Page 20 of Power Play
She takes a drag, eyes flicking sideways. “What, you’re worried I’ll catch feelings?”
“No,” I say quickly. Too quickly. “Just want to make sure we’re on the same page.”
She exhales smoke slowly. “Same page. Same sentence. Same full stop.”
“Right.” I try to laugh it off. “Good. Solid. Unambiguous.”
She turns to face me fully. “What about you?”
“What about me?”
“You cool with pretending to be into me?”
I blink. “Sophie, I’vebeeninto you. That’s the problem.”
She freezes. I could lie. I could joke. Diffuse the moment like I always do. But something about the way she’s looking at me, half guarded, half vulnerable, makes me hold the line. “You’re easy to be into,” I say, my voice lower now. “Too easy, sometimes.”
She drops her gaze, “We said it was one night,” she says after a pause.
“I know.”
“And that we weren’t doing it again.”
“Still know.”
“So why say shit like that?”
I shrug, honest now in a way that makes my throat tight. “Because pretending not to care is getting harder.”
She looks at me then, properly. And for one long moment, we don’t say anything. Just stand there in the cold, with months of unsaid things hovering between us.
Then the door bangs open and Ollie yells something about shots, and the moment shatters like ice. Sophie steps back. “Let’s go in before someone thinks we’ve run off to elope.”
“God forbid,” I say, trying to smile. She doesn’t look back as she walks in. And for the first time in ages, I don’t follow right away.
We ride home in near silence. She catches a lift with me because her flat is on the way and I offered before I could overthink it. She fiddles with the radio, skipping songs like none of them quite match the mood. Eventually she lands on something acoustic and mournful. Of course.
“Thanks for tonight,” she says finally, as we pull up outside her building.
“Yeah,” I say, my hand gripping the wheel too tight. “You were brilliant.”
She pauses with her hand on the door. “We doing this again?”
“You mean the fake dating thing or the part where I admit I fancy you and then we pretend I didn’t?”
That earns me a tired laugh. “The fake dating.”
“Sure. If you’re game.”
“I’m game,” she says. Then adds, quieter, “Just don’t go getting allreal feelingson me, yeah?”
I smile, even though it feels as if I’m papering over a crack. “I’ll do my best.”
She nods and opens the car door. For a split second, I think she’s going to lean in and kiss me. Or say something. But she just steps out into the night. “Goodnight, Murph.”
I watch her go. “Night, Soph.”
And I sit there in the quiet for a long time before driving away.
