Page 33 of Fake it 'Til Christmas
“Were you always this broody,” I ask eventually, “or is it something you cultivated, like sourdough starter?”
He smiles, faint and crooked.“I don’t even like sourdough.”
“I bet you do.Secretly.I bet you’ve got some bougie bread preferences and an emotional gluten-origin story you won’t tell anyone.”
He doesn’t answer, just glances at me sideways.
“What?”I ask when the silence stretches again.
“Nothing.”
“You’re giving me a look.”
He shrugs.“Just thinking how weird this all is.”
“That we’re fake-dating and sharing a suite that smells like strawberries and ambient intimacy?”
He chuckles.“That you haven’t thrown something at me yet.”
I tilt my head.It’s not like I’ve thrown anything at him in all the years we’ve lived next to each other.Not at all.We actually ...well, we just argue all the time.It’s all in good ...no, not all the time is good.He likes to be right, but sometimes, he’s definitely not right at all.
“Oh, I’m pacing myself.”I shrug, mostly to buy myself a second.I don’t feel like arguing—not now.It’s too early, or maybe too late.Not enough sleep, not enough caffeine, and whatever magical ingredient makes pretending to feel easy?It’s totally missing.
Yep, I’m pretty sure something’s missing.Or maybe it’s just the looming pressure of beingwefor his sister’s engagement party.
The moment softens again.It stretches between us like taffy—warm, elastic, a little too easy to get stuck in if you’re not careful.
He looks back at the skyline, expression unreadable.“My family’s not easy.They’re not going to make this fun.”
I pull the blanket tighter around myself so I can hide inside the weave.“Mine wouldn’t either.”
“That bad?”
“Oh, honey.”I sigh, dragging it out just enough to be dramatic but not totally exaggerated.“After last Christmas’s fiasco, I made vision boards for what I’d wear to my fake funeral if I ever went home unengaged.”
His mouth twitches.He wants to laugh.But he doesn’t.Because he can tell—I’m not joking.Not entirely.
“Really?I have to know,”he says, voice quiet enough that it blends with the sound of the wind moving between buildings.“You don’t have to tell me everything.”
“But?”
“But I’d listen if you did.”
That gets me.
I glance down, fingers tightening on the edge of the blanket.“As you know, I’m the youngest.Which in my family means ‘set up to fail.’”
He doesn’t interrupt.Doesn’t shift or fill the space.Just waits.
“Last Christmas, it was a nonstop loop of ‘you’re thirty and haven’t met the man of your dreams,’ followed by ‘you should get a real job,’ because anything and everything that I do isn’t serious enough for them.”
“Do you like what you do?”he asks, soft but curious.Not in a ‘prove it to me’ kind of way.More like ‘please tell me you have something that’s yours.’
I nod.“Yeah.And when I don’t, I change careers.Life doesn’t have to be just the one thing for the rest of your life.”
There’s a pause.
A shift in the air that feels like an inhale waiting to happen.
