Page 21 of Semblance

“Huh,” he said after the big reveal.

I was taken aback.

“What do you mean huh?” I asked. “Huh, as in I look like ass?”

“I never said that,” Shadow protested. “Don’t start putting words in my mouth.”

“I take off my mask so you can look at my face, and the first thing you say is ‘huh’? Excuse me if I’m not dancing on the clouds at the moment.”

“You’re very pretty,” Shadow said. “I wouldn’t kick you out of bed.”

What the hell was wrong with this guy? For someone as handsome as he was, he was terrible with women.

I was starting to feel self-conscious and foolish. This entire night was turning out to be a first degree fuck up.

“Look, I’m tired,” I said. “I can see you’re having some domestic squabbles in this clubhouse of yours, and you’re using me as some strange way to stick it to them. You couldn’t care less about me. Am I right?”

“You’re not so far off,” Shadow said, “with one exception.”

“Do I even want to know?”

“Like I said, I think you’re very pretty. You have the entire ‘don’t care about you’ part a little off.”

“Who the hell looks at a girl for the first time and says ‘huh’?”

“It’s the opposite of what you think,” Shadow said. “When I chose you to be my sham bride, I actually wasn’t expecting much.”

“Why?”

“As long as I’ve known Calisto, which is all my life, she has found ways of using strong adjectives to exaggerate both people and situations,” Shadow said. “Pretty to her really means ‘only a face a mother could love’, and drop-dead gorgeous really means ‘she’s alright’…well you get the idea.”

This guy was starting to sound pretty shallow.

“Maybe she sees a person’s inner beauty,” I said. “You jerk.”

Shadow laughed. “Right,” he said, “Inner beauty. You haven’t heard her insulting people. Look, long story short, when Calisto called you ‘lovely’, I was expecting worse.”

His story seemed plausible, though I had to wonder if Shadow was as gifted a liar as his sister was.

“What now?” I asked.

“I don’t know about you but I’m not ready for serious commitment right now.”

That was a relief. Neither was I.

I admit Shadow was hot as hell. However it was plain to see that we weren’t a good fit.

An upper echelon aristocrat dating a poor college girl was a foolish fairy tale that belonged in a storybook. If there was one thing I was good at, it was being realistic. Too bad though.

The guy was a stud.

A yawn escaped my lips and I glanced at the clock. It had been an extremely long night.

“So you’re not ready to get married, and neither am I. How about you get Abraham to drive me home and we’ll call it a night?” I asked. “Maybe you can add me on Facebook so I can show everyone how I turned down a rich guy’s proposal for marriage, just for kicks.”

Shadow gave me a backwards glance.

“I’m joking,” I said. “Seriously, I don’t even like Facebook. I have no friends.”

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