Lucy
T here are ten minutes left until Darius picks me up for our date, and I just stabbed myself in the eye with a mascara wand. Now one eye is bloodshot and watering, the lashes all clumped, and mascara is smeared beneath my eye so I look like a raccoon.
“No. No, no, no, no, no.”
Maybe if I deny this hard enough, reality will warp and change. I’ll be ready and calm when Darius arrives, with perfect make up and contacts and a wide smile, and the sight of me will blow his mind. Like in those teen movies, when the nerdy girl finally takes off her glasses. After one look at my red velvet dress—oh god, how did I ever think I could pull that off?—and my glossy auburn waves, he’ll fall in love on the spot. He’ll drop to one knee and propose, right there in my apartment hallway.
But, nope. No such luck. Life doesn’t work that way, and when a knock rattles my front door, I’m still pressing a tissue to my eye and stumbling around barefoot.
“Shit.” Half-blinded by my Kleenex, I stub my toe on the coffee table on my way to the door. Pain blooms in my foot, hot and sharp. “Ow! Shit!”
“?” That deep, smooth voice floats through my door. The voice that haunts my dreams. “Are you okay in there?”
“No!”
Darius jiggles the door handle, but it’s locked. And I can’t leave him out there in the hallway; can’t pretend I haven’t failed horribly at this date already. My toe throbs as I limp to the front door and undo the chain.
“Oh,” Darius says when the door swings wide, gaze flicking over me. “Oh dear.”
I burst into tears.
Darius curses, crowds me into the apartment, and shuts the door. And I hate that he’s seeing me like this—red-face and snotty, with a stubbed toe and ruined makeup—but a calming voice whispers in my head that this isn’t a real date. This doesn’t really matter.
I had no chance with Darius Amin in the first place, so I haven’t lost anything with this shit show—just embarrassed myself. Fine. That’s what friends are for, right?
“Is it broken?” The composer shepherds me to the sofa, nudging me to sit down. “Luce, your toe. Does it feel broken?”
How can you tell? Gritting my teeth, I give my toes an experimental wiggle—and though the pain throbs, it doesn’t feel any worse.
“N-no.” I sniff, transferring the tissue from my eye to my nose. “I don’t think so. It just hurts.” Darius sees the mess of mascara, but like a champ, he doesn’t comment. He’s too busy rubbing my shoulders, stroking my arms, soothing me as he looms above the sofa, dressed like a movie star on a red carpet.
Life is cruel.
Here I am: a complete mess, barely keeping it together, already tortured with nerves. And there he is, looking like the front page of a glossy magazine.
His dark hair is styled, his jaw freshly shaved. That eggplant colored suit hugs Darius’s sculpted body, and the crisp white shirt glows next to his smooth, bronze skin.
And he smells good . Woodsy and expensive.
Whatever his cologne is, I want to spray it on my pillow.
“So.” My tear-stained face twists as Darius kneels on my rug, taking my foot in careful hands. He inspects my toes carefully, his touch so warm and gentle, and my voice quavers. “How am I doing on this practice date so far? Any notes?”
“No notes.” Darius’s smile is faint, his attention fixed on my toes. “It’s the perfect amount of hysteria. You nailed it.”
“Thank you. I tried.”
And with his calming presence, the nerves are fading fast. My heartbeat slows, my tears dry up, and even the ache in my foot starts to ease. Darius is magic like that.
The snort comes out of nowhere. I press my lips together, fighting hard, but the giggles can’t be stopped. They spill out of me, my shoulders shaking and my cheeks hot. Darius quirks a smile, still kneeling on my rug, and places my foot carefully down.
“You have an odd sense of humor.”
“Yeah, well.” My cheeks ache from fighting this grin. “It’s either laugh or cry, right? And I already tried crying.”
“True.”
When Darius pushes to his feet, my breath catches, the giggles stalling in my throat. He tugs on his suit jacket and eyes my dress, my hair, my blotchy cheeks. The whole damn mess of me, sprawled on my sofa for his consideration.
Feeling those brown eyes on me… my body perks to life, even though I’ve surely never been less sexy.
The composer tilts his head. “Do you still want to go to the party?”
Doesn’t he ? Oh god, will I embarrass him too much?
“Um. Well. Do you?”
“Yes,” Darius says immediately. “But only if you want to.”
Whew. Okay.
“I do. But I need five minutes to redo my makeup and change my contacts, and I need to find a different dress—”
“Keep the dress.” Taking my hand, Darius pulls me gently to my feet. Not even a whisper of pain now. “You’ll break my heart if you change. Other than that, take as long as you need.”
My head spins, both from his compliment and his hand on mine. “Shouldn’t I be quick, though? Like on a real date?”
But Darius shakes his head, expression sour. “Any man worth dating won’t rush you, .”
Noted.
I still scurry to my bedroom extra fast. No need to keep my friend waiting.
* * *
“Let me split this with you.”
We’re tucked in the back of a cab, drifting through the city streets to the party. The night sky is dark, but so many lights glow all around that it’s almost as bright as during the day.
Headlights. Lit-up windows. Glowing neon shop signs, and flickering advertisements on giant billboards. It all washes the streets in a bright electric glow, and I’m relieved to huddle in the shade of the cab.
“No.”
Darius sits next to me, his elegant body folded into the leather seat. Sometime in the last few minutes, he snagged my wrist, and now he’s tracing feather-light circles over my racing pulse point. It’s hard to read his expression in the gloom.
But the wrist thing—it’s all fake. For our practice date.
Yet goosebumps still ripple down my bare arms.
Red velvet clings to the rest of my body, hugging the hourglass shape of my curves—and my cheeks go hot every time I think about Darius demanding that I keep this dress on. Which, so far in the last fifteen minutes, has replayed in my mind about a billion times.
He really likes it?
He thinks it looks good?
Shaking my head, I try to focus: numbers. Cab fare. Right.
“We should split this, Darius.” He’s not budging, but I try again. “We’re both benefiting from the ride, and actually you live closer to the party than I do, so really if anything, I should—”
“It’s a date, .” Darius fixes me with a look, that fingertip still swooping over my wrist. “Let me pay for you, woman. Stop fighting this.”
“But—”
“I’m going to buy your drinks, too. Might as well make your peace with that now.”
Ugh. Does he have to be so bossy about it? Such a caveman?
Although… a tiny, shameful, bad-feminist part of me loves this. Loves being treated like someone special. It feels so nice . Even if it’s fake, even if it’s all just practice, I’ve never had someone rush to pay for me before. Usually I’m the one bailing people out, then writing off their debt after a while when they’ve clearly forgotten.
…But not with Darius. Now that I think about it, whenever we go out for a friendly dinner together, we always fight to pay the bill, and he agrees that I’ll pay it next time, but ‘next time’ never comes. Then there are those morning coffees and pastries, those treats that he never accepts payment for, even though I offer…
Oh, god. Am I a leech?
“I want to pay, .” It’s like Darius is reading my mind, studying the stiff set of my shoulders. Hearing all my unspoken doubts, and soothing them away with his circling thumb. “I love paying for you. Please let me. All I want is to take care of you.”
I swallow, unsure, though my heart’s pumping extra hard. He didn’t mean anything by that. He means he loves taking care of me as his friend.
“I just—I feel like I’m taking advantage of you. Not only tonight, but those morning pastries… those dinners…. I feel terrible.”
Darius inhales sharply, and raises my wrist to his mouth. The brush of his lips scorches all the way down to my toes, and his hot words tickle my skin.
“Don’t take those things away from me, sweetheart. I love treating you. It’s the best part of my day.”
God . He shouldn’t say things like that to me. It’ll warp my brain and give me false hope. And I should argue more, but—
Can’t think with Darius kissing my wrist.
Can’t focus when the cab smells like his clean, manly skin.
Can’t do anything except breathe shaky breaths, and squirm against my leather seat, and fight to ignore the tickle between my legs.
Just. Friends.
“Surrender,” Darius growls, the hot flick of his tongue making my eyes cross. “Admit defeat, . Say you’ll let me keep paying. Give in to me.”
And he’s half-teasing, half-serious, but I am one hundred percent cooked. My words are strangled when they burst out of me, and I’m lucky I can still string a sentence together, because my thoughts are so muddled. “Fine, you madman! Fine.”
Darius winks in the darkness, pressing one last kiss to my wrist before lowering it to his lap. He doesn’t release my arm, but goes back to drawing soft circles. Yeesh.
How long is this cab ride?
Will I even make it there with my sanity intact?
Or will I have gone mad with confused longing by then? Falling steadily more and more in love with my fake-date friend.