Page 15 of Hard to Pretend

“Maybe you could go introduce your boyfriend as a distraction,” Natalie suggested with an impish grin. “You do not know how excited she’s been to meet him. All week. I think she was more surprised than I was that you had a secret boyfriend, Christopher!”

I laughed and looked over at Chris. “If it’ll save the birthday girl from cooking, maybe we should?”

“Give you a chance to say hi to Mason,” he agreed.

I waved awkwardly at the people sitting around the table and followed Chris into the kitchen, my hand still in his. I tried not to feel weird about the way his hand felt in mine or the fact that my hand was starting to sweat. I wondered how long we’d be holding hands. It wasn’t that I didn’t like it; I just wasn’t used to it. Maybe that was it. It felt more intimate than the time we’d hooked up.

Now that I was thinking about it, I wasn’t sure when the last time I actually held anyone’s hand was.

Chris squeezed my hand to pull me out of my thoughts as we entered the kitchen. Mason stood beside a frazzled looking blonde woman, looking distinctly annoyed as she stirred a pot of something. He looked up to see us and his face changed almost immediately. “You guys made it!”

“I told you we’d be here,” Chris replied. He let go of my hand to give his friend a hug.

The frazzled blonde looked up. Her eyes landed on me and her face brightened immediately. “Mase, you were right. He’s…” She looked me up and down, nodding approvingly, still holding the white plastic spoon.

“Right?”

“I’m what?” I asked, because the ghost of the unsaid and unknown adjective hanging in the air kind of terrified me.

“Hot,” the blonde supplied. “Mason said you were hot and that Chris really scored with you.”

I felt my face burn and looked down, trying to hide the flush to my cheeks.

“Can you not embarrass him?” Chris asked, shaking his head. “Or scare him off? Christ, Luce. You’ve been up my ass to get a boyfriend for how long, and now you’re trying to scare the one I’ve found off. Not really productive.”

“If he’s scared off by a little compliment and some light teasing, he’s never going to survive,” Luce shot back. “Now introduce me.”

She passed the spoon over to Mason, who immediately went back to paying attention to the food on the stove. It smelled like my mom’s spaghetti, and I wondered if that was what we were having. It’d be a good dinner for a group. Mom used to bust it out when I’d have the guys over.

“What are you making?” I asked without preamble.

Maybe because the idea of formal introductions felt weird.

“Spaghetti,” Luce answered. “So you’re Seb?”

We made small talk for a few more minutes before Luce went back to hovering over the stove. Chris and I left the kitchen as soon as Luce and Mason started bickering. “We tried,” he declared as we made our way to the table.

“It worked for a few minutes.” I waited for Chris to find a seat before taking the empty one directly beside him.

I was between Chris and the man he’d motioned to when talking about Natalie’s husband. There were two other people at the table, and Chris introduced them as Mason’s date, Vince, and Luce’s partner, River. We all chatted until Luce and Mason brought food out.

Dinner was a loud affair, and luckily, I didn’t have to talk too much. The little tidbits Chris and I had shared about ourselves had come in handy when questions were directed at us. I noticed that Chris was a master at deflection. He’d direct questions backto his friends or bring them into the conversation, conveniently directing it away from us and the web of lies we were weaving.

After we ate, we played board games. The reason Luce wanted Chris to have a date became apparent pretty quickly. Most of the games had teams, and if he’d come alone, he wouldn’t have had a teammate. We didn’t do great at Pictionary, but we’d somehow kicked ass at Taboo. I usually only kicked ass at Taboo while playing with my friends, and that was solely due to the amount of inside jokes and history we shared.

At the end of the party, I had six new contacts in my phone. It was a little depressing to know that I’d never use them, that the basis of getting to know them was actually a lie, and I’d probably never see them again.

6

Ithadbeenaweek since Luce’s party, meaning it was time to tell everyone that unfortunately, things with Seb didn’t work out. We’d talked about the reason for our breakup at our planning session. We settled on something simple. No complicated stories that painted either of us in a bad light. It just didn’t work out. We had different relationship goals, and we weren’t compatible.

The problem was sending the text. I didn’t want to deal with everyone treating me with kid gloves because a fake relationship ended. I didn’t want to have to explain to them why I wasn’t upset about it either. I was in too deep to ever tell them the truth.

Hopefully, they’d forget about my short lived relationship with Seb, and no one would ever have to know.

I took in a deep breath and forced myself to open the group chat where we’d all been planning Luce’s party. Of course Luce was in it. If she hadn’t been,she would’ve flipped her proverbial lid when we all showed up at her house. Especially if we showed up with food that she hadn’t helped prepare. It was better to let her have input even if we were trying to do something nice for her.

I started to type a message only to delete it. I did it three times before tossing my phone back on the couch. “This is fucking ridiculous,” I muttered to myself. “Man up, Chris.”

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