Page 17 of It's Complicated

She turns to her fiancé. “Did I miss something?”

Aiden scratches the back of his head. “Apparently, these two started dating and forgot to tell me. I found out yesterday.”

Kirsten unleashes such a bright smile, her pearly veneers threaten to blind us all. Next, Aiden’s fiancée squeals in delight, as if she couldn’t believe her luck. “But that’s amazing, you guys. I want to know everything.”

Lori squeezes my hand as if in warning, then she makes a dreadful attempt at casually flipping her hair backward. “Oh, you know, it just happened. One day we were best friends and the next, we were knocking boots morning, day, and night.”

Aiden’s eyebrows disappear behind the perfect golden locks covering his forehead and this is my cue to make an intervention.

7

LORI

I can’t believe I said knocking boots morning, day, and night in front of Aiden. My cheeks are on fire and I’m internally hyperventilating.

Things get worse when Jace pushes my hair aside and leans in to loud-whisper in my ear, “Maybe that’s too much information, babe.” Then he kisses me just over the jugular.

The touch of his mouth on my neck is searing. The softness of his lips mingles perfectly with the gentle scraping of his stubble.

I fight to stand still as my knees go weak. Gosh, the man really has got game.

“Sorry, guys,” Jace says, pulling off his effortless charm. “We weren’t ready to share our news with the world, and Lola is still a little nervous.”

“This is fantastic news,” Kirsten shrieks.

She trots toward us in her stiletto boots and hugs Jace. I’m next. Before I know what’s happening, I’m being squashed by five-feet-eight of former cheerleader in a bone-cracking hug. In the three years I’ve known Kirsten, the extent of our bodily interactions can be summed up by the half-hearted handshake we shared the first time we met and a few accidental shoulderbrushes. The enthusiastic hugging takes me by surprise. All I manage to do in response is awkwardly pat her back until she finally lets me go. But apparently, the eagerness isn’t over.

“Guys,” Kirsten says when she pulls back, still lingering too much in my personal space. “We have to go out for drinks.” She checks her watch, talking to Aiden. “We have to meet my parents at Morton in one hour and a half for dinner, but we have time for a quick cocktail. We can go to the bar down the block. What do you say, guys?”

Aiden, Jace, and I all stare at each other, none of us keen on the idea of going for drinks, each for our own reasons. But Aiden’s fiancée is one of those don’t-take-no-for-an-answer people. It’s how she force-convinced me to be a bridesmaid at her wedding when it was literally the last thing I wanted to do in life. Now we all know better than to interfere with her cocktail-hour plan. A weird situation considering how until today, Kirsten has done her best to cut Jace and me out of Aiden’s social life completely.

I sigh. At least, if they have a dinner appointment with her parents, the torture will be short-lived.

And short-lived it might be, but the next hour is excruciatingly painful. I have to simultaneously invent answers to Kirsten’s one million questions about Jace and me, and try not to short-circuit every time Jace lays a finger on me, all the while avoiding meeting Aiden’s gaze altogether.

Surprisingly, the middle part of the equation proves to be the most difficult. I mean, it’s easy to avoid looking at Aiden when his fiancée fires one question after the other at me. She’s monopolizing my attention. As for the answers, I have years ofunfulfilled fantasies about Aiden and me I can pick and choose plausible explanations from. But Jace touching me? That’s not something I’m prepared to handle.

It’s not like he’s being grope-y or creepy, but I’m not used to him being physical with me. He’s always been sparse in his interactions over the years. I might get a hug every once in a while—I got one when Aiden got engaged and one the night we received the wedding invitations, but I can’t remember the last hug before then. And even after years of sleepovers, we’ve barely ever sharedanybody contact.

But tonight it’s different.He’s different. There was that kiss on the neck in our lobby that made me short-circuit. Then, when he wrapped an arm around my waist as we walked out of the office and toward the bar, pulling me against his solid, muscular side, my skin broke into the worst case of goosebumps. I shivered and heated at the same time. And when we got to the bar and he let go of me to open the door, I understood what real cold feels like for the first time in my life. I bet that if I joined the Chicago Polar Bear Club and took a dip into frozen-over Lake Michigan, I wouldn’t feel that cold.

Then Aiden and Kirsten walked past us into the bar, and before I could follow them, Jace pulled me back, cupping my face. For a CPR-inducing moment, I thought he was about to kiss me. My hands went all sweaty, and I had trouble swallowing. I stared into his ice-blue eyes, wondering why I’ve always thought of Aiden’s baby blues as more soulful. Jace’s gaze on me stirred something deep in my belly that felt suspiciously like a kaleidoscope of butterflies was having a carnival dance party in there. As his face drew closer to mine, my gaze dropped to his full lips, the thump-thump-thump of my heart echoing the pulse in my ears.

But all he did was kiss me on the forehead, a soft, chaste kiss that left me confused and a little disappointed.

“It’s going to be fine,” he whispered. “Just relax and act normal. You’re being too fidgety.”

At that moment, I forgot how to swallow. I only nodded and followed him inside on wobbly legs.

Throughout the night, he kept doing other little things that pushed me off balance. The way he held my hand as we walked to the bar, or how he ordered my favorite drink for me and the extra-large portion of nachos I was craving without me having to say a thing. Or how he kissed my temple when I had to go to the ladies’ room with Kirsten.

If he’s not straight-out holding me, he’s touching me in some other way, brushing a finger on the back of my shoulder, or playing with my hair—theexactopposite of what I’m used to from him. And he smiles every time he catches my gaze. We’re sharing a booth and he’s sitting so close to me the heat of his body seeps into my skin through our clothes, causing sweat beads to dot my forehead. Each small interaction brings my body temperature up a notch. And he’s charming and funny, making Aiden and Kirsten laugh at his jokes and blush at his compliments.

The attention he pays me confuses me. I know we’re fake dating. But it doesn’t feel fake. Either he’s the best actor on the planet or…

What?

I don’t know. But one thing is certain, my reactions are as real as it gets.

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