Page 91 of Eastern Lights

She stabbed a piece of kale and held it in my direction. “Open up.”

I pressed my lips together and shook my head. “Nah-uh,” I said through my closed mouth.

“Connor! Fair is fair.”

I kept my mouth locked closed. “Life’sNotFair,” I mumbled.

“You’re so dramatic.”

“IKnowButThat’sWhoIAm.” I shrugged, she laughed and my God, I was so happy she didn’t marry that asshole.

She gave up and pushed the fork into her own mouth, allowing me to part my lips in victory.

“One day I’m going to get you to eat a kale salad,” she warned.

“Don’t hold your breath. If my mother couldn’t get me to do it, a beautiful lady won’t be able to do it either.”

“Don’t flatter me.”

“Don’t be so beautiful, then.” Her cheekbones shined through as she grew bashful. I threw a french fry her way. “Don’t blush like you don’t know you’re beautiful.”

“I don’t take compliments well,” she said, tossing the fry back my way, and like the professional fry eater I was, I caught it with my mouth.

“That’s because you’re too humble. You should stop being so damn humble. You’re the shit, Aaliyah. You work at one of the top magazine companies in the world as an editor, you are educated, you are a great person, and you are hot as fuck—”

“Don’t say hot as fuck,” she said, blushing even more.

I placed my hands on her shoulders and shook her back and forth as I hollered. “Aaliyah Winters you are hot as fuck and the whole world deserves to know it!”

“Oh my gosh, Connor shut up!” she whispered, covering my mouth with the palm of her hand. “You’re so extreme.”

She wasn’t wrong.

“I’m just saying. You are the shit, and you need to start acting like you’re the shit.”

“But I don’t feel like I’m the shit. I honestly feel…weak.”

“Who cares, though? Fake it till you make it.”

She raised an eyebrow. “What?”

“Life is created by habits. We teach the world how to treat us, and that all comes down to how we treat ourselves. I learned this at a young age. When I moved out to New York, I had one thousand dollars to my name, and no idea what the hell I was going to do. All I knew is I needed to act like I was a rich man in order to get through the doors of real rich men. I faked it until I made it. I walked into every room as if I belonged there. I drank whiskey with people who are billionaires. I attended galas and parties for the elite when I still only had pennies in my bank account. You know why I was invited?”

“Do tell.”

“Because I showed up as if it would be their loss if they didn’t invite me. Confidence is a repeated habit. Act confident in your own skin until it becomes your outer layer.”

She narrowed her eyes in thought. “Fake it until I make it?”

“Yeah, and don’t take life too seriously. Life is short, might as well learn how to laugh at yourself sometimes, too.”

“Sounds like you need to be my life coach,” she laughed. “I mean, let’s be honest, you kind of were my life coach on that Halloween night all those years ago.”

“Yeah, which by the way, makes me extremely confused. Because afterwards, you were falling back into self-love. I thought we really had some breakthroughs that night. Color me shocked when two years later I find out that you were engaged to the bane of my existence. Like, how, Red?! How did you end up going from where we left off to ending up with Jason Rollsfield? As your temporary life coach, I was hurt by that discovery.”

She laughed lightly and shook her head. “What can I say? I didn’t have enough time to observe your knowledge. You were a flash of love for me, and then reality came back and I fell back into my old patterns. Maybe if I had more time to learn from you, it would’ve stuck better, but it was hard to hold onto something that came and went in a flash of an eye.”

“All right,” I said, rubbing my hands together. “We can start again.”

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