Chapter 14
By all objective measures, Marisa was pretty sure there was no right amount of alcohol to make a night go by faster, but she’d always prided herself on her experimental spirit.
One glass of wine down, with number two in her hand, and the seeping warmth that unspooled within her veins was doing little to cast out the impending doom blanketing her.
With Alec gone, even temporarily, the ruse they’d engineered felt far more fragile.
Add in her genetically spawned anxiety and Marisa was quickly spiraling from unsettled into unhinged.
Just as she was going to throw up her hands—well, her one free hand—and add some latkes to soak up the wine sloshing around nervously in her belly, a handsome man approached her. “Rumor has it you’re the famous Internet lady with some really good sugar.”
And just like that, unhinged morphed into unbelievable.
Ugh, gross. Worst opening line ever.
“That’s the rumor,” she said into her wineglass.
“I’m Jules,” he added, holding out a hand and flashing a smile that had gone a little too heavy on the whitening strips.
“Marisa.” She shook his hand, inwardly groaning at why her aunt’s neighbor had chosen that moment to show up.
“You’re not one of those people who talks about gut health a lot and is oddly obsessed with the microbiome, are you?
Nine times out of ten in my business, when someone starts talking to me about sugar before they even tell me their name, that’s usually the case. ”
The man laughed heartily and shook his head.
“Nah. Just trying to talk to someone who’s not carrying an AARP card and doesn’t seem to be perfecting their Pinot Grigio mom strut every time they hit the smoked salmon station.
If I’m asked to hold one more handbag, I’m liable to start charging baggage fees. ”
Against her earlier inclinations, Marisa couldn’t help but snort a laugh through her latest sip. But before she’d barely gotten through the sting of red wine singeing her nose, Jules was already holding out a napkin for her.
“Happy birthday, by the way. When your Aunt Gail invited me, I didn’t really have the heart to tell her no, especially if I was going to be living next to the woman for the foreseeable future.
I mean, she cornered me when I just got back from a run and was in the middle of taking in the garbage cans.
I got the sense that if I didn’t shut down the conversation real quick and appease her, she’d have me out there inspecting for visitor parking passes or asking my opinion on whether the homeowner’s association is paying too much for their snow removal contractor.
I know a yenta when I see one. Besides, wouldn’t have been the first time I’ve had to make nice with the new neighbors. ”
“You volunteered to go to a Hanukkah/birthday party with a bunch of people you’d never met before just so you could get away from your neighbor and back into your house as fast as possible?”
“In my defense, I was in the middle of my West Wing rewatch. After my run that morning, I was planning on eating my oatmeal while President Bartlet comforted the signalman in the hurricane. I had a fair bit on the line there. So, I’d say I didn’t so much volunteer to attend the party as was volun-told. Plus, I knew there’d be doughnuts.”
“Oh my God, I can’t watch that episode. Not unless I want to spend the entire day making sure my eyes don’t leak into my caramels.”
“Hey, you never know. Maybe selling a new batch of candies called The Signalman’s Salted Caramels might be a runaway hit.”
Marisa shared a careful, yet pleasant laugh with him before the wine unhelpfully let loose what her brain had been guarding.
“I’m sorry, and I know this is going to sound the way it’s going to sound, but I was sort of under the impression that my aunt wanted to .
. .” Don’t make me say it. Please, buddy, don’t make me say the words.
A humorous expression came over his face, one that played perfectly off the half-smile curving his lips.
He leaned forward, grabbing her elbow and bringing his mouth to her ear.
“I didn’t want to make a scene with your aunt or anything, but I’m pretty sure the guy I just started dating at my new gym would take offense. ”
The peal of laughter that rattled Marisa’s lungs was so intense, she had to slam her teeth together to keep her family from thinking something was wrong or, worse, far too interesting to go a minute longer without their inspection.
And that was the last thing she needed.
“Oh, I can’t believe this,” Marisa said, shaking her head and pounding her fist against her chest to beat back the burn.
“Believe it,” Jules added, picking up a decorative dreidel nestled within a puddle of gelt on the table and spinning it for effect.
“When she mentioned her niece, I knew exactly why I was being invited, but I didn’t want to be rude.
And I wagered that anyone who had an aunt like yours probably needed as many distractions as possible to get them out of your business so you can have some peace.
I do know what that’s like.” A sad look of commiseration highlighted his angled features, shocking Marisa even more.
On anyone else, she would have found his ability to get such an accurate read on her sourness annoying, but all things considered, she didn’t mind the sympathy.
Jules took a sip of his drink. “Then you introduced your boyfriend to everyone earlier and saved me the headache of having to perform.” His eyes took on a new life.
“But I had no idea you were dating him. Took me a few minutes to connect the name with the face, but I knew I’d seen him from somewhere.
” Then he pulled out his phone and scrolled through a feed of photos until he landed on one and held it up to her.
Whatever air had remained in Marisa’s abused lungs from the near spit take a moment ago vanished.
In a sea of stadiumgoers, Alec’s joyful face stared back at her.
With a backward hat on, a beer in one hand, and a carefree smile that could disarm even the most strident drill instructors, he was the picture-perfect epitome of a sports fan.
Right down to the beautiful woman draped beneath his other arm. None other than Phoebe Boyle wearing a too-large rugby shirt in Great Britain’s colors.
Marisa was immediately slammed with the desire to find the nearest bathroom and lock herself in it.
Grief followed that up, riding in hot and angry, but it wasn’t the ancient and oppressive kind that, as a proverbial member of the tribe, she was used to.
Instead, the frustrated anguish that was doing a bang-up job of stealing her words could better be ascribed to the grief of Charlie Brown.
More of the eternally unfortunate sort.
If there was one thing Marisa excelled at, it was woeful and perpetual sadness, especially the kind that sprang up in the form of reminders she’d rather forget.
Like how Alec and Phoebe used to be romantically linked. And how he’d yet to explain any of it.
Unaware of her quiet despair, or perhaps uninterested in it entirely, Jules took his phone back.
“Used to date a guy who was a goalkeeper for the New York City Football Club. I’d go to games when I could, and every now and then, when the Jumbotron operator got wind of a few famous people in the crowd, they’d direct it around in the stands, spotlighting some of the celebrities attending.
I’d always snap pictures because, hey, they’re celebrities, right?
Even though most time, I had no fucking clue who any of them were.
I deleted most of them when I had to clear out my phone storage, but this fellow?
” His voice was full of a wistful smokiness that Marisa suspected had nothing to do with the rapidly extinguishing candles in the living room.
Because Atlas himself couldn’t have held up the weight of Jules’s sentiment without shattering a shoulder blade or two.
The photo of Alec was a beaming portrait of a man who could be the sentinel of his sport.
A shining star that attracted everyone around him into his orbit.
There, radiating back at her, was the evidence of just how magnanimous the man was.
And how he was absolutely getting the shit end of the deal in their little arrangement. She was staring at documented proof that he didn’t need her, not in the same way she needed him. Not really.
It made the whole charade feel like she was being kept at arm’s length from the true manipulation, as if he were some sort of agreeable renegade to a cause he refused to share with her.
When Marisa had tried to wrap herself in her denial all over again, doing her best to project an outward appearance of Yup, that’s my boyfriend and we’re definitely super, super into each other, the sentiment stretched over her like a soggy parka she’d forgotten to dry out the last time she’d worn it, leaving her feeling steamed in all senses of the word.
Jules’s eyes softened, but then he took a step back as someone approached from behind her, their shadow climbing up his body.
Suspecting it was her father finagling an Everest-sized mountain of sufganiyot without her mother catching him, Marisa turned, ready to aid and abet in his culinary heists, as she always did.
Instead, what she got was the all-encompassing presence of Alec Elms as he gripped the back of her neck, pulled her close, and kissed her.
So many things began to fire at once, bringing all the microcomponents of the situation into awareness.
The grain of Alec’s short beard rasping against her chin.
The way his hands shifted from the back of her neck to the sides of her face, angling her mouth higher while he lowered to meet hers.
The thrill rocking her body as it desperately tried to match the energy he surrounded her with.
If this deception was a performance, she could think of a million and one reasons for never bothering with the truth again.
Marisa’s ribs desperately tried to expand with the enormity of the emotions flooding her body, but the damn things seemed to have no more room for anything other than breathing in Alec’s essence.
His wine-kissed lips, that familiar earthiness from earlier, and the subtle sweetness of dark chocolate gelt that paired so wonderfully with all the rest of him crowded out the party until all she cared to focus on was the gift he was giving her.
He was kissing her. They hadn’t agreed to it or discussed it beforehand. Weren’t there rules they should have put in place so her emotions wouldn’t get all sticky like this?
Because when his lips pressed against hers, urging her tongue to join his and dance along to the rhythm he set, it didn’t feel like an agreement between platonic business partners.
It felt like more, like he actually wanted to kiss her, instead of doing so out of duty or obligation.
When he finally pulled away, he took most of her breath with him but left just enough for her to add so incredibly lamely, “You . . . just had one of the Nutella-stuffed doughnuts, didn’t you?”
The satisfied smirk looked just as at home on his face as the arms that now held her to him felt, and it was more than enough of an answer for her confused mind.
But then he went and added his rumbling “Aye” to the mix, and as sure as she felt every bit of his brogue down to the tips of her heels, she knew one thing.
Their relationship may be fake, but there was nothing fake about that kiss.