Page 39 of Maybe We Can Fake It

He’s my friend, I remind myself firmly.

He’s my friend, and I want him to stay my friend. I don’twanthim like that. This whole pretending thing is just making everything confusing. But it’ll be fine. I’ll get myself together.

At least, I’d better. And I’d better do it fast.

CHAPTER TEN

TRAVIS

Despitebeingtheonlybar in town, Roddy’s is entirely empty other than me and the bartender, Roddy’s nephew Tate. Guess it’s a bit too early for this town to start drinking.

I left the diner right after Brenden and his group did, before the dinner rush could hit. As they left, Elise was thankfully discreet when she asked me if they’d be seeing me at the house tonight. In my haste to end the conversation before any of the diner’s stragglers got curious about what was going on, though, I mumbled what I think was an affirmative. So I’ll have to head over there later.

First, I’m meeting Connor for a beer. I invited him out as an apology for snapping at him on the phone the other day over my produce order that I messed up. I might be grumpy, but I try not to be a total asshole.

As I sip whatever IPA Tate poured me while I wait for Connor to arrive, my mind keeps drifting back to this morning. More specifically, to how I woke up this morning. In Brenden’s bed. With my hard dick pressed right against his ass.

Despite how I’ve spent all day trying to lock that moment away in a vault and shove it toward the back of my mind...well.The lock must be faulty or something.

Luckily, before I get myself too worked up with the memory, the door opens, and Connor wanders in. He quickly spots me on my stool at one of the high-top tables against the wall. In the dimly lit room, he almost glows with his white T-shirt, blond hair, and pearly white smile as he heads my way.

He eyes my pint glass when I ask what I can grab for him. “I’ll take whatever you’re having. Thanks.”

Tate is playing around on his phone as I approach the bar, so I have to clear my throat to get his attention. He apologizes, but I wave him off. When you only have two customers, you’re not just going to stand there staring at them the whole time.

I bring the beer back over to Connor, and he asks how I’ve been. My answer doesn’t take long, since my life never seems to change. Wake up, cook people food all day, clean up after them, go to sleep. The only interesting thing happening to me right now is the one thing I can’t tell him about.

I’ve known Connor forever, and I’d trust him to keep Brenden’s absurd fake dating scheme a secret if I asked. But explaining it would only tempt me to explain my very real feelings for Brenden. And Connor, like everyone else except Brenden, doesn’t know I’m gay, so that would require a whole other conversation.

After my boring answer, I do the polite thing and ask how he’s been too, but I immediately regret it. Everyone in town has heard about his divorce by now. How Emma left him and their son because she wanted to go off and find herself. Whatever the hell that means.

Other than cringing almost imperceptibly before telling me he’s doing fine, he seems to be taking this oddly in stride. He talks about the farm for a while and mentions his son.

“How’s Mason handling everything?” I ask, though from my own experience of being a kid whose my mom left, I can pretty much already imagine.

He swipes at a bead of condensation on his glass before answering. “He’s holding up. I mean, he’s been better, for sure. Emma and I tried to explain to him why it was best for us to separate, but he’s too young to truly understand the complexities of it. And even if he could understand why we got divorced, no kid deserves to be abandoned by their mom.”

“Yeah, that’s bullshit,” I say without thinking. Then I apologize, because I didn’t know Emma well enough to judge her actions.

“No, it’s okay, it is bullshit,” Connor agrees. “I get why she wasn’t happy. I really do. We’ve both spent our whole lives simply going along with what everyone expected of us. And those expectations can weigh you down after a while. If she wanted to leave me, she had every right to. But leaving her son?” He sighs, rapping his knuckles lightly on the table. “It’s a little harder to forgive her for that.”

By the time we finish our beers, he’s told me more than I needed to know about how he and Emma stopped having sex two years before they split. About how he wasn’t happy in the marriage anymore but didn’t think he could do anything about it. He felt too guilty at the idea of asking Emma to leave her home—the farmhouse he built on the edge of the property at Shaw Family Farm and Orchards. But he obviously couldn’t leave it either.

The farm isn’t just a job for him. It’s his family’s legacy, something he always wanted to be a part of. He took over most of the responsibilities of running it from his dad, letting his parents basically retire early, although they still help out.

So he was stuck between a rock and a hard place.

“Honestly, it was sort of a relief when she told me she wanted out,” he admits. “And that makes me feel like shit.”

“You shouldn’t,” I assure him. “You didn’t do anything wrong. You were willing to stick it out while she wasn’t.”

“Yeah, but now everyone in town thinks she’s the villain who broke my heart, when really, we were both looking for exit strategies. And in a way, now I’m free too.”

I offer to grab us another round, needing to step away for a moment, because I’m not the best at emotional crap like this. I’m better at solving problems with clear solutions, not at having to navigate how someone feels. That’s probably one of the reasons I’ve been okay with resigning myself to hookups outside of town, rather than trying to actually date anyone.

I consider Connor a simple guy (like me) and a pretty open person (unlike me), but our friendship’s always been surface level. I guess I didn’t realize how much more he kept inside him.

“I didn’t mean to unload all this on you,” he says when I come back and hand him his beer.

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