“What about your dad?”
“He’ll be away on business.”
I briefly glance in Taylor’s direction. He’s looking out the window, and he sounded a touch…sad.
This is unacceptable. Not because I want him to pretend to be happy-go-lucky around me—no, I want him to genuinely be happy.
“So, you really want to come over?” I ask slowly. “You’d enjoy that?”
“Yes.”
I don’t love the idea. Bringing a guy home is always stressful, even if, in this case, he’s not actually my boyfriend. There are too many opportunities for disaster; I can’t control exactly what will happen.
But if Taylor wants to spend the holiday with my family, well, he can.
“If you don’t want me to…” he begins.
“No, no. Of course you should come.”
If my parents and sister were away for the holidays, I’d be content to spend the time alone in my apartment, eating good food in peace. However, I recognize that not everyone is like me, which is probably for the best. The world wouldn’t function if everyone was the same.
Okay, my family is meeting my fake boyfriend next weekend. This is really happening.
That’s a problem for another day, though.
Tonight: bowling.
Because I haven’t been bowling in so long, I’ve forgotten the worst part of it. When we get to the bowling alley, someone asks for my shoe size, and I wonder what on earth is happening before I remember bowling shoes.
Right. You can’t wear your own shoes when you bowl. I don’t know if this is solely to avoid marking up the lanes, or if it’s supposed to help with the bowling itself, but I mumble my shoe size and someone hands me a pair.
We go to our assigned ten-pin lane, next to a group of white women who are older than my mother. Judging by the fact that two of them throw strikes, I’m guessing they’re better at this than I am.
I’ve been bowling a grand total of three times. The first was at a birthday party in elementary school, and that was five-pin with those inflatable things in the gutters. Bumper bowling, I think it’s called. In fact, the electronic score system looks like it hasn’t been updated since my elementary school bowling days, and it feels like we’ve stepped back in time.
“You want to go first?” Taylor gestures toward the lane.
“I’ll let you have that honor,” I say, as if I’m doing a kind thing rather than being scared of embarrassing myself.
I enter our names into the system, and he picks up a ball, gets into position, and…
Whoa. Why am I finding the image of Taylor wearing ugly bowling shoes sexy?
In addition to the bowling shoes—because of course he’s not bowling naked, and why is my brain now imagining naked bowling?—he’s also wearing jeans, a T-shirt, and a hoodie. More casual than our last “date.” I don’t understand what’s so attractive about this fairly ordinary outfit, yet I can’t help licking my lips.
Luckily, he’s not looking in my direction, so he doesn’t notice.
When he bowls again and gets a spare, I take a couple of action shots. Proof to post on Instagram later, not because I want to admire them.
“Helen?”
“Uh, what?” I sound guilty, like I hacked the old computer system and gave myself a strike. Unfortunately, I don’t have such skills.
“Your turn,” he says, laying a hand on my shoulder.
“Oh, right. Right.”
My first attempt at bowling is just as bad as I'd feared. My technique is shaky, to put it mildly, and I trip on my feet. The ball starts traveling down the lane, but it’s not going very fast, and it’s veering to the left at an alarming rate. It’s still a long way from the pins when it goes into the gutter.
