Eight
Reece
Stacy pulls at the hem of her little white dress for the thousandth time. She readjusts in the passenger seat of my Audi, sighing and flipping the visor down to fix her lip gloss in the mirror.
“Nervous, Stace?” I ask, peering over from the driver’s side.
Stacy insisted on driving us to her family dinner, but what kind of fake boyfriend would I be if I let her do that? I am nothing if not chivalrous, even to my pretend girlfriend.
“No,” she lies quickly, running her ruby fingernails through her blonde curls. Again.
I give her a droll look, saying nothing.
“Just anxious about classes starting,” she goes on.
I smirk at my windshield as I merge onto the interstate.
“You know, I think you might be a worse liar than Drew. He got two MIP’s freshman year because he couldn’t even lie to our hall director.
All he had to do was say the bottles weren’t his but he was sweating bullets the whole time during our hall meeting. Twice , Stace. That happened twice.”
She’s uncharacteristically silent in response, rolling her lips together.
She looks good tonight. Really good. I’m attracted to Stacy in all her forms: cheer uniform, practice clothes, leisure outfits, party wear.
I’ve seen her dressed up for athletic banquets, for the football parties that the cheer squad always attends after football games, but she’s different tonight.
Her usual wavy hair is curled tight, the ringlets hanging freely to the middle of her back.
Thick, black lashes are framing her light blue eyes, her cheeks rosy and lips pink and glossy.
The white dress she’s wearing is made of lace.
It hits her mid-thigh with a fitted bodice, deep v-neck, and straps that tie behind her neck.
I’m trying my hardest to ignore how the cut of the neckline accentuates her cleavage, but I’m just a man, alright?
The dress fits her like skin and I’m having a hard time pulling my eyes away from her body to focus on the road.
I always have a hard time pulling my eyes away from Stacy.
“If we’re going to convince our families that we’re dating, we should probably learn a little more about each other,” she finally says, clearly glazing over my comment about her being a bad liar.
I stifle a smile. “You’re right. Quick Q&A? Make sure we’ve got our story straight?”
“Sure.” She blows out a noisy breath and fidgets a little bit more with the lace on her dress. “You’re studying exercise and movement science, right? Going the physical therapy route?”
I shoot her a grin. “You do listen when I talk. I knew it.”
“Well, you talk loud enough most of the time that it’s impossible not to,” she bites back.
My goofy smirk widens. “A win’s a win. But to answer your question, yes. Physical therapist is the plan.” I cock my head to the side as a realization hits me. “I don’t know what you’re majoring in.”
It’s odd. We’ve been on the same team for four years now and I’ve never once heard Stacy talk about her plans for the future or even her classes.
Not that she necessarily chooses me to shoot the shit with but I digress.
It seems like her mind is always laser-focused on cheer, not leaving room for much else.
Truthfully, that fact makes me want to crawl inside her brain even more.
Stacy has a deeper side. She has a warm, fuzzy heart behind her cold and meticulous exterior, I just know it.
Stacy sighs. “Business.”
Her answer surprises me but I try not to show it. “Really? How’d you land on business?”
She shrugs. “Had to land on something.”
“And what do you want to do? After college, I mean. What kind of job are you hoping to get?”
She sighs again, but it’s frustrated this time. “I don’t know, the CEO of Disney World or something.”
“Ah, yes. You are just the person I can picture running the Happiest Place on Earth.”
Stacy shoots a glare in my direction before going silent and staring out the passenger window.
“Alright, we’ll just go with undecided for now,” I say when she doesn’t respond. “What’s your favorite color?”
“Pink,” she says to the glass.
I nod, waiting for her to ask me back. “Mine’s blue,” I finally say when she doesn’t go on.
“Didn’t ask.”
Ah. So I see we’ve decided to take the difficult route this evening.
I sigh, reaching out to lightly touch her knee. “Stace, we’ve got to get to know these things about one another if your family is going to believe I’m your boyfriend. Please?”
She swats my hand away, turning back to face the front of the car with her arms crossed over her chest. A surrender of sorts, I suppose.
“You also can’t swat me away if I touch you tonight. Remember, you’re supposed to like me,” I remind her, a teasing smile on my lips as she continues to scowl.
“Fine. Favorite food?” she finally asks.
“Easy. Burgers.”
“Basic answer.” She rolls her eyes.
My lips tick up a little further. “Alright, then. Didn’t realize I was fake dating a Michelin Star chef. What’s your favorite?”
“Vietnamese food. Pho, specifically.”
I nod in approval. “There’s a great Vietnamese place right by campus. Pho Fusion? Been there?”
She narrows her eyes. “You grew up in Cincinnati?” she goes on, ignoring my question.
I’ll take that as a no.
“Born and raised.”
“Do you want to move back?” she asks.
I deliberate. As a child, I loved the city. Even through my high school years, I always thought I’d head back after college, be close to my family. But sometimes, knowing that Tashia and Evan are in the city makes me want to run the opposite direction.
“Undecided,” I eventually say, shooting her a smile.
She nods and stays quiet for a beat before she mumbles, “Do you love me?”
“What?” I ask.
I heard her. I know what she asked. But her reluctance to say anything remotely romantic to me out loud tickles me and I want to hear her say it with her chest.
She groans. “How serious are we? Have we been dating for a while? Are we saying we love each other?”
“Oh, we’re serious, Stace. I am desperately in love with you,” I joke. Kind of.
Stacy slams her head back against my headrest. “Perfect.”
“I’m serious. I ask you to marry me all the time, I’ve dropped to one knee at least twice by now.”
“This is the first time my family’s even heard of you. Let’s dial it back, yeah?”
“Fine, but I’m asking for your father’s blessing over the holidays,” I quip.
I see Stacy roll her eyes in my peripheral, as per usual. “What’s your biggest fear?” she asks.
Man, oh man. Her question hits me in the gut as a million answers run through my mind.
Some would say my biggest fear already came true.
Losing my older brother, losing the guy that me, Evan, and Gemma all looked up to.
Hearing my mother sob when the police showed up at our door to tell us about his car accident knocked the wind straight out of me—and even after six years, I sometimes feel like I still haven’t caught my breath.
On the other side of the coin, maybe my biggest fear is trusting someone again.
Really, truly falling in love and giving myself to another person after Tashia tore my heart to shreds.
It’s why I haven’t dated since our split, why I’ve decided to run through women like a college running back.
If I don’t fall in love, if I don’t commit myself to another woman, who’s going to hurt me?
“Spiders,” I decide. It’s probably third on my list of fears, but the only one that doesn’t require a deep conversation or unpacking years of irreversible trauma.
I hear Stacy giggle beside me and it causes me to do a double-take. She’s covering her mouth like the sound even surprised her as her cheeks flush.
“Something funny?” I ask, my own smile creeping up because, even if it was at my expense, I just made Stacy Dunn laugh.
“Sorry.” She giggles again. “You’re just so…” She trails off, waving her hand in my direction.
“So what?”
“You’re so big,” she chuckles.
“I hear that a lot,” I joke, shooting her a crooked grin.
She swats my forearm, the blush in her cheeks darkening. “That’s not what I meant, you pervert. You’re this big, muscular, tall guy. It’s funny to imagine a tiny spider scaring you. You could crush a spider under your pinky.”
I beam at her. “No, please, keep talking about how big and tall and strong I am. I could use a little ego boost.”
“Your ego is plenty big.”
“Among other things,” I say, following Siri’s directions off the highway.
“Reece,” she shrieks, burying her face in her hands.
“Before we get distracted by my huge ego and glorious body, what’s your biggest fear?” I ask, loving the pink tint I see in her cheeks when she lets her hands fall to her lap.
Stacy hesitates, gnawing on her bottom lip. It makes me wonder if she has different traumas and scenarios running through her mind, too. What could Stacy, the woman who everyone’s intimidated by, be afraid of? This girl can chill me to the bone with one look. What the hell scares an ice queen?
After a moment more of deliberation, Stacy says, “Thunderstorms.”
I bet anything that thunderstorms are Stacy’s spiders. Maybe the second, third, fourth thing she’s the most scared of. But there’s something else, something deeper that she’s not ready to share with me yet.
That’s fine. I have all the time in the world and I’ll peel back the layers of the Stacy Dunn onion one at a time.
“Storms scare you?”
She nods. “To my core.” A small shudder rocks through her body.
“When the wind picks up? And the thunder shakes the floor? God, it scares me. Don’t even get me started on if a tornado siren goes off.
The sound alone makes me feel like I can’t breathe,” she pauses.
“I think it comes from when I was a kid. Me and Charlotte were staying with my grandparents down in Missouri for a week over the summer. They live on a farm down in the southeast part of the state. We were outside playing and the sky got green, Reece. Green . The sirens started to go off and my grandma ran outside yelling at us to get in the house. I just remember running as fast as I could to get up the porch steps and my grandma made us go sit in the basement. I couldn’t see outside because they didn’t have any basement windows but the wind was so, so loud.
“When we finally went back upstairs, there were branches down everywhere. The trampoline from the backyard was out on the road and the power was out because a tree fell on the line. It was a small tornado, no one was hurt, but I’ve hated all types of storms ever since.”
Holy shit. Stacy just said multiple words to me in a row without a sarcastic tone. Not to mention, she was just vulnerable with me about something scary that happened to her.
I try to shake off my shock so I can answer her properly. “So, you’ll come kill the spiders for me if I come sit with you during thunderstorms?”
I expect Stacy to roll her eyes, glower at me, smack my bicep again. Instead, her lips tip up into the world’s tiniest smile.
“Yeah.” She nods. “Deal.”
One layer peeled. One hundred million layers to go.
“Great.” I smile at her as I head into downtown Columbus. “Your place or mine?”
“Mine,” she answers immediately. “I’ve never been to your house, but I know you’re a twenty-one year old boy who lives with another twenty-one year old boy.
I can’t imagine your apartment is clean.
Plus, I have a one bedroom. No roommate.
It’d make more sense for us to spend most nights at my place. ” She shrugs.
“I detest that. My place is very clean.”
She gives me a dubious glance. “You live with Miles.”
“ My half is very clean.”
She chuckles again, much to my surprise. A light, airy sound that warms my chest. I don’t hear her laugh often, but it’s melodious when I do. It makes me wish she did it more. It makes me want to make her laugh all the time.
“Have we had sex?” I blurt out.
Stacy’s jaw drops and her mouth opens and closes a couple of times before she answers. “I don’t think my family will ask about that,” she squeaks.
“Mine might,” I admit with a grimace. “We’re alarmingly close.”
Stacy’s cheeks are the color of the red traffic light we’re stopped at as she collects herself. “Why does it matter?”
“Because.” I shrug. “People act different after they’ve slept together. The tension is different. It’s like their bodies are more in tune with one another, their touches are more fluent.”
She stares at me for a beat as I drive us into the thick of downtown. “That’s a very observant thing for you to say.”
“I notice people,” I say simply.
Stacy blinks at me a few times before speaking again. “Well, my family will not ask so maybe we don’t worry about that until we have to do something with your family.”
“Fair enough.” I grin at her as I pull into the public parking lot across the street from the restaurant. “But when we do, you initiate it and I rock your world, by the way.”
Surprisingly, she smirks back. “Yeah, you and your big ego .”
I wink at her as we settle into a parking space. “You got it, babe. Ready?”
Stacy’s face falls as I go to unbuckle my seat belt. The glimpse of the happy girl I was just with vanishes as she starts to chew on that damn bottom lip again. She rubs her hands down the skirt of her dress and glances at herself in the rear view mirror.
How can she not see that she looks perfect?
“Hey,” I say to her quietly, placing my fingers lightly on her thigh. “I’ve got you. Okay? I promise I make kickass impressions when it comes to parents. They’re going to love me so much they’ll forget all about your stupid sister and her stupid accomplishments, yeah?”
Stacy gives me a watery laugh before nodding. I pop out and round the car to her side, pulling open her door and helping her out of the sedan. She hesitantly takes the hand that I’m holding out, clasping our fingers together as we head into the restaurant.
And it feels damn good to have Stacy Dunn on my arm.