Page 132 of Faking the Pass
There was hope.
Thank you Randy Rump, you sawed-off little shit, for giving me an excuse to kiss my wife.
I turned my head, and there he was, standing stock still, staring at us.
So were his companions, a couple of famous directors you couldn’t help but recognize if you had even a passing knowledge of American cinema.
While they smiled and nodded in our direction, Randy scowled.
He quickly corrected himself, pasting on a smile and making some glib remark to the other men. Then he turned away.
Though his reaction to the kiss was far from my top concern, I sort of felt like I’d thrown a touchdown the other team hadn’t seen coming.
I’d always excelled at faking the pass.
Rosie finally found her voice. “Why did you do that?” she whispered.
“Erasing doubt,” I said as if it was the most reasonable thing in the world.
“I think that was pretty convincing. What do you think?”
She simply nodded. “So you were just… putting on a show?”
I repeated the question she hadn’t yet answered, this time in a lower, more intimate voice.
“What do you think?”
For a long moment, she stared up at me, and I thought I might actually get another kiss, but a familiar female voice broke the tension.
“Hey you two.”
Rosie and I both turned to see Jessica and Wilder approaching. I knew they’d been planning to attend tonight, but we hadn’t seen them yet.
“This is a pretty jaded bunch, but I think you might have just scandalized them with your passionate married-people kiss,” Jess teased. “They don’t see many of those.”
“I’ll be happy to remedy that,” Wilder volunteered, and Jessica laughed.
“Save it for the hotel room, Romeo,” she said.
Wilder made a show of looking at his watch. “How much longer does this damn thing last anyway?”
Jessica and Rosie hugged each other, and Wilder and I exchanged a brief embrace. He was wearing a white tunic with a plaid kilt, and she was dressed as a noblewoman from the seventeen hundreds.
I squinted down at my brother’s bare knees, displayed in what amounted to a skirt.
“Did you shave your legs?” I teased.
He gave me a murderous glare then cracked a smile. “You’ve got no room to talk there, Little Lord Fauntleroy. By the way, the whole party’s been talking about your dick.”
Jessica laughed and covered her mouth with her hand.
I noticed Rosie’s head turn away abruptly. The side of her cheek was red.
“Boys,” Jessica warned. “You’re embarrassing Rosie.”
“I’m fine,” she protested a little too quickly. “So are y’all having a good time?”
“Sure, Ilovegetting surprised by random breezes from below,” Wilder said sarcastically.
