Page 6 of Merrily You

“Lie to our families? Isn’t that unethical?”

I snorted. “If it would get them to leave us alone, does it really matter? We wouldn’t have to lie if they weren’t like that.”

Our server arrived with our huge breakfast plates and I dug into my apple cinnamon Belgian waffles with enthusiasm. Danny stared down at her breakfast plate filled with eggs and bacon and sausage and home fries and toast. I also had a frothy latte in front of me while Danny had just put a little cream in her coffee. No fun, I always told her.

“Danny. It’s only confirming what they already think is true. So is it really a lie when everyone already believes it?”

She looked up and I forced myself to stare into her eyes. She always said that they were boring brown, but that wasn’t true. They were a deep, rich color that made me think of soil and wood and coffee. I thought her eyes were incredible. I’d have to save that compliment for her for later. Right now, I had to get her to agree to this plan that was going to save us a whole lot of annoyance.

“Danny. Just go with me on this. It’ll work.”

Why was I having to talk her into this? What was her hesitation?

It was only for a few days and then we could go back to our regular lives. Plus, if we pretended to date and then broke up, it would take care of next year too.

Neither of us had anything going on with someone else, so it couldn’t be that she was seeing someone. Unless she had a crush that I didn’t know about, but that was highly unlikely. Wasn’t it?

“Wait, is it because you like someone?” I had to know.

Danny shook her head and picked up her fork. “No, it’s not that. It just doesn’t feel right.”

“Well we’ve tried everything else, so why not this?” There really wasn’t a good reason not to do this.

She sat back in the booth and crossed her arms. “This is a really bad idea, Holiday.”

“If by bad, you mean brilliant, then yes, it is.” This had to be one of my best ideas.

Her lips twitched and I knew from experience that I was breaking her down. She might be stubborn, but I was stubborner.

“We can totally do this. Just hold hands a few times, call each other baby, make eyes at each other, and it’ll be done.” We’d probably have to kiss at least under the mistletoe, but we could get to that later.

Danny and I were already pretty comfortable with each other physically, which meant it wouldn’t be that hard to bump up the touching a little bit to make us seem like we were closer than we were. Snuggling a little more with Danny wasn’t a hardship. And it would be fun to pretend to flirt with her in front of people. See if I could get her all flustered. Danny was a hard person to fluster under most circumstances.

“Come on, think about it. I’ll wait,” I said, putting my focus on my waffles. I didn’t want them to get cold. While I ate, I let Danny think. She’d come to the right conclusion, I just knew it.

I was almost halfway through my waffles when she let out a deep sigh and I didn’t even need to look up to know that I’d won.

“Fine. Okay? Fine. But we’re going to need to make some ground rules and set some boundaries on what we’re comfortable with.”

Now we were talking.

Chapter Four

Danny

I must be out of my mind. I’m definitely out of my mind to be agreeing to this absolutely outlandish plan. It’s the kind of plan you saw in movies, not in real life.

But. There was a logic to this plan. There was almost an inevitability of it. If our families wouldn’t stop believing that we’re together, then why not say “sure, yeah, we’re together, okay?” I wasn’t naive enough to think that confirming those theories about me and Holiday would stop all of the chatter and annoyance, but there was a chance that it could lessen it and I would do just about anything to get any kind of relief.

Plus, having to be a little affectionate or flirtatious with Holiday wouldn’t be a terrible hardship. It might even be fun. Sharing a secret between the two of us. It reminded me of when we were younger, and we’d whisper our deepest, darkest secrets (they seemed so scandalous at the time) to each other in the middle of the night while we slept in the same bed at each other’s houses.

No, being Holiday’s fake girlfriend over Christmas wasn’t the worst thing I’d ever had to do. Not by a mile.

Holiday was so excited, I knew she wasn’t really listening to me while I laid out what I thought some of the rules should be.

“No kissing,” was my first rule.

“What?!” she nearly screeched. One thing about Holiday is that when she was excited about something, she lost nearly all her volume control.

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