Page 35 of The Hanukkah Hoax
Whatever air had remained in Marisa’s abused lungs from the near spit take a moment ago vanished. In a sea of stadiumgoers, Alec’s joyful face stared back at her. With a backward hat on, a beer in one hand, and a carefree smile that could disarm even the most strident drill instructors, he was the picture-perfect epitome of a sports fan.
Right down to the beautiful woman draped beneath his other arm. None other than Phoebe Boyle wearing a too-large rugby shirt in Great Britain’s colors.
Marisa was immediately slammed with the desire to find the nearest bathroom and lock herself in it. Grief followed that up, riding in hot and angry, but it wasn’t the ancient and oppressive kind that, as a proverbial member of the tribe, she was used to. Instead, the frustrated anguish that was doing a bang-up job of stealing her words could better be ascribed to the grief of Charlie Brown.
More of the eternally unfortunate sort.
If there was one thing Marisa excelled at, it was woeful and perpetual sadness, especially the kind that sprang up in the form of reminders she’d rather forget.
Like how Alec and Phoebe used to be romantically linked. And how he’d yet to explain any of it.
Unaware of her quiet despair, or perhaps uninterested in it entirely, Jules took his phone back. “Used to date a guy who was a goalkeeper for the New York City Football Club. I’d go to games when I could, and every now and then, when the Jumbotron operator got wind of a few famous people in the crowd, they’d direct it around in the stands, spotlighting some of the celebrities attending. I’d always snap pictures because, hey, they’re celebrities, right? Even though most time, I had no fucking clue who any of them were. I deleted most of them when I had to clear out my phone storage, but this fellow?” His voice was full of a wistful smokiness that Marisa suspected had nothing to do with the rapidly extinguishing candles in the living room.
Because Atlas himself couldn’t have held up the weight of Jules’s sentiment without shattering a shoulder blade or two. The photo of Alec was a beaming portrait of a man who could be the sentinel of his sport. A shining star that attracted everyone around him into his orbit. There, radiating back at her, was the evidence of just how magnanimous the man was.
And how he was absolutely getting the shit end of the deal in their little arrangement. She was staring at documented proof that he didn’t need her, not in the same way she needed him. Not really.
It made the whole charade feel like she was being kept at arm’s length from the true manipulation, as if he were some sort of agreeable renegade to a cause he refused to share with her.
When Marisa had tried to wrap herself in her denial all over again, doing her best to project an outward appearance of Yup, that’s my boyfriend and we’re definitely super, super into each other, the sentiment stretched over her like a soggy parka she’d forgotten to dry out the last time she’d worn it, leaving her feeling steamed in all senses of the word.
Jules’s eyes softened, but then he took a step back as someone approached from behind her, their shadow climbing up his body.
Suspecting it was her father finagling an Everest-sized mountain of sufganiyot without her mother catching him, Marisa turned, ready to aid and abet in his culinary heists, as she always did.
Instead, what she got was the all-encompassing presence of Alec Elms as he gripped the back of her neck, pulled her close, and kissed her.
So many things began to fire at once, bringing all the microcomponents of the situation into awareness. The grain of Alec’s short beard rasping against her chin. The way his hands shifted from the back of her neck to the sides of her face, angling her mouth higher while he lowered to meet hers. The thrill rocking her body as it desperately tried to match the energy he surrounded her with.
If this deception was a performance, she could think of a million and one reasons for never bothering with the truth again.
Marisa’s ribs desperately tried to expand with the enormity of the emotions flooding her body, but the damn things seemed to have no more room for anything other than breathing in Alec’s essence. His wine-kissed lips, that familiar earthiness from earlier, and the subtle sweetness of dark chocolate gelt that paired so wonderfully with all the rest of him crowded out the party until all she cared to focus on was the gift he was giving her.
He was kissing her. They hadn’t agreed to it or discussed it beforehand. Weren’t there rules they should have put in place so her emotions wouldn’t get all sticky like this?
Because when his lips pressed against hers, urging her tongue to join his and dance along to the rhythm he set, it didn’t feel like an agreement between platonic business partners.
It felt like more, like he actually wanted to kiss her, instead of doing so out of duty or obligation.
When he finally pulled away, he took most of her breath with him but left just enough for her to add so incredibly lamely, “You . . . just had one of the Nutella-stuffed doughnuts, didn’t you?”
The satisfied smirk looked just as at home on his face as the arms that now held her to him felt, and it was more than enough of an answer for her confused mind.
But then he went and added his rumbling “Aye” to the mix, and as sure as she felt every bit of his brogue down to the tips of her heels, she knew one thing.
Their relationship may be fake, but there was nothing fake about that kiss.
Chapter 15
Normally, Alec was quite fond of snow. Moving around in it tended to do a good job of working his muscles and kneading out the bits of tension his trainer always managed to miss. Winter in New Jersey, however, made him bloody hate the stuff.
Sitting right smack in the center of the Mid-Atlantic Coast, the state wasn’t far north enough to know how to reliably manage nor’easter-levels of snow, nor was it south enough to miss out on snow entirely.
There were too many damn people in the state to make maneuvering in winter anything other than a clusterfuck of traffic, dangerously narrowed lanes, and snowbanked sidewalks that everyone thought was everyone else’s job to clear.
But after what he’d done with Marisa, Alec didn’t think he was in a position to debate roles and responsibilities with anyone.
Alec skirted around a slushy gray snow pile encroaching on the walkway and nearly cursed when an oncoming stroller, whose owner was far less inclined to share the concrete than he was, almost ran over his boot toe.
