Just Pretend (Love Comes To Town)

“Fine,” I tell him, throwing myself upright before I can think better of it. “We’ll go out, you and I. A wild night on the town in our city that never sleeps. Happy?”

He tries to fight the beginnings of a smile, without success. “I’ll be happy when I have a few Guinesses in me.”

I give him a big clapping pat on the back. “That’s more like it, my man.”

Come to think of it, that’s probably what I need too: enough alcohol to forget my name, and enough women to forget Sierra.

She still hasn’t responded to any of my texts.

I’m probably kidding myself about the women part. Even just trying to dial up one of my usuals had me chucking the phone across the room in frustration earlier today. But at least alcohol would drown out the memories of Sierra and I replaying in my head. Like those fucking YouTube ads they won’t let you skip until 30 seconds have passed or you piss away money on their Premium bullshit.

I can’t seem to get it out of my head: the face she wore after I brought up the stupid fake engagement thing—the one I’d never seen before and don’t much care to ever see again. A mix of looks I can’t place. Confusion was in there somewhere, and hurt.

I hurt her.

“Jax,” I say, suddenly. “What would you say if all we had to do was get fake married and you’d get a shit-ton of money?”

“Fuck off,” he says, deadpan.

“I’m not joking.”

Seeing his horrifically grimaced face, I add quickly, “I’m not serious. Just—if you were a girl, and you were dating me, and—”

Jax just shakes his head, still grimacing. “Dude. This is way, way too far from my current existence.”

“Forget it,” I say, scowling.

I was stupid even bringing it up.

But I can’t get it out of my fucking head. How, somehow, bringing it up to Sierra—a perfectly reasonable suggestion—I ruined something. Broke something that can’t be put back together again.

Fucking women.

I would rather not have said it and gotten to see her tonight.

I could’ve gone over there, or she could’ve come over here… I could’ve booted Jax and hooked him up at one of my buddies’ places, gotten Sierra and I this place for ourselves for the night—or maybe taken her out to one of those hot new rooftop pool clubs I keep hearing about…

“Hello?” Jax is waving a sunburned hand in front of my face. “Are we going this century?”

“You really need to get on that sunscreen bandwagon,” I say, flashing him a winning smile. “I hear it can prevent sunburn.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Jax says, although he’s smiling.

Inside the cab, though, even as Jax grumbles about how his basketball team lost the playoffs and all the reasons he should (and won’t) forget about Laura (he actually mentions her vanilla-smelling hair, for Christ’s sake), I can’t get her out of my head.

That smile I was starting to get out of her. Like a book unfolding, it seemed to reach her changeable blue eyes more and more until—it was gone.

Will I ever see that smile again?

Fuck me, if I haven’t lost my head over this fucking woman. That’s it—

“Jax,” I say suddenly. “If you were with a girl who was cool, one you actually liked—”

“Like Laura,” he says, visibly deflating.

“Like any of the many wonderful, gorgeous women you will meet over the next few years who Laura won’t hold a candle to,” I say patiently.

“Anyway, would you run a fake engagement by them?” I add.

Jax, who has been gloomily watching our cab pass cars on the freeway, spins his thick freckled neck around to eye me. “Huh?”

“You know,” I say reasonably. “Offer a fake engagement arrangement to the—”

“Nope,” he says immediately.

“Let me finish,” I growl. “Offer a financially lucrative fake engagement to them.”

Jax squints at me, as if this is one of those stupid word games (Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers) his cousin used to annoy us with when we were all stoned off our faces. “And I like this girl?” he asks.

“Yeah,” I say. “More or—”

“Nope.”

“You didn’t even hear the rest of it!” I protest.

He shrugs. “Don’t need to. If I actually like a girl, there’s no way in fuck I’m going to propose some crazy fake engagement to her.”

“But what if the need was dire, like you’d lose a lot of money if you didn’t?”

“Nah.”

“Dude.”

Jax eyes me, shaking his head. “Dude. What dumb-ass thing did you do this time?”

“Fuck off.”

He turns back to the window. “Who knows, maybe you’re right. Maybe with all that money you can buy yourself a shit-ton of escorts and, with some luck, you might even like one.”

“But why does it have to ruin things? Why does it have to change anything?”

Back still to me, Jax just shakes his head. “I’m not going to dignify that with a response.”