Chapter 9 #2
Addison felt dizzy. “Sorry,” she said. “Oh my gosh. This is so cool. I’m going to send this to all my friends.”
She wanted to say no, don’t do that, because she didn’t want this to get around, but that was the exact opposite of what they wanted. They wanted it to get around, it was just so counterintuitive that she would want it to be spread around that she was out on a date with Walker.
It was like some old, terrible fear that rose up inside of her chest. Something she couldn’t really readily explain.
But something that felt very real all the same.
They got led to their table, in the center of the restaurant, where they would be very visible, and Walker lowered his head, his lips touching her ear, making her jump. “You are hating this.”
Then he pulled her chair out for her, and she sat, robotically.
She could feel all eyes in the restaurant on them.
The anonymity that they’d experienced out on the street where everybody was distracted melted away.
Everyone in the restaurant was looking at them now.
Everyone.
She hadn’t fully realized that they would be on display like this, and she should have. She had agreed to all this without practically taking the idea and imagining running through it in the real world.
She had agreed to this without deeply pondering the implications.
Because they were going to have to make conversation like they knew each other a hell of a lot better than they did.
They were going to have to make conversation like they were comfortable with each other. Like they had spent the last two weeks in each other’s presence.
As if he was reading her mind, he reached across the table and put his hand over hers.
She could feel the color bleeding into her cheeks, and she tried so hard to keep from looking like she was losing her mind.
Tried to look like this was inevitable, like it was something she expected. A normal gesture, innocent, even, because the story was that they had immediately sparked in attraction, and slept together after he had carried her away from the wedding.
“You look beautiful tonight,” he said, smiling. Too smooth. All of it was too smooth. She needed to do something to get her control back in this moment, because she was losing it, completely.
People were whispering about them, she was so, so aware of it, and she didn’t want to look around the room too keenly, didn’t want to look like they wanted to see who was seeing them, because that would make it look more like they had engineered this than it should.
Hilarious that she would be annoyed that it might look like they were doing exactly what they were doing. But the whole point of it was to fake date. So people couldn’t know that it was fake.
“Thank you. You look incredibly handsome.” That was actually true, but she would never normally compliment him.
She had spent most of her life, in fact, hoping that he never knew how handsome she thought he was.
But now she didn’t have to do that. This was her chance, she supposed. Her chance to actually be somewhat authentic with him.
Not that she wanted to confess feelings for him, she didn’t have feelings for him. It wasn’t that. It was more…
Her worst nightmare when she had been younger was anyone knowing that she had found Walker attractive.
It was why she had pushed him away. It was why she had been so mean to him. Why she had agreed to fake ask him to prom when Alan had goaded her into it, because she had been so desperate to throw him off the scent.
Maybe that was the big problem now. It wasn’t so much that she was stepping out with Walker in the wreckage of her wedding, but the fact that she was stepping out with him at all.
Because it was like exposing this secret that she had kept for so long.
But it wouldn’t be exposed, not to him, because he thought that she was just playing a game. And everyone in town needed to buy into it, so it would be completing the objective.
All she had to do was think of all the things that she had felt back in high school, and say them now.
She felt bolstered by that, for some reason. Or maybe she was having a manic episode, it was really difficult to say. Because the last couple of weeks had felt like a hallucination, or some kind of mental health break, so who could say in the end.
But it didn’t matter right now. Right now, what she had to do was channel 15-year-old Addison, and let her say everything that she had ever wanted to.
“You always look handsome, though,” she said, smiling.
And suddenly, it was like she had found some channel into herself, a part of herself that she had repressed for a very, very long time.
“That’s always been the case. Even in high school. Especially in high school. That football uniform… Please. That did things to me.”
He had gone still. Like a predator who was watching the movement of his prey, but who seemed a little bit surprised by that prey.
“Really?”
“Really. Half the time when I saw you, I couldn’t even think of what to say.”
“Shocking. Because you always had plenty to say.”
“I suppose so. But it was all me trying to throw you off the scent. Nobody wants to have an unrequited crush.”
“An unrequited crush? Is that what you had? What a trial that must’ve been for you.”
His voice was hushed, practically a murmur, and his blue eyes were hot. No one would be able to hear exactly what he was saying; they would only be able to hear his voice, low and smooth, so they would have no idea what exactly he was saying to her.
She felt like she was caught. Like she had walked into some kind of a trap, and now she was in danger.
“It’s fine. What teenager has an experience like that?”
“Most of them, I assume. How terrible for you to have been lost in the throes of your desire for me.”
She smiled tightly. “It was.”
“Is that why you didn’t go to prom with me?”
She looked down, tapped her finger against her fork, and prayed for the waiter to appear.
He didn’t.
“No,” she said quickly. “I did that because I was trying to prove that I didn’t like you.”
That was when the waiter graciously appeared, asking if they’d had a chance to look at the wine list. They hadn’t, but she told Walker that he could order, and he did, and quickly, without even looking.
He was an expert on local wines, which, she had discovered during the planning of the wedding.
Because he had a great many relationships with local wineries, that allowed them to serve wines at their ranch for a good price.
They also sold whole bottles from local vineyards in the shop at the resort.
Those relationships were probably all because of Walker.
He was a relationships guy. She was the one who had never had one with him.
And she was dangerously close to telling him why.
Because he was probably going to figure out that she was telling the truth.
If she wasn’t careful, he was definitely going to figure that out.
“Tell me more,” he said.
“We probably need to have a glance at the menu.”
She looked down at the menu and knew without having to think too deeply about it that she was going to get the ravioli, whatever the special ravioli was, because it was what she always wanted.
Lana had handmade pasta and an herb garden in the back of the restaurant, and anything that they served was a revelation. Usually, when she came, she filmed it and put it up on her social media so that she could help get more bodies into the restaurant, but that wasn’t happening today.
“Glance away,” he said.
The waiter returned promptly and gave them a basket of bread and a little dish of olive oil and vinegar.
Walker ordered a steak with roasted vegetables on the side and mashed potatoes, while she got her ravioli and a garden salad.
And with all of that out of the way, she could no longer avoid his questioning.
But she was going to make him ask the question again.
“Tell me,” he said. “Is that why?”
“Now you seem to be the one begging,” she said, looking back down at the table.
Then she found her chin being lifted. He gripped it with his thumb and his forefinger, tilted her face up so that she was meeting his gaze.
“That’s not begging.” He was smiling, and nobody around them would be able to feel the danger, the undercurrent beneath his words, but she could feel it. The warning.
They definitely looked cozy, physical, and they were supposed to, she knew.
But no one would have any idea of the game that was actually being played here.
And what game is that?
She didn’t want to answer that internal question.
“It seemed like it,” she said, her words more hushed than she would like. Because it gave him way too much information on what he was doing to her.
“No. But we can have a primer on that later if you would like.” He dropped his hand then. “How come you don’t want to tell me?”
“I don’t like thinking about it. And I am sorry. I almost told you that earlier today. But… I’m so used to just not acknowledging that. And not thinking about what a terrible thing it was. I just figured that you never thought about it again.”
“You left me standing outside the gym with a corsage that matched your dress, while you walked in with a different date.”
Everyone liked me…
No, they hadn’t, and there were good reasons for it.
She’d blocked out some of the stupid, mean things she’d done because they hadn’t felt mean at the time.
She’d only thought of how it touched her circle.
What it made those people think of her. If she could prove that she was uninterested in Walker, or in certain groups and certain activities then it built a case for her being her father’s daughter, not her mother’s.
She’d heard people say so many times that bullies were only compensating for their insecurities, but she’d never thought of herself as a bully so she’d nodded along and filed it away.
She might not have been punching people and taking their lunch money, but she’d worn the cloak of queen bee, and she’d used her status to make herself feel big. By making others feel small.
“I didn’t see you.” She couldn’t bring herself to look at him now.
She hadn’t seen herself.