Page 57 of The Fine Art of Faking It
“Ah,” Eden said. Rupert stared at her expectantly for a long beat.
Davis cleared his throat. “Do you have any specials tonight?”
“Oh, sure.” Rupert dug his notebook out of his back pocket. “You want to hear them again?”
“Or for the first time,” Davis said amicably. He shot Eden a look that said they’d be lucky to get the food they ordered before the restaurant closed.
She squeezed his thigh under the table again, and Davis reflexively hit the bottom of the table with his knee.
Rupert didn’t notice and carefully read off the night’s specials. “So, I’ll go ahead and put in your appetizer. And I’ll give you a few minutes with the menus,” he said as he tried to grab the menus from the table.
Davis wrestled one away from him. “We’ll just hang on to this one. You know, so we can order dinner.”
“Oh, sure.” Rupert wandered away.
“What appetizer did we order?” Eden asked.
“We didn’t.”
“Where are you going?” she asked, as he slid toward the edge of the booth.
“I’m going to the bar to get us drinks. If we wait for Rupert, we’ll be dehydrated skeletons.”
“I’ll take the biggest glass of wine you can carry,” Eden told him.
“Anything your heart desires, beautiful.” Davis said it loud enough that the Beautification Committee members lifted their heads above their menus like prairie dogs.
The flush that tinged Eden’s cheeks was by no means scripted.
She studied the menu and traced a finger over the tablecloth to calm her nerves. Her phone buzzed in her purse and Eden jumped at the distraction.
Sammy: How did I miss the fact that you’re dating Davis Gates????
Her text included a screenshot of a post from the Blue Moon Facebook group. It was Eden and Davis staring deeply into each other’s eyes posted approximately two minutes earlier. The damn Blue Moon grapevine.
Eden: Long story. We’re revenge dating.
Sammy: Is this like when you spite dated Ramesh Goldschmidt for half of junior year?
Eden winced. After the disastrous HeHa dance, she’d dated Ramesh until Davis left for college that summer. She’d ended up liking the guy. Just not as much as she would have liked Davis. It was not one of her finest moments. He’d dumped her gently for Windy Jones, who wouldn’t have given him the time of day had he not spent six months in a relationship with Eden. They had married, moved to Buffalo, and ran a thriving orthodontist practice together. So she considered her karmic debt paid.
Eden: I’ll explain later. It involves the B.C. BTW, you’re next on their list.
Sammy: The HELL I am!
Eden smirked and stuffed her phone back in her clutch. It was always funnier when someone else was the target of the Beautification Committee’s machinations.
23
Davis returned to the table with two glasses and a bottle of Blue Moon Cabernet Sauvignon. “I had to fight my way through the crowd,” he said, dropping back onto the booth beside her. “It seems like Rupert has a lot of tables tonight.”
Eden laughed loud and long. “Oh, Davis, you’resooooofunny.”
He looked at her like she was losing her damn mind.
“Just play along,” she hissed. “They’re eating it up. We’ve already made the Facebook group.”
“You really commit, don’t you?” he asked.
