Page 49 of Pretend You're Mine
Anyway, we’d finally reached the front of my building.
We sat there for what seemed like a few minutes, as pointless as waiting was. Guess I didn’t want to go, to have the silence be final. But finally, I couldn’t take it anymore, when I went to open my door, Xander said, “What happens now?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “This whole time, I’ve been waiting to find out. I don’t want you to do what I want – I want you to do what you want.”
There, I’d set it. Now it was all for him to say what I hoped – or feared, most.
“And I want to do what’s best for you,” Xander said.
His lips were at me again, but I couldn’t take it this time. I pulled away, turning my head so he couldn’t see my tears. It shouldn’t matter, but I didn’t want him guilted into anything.
In the space that followed, he still wasn’t answering my question, and he wasn’t asking any of his either.
But when I opened the car door, he said, “What if you stayed over at my place tonight? Walter loves you.”
Yes, Walter. The little raggedy ball of fur who was on any one of his friends with a flurry of licks and excited barks; who barked at any intruders he felt didn’t belong. Yes, Walter knew what he wanted.
“Naomi?” He said.
“I can’t.”
My hand tightened on the door handle.
“Why not?” He said.
“You know why not. What would your family think if we actually made a real go of this?”
He only frowned, and I continued, “This can’t work. We can’t work. How will your family ever forgive us when they find out what happened? How will they forgive me? You’re their son, but I’m just a stranger who came in and agreed to this big fat horrible lie, and they didn’t even really approve of me in the first place.”
“I told you…”
“They love me,” I said, “Yeah, you told me. But not enough to stop them from trying to set you up with someone who’d probably be a better match.”
“Then screw them. They’re the whole problem in the first place.”
“And that’s just it.” Now I was facing him, tear-stained face be damned. “They’re not what started this whole thing.” Now it was bubbling to the surface, the horrible question I’d been holding in me for some time now. “Tell me, Xander, did you go into that bar looking for some sad girl to marry? Was all this premeditated, and I was just the girl who happened to be the one sitting beside you? Would you even have talked to me at all if you hadn’t planned to do this … this fake marriage?”
Xander’s face looked like a mask. “Is that what you’ve been thinking all this time? That I’m some soulless manipulator who’s just been using you from the start?”
“Have you?”
He had it all wrong, but I didn’t care now, I just wanted to know. I just wanted to know what this was, how it had begun, everything.
“What you really want to know Naomi?” His voice was raised, way louder than it needed to be since we were both in the car.
“I don’t know. All I know is, at Babylon I drank until I was drunk, and I had this stupid annoyance of my family’s upcoming visit rumbling in the back of my mind, wondering what the hell I could do. And then I met you, and a crazy night happened, and we woke up married.
“And we decided to run with it. I didn’t expect to actually care for you; I didn’t expect for any of this to have happened. I didn’t even want any of this to happen, but it did. And we’re here now. So if you want to know the truth of the matter, Naomi, then it’s this; I want things to work with you.” He reached out for my hand.
“I want to be with you, and not just for pretend. This isn’t just a show for me anymore.”
All of me ached to take that hand. To kiss him and to let that kiss be enough. Let practicalities fly to the wind, let us be caught up in the heat of each other’s bodies, in the passion of each other’s movements. But I’d done that. I’d been doing that, and all it had left me with was more heartbreak and uncertainty.
Although that didn’t mean I was going to pull away for good.
“I have to go now,” I said.
And I left, because it was true.
28
Xander
She’d wanted to say yes, to come with me. All the way home I played and replayed the final scene in the car in my head. She’d wanted to say yes, I knew she had. But she couldn’t let herself. And now that she hadn’t? Now that she left it like that?
