Page 5 of The Great Dating Fake Off
If it were anyone other than Benji Ferraro flailing in front of me, I’d skip after Sebastian and find out.
But it is Benji. And he could clearly use my support right now.
I tear the suction cup of my gaze off the window and return my attention to my friend.
“Found it,” Rosalina announces in triumph as she lifts her phone in the air. She begins typing with abandon. “Okay, I’m sending you the names of two women who are available on such short notice, their phone numbers, and what they look like in case you have a preference. What is your physical preference, anyway? For future setups?”
Benji levels her with a stare she can’t see because her eyes are glued to the screen. “Rosalina, I am begging you not to press send on those—”
His phone chimes.
He closes his eyes and exhales.
Benji has told me about his overeager family and why he mostly avoids them, but seeing them in action makes it crystal clear. If I watch this go on any longer and don’t intervene, I’ll be complicit in the crimes of meddling being committed here today.
Benji is the only best friend I’ve had. My social life before him was a barren wasteland. Now it’s a barren wasteland only five days a week, because we go out to dinner or play strategy board games the other two. When I had mono a few months after moving to Great River, he had groceries delivered to my house every three days like clockwork and kept me well stocked on memes and videos.
I take the long way to the counter, passing Rosalina in the process.
“Honey! You’re back!” I maneuver behind the counter and wind my arms around my friend’s torso. “How was your trip? Pick up anything good for the store?”
His body tenses as I rest my head on his arm. I can feel his cells individually rejecting my touch one at a time. “What?”
“Seventy-two hours is a long time to be apart. I missed you every last one of them.” I pivot my attention toward his family members, who are both staring at us with the intensity of the sun’s rays at the equator. “Sorry, was I interrupting something?”
Rosalina lowers her phone, her hazel eyes widening to cartoonish proportions. “Not at all. I don’t think we’ve met. I’m Rosalina, and that’s our mother Veronica with the book. And you are?”
“I’m his girlfriend Nora.” I bat my lashes their way. “Thank you both for picking him up. Ubers are so overpriced, and I was stuck here manning the store.”
“Girlfriend?” Rosalina gasps. “Why didn’t you say something? We’ve been going on and on about other women!”
All eyes are on Benji. Including mine, because I couldn’t exactly run this little plan by him ahead of time.
After a biblical length of time, his shoulders rise and fall. “You didn’t let me get a word in edgewise.”
Veronica, clutching Tempting the Duke against her chest, looks from me to Benji. In Italian, she asks, “Why did you hide the sea pearl?”
In English, he answers, “She speaks Italian.”
That’s half true. I speak butchered Italian, courtesy of that stretch of time my mother decided we should honor our heritage more and played a language learning course every time we rode in her car. We racked up a lot of miles. I conjugated a lot of verbs.
Rosalina gives Veronica an impatient look. “Sorry for my mother. It’s just that we didn’t realize Benji had a girlfriend. Why he wouldn’t at least tell his sister is beyond me”—she pauses to offer him a brief but pointed glare—“but this is so exciting.”
Benji speaks as if through gritted teeth. “Yes, yes, very exciting. Anyway—”
“Thank the good Lord.” Veronica uses the smutty paperback to make the sign of the cross, her voice choked with emotion. “We were so worried the wedding photos would be unbalanced. We thought he’d be the only single Ferraro, sullen in the back of every portrait.”
“You were worried,” Rosalina argues. “I couldn’t care less about that. I just wanted him to come and have a good time.” She moves her focus back to Benji, her tone the antithesis of a good time when she adds, “Since I never see you otherwise.”
“We aren’t going to this wedding to have a good time, Rosalina,” Veronica says, shuddering at the idea. “That ship sailed the minute you chose to marry a Mazzelli. We’re going to support you. And take damn good photos for the family wall with our extended relatives. And maybe teach the Mazzellis a thing or two about class and decency while we’re all forced to be together for the week—”
“Please, Ma,” Rosalina snaps. “You promised a truce, remember? To be on your best behavior, at least until after the wedding?”
Veronica mutters something that sounds like biting my tongue under her breath.
I pull back to look at Benji. “Wedding?”
He holds my eye for the first time since he rolled in, wordlessly communicating his loathing of the direction this conversation is taking. I’m not worried. Even if this bugs him, he’ll be back to sending me links to niche videos and articles he thinks will interest me in no time. His friend-love-language is I found you a thirty-seven-minute-long compilation of your favorite game shows from the 1970s.
