“Was there a compliment somewhere in there that I missed?” I ask dryly.
He rolls his eyes. “You look fit, as the Brits would say. Take the compliment, Dornan.”
A deep heat blossoms in the bottom of my abdomen, then spreads until my entire body is lit up like a match. Oh no. If I can feel the flush on my cheeks then there’s no doubt he can see it.
No.Nope. I refuse to accept that Damian Navarro of all people is making me blush. Maybe I’m having an allergic reaction? Yeah, that must be it. An allergic reaction to bullshit.
“Let’s just…go to Izzy’s,” I grumble, dipping my head as I brush past him so he won’t see my face. “But please refrain from referring to yourself in the third person moving forward.”
I glimpse Damian’s tall form out of the corner of my eye as he falls into step beside me. “Okay, but only if you promise to smile at least once during our date. Arealone this time. I can’t have this looking like a hostage situation.”
I consider telling him to take that smile and shove it up his billion-dollar ass, but ultimately decide this whole thing will be far less painful (and way less tragic) if I just swallow my pride and agree.
But because I’m me, and Damian is the human embodiment of a bag of shit, I, of course, can’t do that without first making my displeasure known.
So, I huff out a disgruntled breath, and only then do I begrudgingly say, “Deal.”
It’s another beautiful, warm sunny day, so we sit outside at Izzy’s. The fact that doing so means we’re out in the open and more visible for the masses to see is just a bonus.
We settle at a table as far from listening ears as possible, though stay in sight of prying eyes—this will work best if we’re seen and not heard, at least until we get our story straight. Or a bit straighter than the crooked mess it is at the moment. Damian, for all his fuckboy ways, plays the part of a gentleman well. He pulls out my seat, pays for my coffee, gives me his coat when a breeze blows through and I shiver. He even buys me a slice of lemon cake completely unprompted, which is absolutely to die for.
We only have an hour until my next class and Damian’s first lecture of the day (so he says, though I have a sneaking suspicion that’s not entirely true, and he skipped his morning seminar just so he could come harass me), so we decide to spend that time pretending to get to know one another…by actually getting to know one another, but only a little and only on the surface. We agreed as soon as we sat down: nothing personal. Nothing too deep. Only the superficial shit that people should probably know about their significant others. Like blood type. And where one stands on the topic of pineapple on pizza.
We discuss favorite colors (green for me, dark blue for the fuckboy) and favorite foods (mine are tacos, without a doubt, and Damian’s is his abuela’s“it should really be famous” tres leches cake) before moving on to favorite movies. Mine will forever beGood Will Hunting—what can I say, I relate to the whole awkward math genius thing—and, questionably,Damian’s is apparentlyTwilight, though I sincerely hope he was joking. I’ve only seen theTwilightmovies once—Gina, who is a self-proclaimed Twihard, made me watch them with her when I was in high school—and let’s just say, the character I related to the most was Charlie. I wanted to see him use that shotgun.
Now, we’ve shifted to the topic of friends, and I really wish we were talking about Bella and Edward’s vampire baby instead.
“Ronnie Hayes…” Damian takes a sip of his coffee, his face a mask of contemplation. “The name rings a bell, though I can’t place her. Have I smashed her before?”
I grimace. “No, you have not ‘smashed’ my best friend.”
Damian’s eyebrows reach for his hairline. “Statistically, that seems unlikely given how much pussy I get at this school, but I guess it’s not impossible.”
“Charming.” I sneer at his word choice, but he just shrugs as if to say,What? It’s the truth.I shake my head. “Statistical impossibility or not, you haven’t, and you never will,” I assure him.
That piques his curiosity. “What makes you say that? Is she into girls or something?”
I scoff. “Not that her sexuality has anything to do with why she wouldn’t touch you without a hazmat suit…but if you must know, she’s pan. And you are definitelynother type.”
“Devilishly handsome, you mean? Rich? Fantastic in bed? Baby, I’m everyone’s type.”
That smile I promised him almost tugs at my lips. I don’t want to give him the satisfaction, but damn if the thought of insulting him doesn’t bring me joy. In the world of Marie Kondo, the opportunity to knock Damian down a peg is one thing I would not dispose of. At the last second, I manage to keep my expression in check. “Sorry, she’s not really into fuckboys.”
Rather than take offense to my words, Damian counters, “Well, she’s not had a taste of this particular fuckboy. Maybe I’ll hit her up when this whole fake relationship is behind us.”
A smile once again threatens at the mental image of Damian hitting on Ronnie, and I almost cackle with delight. “You know what? I take it back. I wouldloveto see you shoot your shot with her. She would absolutely destroy you.”
“Is that a promise?” Damian purrs, a sly curve to his lips. “Wait, you do mean sexually, right?”
I shrug. “Emotionally. Mentally. I’ve seen her make a grown man cry?—”
He shudders. “Okay, okay, I get the picture. Do you have any other friends who aren’t psychos, Dornan, or is it just the one?”
I take a sip of my coffee, then set my cup back down on the table. “Well, there’s Andie. She’s less intense than Ronnie, though theyarerelated, albeit not genetically. They’re cousins. But she’s taken,” I warn him. “She has a boyfriend. Not that that’s stopped you before, I’m sure.” I mutter that last part under my breath. “He’s in my year, but you might know him. Eli Winslow? He’s rich like you, but the dickhead gene seems to have skipped over him.”
“As in the hotel chain Winslows?” Damian asks. “Yeah, I know of them. I’ve stayed at their hotels a few times. Nice places.”
“I wouldn’t know,” I admit, wrapping my hands around the cardboard cup, and relishing the heat seeping into my fingers. “If I could afford thousand-dollar hotel rooms, I wouldn’t have to fake date you, now would I?”
