14. Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fourteen
Will
In the kitchen, we pull up stools next to each other and enjoy our treats. I sip my iced latte, content with Lizzie’s choice of drink for me. She’d already made lattes for both of us before I even finished heating up the plate of cinnamon rolls.
She stirs her drink and glances down at her journal, reading over the notes. She starts to write something down but then scratches it out, saying in a sing-song voice, “Everybody makes mistakes. Everybody has those days.”
“Is that a song?” I ask, watching her and trying not to laugh.
“Did you just ask me that?” she asks, narrowing her eyes at me in that way she does so often. “As if you don’t know?”
“What?” I shake my head. “I really don’t know that song. I just assumed it was a song because you attempted to sing the words.”
She playfully hits my arm. “Attempted to sing the words? Wow. You are really trying me tonight, Darcy.”
I playfully tap her arm in return and ask, “Are you going to tell me the name of the song you attempted to sing or not?”
“It’s ‘Nobody’s Perfect’ by Hannah Montana, duh.”
I look at her, waiting for her to say she’s kidding. She doesn't. She looks completely serious. “Hannah Montana, as in Miley Cyrus’s character from that Disney Channel show from back in the day?”
She gasps, looking offended. “So you do know who Hannah Montana is?”
I laugh, almost choking on my latte as I take another sip. “She isn’t real. You know that, right?”
She glares at me. “Nobody asked for your pessimism about one of my childhood icons. And I bet you’re just trying to distract me from the point I was making. You do know who Hannah Montana is, which means you definitely probably watched it when it was airing on Disney Channel.”
“Okay, you got me there. I know the show, but I didn’t really watch the show. My sister did though. Our parents were a little strict, so we couldn’t watch anything outside of Disney and Nickelodeon. But I’m not as familiar with the songs from the show Hannah Montana.”
She takes a bite of her cinnamon roll, chewing and swallowing before she speaks. She’s sizing me up the whole time though.
“So you mean to tell me you’ve never listened to a Hannah Montana song or a Miley Cyrus song, for that matter, but you listen to the Jonas Brothers?”
I think it’s my turn to be shocked. I almost gasp, but instead I lean back a little and tilt my head at her. “I never told you that I listen to the Jonas Brothers.”
She rolls her eyes at me again for what feels like the millionth time today.
“You don’t have to tell me that you listen to the Jonas Brothers, Darcy. I can always hear it blasting through your headphones when you’re in full-on baking mode. It’s actually pretty funny to watch you floating around the kitchen bopping along to the Jo Bros.”
I fold my arms across my chest as she laughs at me. “Are you hating on the Jo Bros?”
She gawks at me, licking the icing off her fingers. I watch her do it, and for some reason I can’t look away. Then we lock eyes, and I quickly avert my gaze, taking another sip of my latte.
“Darcy, be for real. I love the Jonas Brothers. Back in the day and now. I just saw them in concert last year in Chicago.”
“No way!” I exclaim, geeking out a little. I clear my throat, and she giggles. I try to regain my composure. “I was there too! I went with my sister. We had front-row seats. It was amazing.”
She laughs again, and I almost feel self-conscious before I realize she’s not laughing at me. She’s laughing because she’s sharing this with me.
I let myself relax a little, usually feeling weird about sharing the things I love with other people for fear of being rejected or laughed at, especially as a Black twenty-something man who’s a Jonas Brothers fan.
I’m not shy, but I don’t have many people to bond over something like that with except for my sister.
Lizzie beams, saying, “I was up in the nosebleed section with my sisters, but I agree. It was absolutely amazing. I stood up the entire time and totally freaked out when they sang ‘Waffle House,’ ‘Year 3000’ and Burnin’ Up.’”
“Same!” I beam at her, reliving memories from the concert in my mind. “My sister was actually the girl Joe picked for ‘Backwards’ at that concert. If I let her, she’d literally find any reason to bring that up.”
Another gasp escapes Lizzie as she takes it all in.
“No way. I so wanted to be one of the girls they picked. I actually brought a sign to the show. I had it printed at the local drugstore, and since one of my favorite songs is ‘Burnin’ Up,’ the sign I made said, Sing Burnin’ Up for the Girl in the Red Dress.”
I have to ask. “So let me guess,” I interrupt. “You wore a red dress?”
“Obviously, Darcy.”
We’re laughing again before settling into a comfortable silence as we finish our cinnamon rolls and drinks. Then she picks up her pen, pulls her curls into a ponytail with the hair tie she’d been wearing on her wrist, and opens her journal again.
She taps the section she’d titled Romantic Partnership before looking over at me. “And how are we supposed to do this? For real?”
Her question brings me back to the reason we’re even sitting here. I’d rather sit here talking about music with her. I’d rather talk about anything else. But I realize we have some things we need to figure out.
I clear my throat and say, “Well, you mentioned before that we need boundaries and rules, so is there anything specific you’d like to set as a boundary or a rule?
I know I mentioned that we could do this for the rest of summer and break it off in the fall.
That way we could still work together and have some kind of partnership.
I could sell my half of the business back to you, and by then I’ll hopefully be back in my parents’ good graces and have enough money to open my bakery truck. ”
I’m amazed I was able to come up with this plan because, honestly, most of it had just been thoughts swimming around in my head instead of anything concrete.
But now that I’ve said it out loud again, I feel like this can actually work. I can see myself running my own bakery truck while still partnering with Lizzie to make sure she has baked goods for the cafe. It actually makes sense.
This way we can build up her business first and then naturally build up mine. I think it’s a win-win situation. I wish I’d thought of it sooner.
“Right,” Lizzie says, looking down at the paper. “Boundaries.” She’s quiet for a moment, thinking it over. Then she looks up at me. “Can I be honest?”
“Of course.”
“I really haven’t been in a relationship since Billie.
And that was years ago. I stopped dating because of how things ended between us.
After that, I was a bit traumatized. I decided to shift my focus to building my business, and ever since then I’ve just been...
well, working and not dating at all. I’m just letting you know that my experience level is... well... limited.”
I don’t laugh at her or ask any questions. I know it must have taken a lot for her to share that because even though we will be pretending, this is going to be personal. It’s not just a business deal anymore.
It’s something much bigger. I understand why the stakes are so high, and now that I know a little more about her dating history, I want to make sure I take that into account and be careful with her.
Not that I wasn’t going to be before. But thinking about this as one big plan to save both of us made it all seem so grand. Now I see it for what it really is. Two people working together. We have to make sure we set boundaries that keep us both on track and make sure nobody gets hurt.
I let her continue. “I don’t want to do a lot of the typical relationship things because I haven’t really done them in a long time, and when I do them, I want them to be special.
Which I know probably sounds ridiculous, but I don’t want us to kiss very often because I feel like if we overdo it, it’ll just be overkill.
I think kisses on the forehead and cheek are preferred.
And maybe a peck on the lips, if we both agree it’s okay, but we should use it sparingly. ”
Nodding in agreement, I say, “That’s fine. We can work with that. I promise I won’t try to make out with you.”
That earns me a laugh as she writes the rule down since we both agreed on it. Then she looks back up at me.
“Also, I think holding hands is really cute because it feels romantic without being overly obvious. And hugs are fine. And compliments. We should definitely compliment each other. I know that’s not something we do a lot, but we can work on it.
And I promise I’ll try to be a little less sarcastic with you, but I think we should probably keep a little sarcasm to keep things interesting. ”
Now it’s my turn to laugh. I nod in agreement again, and she writes that rule down too.
“Okay, Darcy. We should get our story straight about how we started dating. Because it’s coming out of nowhere. We were literally just with our friends the other day, and I made it clear that the fake dating thing was a joke. So we have to pull this off without anybody suspecting anything.”
“Agreed.”
Lizzie taps the pen on the counter, before asking, “What if we tell everyone we’ve been friends for a while, and since we work together, we’ve been spending a lot of time together?
Then one night, after bonding over our love of cinnamon rolls, lattes, and the Jonas Brothers, we realized we’re kind of perfect for each other. ”
I push back a little, asking, “Do you think people are going to buy that story? Don’t you think we need something dramatic and intricate with a lot of details? Something we can rehearse where I have a line, then you have a line, and it all sounds romantic, like we’re in some crazy rom-com?”
She shakes her head, not agreeing with me on that one. “I think being realistic is the way to go, but maybe we should have a story that we both can remember.”
“Okay,” I say, willing to follow her lead. “We can use the story you came up with. You’re right. Simple is better.”