5. Hadley
Chapter five
Hadley
I tear my gaze away from the disappearing back of my fake fiancé, taking a sip of beer. I fear I may be in trouble. When he called me his fiancée … ugh, that word coming out of his mouth, directed at me.
Why the hell was it so hot?
It shouldn’t be.
But it was.
I want to hear him say it again if I’m being honest.
I give myself a small shake. What am I thinking? No, I don’t want him to call me that. This is just for one day, an evening, and that’s it. I chew on the inside of my lip.
“What’s got you making that face?” Weston asks as he retakes his seat, another beer in his hand.
“Nothing. Just hoping no one else I know is at this party.”
“Are you ashamed to be seen with me, Hadley Jane? Afraid I’ll ruin your reputation?” He bounces his eyebrows at me, and it’s all I can do to hold in a laugh.
“Nope, Weston Raymond. Worried I might ruin your reputation.”
“Not my middle name, Hadley Jane, and I think my reputation is safe.”
I take a sip of my drink instead of answering him because I’d probably say something snarky, like ‘what reputation’? The last thing I want to do is be a jerk to the guy who is saving my ass.
“We need rules,” he says after a few minutes of silence.
I set my now-empty bottle down on the table. “We don’t need rules. It’s one evening. That’s it. I’ll introduce you as my fiancé to Henry and whoever else. We’ll eat. Make awkward small talk with people we don’t know and escape as soon as possible.”
He frowns. “You don’t want to go, do you?”
I shake my head.
He tilts his head, studying me in the dim light from the moon. “So why are we going? Why not say you can’t come when he texts you?”
I turn over his words in my head.
“Because it’ll seem as though I’m avoiding him. It’ll give him the wrong idea. That I haven’t moved on. That I’m still somehow hurt by our breakup.”
“Who the hell cares what he thinks?” I swallow, unsure of how to answer, but he saves me from having to by continuing to speak. “Fuck ’im.”
I snort. “Done that. Wasn’t that great.”
He wrinkles his nose, grimacing, and I can’t help but laugh.
Silence surrounds us, only interrupted by the buzzing of crickets, the occasional frog croaking, and the wind whispering through the trees. The quiet starts to lull me to sleep, and after I yawn for the fifth time in a row, I push my chair away from the table and get to my feet.
“I’m going to head to bed.”
“Good night.”
“Night.” I grab my empty bottle and turn toward the back door, reenter the sleeping house, and make my way upstairs to my room.
“Hiya.” Callie, my best friend, answers on the first ring when I call her a few days later. “How’s it going?”
“Hey, Cal. Welll …” I drawl, lying down on my unmade bed.
“What happened?”
“I ran into Henry at the grocery store earlier this week. He was with his new fiancée. I may have told them I was engaged to one of my brother’s teammates.
And now I’ve roped one of Holt’s best friends into being my fake fiancé and going with me to his engagement party tomorrow night.
” The words come out in a rush, and I don’t even know if they made sense.
There’s silence for a few seconds, and I start to repeat what I said, except slower, when she says, “Noo you didn’t.”
“I did, Callie,” I whine. “I did. It wasn’t my finest moment. I panicked, and before I knew it, I was telling Henry I was engaged too and, well, all the rest.” I throw my hand up even though she can’t see me.
“Leave it to you to do something like that.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“I’m sure it’ll be fine. It’s just one night, right?”
“Yes.”
“Which friend of Holt’s?”
“Weston Reynolds.”
“HADLEY. No, you didn’t. Shit, girl. Why didn’t you lead with that?”
I put my hand over my face. “Because it’s a disaster. And it’s fake.”
“But maybe it’ll lead to something more.”
I groan.
I seriously regret spilling my secret crush on Weston to her after one too many glasses of wine.
Do I still have a crush on him? I do. But that’s all it’ll ever be.
I don’t stand a chance of dating someone like Weston.
He deserves a partner who has their act together and knows what they want to do with their life, not me, an unemployed photographer who is starting to question her career choice.
“Stopppp,” I whine. “Please don’t.”
She laughs. The bitch fucking laughs, and if she wasn’t my best friend and I didn’t love her like a sister, I would hang up the phone and never speak to her again. Fine, I’d speak to her again, but it would take me a few days. Instead, I grab the other pillow from the bed and pull it over my face.
“Are you hiding under the covers?” she asks, having seen me dive under my blanket before when she’s called me out on something.
“No. A pillow,” I answer, my voice muffled.
“Come on, you have to admit this is perfect.”
I move the pillow. “No, it’s not. He’s doing it because he’s too nice to say no, and I practically begged him.”
“If you say so.” I can hear the eye roll in her voice.
“Let’s change the subject. How are you? How’s the new job? How’s Colorado treating you?”
Callie recently took a social media marketing position out in Colorado with the major league baseball team there.
She sighs, and I think she’s going to protest the subject change, but she doesn’t.
“The job’s going good. Finally settling into my new apartment. I told you the first place I moved into had mold, right?”
“Yeah. That was gross. I’m glad you’re out of there.”
“Me too. This building is way nicer. I think the leasing office felt guilty, as they should have, and upgraded my apartment for free. More amenities. There’s no way it can be the same price as my other one, yet I’m still paying the same rent.”
“You deserve it. Maybe you’ll meet a hot, single millionaire who will sweep you off your feet.”
She laughs. “Just a millionaire? Not a billionaire?”
“Well, a billionaire would probably have a private elevator to the penthouse, so you’d never see him.”
“True. True.”
We slip into silence for a few seconds.
“So, how’s the job search going?” she asks.
“It’s going.”
“That good, eh?”
“I’ve applied for at least a dozen photography gigs. Most of them are short-term contracts. Most of them are long shots. Nothing yet.” I exhale sharply and say what I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. “Maybe I should start thinking about a plan B.”
“Ugh. I hate that for you. I think you need to give it more time. Don’t give up yet.”
“I have been giving it time, and I’m still unemployed.”
“I believe in you. You’re a great photographer. You’ll find something.”
I hope she’s right. I’ve done a few photography gigs on my own, but nothing steady. Nothing that can amount to a career. Maybe Henry was right; maybe photography should be a hobby or a side gig, and not my career.
“What else is new with you?” I ask, desperately wanting to change the subject. Again.
“Well,” Callie says, launching into a story about one of the players on the team who landed in her office the other week and whose social media she had to help clean up.
Eventually, we hang up, after I promise to keep an open mind about things with Weston and to text her after the party and let her know how it went.
I promised because I knew it was the only way she’d let the subject go, not because I actually do plan to keep an open mind about Weston.
Because there’s no way he feels remotely the same way about me as I do about him.
I know we cleared the weird air between us and that he isn’t annoyed by me.
But I don’t think he likes me as anything more than Holt’s little sister.
Then again, he did agree to be my fake fiancé, and he did share his beer with me last night.
He’s just being nice, right? That’s the way he is.
At least that’s what I tell myself, because there’s no way this thing with Weston and I will ever be more than a fake engagement that lasts for a few hours.