Page 113 of The Problem with Dating

I whispered again, “Now pay up, you cheapskate, before I call my sister to beat you up.”

She laughed. “I’m not saying that.”

“You should say that.”

“I’ll consider it.”

I leaned back. “Seriously, Yara. Stop letting these people walk all over you. Be stern. Be direct. Be bold. And when they try to make you waver, stand strong. Don’t bend.”

“Don’t bend.” She nodded. She grasped my hands with hers. “Now that that’s handled. Can I ask you something very important and very serious, Mr. Black?”

“Anything.”

She inched closer to me and locked her eyes with mine. “Can we get a few pumpkins after this, then go home and carve them? And can you make some super yummy apple dessert with these? And then we can roast pumpkin seeds?”

I chuckled. “That’s your serious question?”

“Yes. Extremely serious. And I know that our fake relationship is supposed to be for outside activities and such, but…I figured even if we are just friends, maybe we can do friends dates inside.”

Friends.

Why did that word feel so deeply painful to me? When did my heart’s position shift on the idea of her, too? There was a day when I thought the mere idea of her was ridiculous. Now, I couldn’t imagine a morning without her knocking on my door for morning walks. I couldn’t imagine not seeing her smile, hearing her laughter, and holding her hand—fake or not.

I liked her.

I liked her so much that it made me want to vomit because I knew whatever we were was simply to get Cole off her back. But at some point, the pretending began to feel a little too real.

Then again, I wasn’t certain I’d ever started to pretend in the first place.

I liked Yara Kingsley, and there she was, calling me her friend.

Stab me through the heart, why don’t you?

She might as well have called me her sworn enemy the way that made me feel. I’d been friend-zoned when I only wanted to take her into my apartment, wrap her up in my sheets, and stay there until morning.

Later that night, we pulled out the pumpkin's guts and slammed it onto the newspaper covering Yara’s coffee table. The oven was already cooking the apple crisp I’d made for us as we began our carving adventures. My pumpkin was supposed to be a golden retriever, and hers was a black cat.

Clearly, she got the easier tracing cutout. My dog would end up looking ridiculous.

“So Noah’s wedding is this coming weekend,” Yara mentioned as she carved the pumpkin.

“Yup.”

“I’m nervous,” she confessed.

“Nervous?

“Yes. The more you tell me about it, the fancier it feels.”

“I won’t lie. Mandy and Noah are really fancy people. There’re going be about four hundred people, too, which is wild to me. My wedding would have like…two people. But that’s my social butterfly best friend for you. He’s my friend golden retriever.”

She smiled. “You black cats are always secretly searching for us.”

“No. You just run wildly with your tongues out and crash into us.”

“That’s… Accurate.”

“You shouldn’t be nervous, though. It’s going to be an epic party.”

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