Page 5 of Looks Real Good Now
Alana
The reasons to say no were glaringly obvious.
Say no because it will open a whole can of worms, and besides, how much did I reallycareif people talked about me? Say no because you don’t want to lie tohisparents. Or your own. Say no because no matter what he says, someone will hear that we are together, trace the timelines of our previous relationships and assume there was some crossover. Say no because he’s still Liam Mulligan, an NHL superstar, even if he no longer plays and news of him supposedly seeing someone would get out and you like your private life private.
Say no because you loved him and let him go once and it broke you, so putting yourself through that again is foolish. There is no way this could end happily. He’s gone on to do great things and you have done great things too, but on a much smaller scale. He’s black-tie galas and you are sweatpants covered in flour stains and you didn’t think it would work when you were eighteen, so why would it work now?
But when I looked at Liam, really looked at him, I saw the scar that bisected one of his eyebrows. The green eyes thatsometimes looked blue. The thick brown hair that still looked like it was begging for me to sink my fingers into it. His slightly crooked nose and the birthmark on the side of his neck. The sheer size of him and the fact that he was the only person who had ever made me feel small. The fact that he was once the person who knew me best. I couldn’t bring myself to say no. I knew that the next two weeks would be easier if we gave them another story, but I was fine with writing this story withhim.
So, I said something else and tried to ignore the fact that this was a much easier yes to give.
“You came to Sweet Nothing’s fifth birthday party. Someone from that team of yours convinced you to come and you finally said fuck it and crossed enemy lines. The party was a couple of weeks after things ended with Kai.”
A flicker of triumph flashed across Liam’s face. He knew I’d say yes. How, I wasn’t sure. Maybe because even after all this time, he still knew me better than he knew a hockey play. Then, he ran a hand over the back of his neck. He was about to say something he didn’t want to.
“Might not work. My parents know I’ve never been there.”
“When did this last come up?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe over the summer? Might have been earlier.”
“Then we’ll be fine. You had never been there when it last came up. It doesn’t even have to be a fuck it moment. Maybe you decided to stop being rude and came to thank the person who made you a tower of brownies for your birthday.”
His eyes widened. “How do you know that?”
“I know when your birthday is, and how many Liams couldthere be turning thirty on that day, with a specific request for the number seventeen to be added to a tower of hazelnut brownies?”
He blinked at me slowly, like I had just sprouted another head or something.
“Okay fine, we saw each other again when Teddy made me go to Sweet Nothing’s birthday party so I could thank the person who made my birthday brownie tower. Five months after my birthday,” he tacked on at the end.
I rolled my eyes and noticed that my fingers had stopped playing with my thumb ring. “Less sarcasm would be great, considering this was your idea and I am just trying to make sure that people buy it.”
“Even though I am closer to thirty-one than I am thirty, thank you for the brownie tower. I think they are even better than when we were kids,” he said sincerely.
“It’s a blend of dark and milk cocoa powders. And you’re welcome.” I just about stopped myself from saying that I made sure that they were the best brownies I had ever made. I’d made them twice. There was nothing wrong with the first batch, not really. I just wanted them to be perfect and they weren’t the first time, but I nailed the second batch.
“So, you’re saying yes then?” He sounded hesitant.
“Against my better judgement, yeah. I’m saying yes.”
The look of excitement and relief on Liam’s face when I said it threatened to make butterflies take flight from somewhere I thought long dormant within me.
6
Liam
Even though I thought I had her, I was fully prepared for Alana to shut me down. I had prepared myself for the ‘no’ because the more I thought about it, the more I realised it was ridiculous of me to suggest to a woman I hadn’t seen in twelve years, by her own choosing, that we tell people we were dating. Two months after her eight-year relationship had ended. Mine had also been long-term, but at least it had ended closer to the beginning of this year than the end of it.
Now that she had said yes, I was equal parts excited and terrified.
I wasn’t super excited about lying to either of our parents and her brother, but I was so tired of people asking me how I was holding up after everything. I was fine. I had been bummed when the relationship ended but the more time I had away from her, the more I accepted that it was a good thing that it was over. The only thing I was good for was keeping her profile up. It hadn’t taken me long to enjoy not having a camera shoved in my face when I was doing something boring like waiting for my coffee to brew all for the sake of ‘content’. In fact, therelationship ending probably made the reality of my life without hockey a lot easier because I wasn’t around someone who was always asking me about it.
If there was one thing I knew about Alana, it was that she gave exactly zero shits about hockey. That applied to most sports, which was always funny because she was a cheerleading co-captain and had to attend a lot of sports events back in high school, but she really didn’t care about hockey. It was her apathy to hockey and her belief that there was life outside of the sport that got me through rehab in our junior year. Finding myself with someone like Lenny now made sense. And I could talk about her all day long.
“You got any other backstory bits you want to add or are we just going with that?” I asked, just to be sure we were on the same page.
“Don’t think so, no. How hard can it be to figure the rest of this out on the fly? I mean, I’ve gathered that you and Teddy are still close as anything, not that he brought you up much, but you said he would be the reason you got dragged to a party, so I just assumed. Am I wrong?”
