Chapter 4 Our Mutual, Imaginary Katie #2
“So Katie was supposed to get married next week to this guy Tom—you don’t know Tom,” Lainey assured her.
The woman appeared relieved to have not forgotten him.
“I sent this guy…” Lainey stuck her thumb out at her unwitting accomplice.
“…out this morning to buy the gift, and you know me—a classic Aries—I immediately remove the price tag to wrap it when, this afternoon, I get a phone call. Get this: it’s Katie telling me that the wedding’s off. ”
“Really? What happened?” Our clerk friend leaned forward eagerly, because now our Katie, fictional or otherwise, was producing top-tier gossip.
Elliot was less amused. “Yes. Please share,” he murmured.
Lainey lowered her voice—out of respect for Katie. “He’s been cheating on her with her mother this whole time.”
“No!” she cried.
Elliot grimaced.
“Yes!” Lainey replied eagerly. “And she’s on the hook for this whole big wedding because his dad is, like, an ambassador to Liechtenstein or something and the fiancé…” She searched her brain for the cast list of her fictional melodrama. “Uh…”
“Tom,” Elliot provided.
Lainey eyed him gratefully. “Tom. Yes. Tom has diplomatic immunity.”
Our new friend furrowed her brow. “Is that a thing?”
“Apparently!”
“That’s so wild. I can’t believe it!”
“It almost sounds made up,” Elliot deadpanned.
Lainey cut a glance to Elliot. “Anyway…Everyone has to return the wedding gifts and give her the cash so she doesn’t go into debt after her fiancé’s devastating betrayal, but this dummy over here”—she elbowed Elliot, who bleated out a startled guffaw—“didn’t save the receipt.”
The girl blinked. “Oh…um…without a receipt I can only offer store credit.”
“Even for Katie?”
She didn’t budge.
“Okay.” Lainey made herself sound disappointed. “That’s probably fine. It might be nice for her to treat herself to a pillow sham when she’s forced to move in with her home-wrecking mother and her ex-fiancé-turned-stepdad.”
Elliot nearly choked.
“Okay, I…” Katie’s friend folded under the threat of such astonishingly bleak living arrangements. “I can probably make an exception. For friends and family.”
“Oh my god. You are the sweetest.” Lainey grabbed Elliot’s arm again as she imagined this fictional Aries woman she’d crafted would touch her boyfriend.
Perhaps the bicep squeeze was laying it on a bit thick, but Lainey didn’t know.
She was a Gemini, and Elliot’s arms were surprisingly muscular, something Lainey was discovering she really liked in real time. “Isn’t she the sweetest, babe?”
His lip twitched. “So sweet.”
Gina—Lainey finally learned her name when she logged into the system to make the return—handed her $87.77 in cash. As they walked toward the entrance, the two women made indefinite plans to grab drinks with the imaginary, jilted Katie.
Once they were both in the car, Lainey placed the crisp bills into her wallet.
“If you didn’t like the candlesticks, I would’ve given you the receipt to return them.”
Lainey didn’t glance at him as she reversed out of her spot.
“If we’d have given Gina the receipt, she would’ve put the eighty-seven bucks back on the gift card that I’m guessing you got from a concerned aunt who was hoping you’d use it to warm up what I suspect is a very cold and architectural American Psycho–style apartment. ”
Elliot didn’t respond immediately, but just as Lainey reached for the stereo, he covered her hand with his.
Something about the unexpected contact sent flutters through her stomach.
Elliot moved deliberately, and his eyes looked at her with intent.
Every single time. Lainey wasn’t used to being around men who seemed so sure of what they wanted from her, even though—in this instance—what he wanted from her was a second of peace.
Since the moment this man had asked for her number in the rain up until he showed up on her lawn, wanting nothing to do with her, Lainey had fantasized about seeing him again—how those large hands might touch her.
How they might gather up her face to press his mouth to hers.
What would it be like to be with Elliot?
To be wanted by him like that again? The thought exited her mind as quickly as it had entered, like a gasp of air.
“How did you know I used a gift card?” he asked, crashing her back to reality.
Lainey’s momentary disappointment that their physical contact hadn’t sent him into a similarly all-consuming daze downshifted into glee almost immediately, because if there was one thing Lainey loved above all else, it was being proven right.
“You drove over an hour to buy a gift that costs just under a hundred dollars for a woman you don’t like.
We passed an outlet mall to get here. There was literally no world in which you didn’t use a gift card to buy those candlesticks.
” She glanced over at him. “Hey, no judgment here. I’m not above regifting, but I have very little need for anything Pottery Barn has to offer, and I’m guessing the same goes for you, considering it’s mid-March and you’re only now getting around to spending your Christmas gift card.
So I just took your crappy, manipulative gift, and…
How did you put it before? I ‘worked it out to give us both what we wanted,’ ” she said, paraphrasing in the big, dumb man voice she reserved for all impressions of the opposite sex.
She kept her eyes on the road, feeling the press of his narrowed gaze against her temple.
“Is this a thing you do?” he asked. “Grift poor, innocent people for a quick eighty bucks?”
“Grift?” she balked. “Who am I grifting in this scenario? Pottery Barn? You? This was a victimless crime. You’re just mad that you tried to outmaneuver me, and I wasn’t so dazzled by a set of silver-plated candlesticks that I’d hand over my house.
The only person who got grifted was me, because you were too stingy to spend the entire gift card on your cheap tactic.
You have a plan for the other thirteen dollars, by the way? ”
His hands raked through his wavy hair and gripped at the roots for dear life. He was completely out of his depth. “I can’t believe my dream is being held hostage by a con woman. I’m in a waking nightmare.”
“Gil’s collection of lakeside shacks is your dream?” He looked over at her with palpable despair, and she found herself backpedaling. “I mean, there’s obviously soooo much potential there.”