Page 35 of My Fearless Fake Fling

“The Deirdre who made friends with her cheating ex’s new bi-otchbehind her back and never bothered to tell her the man was a cheating bastard?” Then he looked to me. “Sorry. I don’t have a replacement for bastard.”

Her mouth dropped open. I covered mine.

Len wasn’t done. “You call that friendship? That was a biotch move that had nothing to do with friendship. It takes a pretty low-class person to pull that on a friend.”

He just called Deirdre a biotch and low-class. I looked to her date to see if this night was going to end in fisticuffs. The date stood to the side laughing.

Deirdre wasn’t.

“I see the priss has you censoring—”

“Shedoesn’t have me do anything.” He cut her off. “I do it because she doesn’t like it, and I care about her.That, you see, is what friendship is.”

Why couldn’t he be real? Because that—that was so believable. It meant a lot for him to stick up for me and—what the heck—I stood up and walked around the table, bumping Deirdre out of the way, to bend down and kiss him. Nothing pornish, but enough to relay my thankfulness.

“Everyone will hear about this,” she threatened behind us, but who even cared? I kind of hoped she did spread the word. Especially since I’d be gone for six months soon, which meant I wouldn’t have to deal with the fallout from when Len broke up with me. I could post fewer and fewer pictures of us together until ourrelationshipfaded into obscurity.

Thanks to Dierdre, I had the perfect out.

As I was so happy about this revelation, I continued to kiss Len. When we broke apart, Deirdre and her date had left and Lydia, our server, waited off to the side with our check. In an instant, once I realized we’d been making out in public, my skin heated with embarrassment.

“I uh… can’t believe I did that,” I said in sort of a mutter. Yes, the mutter of a shocked woman.

“Baby, that was phenomenal. You have my permission to do thatanytimeyou want.” And he wrapped one arm around me while taking the check. “Thanks,” he said to the server.

Never letting me go, which meant pulling my butt onto his lap, Len reached into his back pocket for his wallet. He set it on the table, flipped it open, and slid a card out. Sliding the card into the leather check holder, he handed it back to Lydia, who turned to cash us out.

A text pinged my phone while we waited for Len’s card to be returned. I fished the phone from my purse to check it.

Brian. Oh, for crying out loud, when Deirdre said she’d tell everybody, I figured she’d at least wait until after appetizers.

I could not deal with him tonight.

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