Chapter 17
Rosa
Why the hell am I nervous? This wasn’t real. Noah and I aren’t really together. This dog he’s adopting won’t be mine in twelve months time.
I couldn’t get attached.
Not to the dog.
Not to his family.
And certainly not to Noah.
Except, in a matter of 24 hours, it was already feeling very real. Too real. I wasn’t exactly sure how we were supposed to get out of this with our hearts intact a year from now.
Beside me, Noah squeezed my hand in his, his other holding the cupcakes we’d bought from Beefcakes. “Ready?”
I exhaled. “As ready as I’ll ever be.”
He rang the doorbell and we were met with an intense and immediate chorus of barking dogs. My eyes went wide as four dogs of varying sizes and colors charged the front door, barking at us through the side windows. “Good lord, how many dogs do they have?” I squeaked.
“The big guy, Gatsby, is Steve and Yvonne’s. So is Daisy, the little chihuahua. The labradoodle is Cam’s dog. That one is Ronnie and Lex’s dog, Penny?—”
“It’s like a freaking doggie daycare in there!”
Noah blinked, turning to look at me. “Do you not like dogs?”
My exhale was tighter than I intended it to be. “I love dogs. A lot.”
“But?”
“Come on,” I laughed, gesturing at the insanity happening on the other side of the door.
Through the window, several people tried to wrangle the dogs, pushing them back away from the door while Steve unlocked it.
“You have to admit, this is a lot. It’s a lot of family to get thrown into and a lot of animals. ”
Noah’s grin widened. “You’re saying my family is a lot?”
I opened my mouth to answer, but I was cut off when the door flung open Yvonne and Steve stood there in the doorway, Yvonne with the barking chihuahua in her arms and Steve wearing an apron. The rest of the Tripp family surrounded them in various states of holding back dogs.
“Come on in,” Steve waved. “Quickly, before one of these mongrels gets loose and terrorizes the neighborhood. Again.”
Noah squeezed my hand as we walked through the front door, leaning in to whisper, “You haven’t seen anything yet.”
“My prom date was so skittish the whole damn night and I couldn’t figure out why.
My curfew wasn’t until midnight, but he had me home by ten p.m.,” Ronnie said, running her palm over her pregnant, swollen belly.
“It wasn’t until I got to school on Monday that I learned these jerks had threatened him!
” She half-stood, swatting at her big brothers.
“They had zip-tied him to the flagpole and took compromising photos of him that they threatened to leak if he had me home a minute past curfew.” Ronnie sighed.
“Needless to say, he overcompensated and had me home hours before.”
We had finished a full game of Settlers of Cattan and a few rounds of Red Dragon Inn… both new board games to me. And now, we were finishing up the last of the red wine while the Tripps traded war stories.
“What about you?” I elbowed Noah’s ribs. “What trouble did you get into?”
Callie leaned in, falling onto her twin’s shoulder. “My brother?” she snorted. “He was too busy starring in every school play and musical to get into trouble. But he was quite the heartbreaker. A quintessential showmancer.”
The tips of Noah’s ears went pink. “Callie,” he hissed.
“Showmancer?” I asked. “What’s that?”
“Mmmm,” Marty piped in. “That’s when you have a romance with someone in your show. Usually, your romantic lead. Instead of a romance, it’s a showmance because it only lasts the length that you’re in the show with the person.”
“Cute,” I teased, poking Noah’s scarlet blushed cheek. “So you fell for your costars over and over again?”
“Hardly,” he groused.
“Oh my God, are you joking?!” Callie exclaimed. “You fell madly in love with whomever you were starring opposite. The Audrey to his Seymour. The Mimi to his Roger, The Juliet to his Romeo?—”
I leaned in and whispered, “Your Mrs. Robinson?”
Noah rolled his eyes at me, a smile softening the gesture.
“Hardly,” Noah said, leaning down to pet the unnamed rescue pup who was sleeping in a pen beside him.
The fenced in pen was the only way we could think to keep him from trying to play with the other dogs after just having had his surgery. “What about you, Rosa?”
“Zero showmances for me,” I said.
“No, I mean… were you a troublemaker?” Noah clarified.
“Ooooooh,” Callie’s eyes went wide as she turned to me. “Yeah, what havoc did you wreak in high school?”
Oh boy. I wasn’t sure they were ready for my stories. Mine made theirs sound rookie. “What havoc didn’t I wreak? I made my parent’s lives a living hell.”
Cam took a pull from his beer, giving me a playfully narrowed glare. “You? Nah. I don’t believe that. You look like a straight A student.”
“Oh, I was,” I responded. “I got straight As, but I also broke every rule I could.”
“Really? Like what?” Steve asked, skeptically.
“Yeah, we’re going to need specific examples,” Lydia added.
It didn’t escape my notice how Noah tensed up every time Lydia spoke.
I knew there was some bad blood there that they’d managed to somewhat get past…
but if his demeanor was any indication, Noah clearly wasn’t healed or over it by any stretch of the means.
“How much time do you have?” I joked. I had more stories than I could keep track of.
Steve settled back in his chair, crossing his arms. “I think you’re bluffing.”
“Oh yeah? Do me a favor. Pull out your phone and google: Senator Alvarez and Winstone New Port High School.”
Steve gave me a strange look, but tugged his phone free. After a minute, his eyes went wide as they locked on the screen, reading. “Damn, Rosa. I stand corrected.”
“What is it?” Callie giggled, pulling out her own phone.
“My senior class prank went a little too far,” I said. “We stole the neighbor’s cows, brought them inside the school and let them wander around all night and then changed the letters on our school to read Winstone Wet Porn High school.”
“Savage,” Lydia said with a giggle.
“Manure was everywhere inside. They had to close the school for a week to have it professionally cleaned. And even then, the smell was horrifying. I was one of thirty seniors who participated in the prank, but of course because my father was the senator, I was the only one caught and publicly shamed for the part I played in it.”
Noah leaned in and tugged on one of my curls. “Looking at us now, no one would assume you were the rebel and I was the goody-two-shoes.”
“We’re just full of surprises,” I said.
His blue eyes searched mine as he slowly released his hold on my hair, dragging his knuckle down my jaw.
The clinking of a fork to a wine glass tore our gazes away from each other.
Ronnie was standing, holding her glass of sparkling grape juice in the air.
“I’d like to make a toast,” she said. “To my baby brother and my new sister, Rosa. I couldn’t be more thrilled to share a wedding weekend with the two of you.
Cheers to a lifetime of happiness.” She smiled so warmly at me that guilt gnawed at my stomach.
This ruse was fine when we weren’t getting to know each other’s families. But now I was looking into the eyes of lovely people—people I truly liked—and lying to them.
“To two lifetimes of happiness!” Marty added, lifting her glass of wine high in the air.
I gulped and reluctantly lifted my glass as well with everyone else’s, tapping it to Noah’s. His crystal blue eyes pinned me, reflections of his own guilt bouncing back at me.
Dammit. What have we done?
After taking a sip and setting my glass down, more clinking surrounded us, starting with one fork against a glass. Then two. Then three. Until all the Tripps were tapping their silverware to their wine glasses.
“What are they doing?” I asked.
Noah groaned. “They want us to kiss.”
Ronnie and Lex didn’t hesitate for a second. He tugged her into his lap gently, laying one on her belly before kissing her.
Noah cleared his throat, looking at me with brows raised.
My cheeks felt like fire as I leaned in and gave him a quick peck to the lips.
It wasn’t like we hadn't kissed before. But that was privately. A moment shared between him and me. This? This was different. It felt performative. Fake. And this whole ruse felt like such a lie already… I didn’t want to add to it now.
Besides, I wasn’t an actor. I didn’t have the nuance Noah did when it came to playing this part.
“That was a lame ass kiss,” Callie said. My flaming cheeks officially turned into an inferno of heat.
“Callie!” Marty elbowed her daughter.
“Well she’s not wrong,” Steve muttered behind his glass.
“PDA isn’t really our thing,” Noah said, offering as an excuse and glaring at his sister. She was the only one who knew the truth and yet was the only one giving us crap over it.
I thought she was supposed to be helping us.
Since I suck at lying… and I’m not an actress, I tried for the truth.
Or at least the partial truth. “I feel weird,” I admitted to the Tripps.
“I’ve only just met all of you and now here we are…
a family . But you don’t know me. And I don’t want to shove my tongue down Noah’s throat during our first dinner together.
” When no one said anything after a second, I added, “Especially when we all know that’s a second family dinner sort of activity. ”
Smiles cracked around the table and everyone’s faces softened.
Lydia gave me an empathetic nod and said, “I hear you. This family is a lot to step into.” She sent me a little wink from across the table.
And while I was comforted by that, it didn’t escape my notice how Noah tensed at our interaction.
“Thanks, Lydia,” I said.
A shrill whine came from the floor beside us and when I looked down, the puppy was on his hind legs, trying to paw at my thigh with his casted leg.