Page 3 of The Fine Art of Faking It
“Maybe we know more than the adults?” Davis breathed.
“Seriously.” Eden nodded. “Look at us. We’re the only members of both families mature enough to not feud.”
She watched his Adam’s apple work. Eden turned back to her notebook. “So, uh. Are you going to the HeHa dance Saturday?” she asked as casually as the adrenaline exploding in her veins would allow.
What she really wanted to know was:Do you have a date for the HeHa Dance?
“I’m planning on it,” he said. “You?”
She gave a little shrug of the shoulder closest to him. “Yeah. Probably.” Eden bit her lip, closed her eyes, and took the plunge. “Maybe we should go together?”
He rubbed his palms on his thighs. “That would really freak our parents out,” he hedged.
Eden rested her chin on her hand coyly. “Only if they knew.”
He nodded and stared at the lab table for nearly a full minute, during which Eden didn’t draw a breath. “You know I like you, right?” Davis blurted the words out.
Eden wasn’t sure which reaction to go with, the one where the doors to her vulnerable heart exploded open to reveal a heavenly choir singing, or the one that was skirting the edge of supreme disappointment and humiliation. He liked her.Yay!But he sounded like he was gearing up to let her down gently.Agony.
“I hope so, seeing as how we’re in a committed domestic partnership,” Eden joked, drumming her pencil on their role-playing script.
He gave a choked laugh. “I’m serious. I really like you. I just don’t want to piss off my parents. They still pay for my car insurance and the roof over my head. And they’re thinking about letting me apply to some East Coast schools instead of just West Coast wine country colleges…”
Eden let the words settle. West Coast colleges? She hadn’t factored that into her Eden and Davis Fall in Love plan. Him migrating the whole way across the country could be a problem. That wasn’t in her family’s budget. Heck, if she didn’t get her shit together in the math and science areas she was going to have to cook up a miracle to pay for a state school.
How were they going to start their life-long love affair on opposite ends of the country?
It was a problem she’d solve later. First, she had to convince him to be in a relationship with her right now.
“Do youwantto go to the dance with me?” she asked finally.
Davis reached over to where her pencil had left a staccato splatter of lead dots and covered her hand with his. “I really do.”
Zing!“Then maybe no one has to know. My parents never go to the dance and neither do yours. We could show up separately, dance in the corner, maybe throw in a dance or two with other partners so no one’s any the wiser… It would be like a secret date.”
The only thing better than a relationship with Davis was a secret relationship with Davis. They would be like a modern-day version of Romeo and Juliet. Only smarter and with better communication skills… and fewer suicides.
“You’d be willing to do that?” he asked, perking up.
“Yes!” She said it a little too loudly and the neighboring lab table partners turned to stare at them.
He nodded slowly. “Yeah. Okay. Let’s do this. I’ll meet you there.”
“I’ll be your secret date,” Eden whispered. She was so excited she was surprised that she didn’t rocket right off her lab stool and into the stratosphere.
She was going out on a secret date with Davis Gates. Her dream was coming true.
All they had to do was make sure their parents never found out.
3
“Isee you making those eyes!” Eden’s mother snapped, elbowing her in the ribs.
“What eyes?” Eden asked innocently, breaking Davis’s gaze from across the sidewalk. They were in One Love Park, Blue Moon’s center, mere hours away from her first dance with her one true major crush. She and her parents were manning the coat donation booth in the freezing December weather while Davis was bundled up, volunteering at the book donation tent twenty feet away.
Her mother shoved a garbage bag of winter wear into her arms.
“You stay away from the Gates family. And that includes their demon spawn,” her mother said, pointing a finger in Eden’s face. Lilly Ann Moody was a kind, generous spirit in all areas of her life except one. As far as she was concerned, the Gates family could rot in hell. The decades-old feud that began who knows when over who knows what had only escalated in recent years with each generation committing to public hatred. “That boy’s mother sabotaged my entry in last year’s casserole contest!” Lilly Ann announced.
