Chapter 3 #2
“We aren’t . . . weren’t, close, I mean, but then we were and with our degree program ending, we just realized we didn’t want to be apart, so . . . here we are.” She shrugs helplessly, no idea how to extricate herself from this. She needs to talk to Xavier, but there’s no way to do it right now.
Her sister pauses and shakes her head in disbelief, before sitting down on the edge of her unmade bed.
“So, how did he do it?” she asks.
Bianca wrinkles her nose. “Do what?”
“Are you kidding me? How did he propose?”
“Oh, right,” she says. God, she’s so bad at this. Lying was never a strength of hers. “I mean, it was last night after the party. We came back here and he just asked me.”
“That’s it?”
“Yeah, Lex, that’s it. Sorry, does it not live up to some kind of proposal standard I’m unaware of?”
And yeah, okay, she can admit it to herself. She’s still pissed off about last night, about how clearly her sister was able to get away this morning, but showing up to her party was just a no-go.
“No, I mean . . . no, of course not, but he didn’t think to get a photographer or have your family or friends . . .”
“Well, you were supposed to be there last night, but you all bailed.”
That, at least, makes her cringe. “Everyone?”
“Yeah, everyone, except a few people from school.”
“Shit, sorry.”
“How is Alec, by the way?”
“He’s okay, I think. No fever, but he just looked so sad and pathetic, I felt like I needed to stay home.
” Something inside Bianca softens. Her sister’s son was sick.
Of course she was going to stay home with him.
That’s just being a parent. “But if I knew you were getting engaged, I would have . . .”
And the anger is back, tenfold.
“What? Tried harder to make it, to celebrate the biggest accomplishment of my life?”
“Bianca, you know that’s not what I meant.”
“It’s exactly what you meant.”
“You’re right. I know you’re right. It was incredibly shitty to bail last night, but now we have two things to celebrate so you have to let me make it up to you.
Come over for dinner tonight. Alec’s going to Chris’s parents’ house for the weekend.
We can celebrate and get to know Xavier.
Please? Please, please, please, please . . .”
Raising her hands to make her sister stop, Bianca shakes her head, her rage settling and dissipating. She needs to end this now, while she can, before things get out of control. “I need to tell you something first.”
Lexi shakes her head firmly. “Tell me tonight at dinner. I’m gonna get out of your hair so you can, um, celebrate properly with that absolutely gorgeous man.
All this time we were so worried about you not finding someone because you were so focused on your career, but it all worked out for the best.”
And the anger is back, again. She passed her dissertation, she has her fucking doctorate, and the only thing her sister cares about is Xavier.
Fuck it.
She can pretend for a little bit longer.
“Let me just talk to Xavier about it before I say yes. He’s still kind of pissed at you all for not showing up last night.”
That part is the truth at least. He’d been as angry about it as she was, so much so he was the one who came up with the whole thing to begin with. She’d forgotten that until just now. The fengagement was his idea.
“Well, maybe if he’d reached out and told us what was going to happen . . .”
“Lex,” she says, all the warning she needs in her voice.
“Okay, okay, just try to convince him?”
“I will.” She nods toward the door, but Lexi hesitates.
“Before I go,” she wiggles her fingers, “can I see the ring?”
Bianca glances down to where she’s staring at her left hand, but it’s ringless.
“Oh, right,” she says, moving back into the bathroom. “I took it off to shower.”
“You took it off?” Lexi asks, following her.
“Yeah, I didn’t want it to catch in my hair.”
Another lie, obviously, but a believable one.
“Well, put it back on, I want to see!”
As soon as the ring is back on her finger, strange and foreign and a little bit heavier than she remembers, Lexi whips out her phone and snaps a picture.
“Wow, you really didn’t know he was gonna ask, did you?”
“How do you know?”
“Your nails. They look like crap.”
“Jesus, enough – get out or we’re not coming over, and delete that picture.”
“Okay, okay, I’m going. But I’m not deleting it!”
“Lexi!”
But it’s too late, she skips out of the bathroom, through to the bedroom and the hallway and out the door before Bianca can catch her.
“Fucking sisters.”
“I wouldn’t know.”
“Shit!”
Xavier, he’s still here. In her kitchen. Making breakfast?
“Sorry, didn’t mean to scare you.”
“Did you cook?”
He shrugs. “Just some eggs and toast.” Then he clears his throat roughly. “Your, um . . .” He trails off, lifting the spatula he’s used to move the scrambled eggs from the pan to plates to gesture at her, back and forth.
Glancing down, Bianca lets out a squeak. Her robe . . . wasn’t completely open, but there’d been quite a bit of her on display. She fumbles to hold it closed.
“Can we just pretend like the last fifteen minutes never happened?” she pleads. “I’m so sorry about my sister and literally whatever she said to you.”
He shrugs, as if Lexi hadn’t probably interrogated him to within an inch of his life in whatever time she had with him alone. “She was fine. Sorry if I, uh, overstepped with the breakfast thing. I just know that I do better after a night of drinking if I have a decent breakfast.”
“No, it’s fine – great, actually.” She’s not the kind of hungover where the thought of eating makes her want to throw up; instead she needs something to get her body running again.
His face lights up in the brightest smile she’s ever seen, and something about it just makes her even more aware of the weight of that ring on her finger.
“Did you, uh, tell her the truth?” he asks, putting their plates down at her kitchen table and sitting.
“No, I . . .” She trails off, sitting just like he did. “I was going to, but then she just pissed me off again, and before I knew it, I was just making more shit up about how you proposed when we got back last night.”
“That part’s kind of true,” he says with a rueful grin.
Letting out a soft laugh, Bianca agrees. “Yeah, but now she invited us over to her house for dinner to celebrate and I said I’d talk to you about it, but you definitely don’t have to go. I’ll figure something else out and then tell her it was just a stupid prank.”
“I mean, we can do that if you want, but I don’t mind going to dinner. Not gonna lie, I kind of want to see her face when you tell her. She clearly loves you, but you shouldn’t take people you love for granted and that’s what she did last night.”
The firm way he says it makes it sound completely rational. And he’s right. Lexi could have come last night, but she chose not to.
“My sister is a great cook, but I’ll ask her to make moussaka because there’s like a billion steps and that’ll be sufficient penance.”
“Revenge served hot?”
Bianca snorts. “Exactly. Okay, I’ll text her.”
It’s weirdly incredibly easy to just sit and have breakfast with him.
It’s been . . . a really long time since she’s had a man in her apartment, but he seems to fit in her space.
He’s sitting in front of the kitchen wall, which has a few plants lining the shelves, greenery hanging down.
His hair is damp from the shower and that scruff is still there, his Indiana Jones-vibe going strong.
They talk about his upcoming thesis defense, which she’s absolutely sure he’s going to ace.
He’s prepared and ready, just like she was.
And when they finish the eggs and toast and she teases him about the gross combination he made when he fished some peanut butter out of her cabinets to make a peanut butter and egg sandwich, he says he’s going to head back to his place to do some prepping for next week.
“Should I just meet you there tonight or I could pick you up and drive?” he asks, as she walks him to the door.
“Oh, yeah, sure, that’d be great. I’ll text you when Lexi lets me know what time and . . .”
“Yeah, okay, great,” he says and then just stands there for a second, shifting from one foot to the other before he shakes his head at . . . something, who knows what. “I’ll see you later, boss.”
Then he leans in and brushes a soft kiss to her cheek, that scruff she’s spent the last day admiring rough against her skin, but the contrast between it and the press of his mouth sends a shiver through her and thank God he’s gone, out the door and down her stairs before he notices how he left her completely dumbstruck and gaping with goosebumps spreading over every inch of her.
“Fuck, get a grip, Bianca,” she mutters to herself. “It was barely a kiss.”
She could go back and check her phone, answer the billion messages that rolled in overnight, but she doesn’t have the energy for it right now.
She’ll just leave it alone and eventually delete the thing once they come clean.
Instead, she needs a little mindless entertainment and maybe a nap and hanging out on the couch with Amelia for the rest of the day until dinner.
Despite the chaos she’s made of her life in the last twelve hours, she’s still a free woman for at least a little while, no more dissertation prep, no more studying.
Aside from a few more shifts at the university library, her schedule is blissfully empty.
She deserves to lounge for a while and she’s going to give in to that urge.
“What do you think, Meals? The Mummy , right?”
Amelia doesn’t look up from her food bowl that Xavier thought to fill as well because apparently he’s actually the perfect guy, but that’s good enough for her.
And then after two movies of watching Rick and Evie defeat evil, save the world, have a kid, save their kid and the world again, with a nap in between and more ignoring her texts (except one from Xavier where he asks how he should dress and she tells him that last night’s outfit would work fine, leaving out that he would absolutely look hot as hell in anything and he should never worry about what he wears, ever), she starts to get ready. He’ll be over soon.
She throws on a dress mostly because it’s easy and only one decision and that gives her enough time to take a blow-dry brush to her curls to smooth them into a long, shiny and nearly straight curtain over her shoulders and apply some light makeup, with a little bit of extra highlight under her eyes because a day of rest is not enough to get rid of those dark circles after a night like last night and she does not need Lexi’s opinion on those on top of having the wrong nails to show off an engagement ring.
Shit.
She’d taken it off again because this time she really didn’t want to get it tangled in her hair as she tackled the monstrosity it tends to become when she lets it air-dry and had almost forgotten to put it on again.
That would actually be hilarious, if she blew this thing because she forgot to wear her fake engagement ring.
She’s just coming out of the bathroom and sliding it back onto her finger when Amelia streaks toward the door, a sure sign someone is on the other side of it. She’s better than a guard dog.
Lifting the tiny cat into her arms, she opens the door and Xavier’s there, hands in his pockets, mouth open in shock and seemingly not even attempting to knock.
“Hey,” she says, but that’s all she’s capable of because holy shit he looks good, even better than last night if that’s possible.
He’s got on a collared shirt and dress pants instead of his usual jeans, and he shaved (which is just as good a look as the scruff, in a different way).
His soap and cologne drift over her senses, fresh like a cool breeze off the ocean with a hint of something woodsy underneath.
“Hey,” he says, running a hand through his hair, which, if she didn’t know better, he might have blown dry because it looks a little shinier than usual and not just resting wherever the wind decided to take it.
“Wow, you look . . .” He trails off, letting his gaze drop up and down, lingering just long enough to set a soft warmth over her skin.
She sets Amelia down as he closes the door behind him.
Biting her lip, she steps back to let him in. “Yeah, you too,” she manages to say, which is a massive understatement, but then he probably knows he always looks good.
“We match,” he says, laughing, motioning to the light blue color of her dress, which is incredibly similar to the blue of his shirt.
“Ha, well, all the better to fool them with, right? Isn’t that what engaged couples do? Dress similar so the pictures come out right?”
He shrugs, his brow furrowing in genuine puzzlement. “Honestly, I have no idea.”
“It feels like something engaged couples do, anyway.”
“Okay, you ready to go?”
“Before we go, we should probably get our story straight.”
“Our story?”
“Yeah, like of our relationship, because you met my sister for like five minutes so she didn’t have time to fully sink her claws in, but she will tonight.”
“Right,” he says, leaning his hip against her kitchen counter, and Amelia, who is definitely not allowed to be on the counter, hops up there and presses against his arm, begging for attention.
“Well, the first part is easy.” He absently scratches under her chin.
“We met at school, decided to start seeing each other and kept it quiet because people would talk – you know, the usual workplace-romance stuff.”
“Right.”
“And then we realized we couldn’t live without each other. Is that enough?”
Probably not, but . . . whatever, that’s basically what she told Lexi and it’s not like it needs to hold up beyond tonight.
Once everyone knows the truth, it won’t matter at all.