Page 12 of The Faking Game
That makes me chuckle. “Right, and you left him because I told you to, did you? You have never had a problem being yourself around me. If he was the love of your life, you’d still be in there. Or the two of you lovebirds would be on the phone all night after this. I’d be a good villain to bond over.”
“Fine, so maybe he wasn’t all that fun. Or nice,” she says. “But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t still important to me.”
“I don’t see how practicing dating can help you actually find a relationship.”
“No, I suppose you wouldn’t.” She looks past me, at the people in the distance. Her expression is shuttered. “Is this the way to disrupt West Calloway’s day, then? Go on a date that he hasn’t been informed about beforehand?”
“Don’t abuse it, trouble.”
“Stop calling me that.” Her eyes flash again.
“That’s what you’ve been these last few days.”
“Only because you’re overly concerned with what I’m doing and who I’m with.” She walks past me to the car and stops by the door. “Are you going to drive me home?”
The annoyed expectation in her voice makes my lip twitch again. “If you stop going on dates with random guys.”
“I promise,” she says, and tilts her head up like a queen without a court, “to stop going on dates withrandomguys. The next guy, I’ll make sure your team vets. How about that?”
I walk past her and pull open the door to her car. The idea of her with other guys, other dates, makes the smile die on my lips. But I just gesture for her to enter the car.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” she says, and slides into the darkness of the car.
Because itshouldbe a yes, even if I feel like it’s ahell no.
CHAPTER5
NORA
I’m not defeated the next day.
I might have lost the battle, but not the war. And there’s no denying that West showing up saved me from a date that had turned sour almost as soon as I sat down. He started by telling me about his tech job, about cryptocurrencies and how much he could bench, before slipping into conversation about how his ex was a model, too.
I hadn’t gotten that impression from our chat. Then again, I’d only matched with him a few days prior, and what I need is practice in person. Not texting.
It’s easy to be nice in texts. It’s harder to be authentic in person.
Zeina and I have tried to trace where my issues started in our sessions.
When my friends and classmates were bubbly and excited about boys, and I was too, until I tried it and found their wants and needs like a cage that closed around me. It was like a dance that took too much energy and drowned out my own burgeoning feelings of excitement for a boy.
When I was sixteen, I was at a party in Paris. My friend’s older brother was cute, and we’d been talking all night about nothing and everything. Mostly teenage bluster and a few fumbling jokes.
He took my hand and pulled me into his room on the second floor, and I ended up on his couch, watching him put on some music.
He locked the door behind us.
He wasn’t a bad kid. Only a year older than me. We kissed for a long time, wet and warm and sort of nice, even though he tasted like whiskey. But when I pulled back with a giggle, his eyes were hot with desire.
He looked at me like I held the entire world in my hands. I could make or break his night.
If I made the wrong move, I would disappoint him. And disappointing people felt like dying. With parents like mine, it was the most terrible thing that could happen to me as a kid, and the fear reared its ugly head again.
Any excitement or desire I felt died right then. Withered behind the expectations and the pressure and the words that couldn’t, wouldn’t, form on my tongue.How about we wait? How about we go slower? How about…
He went to the bathroom, and I snuck out through his window onto the terrace. Left the party entirely and called a taxi to take me home. Then I snuck back into the apartment in the 16th arrondissement that I shared with my mother and fell asleep with a pounding heart.
I said no a lot after that.
