6. Austen
SIX
AUSTEN
“Remind me what we’re doing here again?”
Here being Huckleberry Lanes, the bowling alley in town, where Clint had dragged me after I closed the shop for the day. This was not the sweatpants and glass of wine that was my usual post-work ritual, and I wasn’t entirely sure how he’d talked me into this.
No, that was a lie. It was the dimples. Those damned dimples could get me to do almost anything. Even put on ugly shoes.
As I accepted the size eight monstrosities in a dirty pink and lime green pattern, Clint shot me a wink. “I have a plan. Trust me.”
How many times had he said that to me over our lifetime? How many times had I gone along with whatever it was because it was him? Too many to count. So, despite the fatigue that probably would’ve driven me to nothing more elevated than a box of mac and cheese for dinner, I followed him over to the lane we’d been assigned and changed my shoes.
“I don’t think I’ve been bowling since high school.”
He glanced up at me from where he tied his own shoes. “As I recall, you weren’t that great at it then.”
I scowled. “Only because no one would let me bowl with bumpers.”
Clint laughed. “I can teach you. Are you hungry? Do you want snacks first? We can pick up some nachos or pizza or something from the snack counter. I know I’m interrupting your dinner.”
“Maybe in a bit.”
We each picked a ball from the selection. As I didn’t actually know what I wanted, I nabbed two different ones with finger holes close enough together that I could pick them up comfortably and carted them back to our lane. Clint followed with a big black ball.
“Okay then. Let’s see what we’re working with.” He entered our names on the scoreboard from the electronic screen and made an after-you gesture.
Without a lot of hope for a positive outcome, I picked up the gold ball and moved to the head of the lane. Eyes focused on the center pin, I inhaled, took two steps forward, and let the ball fly. It landed on the lane with a thunk and shot immediately into the gutter.
Clint choked back a laugh. “Okay, we’ve got our work cut out for us.”
I gave him a withering look that didn’t deter him in the least.
He stood and crossed to me. “Stick with me, Padawan, and you will improve.”
Irritably, I picked up the pale blue ball. “You have an inflated sense of your teaching ability.”
“We’ll see.” He spread his hands, almost as if asking for a hug. “May I?”
He obviously thought he could adjust my form. I didn’t have a lot of hope for success with that either, but I appreciated him asking permission to touch me.
“Yeah, okay. Fine.”
The moment he stepped up behind me, I felt my breath catch. It wasn’t as if we’d never been close before. We’d been friends for years. We hugged. We’d been wedged into the back of vehicles with too many other people and had shared sofa space during movies. But this immediately felt different. The heat of him soaked into me as he wrapped his bigger body around mine in what would unquestionably be A Move from any other guy.
His breath tickled my ear as he murmured, “We need to be seen together before the wedding, so I don’t just look like a ringer. In order to effectively make the asshat jealous and regret what he gave up, I need to look like the boyfriend, not the date.”
I couldn’t fault his logic, but I wasn’t prepared for how my brain would short-circuit at his nearness.
“Oh.” It was all I could manage with him this close, his hands covering mine to position the ball in front of me.
It’s just a performance , I reminded myself as he murmured something I didn’t hear at all about focus and position. But it didn’t feel fake as he guided me forward and through the release of the ball. It sailed neatly down the middle of the lane on a slightly leftward path, where it crashed into the pins, knocking down four.
I bounced on my toes. “Oh, my God! I hit some!”
“Yeah, you did.” With a quick high five, he took up position for his turn.
If I watched his very fine ass in those jeans while he lined up his shot, well, it was all for appearances, right?
Clint released the ball with one of those fancy curve shots that sling-shotted down the lane and netted him a strike. Because of course it did.
“You always were good at any kind of sporty thing related to balls.”
“By the end of the night, you’re gonna eat those words. Because you, my little bookworm, are going to be okay at this.”
“Not good?” I pretended to pout.
“Good will take practice. I can only do so much in one night.” His voice dipped into a low, flirty tone that implied he could do a whole lot of other things in one night. Naked, sweaty things.
Was it getting hot in here?
When I stepped up to the line, Clint moved behind me again. “Doing okay?”
“Uh-huh.” I choked it out a half octave higher than my normal voice and had to clear my throat. “Peachy.”
“You have any ground rules about PDA? Anything you’re not comfortable with?”
When he’d volunteered to be my date for the wedding, I’d just sort of imagined I’d show up with him on my arm, we’d dance a little at the reception, and it would be enough to keep my meddling relatives off my back and allow me to keep my head held high when Trevor paraded his new relationship in front of me. This was turning into something else entirely. Something that was skating awfully close to fulfilling a whole lot of junior high and high school fantasies.
“I’ve known you all my life. I’m not worried about PDA. Because you’re right. If anybody’s going to believe this, that’ll be a necessary part of the whole thing.”
“Understood.”
Terms established, we got on with our public fake date that didn’t feel fake at all. Clint was fun and flirty and attentive. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d had this much fun. As promised, he loaded us up with snacks, even going so far as to feed me bites of nachos.
People were noticing. The weeknight league players kept glancing our way, and I knew tongues would be wagging. That was, after all, the point of this whole exercise. I’d deal with the consequences of that when I had to.
Despite this new layer of sexual tension, we were easy together. We’d always poked and teased each other, but it felt different now. It felt… extra now. I didn’t know how much of that was an act on his part. He was an inveterate flirt, someone who’d been safe for me to try out my own skills with flirtation growing up. Sometimes the more outrageous the better. I’d always loved that.
Neither of us brought up my brother and what he might think about all of this. To my mind, Rhett’s opinion didn’t matter. The wedding would be over before he made it back from his convalescence, and then the charade would be over. Clint and I would go back to being the friends we’d always been. But even as we continued our performance, a part of me worried about whether I’d make it through this fake dating unscathed, because this wasn’t doing a damned thing to dampen the crush I’d had on this man for most of my life.