Page 11 of Hard to Pretend

“Lemons,” I repeated. “I mean, the blanket, the yellow pillows and carpet, the citrus smell?” What was I even asking? God, this was going to be terrible and not because of him.

“My mom bought me the blanket for Christmas a few years ago,” he explained. “Then when I moved in here, I found the yellow throw pillows at a thrift store. One of my friends, Matt, he bought me the rug because he kept bitching that the wood floors were too cold when he crashed on my couch.” He paused. “And the citrus is a wax melt, because I wanted the place to smell good when you came over.” He bit his bottom lip and looked down at his bare feet.

I laughed. “Well, I’m impressed. You should see my place.” He raised an eyebrow. Right. He had seen my place, and I definitely had not cleaned it before going out to Goliath that night. “Clutter city, if you remember.”

“It wasn’t that bad,” he countered, “and you should see my place when I’mnotexpecting company. Just don’t open any closets or look under my bed.”

The mention of his bed reminded me of the night we’d spent together, of the way he’d been in my bed. I remembered the way his light brown skin glistened with sweat. I remembered the sounds he made and the easy way he changed positions with nothing more than a light touch.

I had to get my thoughts together. We were here for a purpose. Which was to figure out how we were going to make this fake relationship work. That wasn’t going to done by thinking about his bed or the night we’d spent in mine. It would be done by sitting down and figuring out our story and getting toknow one another so that if one of my friends asked us questions, we weren’t caught in my lie.

“Would you like a drink?” Seb asked. I looked over at him and noticed that he looked nervous. He was rubbing the back of his neck. He didn’t seem like the same guy I’d taken home after the club. He’d been so confident that night.

“I’m good,” I told him. “We should—” I looked over at the couch. “Sit. We should sit.”

He nodded and sat down on the couch. I sat on the opposite end and angled my body toward him. We needed to get started, but suddenly, my tongue felt heavy and dry. Maybe I should have taken him up on that offer of a drink. Maybe I should have just called the whole thing off. Followed my instincts and not shown up, not dove deeper into this lie.

He cleared his throat. “So,” he started. He rubbed the back of his neck again, “we already told your friend how we met, so we should stick with that. We don’t want Jason to contradict us.”

“Mason,” I corrected.

“Mason. Sorry,” he amended. “We also told him how long we were together, so it’d make sense that we don’t knoweverythingabout each other.”

“But we should know some things,” I pointed out. “I wouldn’t bring a complete stranger around my friends.”

“Neither would I. Except when they pick me up at a bar.”

“The guys you were with the night we met?”

“Yeah. We get together every Thursday night. Have since we were kids.”

“That’s pretty impressive. Should I know them yet?”

“Probably not, but you’d have heard stories.”

Seb leaned back on the couch. Just the mention of his friends seemed to relax him. He wasn’t holding his shoulders as tightly as he’d been moments before. I wanted to encourage it, to keep that relaxed version of him present. “Tell me about them?”

“I met Jonas in preschool, and his mom used to watch me on Thursday nights when we were in elementary school,” he explained. “He’s been my best friend for so long that I don’t actually have any memories of a time when hewasn’tmy best friend.” I felt a twinge of jealousy at that. I had friends, but nothing like that. “Then we met Holden and Eli in middle school, I think. It might have been fifth grade. I can’t remember really. Matt joined us last, in high school.”

“What are they like?”

“A lot of fun. Jonas can be a big grump sometimes, but he’s also one of the nicest people I know once you get past that. And Matt’s got the biggest heart and one of the coolest heads. He’s really logical. The kind of guy you go to with any problems you have. He’s our rock.” Seb’s eyes were soft as he talked about his friends. There was a love there that I wished I couldexperience. I loved my friends, but it didn’t seem to come close to the way he loved his. “Holden can be an idiot sometimes, but he also sees through a lot of people’s bullshit. And finally, there’s Eli, who just doesn’t take anyone’s bullshit. Holden and Eli live together and are basically joined at the hip.”

“Have they ever…” I asked, trailing off. I wasn’t sure how to word the question.

What I was asking sparked behind Seb’s eyes and he shook his head. “No,” he told me immediately. “I don’t think it’s like that for them.” He paused for a moment. I could almost see the wheels turning in his head, thoughts forming behind his dark brown eyes and then disappearing. “No, I mean, if itwerelike that for them, they’d tell us. They’d also already be married the way they are. And neither of them are really shy. If you ever meet them for real—” He stopped himself from continuing. This wasn’t something that would have us meeting his friends in a real enough way that I’d actually be able to observe them together.

This was us gearing up for one night of make believe. Nothing more and nothing less.

A beat passed before Seb spoke, putting our conversation back on track. “What about your friends?”

“You’ve met Mason. We’ve been friends since college. He was my roommate, and we really hit it off. He’s mostly harmless, but he has a big mouth.” Obviously. If he didn’t, then we wouldn’t be in thismess to begin with. “Lucille, she’s the birthday girl, and she’s a bit of a control freak, but she’s sweet. Natalie will be there. She’s amazing and really nice. She wants everyone to be happy and bends over backwards to make it happen.”

“Sounds kind of like you,” he observed.

I snorted. I’d never considered myself to be a people pleaser, but I could imagine it from his perspective. We were only in this situation because I was trying to avoid embarrassment, but from his perspective? Maybe it looked like I was trying to make everyone happy.

“Actually, I’m just really non-confrontational,” I admitted, ducking my head a little. “The idea of telling them that I don’t actually have a boyfriend after our show at the coffee shop?”

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