Page 48 of Just Act Natural

“I’ll text you.” Next month, after Grant is safely back in Texas.

“You’re both coming to Hope’s engagement party, then?”

I think the creeping feeling moving through me is my bones shriveling up. I just gave myself a faux boyfriend right before my sister’s big celebration. Either I drag him with me and field questions about our “relationship” all night, or I fake a breakup in the next week and field questions aboutthatall night. This has to be some previously-undiscovered low beneath rock bottom.

Lesser evil, wherefore art thou?

“Yup. Yes. We’re definitely doing that.”

Mom looks satisfied. I can’t make myself checkto see how Grant’s handling it. He’s been so sweet to me, but it would take a saint to deal with this level of psychosis without a few reservations.

“But now we’ve really got to run, so…” I tug him along, but he’s so big, it’s hard to get him moving.

“I didn’t catch your last name,” Josh says.

“He didn’t drop it,” I snap. The minute he has Grant’s last name, he’ll find everything there is to know about him online. Home address, every picture he’s ever posted to social media, that outdoors article Mitchell mentioned—Josh loves a good scavenger hunt. I don’t want to subject Grant to all of that if I can help it.

Kind of hypocritical, considering I just subjected him to the wholemy boyfrienddeclaration. I can’t get too self-righteous about wanting to protect the man, but still. Josh wouldn’t use any discretion.

Crossing my arm in front of Grant, I shift to his other side so I can steer him away from our audience. I wave goodbye to Mom, but don’t bother making eye contact with Josh.

“Good to meet you, Grant,” Mom calls.

“You too, ma’am.” His accent practically demands a cowboy hat to tip.

We march half a block away before he turns up a side street. We pass a pizza place and a yoga studio, but Grant keeps walking. His arm is still around me—I’m not quite ready to discuss what just happened and lose that warmth.

My roller bag hits an uneven patch of sidewalk and capsizes, so I stop to right it. As soon as I do, Grant takes the handle from me, his duffel bag still over one shoulder. We start walking again, but his arm doesn’t return to my waist.

I guess that’s my cue.

“I am so sorry about this. I shouldn’t have said that back there. It’s just…I have no idea why Josh is here, and I wasn’t expecting to see him when I’m looking like this.” I gesture at my marmot-eaten shirt and dusty leggings. I don’t even want to think about the rat’s nest that is my hair. “He can be so…”

Manipulative. Dismissive. Condescending. I’ve got a long list of descriptive words for Josh, and very few of them are good.

“And now my mother is involved in all of this.” If I thought birds were my biggest source of nightmares, today is bound to prove that wrong. “She’s going to expect us at my sister’s engagement party. Everyone’s going to know about you by the end of the day. She’s a terrible gossip. A sweetheart, but she can’t be trusted with information like that.”

Grant stops at a huge SUV parked in the lot behind Horizon Hikes. He opens the back hatch and puts his duffel and my bag inside. He’s surprisingly chill, considering.

“But don’t worry about it. I’ll just tell her…” Not the truth. That’s far too humiliating. How else could I get him out of this? “We realized we only like each other when we’re stuck in the wilderness.”

I kind of hurt my own feelings there, but it’s a real possibility. We have literally nothing in common. Back in the real world, he might not find me as interesting as he did when I was the only single woman for miles around.

He shuts the car’s hatch and leans against it. “Is that what you want to do?”

Let Mom, Josh, and anyone else she happens to tell about my “new boyfriend” believe he dumped me within a week? I’d rather bathe in murky lake water.

“No. I want to show up at my sister’s engagement party with a mountain-climbing hottie on my arm so I can have a win for a change.”

One side of his mouth tips up. I must have it on my calendar somewhere that this is the day for blurting things without thinking. There’s no other explanation.

“Then let’s do that.”

“You would really pretend to be my boyfriend?” It seems like an awfully big thing to ask of him.

He stares at me for several long seconds, like he’s having the same thought. Maybe spelling it out like that is making him reconsider. That would be the sane choice. Fake dating isn’t on most people’s lists of life goals.

Finally, he flashes a smile. “Yeah. I’ll pretend to be your boyfriend.”

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