t up on a high horse. I’m just—”
“Trying to live up to the expectations you’ve ascribed to your family, even though you’ve more or less cut yourself off from all of them.” He shoved up and headed for the kitchen. “You need to make a choice sweetie. Be a Davenport or be normal. Because this whole in between thing you’ve been rocking the last few years isn’t working for you.”
He wasn’t wrong. But there had to be some kind of middle ground. She’d been trying to walk that line without much success. And it was lonely. Because no matter what she did to distance herself from her origins, at the heart of it, she’d always be a Davenport, and she’d always wonder if anybody would be able to see her as just Cecily.
~*~
“I’d hoped it was just a one-time thing, but it’s been a week, and she’s still coming onto me.” Reed tipped back his Corona and shuddered. “It’s…weird, y’all. And I don’t know what to do about it.”
“Just tell her you’re not interested.” Eli Hamilton, king of stating the obvious, dug a chip into the guacamole at the center of the table tucked into the corner of Los Pantalones. The Mexican cantina was actually named Vaquero, but years ago, all of the neon cowboy on the sign had burned out, except for his pants. Nobody knew who’d started the nickname, but it’d stuck.
“All that time spent in the woods away from people has given you the sensitivity of a bulldozer, little brother.” Leo, the elder of the twins by ten minutes, merely lifted a brow when Eli flipped him off. “Classy.”
“And yet, I’m not the one who’s single.” He shot a grin and a wink at his girlfriend, who sat on the far side of the restaurant with her friends. Jessie blew a kiss back.
“Any day now, Jessie is going to wake up and realize what a Neanderthal you really are and drop your ass. In the meantime,” Leo turned back to Reed, “couldn’t you say something to the effect that personal involvement with employees is against company policy?”
“For one, I don’t want to draw attention to it at all because that’d make us both feel even more weird about it. For another, I wouldn’t put it past her to point out that I’m the boss and I make the rules, so I could change them.” He could just imagine being trapped in the tiny office with Brenda between him and the door, those perfectly manicured nails hooked around his arm like talons.
Zach Warren refilled his glass from the pitcher of Corona. “You’re overlooking the obvious solution.”
“I’m not going to fire her. Do you know what kind of fight that would lead to with my mother?”
“Your commitment to avoiding confrontation has moved beyond pacifism and into wuss territory,” Eli said.
“It’s not pacifism or being a wuss. It’s being a gentleman,” Reed retorted. “Something I know your mama tried to train you to be. Not that it seems to have stuck.”
Eli made a face.
“If you’re finished?” Zach said. “No, you need a girlfriend.”
Went for that. Landed flat on my face.
Cecily hadn’t been back by the bookstore, leading him to conclude she really had just been shopping for her cousin, not out to renew some flirtation with him. He wondered if Blair liked Dark Defenders.
“There aren’t exactly any real candidates in that department at the moment. And I’m not going to start dating some woman with the express purpose of getting Brenda off my back. It wouldn’t be fair to lead somebody on like that. Not to mention I don’t need my mom to start hearing wedding bells where there are none. Now that Cam’s biting the bullet, the entire family has weddings on the brain.”
“What about a virtual girlfriend?”
Reed pinned Zach with a look. “Somehow I don’t think a blow-up doll or a Buffybot is going to get me out of this jam.”
“Not that kind of virtual girlfriend. Geez. I’m talking about Virtual Match.”
Eli picked up the pitcher. “Virtual what now?”
“Virtual Match. It’s this service where you can basically get an invisible significant other to get people off your back. You get to set up a profile, make up your story, pick a headshot or whatever, and when anybody asks, you have texts and emails that prove their existence.”
Reed’s interest piqued. “How’s that work?”
“They’ve got actual people on the other side writing the texts and emails, so you’re interacting with a human, not a computer. There are different levels of the service. But think about it. It’s perfect. Takes the lie of a long distance girlfriend and backs it up with actual proof. Then nobody’s the wiser, and your cougar backs off without being embarrassed about her crush on a much younger man.”
“The man makes a good point.” Eli peered down at his phone. “And at this price per month, it’s cheaper than an actual girlfriend, that’s for damn sure. Look, I’ll even sign you up for a gift subscription.”
“Seriously?”
“Don’t look a gift girlfriend in the mouth,” Leo told him. “Having regular female contact has apparently loosened his wallet. Just go with it.”
“Oh, what the hell. It’s not like I have any better ideas. Fire away.”