Hard to Pretend (Hard to Love #2)

2. Chris

2

I took a deep breath of the coffee scented air and tried to focus on what my best friend, Mason Freeman, was saying. I should have been paying better attention, a fact I was well aware of, but it was hard. He was talking about another date he’d gone on with Vince, this guy from his office that he’d been seeing for the past few months in some unlabeled and undefined thing.

I didn’t get it.

Maybe it was the fact that I didn’t date often, but I didn’t see the point in seeing someone for months and not putting some kind of label on it, not putting in any kind of demands for fidelity or forming some emotional connection.

“Anyway, he has a friend.”

Mason’s words broke through my mental fog like a blaring siren. He has a friend was code, one I’d heard from him and our other friends hundreds of time. It always ended with them attempting to set me up with said friend. I’d allowed it a few times, and it always ended in disaster. There had never been any kind of compatibility or spark or whatever it was that made people want to go on a second date.

At this point, I wasn’t sure if it was me or them, but I knew that I had no interest in being set up with any friends of friends at this stage of my life.

“No,” I said firmly, shaking my head and cutting Mason off in the middle of the pitch.

“Oh c’mon,” he argued. “You could at least hear about him.”

“I could,” I agreed. He opened his mouth to start again and I lifted a single finger to shush him, “but I already know how this is going to go. We’ve done it enough times.” Mason opened his mouth again, and I could already imagine the arguments he was about to give. So I cut him off again. “Besides, I’m seeing someone.”

Mason’s mouth gaped, opening and shutting like a fish struggling to breathe on a dock. He hadn’t heard about this mysterious person I was seeing for one very simple reason: they didn’t exist.

I was an idiot for saying it. Now I had to make up some person that I was seeing, because I knew Mason wasn’t going to let this lie.

His shock lasted only half a second longer, just enough time for me to realize that I’d made a grievous error .

“Who? Tell me about them. And also why the hell am I only hearing about this now? I’ve been on you for how long to start dating and you’ve been seeing someone? Does anyone else —”

The sound of the bell chiming overhead distracted me from his rant.

The person who pushed through the door saved me.

I’d met him before, about eight months ago at Goliath. We’d danced, and we’d gone home together. We’d exchanged numbers, and I’d meant to text, but work had gotten busy and I’d never reached out. And now, I was going to make an ass out of myself and just hope that he wasn’t the type to throw someone under an eighteen wheeler.

“Seb!” I called out, lifting my arm to greet him.

His expression almost spoiled my master plan. His dark brows furrowed for a moment as his eyes landed on me, and then they relaxed. His lips curved upward, and his head cocked to the side. I motioned for Mason to hold our spot in line and sped over to meet him as he walked toward me.

We met closer to the door than the middle of the coffee shop, hopefully out of earshot of Mason. I slid my arm around his waist and leaned in. “Can you pretend we’ve been seeing each other for a few weeks?” I whispered.

He studied me, that same bewildered expression on his face that he’d had when I’d called his name. I was certain he was going to tell me to fuck off or something. There were a few moments where all I could hear was the sound of my heart pounding in my ears as he studied me. Then he slipped his hand into mine.

He gave me a small smile and angled his face closer to mine. “Let’s do this,” he whispered. The way his warm breath caressed my lips felt too intimate for a coffee shop.

I walked with him back to where Mason still waited, holding our place in line. “Apparently, when you speak of the devil, the devil doth appear,” I said with a laugh. “Mason, I’d like you to meet Seb.”

Mason’s eyes moved over Seb, as if checking to see if he was real and not some robot I summoned with previously unknown mental powers. Seb extended a hand toward my best friend. “It’s nice to meet you. This one’s told me a bit about you.”

Had I? I didn’t remember much of what we’d talked about that night. Actually, I didn’t remember doing a lot of talking at all, but clearly I’d said something if he remembered Mason. Unless he was pretending, in which case he was a damn good actor and I owed him a coffee for saving my ass.

“All lies, I’m sure.” Mason’s voice was good-natured. Maybe he accepted that this was some mysterious guy that I’d been seeing and had never told anyone about. I could only hope. “So, how long have you two been…” Mason trailed off, un sure what to say.

“A few weeks,” Seb lied easily, “but we actually met seven or eight months ago at Goliath.”

“So you guys have known each other for awhile?” Mason sounded skeptical. For good reason. There was no way I would’ve kept someone a secret for months.

“We met , but it was one of those things where we meant to keep in touch but life got busy,” I explained. Better to stick with the truth right? “Finally managed to run into each other again, and here we are.”

Mason nodded. The line moved forward a few steps. Was it moving slower than usual this morning? It felt like it was moving slower.

“So what do you do, Seb? Since Chris hasn’t really said much about you.”

“I work at a marketing firm a few blocks from here,” Seb answered. “I’ve been there for a few years.”

“Do you like it?”

“It pays the bills.” Seb shifted and dropped my hand. “Actually on my way there now. Just thought I’d get some coffee first. What about you?”

The small talk felt awkward. I buried my hands in the pockets of my slacks. I wanted to answer his question, but I had to assume it was for Mason. Because if we’d been seeing each other for a few weeks, then he’d know about my job. That was normally something established on a first date, if not a little before.

Mason told him a little about the office he worked at until we finally reached the order counter. The entire time, Seb stood close to me, playing the role of… whatever we allegedly were. People seeing each other? Boyfriends? It didn’t really matter.

In a few days, I’d tell Mason that things didn’t work out between me and Seb, and I’d pretend I never did this incredibly stupid thing. I’d sweep it under the rug and never mention it again.

I had never been more grateful to reach the front of a line than I was in the moment it happened. We placed our orders, and I paid for Seb’s. It was the least I could do since he’d saved my ass by playing pretend for a few minutes. When we had our coffees, he excused himself. “Going to walk him out,” I told Mason with a grin. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

Unless I could pretend to walk Seb to work and never have to go back into the coffee shop and face the music of my own idiocy. Which I already knew wasn’t going to happen. Even if I did that, Mason would just text me later. Either way, I wanted to thank Seb before he slipped away again.

This is why I shouldn’t make snap decisions—or any decisions—before I had my coffee.

Luckily, Seb was still outside, typing on his phone and leaning against the building. He looked shell-shocked and bewildered, like he couldn’t believe anything that had just happened. I didn’t blame him. If some one night stand had appeared out of nowhere at a coffee shop and asked me to act like his boyfriend, I don’t think I would’ve reacted any better .

I also don’t think I would’ve been quick enough on my feet to play along the way that he had. I probably would’ve told them to get lost. I was intrigued by the fact that his knee jerk reaction was to just go with it. It took a special kind of person to do that.

I cleared my throat to get his attention. He jolted and looked up from his phone. There was a tentative half-smile on his lips as he looked at me.

“Sorry about that,” I started. “I just wanted to say thanks. For playing along.”

“You wanna explain what that was about?” he asked, taking a sip of his coffee.

“Mason was giving me shit for not dating, and I tried to pull the whole Canadian Girlfriend ruse—”

“Canadian Girlfriend?”

“Yeah, you know like in movies when someone claims they have a girlfriend. She just lives in Canada or goes to another school or something,” I explained. Seb nodded. “Right, so I was doing that and then you walked in and suddenly it seemed like a good idea. Which, I mean, it wasn’t, but that’s what I get for having ideas before coffee.”

Seb laughed. “Sounds like something one of my friends would try.”

I raised an eyebrow at him. “So your friends are idiots too?”

“Basically.” Seb looked back down at his phone before slipping it into the pocket of his slacks. I expected him to walk off, but instead, he pulled back out his phone and passed it to me. “Give me your number.”

I took the phone but stared at the new contact screen as if it were written in a foreign language, one that I didn’t speak or understand. Possibly one I’d never actually seen like Gaelic or a fantasy language made up for one of the fantasy books my brother liked.

“Seriously,” Seb said with an easy laugh. He laughed a lot, but not in a way that made me feel like he was laughing at me. I liked it, and I wondered if that was always the case or if he was just deeply amused in the mornings. I didn’t remember him laughing that much when we’d hooked up, but that had been a very different context.

I might have actually been offended if he’d laughed when we’d been hooking up—especially if he did it right as I was taking off my pants or something.

“Don’t you already have my number?” I remembered giving it to him the morning after we hooked up, before I kissed him goodbye at my apartment door.

“You gave it to me, but I don’t have it anymore.”

Ouch. Did he give up on me after I never reached out? I wouldn’t have blamed him, but I couldn’t lie. It still stung.

He seemed to read the expression on my face and gave me a small smile. “I didn’t delete it, if that’s what you’re worried about.” I didn’t want to admit how true that was. “I was actually going to text you.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“I had a text all typed out, but then I dropped my phone in a puddle and my Uber drove over it.”

I blinked. There was no way that was true. “You don’t have to lie.”

“I’m not!” he insisted. “I promise, I’m not lying. I was without a phone for way too long, and my SIM card was destroyed. I lost so many numbers.”

Something about the look on his face made me trust him. I typed in my number, hit save, and gave him back his phone.

He pressed a few buttons and a moment later, I felt my phone vibrate in my pocket. I pulled it out and found a text message from him, just saying it was Seb.

The air between us crackled with an energy that was both charged and awkward at the same time. I looked at him; he looked at me. I didn’t know what the next steps were. How did you end a conversation with someone you’d hooked up with and then pretended was your boyfriend months later?

Seb put me out of my misery.

“Guess I should get going. Gotta get to work. I’m already running late.”

I nodded. “Thanks. Again, I mean. For in there. Not throwing me under the bus.”

I was smooth. I was as smooth as a cactus .

“Don’t worry about it. Got a free coffee out of it.” There was another tense beat before he lifted his coffee in a mock cheers. “It was really great to see you again, Chris.”

“You too.”

I watched as he walked away before I went back inside to where Mason was waiting for me, eyeing me suspiciously.

Had he been watching through the window? Should I have kissed Seb before he left, really sold the whole boyfriend act?

I spent the rest of our conversation second guessing that whole interaction.

I really was an idiot.