Chapter Eighteen
Evie
It had been three days since Evie had heard from Jonah. They’d agreed to move forward with this pretend relationship arrangement, but neither had made the next move. It was as if they’d been in a holding pattern, waiting for the other to step up. Even though Evie knew she was the one who’d asked for the arrangement, a part of her still wanted him to be the one to make the first move. What? It was a woman’s prerogative.
Just when she was about ready to give in last night, he’d called and asked her out. Not out like on a date out, but out like going to the mall to buy some new suits. He mentioned something about grabbing a bite to eat after, but she claimed that she had to close the shop—then immediately called Julie to let her know she’d be coming in on her day off to close the shop.
“Play it cool, Evie,” she whispered to herself. But cool had never been her strong suit. Case in point, she was standing on Jonah’s porch ten minutes early because the second she’d hung up the phone last night her internal countdown clock activated.
The plan was to meet at eleven, but she’d been ready at ten thirty, and instead of playing another round of Relationship Twenty Questions with her mom or risk Moira interrogating Jonah when he showed up, Evie decided to walk next door. She thought that being proactive and seeing him on her terms would fill her with confidence, but as she lifted her hand to knock on the door her heart beat abnormally.
“Oh for God’s sake, you’re just picking out clothes together, not engaging in a secret affair,” she mumbled under her breath. But the words secret and affair had chaos exploding through her chest.
Chin up, she gave the door a quick rap with her knuckles and waited.
And waited. Until she began to regret her early arrival. Not to mention her sundress, which had taken her twenty minutes to pick out, or her hair and makeup that she had spent the better part of an hour styling.
All for a ClickByte video, she reminded herself, but her brain called bullshit on the statement. This was a bad idea. An incredibly stupid, epically ludicrous, baddest bad idea ever. Which was why she turned to make a stealth escape. Only the door swung open.
Evie froze mid-step.
“Hey, Mrs. G,” Ryan said, and Evie closed her eyes, silently berating herself for her lack of patience.
The idea of a faux date had her stomach in knots. Running into Ryan while she was dressed like a PTA mom on the prowl had her questioning her sanity. But it was too late to abort now.
Plastering a casual smile on her face, she turned. “Hey there, Ryan.”
The teen was dressed in a pair of athletic shorts, a shirt with the high school football team’s logo, and a ballcap. He had car keys in his hand and a gym bag slung over his shoulder with an expression that said she’d obliterated the “good” right out of his morning.
His eyes darted around, discomfort tightened his frame, and a suffocating awkwardness settled around them both.
Until this moment, there’d never been an awkward moment between them. Evie had read him stories under sheet-forts and sewn him a Batman cape for Halloween. She’d driven him to and from school thousands of times and he’d spent as much time at Evie’s house as his own over the years. But it seemed within the span of a few seconds a gap the size of the Grand Canyon had opened up between them.
She wasn’t sure if Jonah had told Ryan about their “relationship” or if he’d learned about it from Camila, or worse—from ClickByte—but it was painfully clear that he knew. And the change in status quo unsettled him.
Evie suddenly regretted talking to Moira about her dinner with Jonah. Especially in such a public setting. She’d never imagined that it would be filmed, but she should have counted on Camila telling Ryan everything. She only hoped that Jonah had the conversation with his son before the bomb was dropped.
“You okay?” Evie asked and Ryan shrugged, his gaze locked on his cleated feet. Evie took a small step forward and gentled her voice. “It’s fine if you say no.”
Ryan met her gaze, and there was so much betrayal and misery in them she considered just telling him the truth, blaming it all on desperation and insanity, but he spoke before she could.
“Then, no,” he said. “I’m not.”
“Is there anything I can do to make this any better?”
“Not unless you want to break up with my dad. Because this is super awkward.”
“It doesn’t have to be,” she said quietly, because whether it was her or some other woman, Jonah was eventually going to start dating. Perhaps it would have been better, though, if that woman wasn’t one of Ryan’s mom’s friends.
“But it is. Between you guys, my grades, Coach threatening to bench me, and my dad maybe starting a new job, my whole life is one big question mark.”
Evie didn’t know how she felt about being a part of that question mark for Ryan. The poor kid had enough uncertainty in his life as it was.
Just like Camila.
What had she done? It seemed so simple. A few public dates, maybe a kiss or two, a handful of ClickByte videos. She’d never considered just how deeply it might affect her relationship with Ryan or Jonah’s relationship with Camila.
“No matter what’s going on between your dad and I, we will always be here for you.”
His gaze landed on someone behind Evie and a tingling sensation tickled her neck. Evie turned around and her mouth went dry.
Jonah was standing at the bottom of the steps in a blue T-shirt that was in a losing battle with his biceps. Then there was his face—clean-shaven and handsome as hell. Even though he had on dark sunglasses she knew his eyes would be intense.
Concerned for his son.
“Your girlfriend is here,” Ryan said, then blew back into the house. “Later.”
She waited until he’d started up the car before she said, “I should have waited for you at home. I’m afraid I’ve just made everything worse,” she admitted. “I’m really sorry. Maybe we should forget the whole thing.”
Jonah removed his sunglasses and there was that look—the same one from the night of the meeting. Uncertainty. “Do you want to?”
“Well, maybe we should,” she snapped, unsure why she was suddenly so angry. “With the way that just fell so easily from your tongue, like this hasn’t just thrown our lives into upheaval—our families’ lives! My concern was a sincere one, because of my fear of hurting our kids, and you give me some flippant question back.”
“It wasn’t flippant.” His words were loaded with ridicule. “That was me being pissed that my kid found out through the grapevine. Not even from Camila, but Dexter told him after practice in front of his teammates. And I guess Camila is avoiding him at school. This whole thing has blown up.”
“I am so sorry.”
“Sorry doesn’t fix jack shit.” She heard bitterness spill over into his voice and her heart shrank.
Guilt mixed with some of her anger. Her voice barely above a whisper, she said, “Then we call it off. I tell everyone it was my idea, which it was. And that I dragged you into it.”
When he spoke, his voice was soft and clear. “I would never let you take the fall. Plus I came to you. I got you tied up in this mess.”
“We both knew what we were getting into.”
“Honestly, this is embarrassing, but the person I’m really angry at is myself. I just heard back from Kyle.” She could almost see the fresh battle scars on his ego. “I didn’t get the job. He said they just couldn’t take a chance on a guy who hasn’t been in the business for the past two years.”
Before Evie knew what she was doing, she just stepped down into his arms and wrapped him in a hug. To her surprise, he hugged her back, resting his jaw on the top of her head. They stood like that for a good moment or two.
It was when the embrace started to sizzle that she backed away and cleared her throat. “So what do you want to do? What is the best step forward for you?”
“I need your help, Evie. If I’m going to get Way potty trained, look like the candidate of the year, and fix up this yard, I need you.”
Suddenly his yard and her nagging seemed so petty. She had no idea what he had been struggling with, and while she still wanted it completed before her mom’s party, it didn’t mean she couldn’t be neighborly and help him accomplish it.
“I don’t want to back out of the deal.”
He looked down at her. “Neither do I.”
She was shocked at the wave of relief that washed over her at his comment. She could attribute it to the ClickByte fiasco, or the humiliation that would follow getting dumped days after she’d told all of America they were dating. But neither of those reasons could explain away the hum that vibrated through her body over the way he was looking at her. Like he wanted to know what she had on under her dress.
“I really should have checked with you about how and when we told the kids.”
“And deny the public at large an opportunity to bet on our sex life?” he said with a mega-watt smile. “Did you know that the majority of America thinks I can get into your pants in just two dates?”
“Good thing this is all pretend,” she said, even though the tension between them was real as hell. By the smirk on his face, he knew it, too.
Only it wasn’t chemistry that had her worried, it was connection. Specifically, the connection that was forming between them. A connection that was clearly having an adverse effect on the kids.
She crossed her arms over her chest and looked him up and down. “So I guess you ditched the lumberjack look?”
“You didn’t mind the lumberjack look the other day.” He ran a hand down his jaw. “But if you like the lumberjack, he’s only three days away.”
“I think your new clients will prefer clean-shaven. Everyone knows that lumberjacks spend their days playing with their wood.”
“Everyone knows that wood needs regular maintenance. It’s a lonely job but someone’s got to do it,” he said with a grin and the image alone had her tongue turning to dust. “I’m taking applications.”
“Maybe you should post on ClickByte.”