"I wasn't paying attention. When she gave me the mints," I added, as if that was important. "I was worried about garlic and offending the wedding dress lady."
He paused, then pointed the toast crust at me. "The…wedding dress lady?"
"Yeah. Janet had me trying on dresses."
Jude stared at me for a beat before swallowing. "Find anything you like?"
"Not really. It was just to give Janet the bridal shop moment she wanted. I've already done the big white dress thing."
"Yeah. I know." He pushed his glasses up his nose. "I was there, Saunders."
I reached for my tea. Sadly, I couldn't climb all the way into the mug and hide there until the sun extinguished itself.
"Not so fearless today, are you?"
I tore myself away from the mug and met his gaze. I didn't know if it was the headache or the ecstasy hangover or my bridge troll turning me inside out but I asked, "Is that really what you want to discuss right now? My wedding day? Because I think we need to talk about Janet's suspicions about us if we want the party tonight to go well."
He leaned back in the chair, an arm banded over his chest as he polished off the last of my toast. "Tell me about these suspicions."
I gave him an overview of her offhanded comments from yesterday, the quick barbs about him not joining me for Emme's wedding next weekend and the trap I fell into when mentioning a summer wedding. Now that I'd answered some of Janet's questions and offered up a few random details to her, there was more room for our stories to fall apart.
"I think I'm the source of the doubt," I said. "She's worried I'm going to leave you at the altar or something like that." A terrible thought struck as I added more hot water to my cup. "That's not what you're planning, is it? I'd really prefer if you killed this bit before the invites hit the mail."
"Fine. I guess I'll come up with something new." He flagged down a waiter. "Or we stay engaged a little longer."
I waited while he ordered seventy percent of the breakfast menu. Forever a growing boy, it seemed. "How much longer?"
"I don't know." He dumped some sugar into his coffee, stirred it longer than necessary. Didn't meet my gaze. "If we're going to put these suspicions to rest, we should make it believable tonight."
I heard the challenge baked into those words. I knew what he meant. I also knew it was an opening, a side door into a house where the front steps still looked a little too steep to me. "Okay," I said.
"Are you sure you're going to be all right with that?" he asked. Subtext: are we turning this fake engagement into a full-contact sport?
"I've played worse games for fewer prizes," I said, my tiny, mug-dwelling mouse nowhere to be found. "Don't worry about me."
His gaze swept over my loose button-down and limp ponytail to land on my lips. He lingered there a moment then ran a hand over his mouth. "Someday I'd like to hear about those games."
I shook my head. He didn't really want to know about life with my ex and the way I parried and sparred with my family. The way I still fought them for inches, even when I should've built a brick wall of boundaries and left them to learn how to climb. But I didn't want to watch the disappointment register in his eyes. I knew he expected better. Expectedmore.Hell, I expected more. I didn't know how I hadn't realized that until now. "I can't give away all my secrets."
"You used to give me everything." He cleared his throat and glanced away. I didn't think he'd meant to say that. Not out loud. "We need to stick together. Tonight," he added. "We're playing for the same side."
"Right. Stay together, keep the stories straight." I gave my oatmeal another halfhearted stir. "They can't catch us with contradictory details if we're never apart."
He stared at his coffee before taking a sip. "You'll tell me if it gets to be too much. I don't want you to…" He jerked a shoulder up, let it fall. Studied me over the rim of his mug. "I don't want it to be like that night at the motel."
So good of him to bring that up. "I don't think it will be."
Jude pointed at the oatmeal. "What are you doing there? Are you ever going to eat that?"
"Shut up," I grumbled. "I've had at least four bites."
It was more like two but he didn't need to know that.
"The fuck you have," he said. "What do you want? Scrambled eggs on a roll? Or in a tortilla? I'll ask them to make it for you."
"No, it's okay. I'm fine with oatmeal."
"You're not fine and you're not eating, you're glaring. And you don't even like oatmeal so I don't know what the fuck you're doing with this." He moved my bowl to his side of the table like it would prove a point. "Since you look like you're about to fall off that chair, tell me right now: on a roll or in a tortilla?"
