Page 43 of Away With You
My mind flies to all the things we could ramp up under the guise of fake dating, and I bite my lip to stop from smirking.He can’t mean that, can he?
“You’re making me nervous. Just spit it out.”
He motions for me to sit down again, and he follows suit. “When I asked you to be my fake girlfriend, I wasn’t one hundred per cent honest about what I exactly need.”
Hmmm, is it getting hot in here?
“Remember how I told you about my parents? How they’ve been pressuring me to move on? To attend my brother’s wedding?” he continues, oblivious to my internal meltdown.
“Ridiculous.”
“Quite,” he agrees. “And yet, here we are. I need to get them off my back, to show them and everyone else that I’ve moved on. And to do that, I need to attend this bloody wedding and I need to bring my new girlfriend along with me.”
Silence follows this, along with my rising sense of dread.
“If I’m hearing you correctly,” I finally say after the quiet has become unbearably loud. “You need a fake girlfriend, not just for a few dates around town, but also as a date to your brother’s wedding. To your ex-girlfriend?”
He rubs the back of his neck, his forehead wrinkling. “Not just the wedding.” His words come out in a rush. “It’s a week-long celebration.”
“Of course it is.”
“In St. Lucia.”
Pictures of white sandy beaches, palm trees and warm tropical water infiltrate my mind, and I indulge in a mini fantasy of going through with this. Of agreeing to this bonkers plan and spending a week—with Nathan—in paradise.
“You haven’t said anything in a really long time,” Nathan pipes up, twisting his lips in a wary gesture. “Are you okay over there?”
I sigh, my beach-dream-holiday disappearing in a puff of smoke. “Are you seriously telling me that you want me to fly halfway across the world—is it halfway?—and spend a week with your family and friends, pretending to be your new girlfriend?”
“It’s maybe only a quarter of the way around the world.” My nostrils flare, and he holds his hands up. “And yes, that is what I’d like to happen. If you are agreeable, of course. And before you say no,” he rushes on. “Just think about it. An all-paid holiday, in a tropical resort. You could get a break from the English winter, indulge in some downtime and relax. All for the small, tiny, insignificant price of being my fake girlfriend.”
He's lost the plot.
“Come on, Nathan. You can’t think this is a good idea. If it’s a week-long celebration, then we’d have to leave here next week. There’s no way this could work.”
“Do you have other plans? Anything you can’t get out of?”
Again, more pictures flood my mind. Sadder this time. Me alone with Nuke in my flat. The university is closed during the week between Christmas and New Year, with only time-sensitive experiments granted exceptions. I don’t have any of these and had planned to hole up by myself and hibernate.
Nathan’s crazy plan sounds somewhat better than this. And, yet—
“You can’t really be serious about this,” I plead. “Think about it. What you’re suggesting would be more than a few dinners over a couple of weeks. We’d be together 24/7. We’d need to fool those closest to you into believing we’re in love!”
His eyes flare, and he tips forward, leaning into my space. “I know I’m asking a lot.”
I tighten my lips into a thin line. “It’s too much.”
His answering sigh is soft and resigned. “That’s fair. Well, you can’t blame a man for trying.”
He stands, shoving his hands into his pocket as he stares down at me. My stomach flips as I watch him watching me, a loud screeching in my brain struggling to get my attention.
‘Don’t let him go!’it screams.
‘Say yes!’it continues.
‘Live a little!’it begs.
“Thanks for hearing me out,” he says with a wry smile. “And I hope we can still be friends after this.”
