Page 61 of Skating and Fake Dating
Cue the internal groan.
CHAPTER 25
BAILEY
Still at the big oak dinner table, and knowing full well about my marriage scrapbook, my mother begins interjecting her ideas for wedding venues and dates.
Not going to lie, I dip into a daydream about walking down the aisle to meet Carson, but I blame my mother. She planted the idea. She’s also responsible for my arrest record, so there’s that.
Then again, marrying me off isherhobby.
Filled with the sudden need to come clean because I don’t want anything budding between Carson and me to be built on falsehoods, I say, “Mom, this arrangement?—”
My sister’s eyes narrow, putting me in her crosshairs as if she’s caught us in the lie and is waiting for me to say the word so she can pull the trigger.
Nanna says, “Bailey, dear, did you say engagement?”
As if from above, I see the precariousness of my situation and think twice about revealing the truth, at least right now. My cheeks blister. “I just meant, like Odette was saying, we have to keep things professional.”
“For now,” Carson adds, closing his hand over mine.
My sister leans forward, chin resting on her knuckles. “Tell us about your first date.”
I freeze. We never plotted this part of our backstory.
“Coffee,” Carson says at the exact moment I blurt out, “Elevator.”
My mother’s eyebrows shoot up.
I scramble, squeezing Carson’s hand too tightly, “I mean, I was heading to the elevator when I stopped for coffee first. Technically, it was a bakery and then I had it when we were on the elevator.”
My sister’s brow lowers. “Your first date was on an elevator?”
Nanna shrugs. “It works as a forced proximity factor in my romance novels.”
Mom’s expression turns serious. “Were you trapped? Always take the stairs. It’s extra cardiovascular exercise and good for your heart. Plus, you won’t get stuck.”
Damian goes down a rabbit trail about the dangers of being locked in a stairwell.
Carson nods enthusiastically. “Right, and I was rushing to a meeting. That’s why I was so sweaty when I asked you out for our first date in the elevator after you got your coffee from the bakery. Not exactly the first impression I wanted to make.”
My father chuckles. “I thought your mother was a terrible driver when we first met. I was actually afraid for my life.”
“That’s because I am a terrible driver, dear,” Mom says without sarcasm.
My sister bears down on us, undeterred. “How intriguing. Tell us more.”
“Where’d you go on your first date?” Nanna asks, bailing us out with a redirect in the conversation.
“Hockey game,” I say with false confidence as sweat beads along my upper lip.
“American cuisine,” Carson says simultaneously.
We look at each other in panic before I recover. “You had a hockey game, but then we met up afterward for dinner.” I’m really massaging the truth here because technically, he may havebeen playing hockey in the general timeframe of our connecting and our road trip detour—rest stop food could count as American cuisine.
Without missing a beat, he snaps his fingers and nods. “She was so nervous, she was talking a mile a minute.”
“And he still agreed to a second date.”
