Chapter 8 #2
She’s looking at me all concerned now, already tensing up like she’s preparing for me to back out. “Because if you can’t do the full week, I understand—”
“No.” The word comes out way faster than I intended, almost too loud. “No, it’s fine. Totally fine. I’ve got the Olympic break, remember? Nothing but time.”
“You’re sure? Because that’s almost a full week and I know that’s—”
“I’m sure.”
And I am. Because yeah, this is way more than I bargained for. Way more complicated, way more time, way more opportunities for me to screw this up or say something stupid or let her see how much I actually like her.
But it’s also six nights. Six nights where she has to let me in. Six nights to prove I’m not just some guy hitting on her, where I’m not competing with her walls or her schedule or her determination to keep me at a distance.
Six nights feels like winning the lottery.
“Okay.” She looks relieved. “Thank you. I know this is a lot.”
“It’s not a lot.” Total lie. This is so much. “Tell me everything about this week?”
“My parents are going to ask you a lot of questions. They’re protective. Especially my dad.”
“I’m great with parents.”
“Are you though?”
“I’m charming, respectful, and I can talk sports with dads for hours. I’ll be fine.”
She looks skeptical but doesn’t argue. “What about you? What do I need to know about you?”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. Basic information. Literally anything that would come up in conversation if we were actually dating.”
Right. She knows almost nothing about me beyond the past month.
“I’m from Chicago originally. Moved around a lot for hockey, juniors in Canada, then drafted to Seattle three years ago.” I take a sip of coffee. “I have two younger sisters, both still in Chicago. My parents are divorced but friendly. My mom remarried, my dad didn’t. I’m close with all of them.”
“What else?”
“I don’t know. What else do you want to know?”
“Your first name.”
Shit. I was wondering when she’d bring that up again.
“Why do you want to know?”
“Because if we’re pretending to date, I should probably know your actual name. What am I supposed to tell people when they ask what my boyfriend’s name is?”
“Just call me Rod.”
She stares at me. “Rod.”
“Yep.”
“I’m not telling people my boyfriend’s name is Rod Rodriguez. That sounds like a porn star.”
I almost choke on my coffee, the liquid goes down wrong and makes me cough. “Wow. Okay.”
Her face turns bright red. “I didn’t mean, that came out wrong—”
“No, no, that was perfect actually.”
“I just meant it sounds fake. Like a made-up name.”
“Uh huh.” I’m trying so hard not to laugh at how flustered she is.
“Oh my god.” She pulls out her phone. “Fine. You know what? I’ll just look it up. The NHL has their rosters online.”
“Go for it.”
She’s typing on her phone, and I’m trying very hard not to laugh as I watch her pull up the Puckaneers roster page and scroll down to my name because I know exactly what it’s going to say.
“Rod Rodriguez,” she reads aloud, completely monotone.
“See? Told you.”
“Who did you pay to get it listed like this?” She looks up at me, genuinely annoyed now. “What is your actual first name?”
“That is my actual—”
“I will leave you at this airport.”
“No you won’t. You need me.”
“I will find someone else. There are probably dozens of guys in this terminal who would fly to Toronto with me.”
“But none of them would be as charming as me.”
“Rodriguez. I swear to god—”
“Okay, okay.” I hold up my hands in surrender. “How about this. You can call me RoRo. I’ll be RoRo, you’ll be JuJu. Couple nicknames.”
She looks at me like I just suggested we get matching face tattoos. “Those sound like poodle names.”
“Poodles are classy.”
“Poodles are ridiculous.”
“So are we, apparently.” I grin at her. “Come on. RoRo and JuJu. It’s cute.”
“It’s absolutely not cute.”
“You’re right. It’s adorable.”
“I’m going to get your name out of you this weekend and you’re going to have to deal with it.”
“Looking forward to it.” I finish my coffee. “But for the record, RoRo is growing on you. I can tell.”
“It’s really not.”
“Give it time.”
She shakes her head but I catch the tiniest hint of a smile before she hides it behind her coffee cup.
“Moving on. Anything else I should know?”
“You already know the important stuff. Figure skater, from Toronto, stressed-out overachiever with a perfect younger sister and parents who love her more than me.”
“They don’t love her more than you.”
“You haven’t met them.”
“I don’t have to. Parents don’t love the easy kid more. They just worry about them less. You’re—” I stop myself before I say something too honest. “You’re pretty great, JuJu.”
She looks away, but not before I see color rise in her cheeks. “We should head to the gate.”
“Yeah. Let’s go.”
At the gate, I check the time. Still twenty minutes before boarding. Juliette is looking at her phone, probably texting her sister or checking weather or doing whatever organized people do before flights.
When they call for boarding, I grab both our bags. “Ready?”
“As I’ll ever be.”
We board and I guide her to our seats in first class, my hand finding the small of her back. She still tenses slightly when I touch her, but less than before.
Progress.
“You do this all the time,” she says.
“Pretty much.”
“Must be nice.”
“It has its perks. But it’s better when you have someone to share it with.”
She looks at me, and for a second I think she’s going to call me out on the smooth line. But then she just shakes her head and looks out the window.
“Thank you,” she says quietly. “For the upgrade. And for all of this, really.”
The plane starts taxiing and she grips the armrest, her knuckles going white.
I reach over without thinking and cover her hand with mine. “Hey. It’s going to be fine. The whole weekend. We’ve got this.”
She doesn’t pull away, just looks down at our hands, then back up at me. “You’re really confident about this.”
“I’m confident about a lot of things.” I squeeze her hand once, then force myself to let go even though I don’t want to. “But mostly I’m confident that your ex is going to take one look at us together and realize he made the biggest mistake of his life.”
“And if he doesn’t?”
“Then he’s an even bigger idiot than I thought. But either way, you’re not going through this alone. That’s the important part.”
She holds my gaze for a long moment and something shifts in her expression. Not quite trust, but close. Maybe the beginning of it.
“Okay,” she says. “Let’s do this.”
The plane takes off and I lean back in my seat, feeling more awake than I have in months.
This is happening. I’m flying to Toronto with Juliette Chastain to pretend to be her boyfriend for an entire week. Six nights. I have no idea what I’m doing, no real plan beyond “make her ex jealous and don’t screw this up and maybe don’t let her see how completely gone you are for her.”
But I don’t care.
I’ve been trying to get her attention for five months. Now I have an entire week of her attention.