Page 27 of Faking It Right
Could I spontaneously combust from humiliation? Because I was definitely feeling the heat.
We settled into eating, relishing a moment of blessed silence. I focused on my food, trying to ignore the weight of Harley’s hand resting on my thigh.
Gia turned her attention to Harley. “So, three years of pining after Ryker. That’s commitment.”
Harley nodded, completely unrepentant. “The best things are worth waiting for,” he said, casting a sideways glance at me that transformed me into a human embodiment of a keyboard smash as my internal monologue sounded like, “THUDKABOOMZAWHEEE!!!??!!?” All while my face tried to remember which muscles formed a normal expression. His usual sharp, teasing demeanor had blurred, revealing a look so disarmingly genuine it felt like a plot twist in a rom-com. Was he still acting?
“And you, biscuit?” Mom asked, taking a bite of garlic bread with a carefully crafted innocent expression that was anything but. “Only a few weeks of interest? I find that hard to believe.”
“It wasn’t one moment,” I said quietly, surprising myself with how honest I sounded. “It was all the little things. Like how he always makes coffee for both of us in the morning. Or how he can make me laugh even when I’m drowning in exam stress.”
“I’m still trying to wrap my head around this,” Sawyer said. “You’ve been adamantly straight your entire life. What changed?”
I shrugged, feeling oddly calm despite the spotlight. “Maybe I was never as straight as I thought. Or maybe it’s just Harley.” The words rolled off my tongue, and I realized with shock that I might actually mean them.
“I always suspected,” Mom said, looking far too pleased with her maternal intuition. “A mother knows these things.”
“You did not,” I protested. “You’ve been trying to set me up with women since I was old enough to date!”
“Only because you kept insisting you were straight. I was waiting for you to figure it out yourself.”
“I appreciate you care about our happiness.” Harley’s warm smile made my mother practically preen like a peacock.
“Speaking of happiness,” Gia interjected, “when did you realize Ryker wasn’t quite the poster boy for heterosexuality he claimed to be?”
My soul left my body as I braced for Harley’s inevitable raunchy response. He had the sexual discretion of a megaphone playing a porn soundtrack, and I was convinced he was about to announce to the entire table exactly how many times he’d caught me deep-throating a banana out of sheer curiosity before volunteering to let me use his dick.
Harley sipped his iced tea, dragging the moment out for maximum torture. But nothing could have prepared me for his actual answer. “I think I always knew there was a chance. There was a spark of curiosity in the way he looked at me sometimes, even if he wasn’t ready to admit it.”
“I did not look at you like that,” I protested weakly.
“Oh, you absolutely did,” Harley countered with a grin. “Especially when I’d emerge from the shower in nothing but a towel.”
Sawyer snorted. “Classic denial.”
“I wasn’t in denial,” I insisted. “I just hadn’t considered the possibility.”
“And now?” Mom asked, her expression softening.
I glanced at Harley, at his stupidly handsome face and the warmth in his eyes that made my heart hammer against my ribs so violently that my other organs started placing bets on which would crack first: my sternum or my composure. “Now, I’m exploring options I didn’t know were available.”
“That’s a very diplomatic way of saying your best friend turned you into a tourist in the bisexuality neighborhood,” Sawyer teased.
I opened my mouth to deny it, then thought better of it. “Honestly, I don’t know what I am right now. But I know how I feel about Harley.”
“Great, so when’s the wedding?”
I nearly choked on my iced tea while Harley patted my back.
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” he answered while I recovered. “We’ve only been official for a few weeks.”
“But you’ve been living together for years,” Mom pointed out. “You’re practically married already.”
“Mom,” I wheezed, still recovering from my near-death experience, “please don’t plan my wedding before I’ve even figured out what I want for breakfast tomorrow.”
“Chocolate chip pancakes,” Harley replied. “You always crave them on Saturday mornings during breaks.”
I stared at him, astonished he remembered such a minor detail. “Yeah, I do.”
