Page 3 of Make it Real
Maybe, but it also sounded like the makings for a sticky mess.
“I don’t think I’m the right guy for this.” For so many reasons, none of which I especially wanted to outline for her. My dating history could best be described as surface-level. Romantic attachments—even pretend ones—weren’t in my wheelhouse.
Callie moved to grab my hands but shifted and wrapped them around her plastic cup at the last second. My skin tingled as though she’d touched me, but I shushed that away. I didn’t need to be thinking about missed opportunities here.
“No, but you are. We’ve known each other a while now and have spent time together as friends, it’s not totally crazy that we might start dating.” She raised a hand. “Which we wouldn’t be, let’s make that clear. But Gran would buy it. Plus, I trust you. And the girls speak really highly of you.”
Kind of liked hearing that, not going to lie. I’d never been accused of having a shortage in the confidence department, but I liked knowing the women in my family had positive things to say about me. I couldn’t be sure I deserved it all, but it still sent warm fuzzies through my chest.
“And I figure neither of us is going to take things the wrong way and lose our heart inthiscombination.” She gestured between us making a face that said nothing could be more unlikely.
Those warm fuzzies turned to snow flurries. She didn’t mean anything by it, but something about her writing us off didn’t sit right. I couldn’t say which side of it bugged me more—that she didn’t consider melose your heartmaterial, or the hint that maybe I didn’t have a heart to lose.
“It’s flattering that you’d ask. Kind of.” All things considered, she wasn’t going out of her way to butter me up. “But I don’t think pretending to be your boyfriend is such a great plan.”
I hadn’t been boyfriend material in a long time—if I ever really had been—and wasn’t looking for a crash-course. Convincing my pop he could fully retire and hand the family orchards over to me took up my free time already, plus we were smack-dab in the middle of harvest. I didn’t have room in my days for pretending to woo Callie.
“It wouldn’t be for very long, just a couple of months. Gran’s friends are planning to move at the end of summer. If I can convince her to join them, we can drop the act after she’s gone.”
The encouraging smile she shot my way left too much unsaid.
“And if she doesn’t leave?”
Her expression fell. “Well…we would fake break up, I guess.”
Sounded like a good way to shatter whatever glowing opinions the women in my family had about me. However you cut it, both scenarios ended with me as the bad guy. I didn’t care about my reputation around town all that much, but ending a relationship with a girl like Callie would permanently put me in the doghouse with my pop, and probably my sister and cousins, too. Not to mention my stepmother and aunt, who had latched onto her like hens to chicks.
This plan might help her—emphasis onmight—but it would certainly create giant problems for me.
“Don’t you have another guy you could ask?”
She sipped at her iced coffee and pulled a face. “Not really. I don’t know that many guys. The ones my grandma and her friends have been setting me up with are part of the problem. They think because I’m agreeing to set-ups, I must be desperate, and they, uh, have certain expectations I’m not willing to meet.”
I didn’t like the sound of that. “So don’t go on the set-ups.”
“Wow. What a plan.” She rolled her eyes again. It might have been cute if it weren’t so full of disdain. “You’ve never dealt with four insistent grandmas skilled at emotional manipulation, have you? They named a whole wing after my granny at the University of Guilt Trips. If I could just avoid the set-ups, I wouldn’t be sitting here asking you to pretend to be my boyfriend.”
I tried to put myself in her shoes. My pop’s nudges hadn’t escalated to blind dates, but if they did, I’d resent it, too. I still couldn’t imagine a scenario where playing pretend ranked as the best option. How would that even go?
She sank her chin in one hand, flicking the straw in her coffee with the other. “There’s always the divorced fifth grade teacher who was extra friendly to me last year, but he’s in his forties and has a daughter almost as old as me. So that’s a no-go.”
Couldn’t blame her—wait. “How old are you, anyway?”
She straightened up as though she could gain height on me seated at the table. “Twenty-five.”
Yeah. Not going there.
Her shoulders slumped, and she blew out a breath, eyes darting to the side. “In three months.”
“Nope. Absolutely not. This is a bad idea.”
“What, because of my age? You’re, like, thirty-one.”
“Thirty-three, and it’s not just the age difference.” Although that had jumped to the top of myReasons Why Callie’s Fake Dating Plan is a Terrible Idealist. I might not have been looking for long-term, but I never took advantage, and that kind of age difference skated too close to the line. “This is never going to work.”
“Why not? We’d just pretend to date for a little while.”
“You keep saying that. Are you good at lying? Personally, I’ve got no problem with it, but you strike me as a very straight-arrow type.”
