He needs me now, so I’ll be her.
No one really wants to go to their reunion. It’s always a competition, always an effort to prove that you’re a success. But in the case of my best friend and business partner, the stakes are so much higher.
To the town he came from money means nothing. You could be a billionaire and still they’d roll their eyes. Success to them means a steady relationship and a growing family and so he needed someone to be on his arm.
So I became her, for him. I became a beautiful woman to join him for his reunion. Because we’re partners in business and best friends in life, so why wouldn’t I want him to be a happy success to the people he left behind?
But things are different when we’re here. The stakes are so much higher and the pressure so much more intense than I could have imagined. In order to play the game we have to sell the lie, and that means fooling everyone into believing I love him.
And it is love that I feel, but only for a friend. It’s the love and deep trust of a long relationship and nothing more, right?
When I’m in his arms, when I’m by his side, when I’m smiling at everyone and telling them how sweet it is. It’s all just a part of the game.
I don’t really love him. I can’t because he can’t love me.
I don’t really need him, right?
Excerpt
“It really is beautiful here,” he remarked, but I stared only at him.
“Yeah,” I said breathless, “It is.”
And for a moment that passed in tension for me I watched him take in this place and got this sense of him, of him belonging. Carter had always seemed a little out of place in the city, a man who obviously wasn’t from there and was used to operating on a level a step out of pace, one slower. He’d made do and he’d adjusted but he forgot from time to time and it was obvious that it was a conscious decision he had to come up with.
But up here where the pace was slower it seemed to put him at ease. And when he sat in repose like this, taking in the sights of a mountain he clearly loved so much, I couldn’t help but feel an ache like I was losing something that I didn’t want to let go of.
“Carter,” I asked him, not certain where I would draw the line, “What do you think happens here?”
He shrugged, “I don’t know. Like I said, I was never invited.”
“But you can take a guess, right? You’re not dumb, even if you are a little slow. You’ll get there in time.”
“Drinking,” he said indifferently, “Probably more than that. Probably making promises that they’ll get off the mountain and then never following through with it. Probably… probably a lot of things that go nowhere fast.”
I swallowed hard, sitting up and spinning around so I was in front of him crouched and tense like a cat. I waited until his eyes turned on me, looking at me curiously as if I was a puzzle he hadn’t yet figured out.
“Would you have wanted to come here?” I asked him.
He took a while but he nodded, adding the caveat that, “I was never invited.”
“But you’re invited now,” I pointed out, “I mean everyone has clearly put me in the box of being a bad influence, so I invite you and now I ask you the question that should have been asked long ago. Carter Graham, what do you want to do?”
His eyes said one thing. His body said the same. Every part of him spoke of his desire, all but his lips which spoke nothing but lies.
“We should go.”
I shook my head, “I’m not ready yet.”
“Xandy,” he said warningly as I crawled to close the space between us, “What are you doing?”
“Improvising,” I informed him as my hands ran up to the lapels of his coat and I pulled myself closer, “And learning. Because if I’m supposed to play your girlfriend, shouldn’t I know what it’s like to be with you properly.”