Page 19 of Hard to Pretend

“So it’s better that she asks both of you a thousand questions, starts planning your wedding in her head, and then you break up?” Eli asked again.

“Okay, yes. It’s a bad idea, but I can’t unmake it. I’m doing this.”

“And you’re telling us how big of a disaster it was after?” Eli questioned.

If it weren’t for Holden feeling like crap on his lap, I would have thrown something at him. He was lucky I was a good friend.

Eli’s doubts crawled into my head and under my skin. They were insidious, and they haunted every waking and sleeping moment. My brain concocted ways that this could go wrong, and then it concocted worse ways that it could go wrong. After a particularly bad imaginary video of my mother finding out the truth and completely disowning me, I almost called it off.

Then Chris texted me. He was looking forward to the date. Instead of texting my mom to cancel, I told him I was looking forward to it too and went back to the mind numbing data entry I’d been assigned that morning.

While I worked on entering numbers from my colleagues’ marketing campaigns, I tried not to think about why I was looking forward to this date with Chris. Except I couldn’t think about anything else.

I wasn’t looking forward to lying to my mom, but I was curious as to how they’d get along. I wondered if he’d laugh at some of the stupid jokes she told or if he’d find them cheesy. I wondered if he would give me those little looks he’d given me at his friend’s party, the types of looks that made me wonder if he could read my mind.

And then my mind began to wander further.

I wondered if somehow, sparks would fly and we’d repeat the night we spent together. I had told Matt that I wasn’t wanting to keep doing random hookups, but that night with him had been on my mind a lot more recently. I remembered the way his soft handshad felt as they moved over my skin. I remembered the way his lips felt against my neck and the way his breath felt against my ear as he slammed into me, our chests sticky with sweat. It had been one of the best hookups I’d ever had, and I wouldn’t mind a repeat performance. Would it even count as a random hookup?

Memories raced through my mind and I felt my pants tighten.

That was not okay.

I forced myself to think about something else,anythingelse. Apparently thinking about Chris at work was a very bad idea.

Saturday came despite my nerves. I woke up that morning with a heavy weight in my stomach. I skipped my usual frozen breakfast sandwich and choked down half a strawberry yogurt. I thought about calling one of my friends to get them to talk me down, but Eli’s words kept playing in my head. About how this was a bad idea. I remembered Holden calling this plan a disaster. I’d seen the looks of concern Jonas and Matt exchanged when I told them he was meeting my mom.

They’d all try to talk me out of it, and it was too late to back out now.

So instead, I cleaned my already clean apartment. By the time it was late enough for me to hop in the shower, I was pretty sure my kitchen floor was clean enough to eat on even without the five second rule. Then I got to obsess over what I was going to wear. I needed to look nice enough that my mother believed that this was real, but not so nice that it looked like I was trying too hard for Chris. Except I didn’t think I had anything that fit both of those requirements, so in the end, I just settled on a pair of jeans that Jonas once claimed made my ass look nice and my periwinkle button down with the sleeves rolled up.

When Chris arrived, I knew that the outfit was a hit.

He visibly checked me out. “You look good.”

“Thanks.”

“I think you wore that shirt the night we met.”

I tried to ignore the butterflies in my stomach. At least the knot was gone, so thank God for small miracles. I grabbed my keys from the small hook by the door and stuck them in my pants pocket. “You ready?”

Twenty minutes later, we pulled up in front of my mom’s house. It wasn’t much: a small white house with red shutters and a door she painted red when I was a child. The yard was neatly trimmed, but the gardens in front of the house were overgrown. My mom always talked about finding time to weed and making them look nice, but she never got around to it. She worked too hard, and her time off was spenteither taking care of the house, taking classes at the rec center, or doing jigsaw puzzles. She claimed the puzzles were relaxing. I didn’t get it.

Chris parked his car in my mom’s driveway, and the knot came back. I felt like I was going to be sick.

“You okay?” Chris asked. My tongue felt like it was made of sandpaper. I wasn’t sure I could answer. He reached over the center console and covered one of my hands with his, squeezing lightly. “It’s your mom. If you don’t think you can do this, you can cancel. Blame it on me.”

It was the same offer he’d made outside of Luce’s party. The familiar words and his genuine tone soothed me, but not as much as the weight of his hand on mine.

“It’s too late to cancel,” I told him. I reluctantly pulled my hand away from him and wiped my palms on my jeans. “Let’s do this.”

He nodded, and we walked to the front door hand in hand. I didn’t knock. Mom hated when I knocked. She always said that it always made her feel like it was no longer my house. She really hated it when I pointed out that it technicallywasn’tmy house anymore. “Mom!” I called out as we stepped over the threshold.

My mom’s head appeared around the corner, popping out from the kitchen. “Seb, you’re here!”

My mom rushed out of the kitchen and wrapped me into a hug. I inhaled that mom scent of hers:floral body spray mixed with the smells of her cooking. Every ounce of tension I’d been holding slipped away.

“This is Chris,” I introduced. “Chris, this is my mom.”

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