in your face.’

His break-up with Fleur – if their relationship really is done – is still so fresh, his pain is visceral.

‘I know the feeling,’ I tell him. ‘I still wake up some days and thinksurelyAndrew didn’t mean to hurt me. Surely there’s been a big misunderstanding because the alternative means I wasted years of my life on one giant hoax and the only person who fell for it was me.’

‘I hear that,’ Mike says.

Then we watch in companionable silence as the DUMBO ferry’s lines are tied to the dock and its passengers – an eclectic mix of suits, tourists and many other categories of people New York’s melting pot contains – walk onto our side of the river.

When the full ferry departs again, a loud crash of metal hitting metal makes us both dart our heads to the lawn behind us, where fencing is being moved around an open-air cinema area and a poster forE.T.is being displayed.

Mike looks my way, smiling now. ‘What do you say, are you up for it?’

‘Do you have a pack of tissues? Because I’ve never gotten throughE.T.dry-eyed.’

‘Hmm…’ He pats the side and back pockets of his shorts. ‘I don’t but I can offer the sleeve of my T-shirt and a large helping of chips and dips?’

‘I’m more of a sausage kind of girl.’

He chuckles. ‘Not something I’d recommend for your Tinder profile.’

‘Hey!’ I flick his arm. ‘For your information, I no longer need Tinder because I only needed a date for my parents’ party and now I have you. Come on, then!’

We stand in a queue for Mike’s chips, my hot dog, two largesoft drinks and a bag of sweet and salty popcorn. For an athlete, he gives zero credence to nutritional value. I like that in people. Especially in fake boyfriends.

We pay five dollars to hire a picnic blanket and find ourselves a spot on the lawn, waiting for the movie to begin as the space around us fills with fellow moviegoers.

Mike leans back on his side, resting on one arm as he uses the other to scoff his snacks.

‘This is so trashy, it’s delicious,’ I tell him, wiping a dollop of mustard from the side of my mouth with a napkin.

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