Page 19 of Most Likely to Match
“Wouldn’t it be better outside?” I ask. “In a park or something?”
He scoffs. “What, like engagement photos or something?”
“No.” I huff. “I just thought…” I look around. “Never mind.” I know it’s all fake anyway, but doing it here, in a quiet corner of the stacks, adds an extra layer that makes itreallyfake.
Dean steps past me, pushing books aside and setting the camera up on a shelf at about chest height. “Here.” He gestures for me absently.
“Dean.” I cross my arms over my chest. “Seriously. Never mind. This is stupid.”
He levels a glare at me. “You’re the one using French,” he says. “I need clients, too.”
Fuck.“Fine.” I stomp over to him and let him pose me how he wants. He takes a few test shots first, him behind me, his arms hanging limply around my waist. The timer counting down what feels interminably longer than ten simple seconds. He’s stiff, avoiding physical contact wherever possible, which only serves to make the soft brush of his exhales against the back of my neck all the moreweighted, heavy. Even if he was able to pull off something that looked good, given this frankly abysmal setting, there’s no way it’d look believable.
“Stop,” I say as the ten-second timer finishes its countdown and the camera captures us in this stiff-spined version of a prom portrait.
His arms come around me, not like a hug or even a hold. More like he’s a basketball net and I’m the ball. “Hold still,” he hisses, as if he somehow cares about how our photo turns out.
I turn in the circle of his arms, and suddenly all that contact he was avoiding is decidedly unavoidable. My breasts brush up against his chest with every heaving, angry breath. “Forget I asked,” I hiss. I wish we weren’t at the library, if only so I could yell at him. “I don’t get why you even wanted to work together to begin with, since you so obviouslyhateme.”
His hands cup my elbows, a ledge for me to rest them on, making it easier to point confronting fingertips at him. “I don’t hate you,” he says, seeming genuinely affronted.
“Well, you don’t seem to particularly like me.”
At some point, my index finger stopped working and my hand now rests, curled into a fist, against his chest. His heart beats on the other side of his rib cage, his answering yell in our hushed fight. He’s the one to break first, taking a step away, his back against the opposite shelf.
“I don’t know how I feel about you,” he finally says, looking past me.
“I said I was sorry.” But even that is petulant and childish to my own ears. “I…Iamsorry.”
He closes his eyes, a look of pain crossing his face. “I don’t want to talk about that.” He takes a deep breath, his chest expanding almost to its limit.
I find myself hoping that maybe he’ll expand enough to touch me again, even the lightest brush of his body against mine or that I might be downwind enough to catch the stirring of his sigh against my collarbone. He meets my eyes. “Do you want photos or not?”
“Not,” I say hotly. Then, quieter, “At least not like this.”
“Not like what? Fake?” he asks. His thick eyebrows are furrowed low over his dark brown eyes and somehow even thicker black lashes. He squints at me.
He’s always had squinty eyes, ones that lent him an air of skepticism. I used to think it was a defensive posture; if he was skeptical of our classmates, then it wouldn’t be as fun for them to mess with him.
“What did you think boyfriend-for-hire services entailed, Chloe? It’s all fake.”
Despite the space he took, we’re still strangely close to each other. If a librarian needed to reshelve some books, there’s a good chance we’d be asked to leave. I don’t think the Toronto Reference Library can afford the luxury of a lenient hookup tolerance policy.
“I guess I thought you’d at least be good atpretending.”
He laughs, corrosive and bitter. “Sorry I can’t fake it as good as you.” He says the words under his breath, but we’re close enough and it’s quiet enough that nothing isreallya whisper.
“I thought you didn’t want to talk about that,” I snarl. And I immediately regret it.
He rears back like I slapped him. “You know what? Fuck this. I’m done.”
He steps past me without another word, a cloud of cinnamon gum and spicy vanilla and disgust. I should let him leave. I almost do.
“Wait,” I whisper-yell. I grab his camera off the shelf. “Your camera.”
He stops a few feet away from the end of the stacks, his back still turned and his shoulders at his ears. I hold the camera out to him. “I am sorry. I know you don’t have to accept my apology, but I want to say it anyway. I wish there was…” I shrug, shake my head out of sheer frustration. “I wish I could go back and do things differently. I wish there was something I could do to make it up to you.”
Finally, he faces me. “You could get caught mid-clamgram,” he says, matter of fact.
