A Love Like the Sun

Chapter 7 The Plan

By nightfall, I’m seething. I’ve spent the whole day avoiding phone calls while Issac spent the day avoiding mine. I do answer my mom, who sent me home an hour after we opened the shop because people wouldn’t stop harassing me with questions, even when she hit them with: “You look like you could use some oil for that dry scalp. Let’s focus on that.” We’ve sold more products in one day than we have in six months, she tells me, then I hear her and Lex giggling in the background while they count the money in the cash register.

I’m three Netflix episodes into the fourth season of Stranger Things and have no idea what happened in any of them, when Issac finally calls. There is no second ring. I practically dive for my phone on the couch.

But the fire and anger leave; my words come out so soft.

“Issac,” I say, “Issac, where have you been?”

“Hi, Laniah.” His voice is softer than mine. “My sweet Ni.”

“Don’t you dare.”

“I had to do it.”

“You should’ve told me.”

“You said you trusted me.”

I shift on the couch, cross my legs, rip some strings off of a pillow. “I did, but why would I ever think this was your plan? And you decided it without me. Then ran away before we could talk it through. Now everyone thinks we’re together and…Issac, what does this mean for us?”

“What do you want it to mean?”

His question confuses me, but before I can ask him to clarify he clears his throat. “I feel justified for being a coward. You scare me, sometimes. All that fire inside of you, those deadly pinches.”

I laugh even though I shouldn’t.

“But I didn’t run away. I’m still here, for now.”

My back straightens, I look around the room. “What?”

“I’m out front,” he says. “Let’s talk about this in person.”

I move to peek through the blinds and rest my forehead against the wall near the window when I notice Issac’s rental car. We both breathe into the phone. I don’t hang up until I open my front door and find him sitting on my porch. His long legs are stretched, feet hitting the bottom steps, he’s not smiling when he turns his head to look at me. “My sweet Ni.”

“Oh, hush,” I say, and sit down beside him.

It’s still humid out. Summer is setting in and making most nights in Rhode Island feel like a sauna. Issac and I listen to the bugs tick in the bushes and see Wilma part her curtains to spy on us.

“When we spent last summer stoop sitting, she watched us every night,” Issac says, “but we didn’t care. You were so proud to finally have a porch to sit on, and I was so proud to sit anywhere near you. We were dreaming up my growing career, the shop was still blossoming. We played spades and music, grew flowers for your box windows, and hung these plants on the porch that were just babies back then. But you never talk about sitting out here anymore.”

I wrap my arms around my knees and swallow. “I don’t sit out here much.”

He tilts his head, examines me. “Because I haven’t been around?”

“You’re so full of yourself.”

“No, I know you. I know us. Just like you should know that I won’t be able to concentrate on anything, nothing at all, if you’re back here unhappy without me. I thought you were happy. You never said you weren’t.”

“And you think deciding something about my life without me will make me happy?”

He’s quiet for a moment. Then: “I hope you’ll forgive me for the way I went about it, but if you let the world think we’re together for a while, I won’t have to find out you had to move to a cheaper place without a porch in a few months. Call it selfish, but I don’t regret it one bit.”

“It is selfish,” I say. “And have you considered how this will affect your reputation? What does Bernie think? You just stopped dating Melinda. Katrina said the media is calling you a…a sad boy. What will they say about you now?”

Issac doesn’t look offended. “What if I said that doing this with you will actually help my reputation? That maybe it’ll get me out of the tabloids and the media will take me more seriously as an artist if I’m actually in a committed relationship?” he asks. “If I said part of this was for me, would that make you want to keep this going?”

“Maybe,” I answer honestly.

“And if I said you helped me launch my dreams, now let me help keep yours steady?”

“I’d say you don’t owe me anything. They were just silly flash cards, Issac.”

“You and Vanessa, Dennis…” Issac trails off. “It wasn’t just flash cards, Laniah.”

Hearing my father’s name from his mouth makes my heart squeeze. “We love you,” I say. “You’re our family. My family.”

Issac looks down into my face. “Am I like a brother?”

Katrina’s words snap into my mind, and suddenly I’m wondering if he could’ve overheard her while he was on the phone with Bernie yesterday. There’s no sign on his face. He just looks curious.

“Something more than a friend. Family,” I repeat.

He responds with a smile, then bumps me with his shoulder. “Listen, if you really don’t want this, I’ll give a statement, clean it up the best I can. Maybe say it was a prank or my account got hacked. I think the attention will fizzle out fast. I’ll go on some dates and give them something else to focus on.” He releases a breath, his eyes dancing in the dark, hopeful. “But I do think this could work. Get you noticed by my fans, maybe even brands I work with, let people know those products and the people behind them are magic. And hey, if you need to talk to someone about everything you’re feeling along the way, my therapist is a virtual-meeting pro.”

“Your…therapist?” I repeat, surprised by his serious tone. “Since when?”

He inhales. I see the guilt cross his face. Another thing he hasn’t told me. “Just six months or so,” he says.

I shift away, shoulders slumping, stomach twisting, but then…

“I was having a hard time, missing home, and…other things. My mind was full of them. So Bernie urged me to go. Said after my childhood, and with my career taking off so fast, it’d be good. And it has been,” Issac says. The admission makes me realize he doesn’t have to tell me everything, and he especially didn’t have to tell me this. “All I’m saying is, if you need one, I’m sure she’d be happy to help.”

“So just…fake date?” I ask quietly. The question sounds ludicrous out loud, but hadn’t I already felt the relief at the shop? The hope that within his temporary plan I could figure out how to sustain us? Hadn’t I been fantasizing about selling out the stock in my house before he called?

He wiggles his brows at me. “It’ll be just like those romance novels you like to read.”

He says it as if I hadn’t caught him reading one off my shelf last summer. I laugh. But thoughts shoot across my mind at rapid speed. Maybe I could afford to stay in my apartment. Maybe Mom doesn’t have to clean hotel rooms. But will my whole life be exposed to the internet? Will people hate me? Will they love Issac more or less? Will pretending to be with him be hard to come back from? I can’t lose what we have.

But there’s something else, sitting just beneath the surface, making my heart stutter. A selfish need to keep him close. A voice whispering that pretending to be in a relationship with him might bridge the growing distance between us. Then I wouldn’t have to find out important things six months after the fact.

“Or maybe…,” Issac says, examining my face, “that’s what you’re really afraid of. You’re desperate to save the shop, I know it. So why are you hesitating? Do you think you’ll fall for me like the heroine does the hero in your favorite books?”

His directness has made me stumble over my words many times, but this question causes a bodily reaction that involves twitching and frighteningly rapid heartbeats. I chew my lip, shake my head like he’s had a ludicrous thought.

“Of course not,” I say.

“So, then, we’re doing this?”

“We’re doing it,” I agree, because he’s not going to elicit a different response with that challenging look on his face.

“Good.” He smiles.

“Great,” I say. Then when reality hits: “What exactly are we doing? And how are we doing it? I think we need rules.”

Issac’s laughter bubbles between us. “Rules? Like children? Why?”

“Issac! This is serious. You’re my best friend.”

“And you’re mine.”

The words wrap around that nagging worry that distance is changing things, but something is still different about our closeness. I can feel it. Still, I scoot to put some more space between us for the conversation that needs to be had. “What would your team expect? Of you having a…you know.”

He raises his brows, taunting me with them. “A girlfriend? Okay, well, I guess they’d want you to attend some of my events, photo shoots. The big ones at least.”

“Aren’t they all big? I can’t travel all the time because of Wildly Green.”

“Just two or three times,” Issac says, in a steady, calming voice. “Maybe you can spend a weekend with me walking the Cali streets? Eating at restaurants? We can relax on the beach.”

My breathing slows. “That sounds normal for us.”

“Exactly. There will be more cameras, but it’s just you and me, Ni.”

“And you’d make a point to come here more?”

“Of course. Help you at the shop. And we can do all the things we always do. This doesn’t have to be a big deal. Bookshops and hitting up the arcade. Just like we’ve always done.”

My eyes grow heavy. That familiar fatigue I’ve been struggling with lately is catching up to me, but I don’t want the conversation to end, and there’s still other things I need to know. The most important things. The hardest to ask. I hug myself and am thankful for the darkness so he can’t see the flush on my face. “Just like always, except, will there be kissing?”

Issac doesn’t answer for a while, and it makes me want to qualify my question, but then his eyes meet mine and he holds a steady stare. “There are other ways of being affectionate in public, other things we can do besides kissing if you don’t think we should.” His words promptly send a series of intimate images through my mind: ones of him and me doing things we’ve never done before, and I have trouble swallowing. “I respect you so much, Ni. We can be as physical as you’re comfortable with.”

He always knows what to say. Whether it was back in high school when boys would make fun of my bushy hair…or if I’d slip and say I missed my dad, even though he didn’t have either of his parents to care for him. Part of me wants to ask him what he would be comfortable with, but another part of me doesn’t want to know.

“No kissing on the lips,” I say.

He smiles just a little. “There will be no kissing on the lips.”

“And I don’t want to personally post on social media.”

“You can be your same hermit self online. I’ll probably hire someone to help Lex with your business accounts though. And you’ll have to be okay with me posting pictures of us, talking to the media, all of it. Don’t come for my neck every time you see something new. And stop calling yourself hideous.”

“You’re so bossy,” I tell him, sulking a little. “And what about a timeline?”

“A few months? Something flexible and loose?”

“No.” I shake my head, needing to be sure we’re doing this right. “Something solid so it doesn’t get messy. How about until the end of summer?”

“We do love our summers,” he agrees.

“We do.” I smile. “This all sounds…”

“Horrifying?” he asks.

“But maybe worth it?” I say.

“It will be,” he promises.

“When we end things, what if they call you a sad boy, for real?” Call you hard to love, I think, but decide not to say. “What if you resent me?”

He looks startled by the last question and ignores the others. “Resent you? Never in a million years. You could take every last cent of my money, run my name through the mud, if it meant you’d be okay. Resenting you is impossible. I just hope you won’t resent me. Social media. The secrets. We couldn’t tell anyone. If it leaked, that would definitely put some heat on my career. But I still wouldn’t resent you. This won’t feel like work for us. We both can continue to do what we love and be around each other a little more too. Does that sound so bad?”

I lie back on the cold planks of the porch and stare up at the stars. There’s a feeling skittering across my chest, something like a warning about what we’re agreeing to do, but then he lies down beside me and it eases a little. “I just really want to be careful. For our friendship.”

“Understood…and me too,” he says. “I trust the way we love each other, but do you need us to define exactly what messy means?”

“I don’t think so,” I say, because I can’t bring myself to ask if other things means he’ll be placing his hand on the small of my back and whispering in my ear and trailing his fingers up my spine in public. Maybe I do need Dad’s pen back for this.

“So where do I sign? We can make a contract on a food menu inside,” he jokes.

“We can sign in sauce from the chicken parm,” I say.

“Deal.” He sticks out his pinkie; I lock mine with his. “Be prepared for things to be even more intense after I speak to the press about you tomorrow.”

Tomorrow. I don’t know if all the hours in a month can get me ready for our plan to start tomorrow.

“And I hate to say this right now, but I do have to leave for Cali.”

My stomach sinks. I pull my hand away, and he tucks his bottom lip between his teeth.

“Bernie is bugging me to get back now that I announced this. He also wants me to meet with a new designer from London for a potential endorsement opportunity. I spent the day hiding out from you in a small coffee shop and studying Bernie’s notes for it. My flight leaves in a few hours.” At the look on my face, he apologizes. “But won’t it help to have some breathing room before things blow up?”

How can I tell him that if I needed breathing room, I’d be happy just sitting six feet away from him in silence for a while? I can’t. Not when it might be him who needs some breathing room from me.

“I’ll miss you,” I tell him instead.

He sits up and squeezes my knee. My body recognizes the contact.

“And I miss you already. But not for long. We have a contract now. You’ll see me soon.”

“Doesn’t it make you feel bad that I need a contract to spend time with you?”

“So we’re just going to forget that I flew out here to surprise you?”

“That half counts after the stunt you pulled today.”

He shakes his head and stands to leave, the stars shining in the sky around him. “Get inside, big head. You’ll need the rest.”

Since Issac is not the boss of me, after he leaves, I pick up my phone and check his post again instead. This time, looking at the picture brings a different wave of feelings. I’m not panicked or angry, but I’m still very aware of my heart beating in my chest. Because Issac, with his head touching my bare thigh and that smile on his face, does look like my boyfriend. And apparently, I look like his baby. Each time I read the words, I feel more flustered than the last. I’ve never heard him talk about a woman this way. But he’s saying it about me, and even if it’s pretend, I can’t control the flutters spreading through my stomach.

They don’t fade—even after I pry my eyes away from the picture and head inside.