Page 9 of Looks Real Good Now
In the end, I didn’t need to. It takes two people to be in a fake relationship.
“Not too long, sir. We reconnected about six weeks ago,” Liam said it with such confidence that even I believed him.
Dad looked at us both, me still leaning into Liam’s touch. He simply nodded, slipped the backpack off my shoulder and ontohis, and grabbed the handle of my suitcase. He turned with a mutter that sounded a bit like “finally” and started to leave the airport.
Liam removed his hand, grabbed his stuff, and followed.
As I watched the retreating back of my fake boyfriend, I realised that even though I had made Sweet Nothing’s birthday party the start of this thing, I hadn’t specified when it was. Yet Liam knew anyway.
8
Alana
When I was given my own phone at thirteen, I was told that I couldn’t break big news via text. Even now, I had to either call or share big news in person.
Apparently, that rule did not apply to the adults who raised me because I knew the moment we pulled into the driveway that Mom knew that Liam and I had arrived back for the holidays as a couple. As far as I knew, Dad hadn’t made a single phone call.
But there Mom was, alongside Liam’s parents, looking like a kid waiting for Santa. Our moms’ heads were dipping down to try and see the ‘happy’ couple through the window. They weren’t going to see anything because we weren’t sitting together. I was riding shotgun and Liam was cramped in the back. I almost felt bad that he was back there. But then I remembered it was a lose-lose situation. He would have the front seat even further back than I did, and I would have had to do the journey with my knees under my chin no matter whose seat I sat behind.
Also, he had walked straight to the back seat, and I was not going to turn down legroom when it was handed to me. I think it might have been his silent thank you for the fact that I let himhave the aisle seat for half the flight. My legs had been mad at me for sitting in the middle seat ever since and being able to stretch out a little in the car had made them a little happier.
“You told her then?” I mumbled to Dad, who at least had the humility to look sheepish as he pulled into the driveway.
“Were you planning on keeping it from her while you were here?” he asked, his tone light.
“No, I wasn’t, but I thought no big news over text?”
“Is that why you didn’t tell us before you got back?”
No, I didn’t tell you before I got back because Liam has been back in my life for hours, not weeks.
“Yes, that’s why,” I said with a surprising amount of conviction.
Dad nodded once and then stepped out of the car. As the driver’s side door closed, Liam and I were plunged into a tense silence.
“You good, Lenny?” I hated how that name sounded from his mouth. I hadn’t heard it in over a decade and I didn’t think I missed it, but maybe I did. It sounded like home. It was dangerous.
We were using each other as a means to an end for the next two weeks. That was it. I had to remember that before I fell too far.
“As good as I can be walking into this particular lion’s den,” I admitted.
“This will be fine, Len. We let them fawn over us for a minute, then we go to our separate houses, and you won’t have to see me again until tomorrow. Or maybe dinner time. Either way, it will be fine.”
I laughed because even though I had no proof, I knew he was wrong. This was not going to be fine or over in a minute.
I was right.
9
Liam
Stassie had to be joking.
Something about us returning to our childhood homes had made a part of my brain assume that high school rules still applied. No sleepovers. No closed doors. No funny business. A.k.a, I would sleep in my room in my parents’ house and Alana would sleep in hers. I had spent the drive from the airport thinking of ways to repeat the physical contact we had before her dad interrupted. I wanted to get her to soften against me again, like she needed me to keep her warm. The thought of her pressed up against me had me trying desperately to not get hard in the backseat of her father’s car. It was safer if we slept in separate houses.
But I’d been an idiot who forgot who had raised us: Parents who hadn’t had a ‘no closed doors’ policy because they trusted us to make smart decisions. We’d just pretended in high school they were stricter than they were so neither of our houses became the default party, or worse, hook-up, spot. If they had trusted us as teenagers, then why wouldn’t they also trust two fully-fledged adults?
“That isn’t necessary, Mom,” Lenny said firmly.
