Twenty-Five #2
“Shh,” Sera says, at the same time as I flap my hand in his direction. “You’re going to make us miss the countdown.”
“Heaven forbid we get a late start,” Joe mumbles, and Sera gives him a quelling look.
“Get ready,” she says. “This challenge is all you.” Her doctor wants her to stay off her feet as much as possible.
“Take it easy,” he says, and kisses her on the forehead. “I got this.” He lowers into an exaggerated lunge that has the younger
members of their families giggling.
That gives me an idea, and I grab Gavin’s hand, rising on tiptoe to whisper in his ear.
This close, I notice a nick on his jaw from shaving—he had to get ready in a hurry—and barely catch myself before I press a kiss to the spot.
Team Besties is not going to use a party celebrating our friends’ long-awaited baby to reveal the change in our relationship status.
Just as I finish telling him my plan, Sera’s mom shouts, “Three, two, one, GO!”
I bend and grab a toy at random, tossing it into the stroller, but instead of helping, Gavin jogs over to the group of kids
watching us make fools of ourselves. A moment later he comes back with two children who start throwing stuff into our stroller.
Joe glances over and does a double take. “Hey, what are you doing?”
“There’s no rule about how many people per team,” I call out, not pausing in my efforts.
The kids stick their tongues out at him. “Better hurry, Uncle Joe.”
“This is my baby shower, traitors,” Sera says, but she’s grinning.
Joe pauses, mouth downturned in an exaggerated pout. “Just yours?”
“Ours, babe.” She leans over and pecks him on the cheek. “Now hurry. Don’t let those cheaters win!”
The guests have caught on to what we’re doing, some cheering us on, others recruiting kids to join them. Soon it’s a free-for-all,
with kids and adults alike rushing over to help their favorite team until everyone but Sera is in on the game.
In his rush to throw a sippy cup into the stroller, Gavin bumps me with his elbow, and I nudge him back playfully. “Same team,
remember?”
“Always.” He grins at me, face flushed from exertion, eyes bright. His hair is mussed and dark with sweat at the temples,
the wheat-brown strands practically begging for me to run my fingers through them and smooth them down. He’s glowing, all
exuberance and cheer, and all I want to do is kiss him, claim him. Stop pretending I want anything less than all of him.
But this is Sera and Joe’s day, and the last thing I want to do is take the spotlight off of them and the baby they’ve waited so long for.
So, sacrificing my yellow sundress in the name of victory, I kneel down in the grass to grab the small items that have gotten shoved under the stroller—a granola bar, a diaper, bottles, and pacifiers—and toss the whole armful into the stroller a split second before Sera’s mom shouts, “That’s time, everyone! ”
I’m panting, and next to me, Gavin lets out a breathless laugh. The kids are holding on to the teetering pile of stuff to
keep it from tumbling. But when they catch Sera’s menacing glare, they let go and a plastic xylophone tumbles to the ground.
Losing an item may have cost us the game, but I can’t bring myself to care, because Gavin pulls me into a tight hug. I savor
what to everyone else is just friends celebrating but to us is a stolen embrace, his heartbeat thudding against mine, the
muscles of his back warm with exertion under my splayed hands. My cheek is against his chest and my heart is whispering, Mine .
The guests have all left and it’s just the four of us. Sera’s seat of honor has been swapped for a gifted rocking chair, her
feet propped up on the matching stool. Joe’s dad brought it over in his truck, fully assembled, and she used it as a throne
while they opened gifts. “You’re going to have to carry me in the house along with this chair,” she says to her husband. “Who
would’ve thought a baby shower could wear me out?”
“Maybe it was all the yelling,” Gavin says in an undertone. We’re taking care of the cornhole game set up near the back fence.
I shush him, but he grins. “What? Give her a headset and she’d be good to go on the NFL sidelines.”
He’s not wrong. Her family’s competitive streak definitely didn’t skip a generation. “She’d probably take that as a compliment,”
I say, smiling at him.
“Aw, look at you two,” Sera calls. “Couple goals, for real.”
I freeze, hoping I heard wrong.
“Don’t look so panicked.” Sera shares an unreadable glance with Joe. “What I mean is you’re so in tune with each other. Making small talk back there like it’s only the two of you in the world.”
My cheeks heat. We were just messing around. Is that how it’s always looked when we’re together?
“Except they never bicker.” Joe grins devilishly at his wife.
“And what, we do?” Sera asks, sitting up straighter.
“We argue plenty, but about silly stuff,” I tell them, wanting to stifle the impending argument. Bickering is how Joe and
Sera flirt, a rivals-to-lovers couple if I ever saw one. “Like whether streaming or cable is superior.”
“The problem is too many choices,” Gavin says. “Impossible to decide what to watch with all the options.”
I put my hands on my hips. “We could if you’d agree watching people buy houses is not entertainment.”
“Look what you did.” Joe gestures toward us.
“I think it’s adorable,” Sera says. “Like an old married couple.” She sits up quickly, then winces, hand to her belly. “Oh
my gosh, babe. They should take our spot.”
I don’t like the sound of that. At all. What’s she talking about?
Joe frowns. “At the couples retreat? It’s only for people in relationships.”
A couples retreat? That’s a big hell no. It would technically work to test the relationship-in-trouble trope, but we agreed
we wouldn’t involve anyone else in our charade. And now that it’s not a charade, attempting something like a couples retreat
would put our relationship under a microscope we aren’t ready for. My mind flips to the scene I wrote where Victor and Sydney’s
relationship gets put to the test. That didn’t end well.
But Sera’s not deterred by Joe’s hesitance.
“Not like they have to be married, or even dating. What are the organizers going to do? Ask how often they sleep together? Pretty sure a lot of the couples are there because they stopped having sex in the first place.” Before I can counter this dubious logic, Sera tells us, “We already did the first three weekends. I have to sit the final one out because it’s a day of outdoor activities. You guys should take our spot.”
“Maybe if I wasn’t on deadline.” Lies. Under no circumstances, busy or not, would I participate in a couples retreat with
Gavin when we’re not even technically dating.
“That’s perfect. You could count it as book research.”
“The book is friends-to-lovers meets fake dating, not relationship-in-trouble. Sydney is acting out scenes to help Victor
tune up his acting skills.”
Gavin looks up sharply from gathering the scattered beanbags, and I realize I haven’t shared the premise with him yet. Mostly
because I don’t want him to see the similarities between their situation and ours.
She smiles. “Even better. What if they decide to up the stakes and see if they’re good enough to convince the other couples
they’re dating?”
It’s hard to argue with a pregnant woman, especially one who debates for a living. And that’s how we find ourselves agreeing
to one final trope test.
It’s also no easy feat to stomp toward my car with the ten pounds of leftover party food that Sera foisted on me, but I attempt
it. Gavin is a few steps behind, carrying his own culinary loot.
I balance the containers on my hip, fumbling for my keys. “You could’ve said something back there.”
“Like what? We agreed not to tell anyone we were together.”
“That’s why you should have protested.”
He shrugs. “Thought you might want to use it as another trope test.”
“We’re supposed to be done with those.”
“Yeah, well, that was the perfect moment to tell them the truth about us, and you denied it.”
I look up from digging for my keys in my purse and notice his jaw is tight. “I couldn’t tell them without checking with you first.”
“I made it clear where I stand,” he says. “I don’t want to fake it.”
“We weren’t faking it today. We just weren’t being super obvious.”
He gives me a dubious look. “But when she straight-up called us a couple, you shot her down.”
“Looks like I was right to do so. They foisted couples therapy on us while under the impression we’re just friends. Can you
imagine their reaction if they found out we were dating?”
“Um, be happy for us?” He shrugs. “Maybe this is them matchmaking. If they knew we were together, they’d have no reason to
force it on us.”
“Okay, I see your logic,” I admit. “But I still don’t think it was the right time.”
“Springing it on them during the baby shower probably wouldn’t have been in good taste,” he admits, leaning against the cab
of his truck.
“You’re saying I was right?”
“Mostly, yeah,” he says, and smiles.
“You’re pretty good at this boyfriend stuff.”
“I’ve had a lot of time to prepare. Almost ten years.”
“So friendship was just the warm-up?” I raise my brows, challenging him. I went through that with Stewart, who only wanted
to be friends because he thought it would lead to more.
Gavin shakes his head. “Friendship with you was everything. But this?” His eyes darken with intensity, the leafy branches
overhead casting dappled shadows on his face. “This is the kind of thing I only ever expected to read about in your books.
You make me feel greedy, Mia.”
I know the feeling. “Your place or mine?” We’ve spent the afternoon pretending to be just friends, but now it’s just us, and
I don’t intend to hold back. Not ever again.