Six
Mia
“We can’t just go on a date,” I tell Gavin. He’s sitting on the other end of my sofa in jeans and a white oxford button-down,
hair damp from the shower he must’ve taken after work, looking ready to play the part of fake boyfriend. I feel a small pang
of regret that I’ve decided we should switch tactics.
The more I thought about the method-acting scenario, the more it seemed like a great work-around. A way to keep up my creative
momentum and do something to get out of my comfort zone without risking our friendship. Straight-up fake dating—pretending
to be in a relationship—could skew the boundaries of our friendship. But a spin on it might just work.
I pull a typed sheet out of the binder I’m clutching in sweaty palms, and I lay it on the coffee table. Eager to fine-tune
the idea after I got home from writing at the coffee shop with Evie, I barely slept last night and spent all of today working
on what might be the most outrageous plan ever. What I’m about to propose is beyond bonkers, but if there’s anyone I trust
enough to try this with, it’s him. “At first I thought we might need a contract to lay the ground rules.”
He pauses in the act of cuffing his sleeves, tanned forearms on full display.
I do my best not to be distracted by the shape of muscles I’ve seen a thousand times when he wields hammers or carries bags of topsoil, and which have never—well, seldom, I’m only human—inspired me to imagine how they’d feel tucked under my legs, holding me tight against him.
I remind myself it’s just Gavin. Good luck telling that to my nervous system, because it’s still recovering from how he showed
up at my door smelling all shower fresh, holding a potted plant with bright green leaves and fragrant white blossoms—a gardenia,
he informed me—and my heart lit up like midsummer fireflies.
His brilliant blue eyes lock with mine. “A contract.” The word rumbles out, sounding filthy and confirming I was absolutely
right not to go that route.
“Just to make sure we were both on the same page,” I say, grimacing at the accidental pun.
“It’s a date, Mia,” he says. “Not a marriage pact.”
The perfect opening. “Funny you mention that,” I reply, and his sandy-brown brows shoot up. I rush to explain. “A marriage
pact is a trope, and I thought maybe we could explore... Well, not that one,” I add quickly when his eyes widen. “I’m getting
ahead of myself. First, you should look over the contract. It’s got nothing to do with a wedding, I promise.”
He grins, pushing his sleeves to his elbows and scooting toward the edge of the couch to read over the document. I maintain
a death grip on the binder in my lap until he finishes the single page and looks up.
“This is very thorough.” He taps his fingertips against the page, and I notice a small nick at the junction of his thumb and hand, probably from pushing the wheelbarrow around at work, picking up the slack for the new hire he told me about who didn’t realize the job involved manual labor.
“But is it really necessary? We’ve never needed any formal agreement like this to keep our, uh—” his eyes flick back to the paper where the subheading IN THE EVENT OF FEELINGS jumps out at me “—our distance.”
Haven’t we, though? I think about that night in the bar back in college, when I asked him to vow not to let me date friends,
including him. Does he ever think of breaking it?
Instead of entertaining those dangerous thoughts, I say, “That’s why I decided to scrap the idea. But I wanted you to see
the potential risks before you commit.”
“I’m committed already,” he says, rubbing his clean-shaven jaw, tanned skin slightly rosy from the scrape of the razor.
“But if we go to a restaurant right now, nothing would be different, unless we take steps to make things different. More than
just dressing up and ordering a bottle of wine,” I add when he starts to protest. “Getting physical would fix that, but obviously
that’s out-of-bounds.”
“Obviously,” he says, holding my gaze in a way that makes my cheeks flush. If he were anyone else... Nope. I mentally shove
that door closed and lean against it for good measure.
“Besides, physical chemistry alone isn’t enough to build a romance on,” I continue, rushing to get to my next point. “And
it definitely isn’t enough to make two characters who’ve been friends for years throw caution to the wind and try for something
deeper.”
He looks less than convinced. “So what do you have in mind?”
This is the moment I’ve been waiting for, but I feel a little queasy. “The contract was meant to illustrate all the potential
loopholes of fake dating. This—” I lift up the binder “—is how we get around those.”
Eyeing the binder warily, Gavin palms the back of his neck. “This looks like work. I thought you were supposed to be having
fun. Getting out of your rut.”
I bristle. “I’m not in a rut.”
“Creatively speaking,” he says. “All I’m wondering is how this—” he points to the binder, which I’ve affectionately titled The Love Notes “—is any different than your outlines and note cards?”
Pretty impossible to come up with a rebuttal when I used note cards to organize my thoughts, and the first tab of the binder
is an outline. “Okay, yeah. I’m leaning into my strengths. But a date without ground rules is too ambiguous. I’m giving us
parameters.”
“This is just a bunch of date ideas?” He visibly relaxes, like the idea of planning dates with me is a relief compared to
whatever else I had in mind. Surprising, but then again, he doesn’t have my encyclopedia of romance knowledge to know how
risky fake dates are. Good thing I’m an expert.
“Not traditional dates. Tropes. Like the marriage pact,” I say, excited to have the perfect lead-in. “Remember I said we’d
circle back to that.”
He opens his mouth. Blinks.
“The concept, Gavin.”
“So to be clear,” he says, and bright spots of pink appear on his cheeks. “Getting married for non-romance reasons is or is
not one of the tabs in your binder?”
“Not. And you’re the one who brought it up,” I add, defensive.
“Did I?” His eyes are twinkling now.
“I was just using it as a jumping-off point to introduce my plan.” I wave a hand. “Forget marriage of convenience. It’s not
important.”
“If you say ‘marriage’ again, I’m breaking out the shot glasses Sera and Joe brought you from their trip to Greece. We’ll
make it a drinking game.”
It’s a testament to our long-standing friendship that this suggestion doesn’t earn him a glare. “My point is that tropes will give us parameters for our ‘dates’ that will allow us to do things outside of the norm without blurring the lines between our friendship and what’s pretend.”
Wordlessly, Gavin takes the binder from me and opens it on his knees. He licks his index finger and uses it to flip the page.
A habit I’ve always found a little gross, but somehow, watching him do it, thoroughly absorbed in what I’ve written, it brings
to mind thoughts that would definitely violate the contract, had I signed it.
His brow furrows and I glance at the page to see he’s reading the description of the secret-baby trope.
“That one is only on the list for the sake of thoroughness,” I explain. “Can’t test it, so...”
“You don’t want to hide a baby with me?”
“That’s not what it means—”
“Our relationship started with light breaking and entering,” he says. “Kidnapping would be a natural progression.”
I cross my arms. “You’re never going to let it go, are you?”
“That my best friend lured me into a life of crime?” His eyes are sparkling irresistibly, but I won’t be lured into agreeing
with him.
“You had a key,” I remind him. “And to be fully accurate, we didn’t know each other back then. You let a total stranger lure
you into the life of crime. Shows a lack of judgment on your part, really.”
“Victim blame much?”
“Now you’re a victim?” I give him a skeptical look. “Thought you were the hero of that story.”
“I was. Am.” He sends me another irresistible grin, and for a moment I imagine what we’d be doing tonight if I hadn’t met him fresh off of finding out my boyfriend was in love with my sister.
Certainly not talking, not when he’s sitting there looking delectable as a cologne ad.
“Sorry,” he says. “You were explain ing how making babies will help your writer’s block, which to be fair, is worth a try—”
I cut him off by closing the binder on his hand. “You don’t deserve access to this information.”
“C’mon, Mia. I’m kidding. I want to help. And this idea is sounding more unhinged by the moment, which is a good thing. I
like seeing you daring and reckless.”
Reckless? That’s the opposite of what I’ve got planned. “The whole point of this is to keep things contained.”
“Things being our feelings.” His gaze is intense, voice rich, like the last bite of a caramel sundae.
“I just want to make sure we keep in mind this is an experiment for the sole purpose of determining if switching up my routine
can free up my creativity.”
He scratches his temple, the streaks of summer gold in his hair illuminated by the slanting evening light. “So we choose a
trope at random, act it out, and see if it inspires you?”
“We could do that,” I say, hedging. “Or we come up with a list, ranging from easiest to hardest to test. Hopefully we’ll only
have to try a few before I get into a rhythm and we can call it off.”
“Okay, so if not secret baby, then what?”
“Mmm...” I pretend to give it thought, like I haven’t spent hours ranking the tropes already. “Road trip? We could visit
everyone at the farm.” His brother’s family is staying with his dad, and things seem to go more smoothly when I’m there as
a buffer to Dennis’s unsubtle hints about Gavin moving back. The two-hour drive to Wisconsin could double as a trope test.
“Been there, done that,” he says. “Last time you made us listen to an audiobook instead of music.”
“I was moderating a panel with the author that weekend.”