Faking It

Chapter 36: Turkeys Break a Stalemate

Text from: Jake Morris-Whittaker, 7:02 am

T MINUS FOUR DAYS
GET READY
🦃🦃🦃

Can't wait to see youuuuuuu!!!!!!!!

Same 😁

~*~

By some miracle, I survived the rest of the Harvest Gala, and when Jake had called the next morning for the report, I hadn't burst into mortified tears about how awful it had been. Maybe because the rest of it hadn't been that awful, not after Theo had clued in to how miserable I was. After my mini-meltdown outside, he'd gone out of his way to shield me from the other guests, talking me up as if I was the most wonderful thing in all the world. We'd avoided his parents entirely, and he'd squarely rejected that judge's daughter to her face by telling her all about how hard he was falling for me. I hated to admit that it had bolstered my shattered confidence, but it had. And then we'd howled with laughter the entire way home as we reminisced about how damned awful all of the guests had been.

The only problem was that it had done absolutely nothing to advance our ruse. William and Madeleine were solidly a couple now, and neither of us could think of anything to do about it.

"We're at a stalemate," Theo said the next weekend, when he plunked down beside me on the team bus. His cheeks were pink from the stinging November wind of the brutal away game, where the boys had come away winners. Unlike us.

I traced another squiggle in the fog of my breath on the window. "Tell me something I don't know."

Theo's phone appeared in front of me with a text string from "Mom".

Are you inviting your new girlfriend for Thanksgiving?

She's got plans with her family.

That's too bad. Shelley Eckstein's coming, though.

William reminded me how much you liked her last year.

I'll sit you two together :)

"Lucky you." I returned my attention to the window and tried to ignore the dart of pain that lanced through my chest at his mother's obvious dismissal of me as anyone important. "Shelley Eckstein sounds lovely."

"You're not reading between the lines, Emdubs. If I go to this thing without you, it'll just prove William right. So we have to make a move, or else we'll be stuck in this holding pattern forever."

I shoved down the part of me that wondered whether that would be such a bad thing. The part of me that, against my best efforts, was growing more and more insistent every day. Maybe we didn't have to make a move just yet. Maybe I wasn't ready for William to leave Madeleine for me. Maybe...

Maybe I didn't really want him to.

I shook off the shivers that climbed my skin. Even if it was true—which it absolutely, positively wasn't—it would never work between me and Theo anyway. I didn't fit into his world. Every time I'd tried, I'd been miserable. And, to top it all off, there was the fact that he hadn't tried to kiss me again.

My stomach flip-flopped. We hadn't exactly addressed what had happened at the bistro, and it still lurked between us like the elephant in the room. Theo never mentioned what he'd said in his car, and I never admitted what I'd hoped he'd do. Which was ridiculous, given all the reasons I knew it would never actually work.

"I literally just got slide tackled half a dozen times and my skinned arm is stinging like a bitch. I'm too sore and tired to do this right now," I said.

"Well it's either this, or the nuclear option." Theo blew out a sigh and massaged the bridge of his nose.

I leaned against the window and chewed my cheek, watching him. We'd had this exact same debate more times than I'd cared to count. But even if it meant blowing our ruse, there was absolutely no way I was going to the Ellerby family Thanksgiving. Not after the Harvest Gala. Not when Jake was driving home for the first time in months, and his boyfriend Simon had finally gotten the time off work to join him. I wasn't going to miss seeing them, and I'd made that much clear to Theo. But he'd been staunchly against the idea of taking Connor up on the beach house for reasons he hadn't exactly elaborated on. Reasons I wasn't about to press, not with our disaster kiss still hanging between us.

Theo glanced at me. "Please don't tell me you're actually considering it."

I shrugged. "It seems like the lesser of two evils."

"It's a last resort for a reason." He scraped a hand over his face. "We go through with that, and I'll have no choice but to dump you the next week."

My chest tightened. "Come on. You don't really have to—"

"Yes, Ellie." He pivoted towards me. "I do. That's why it's the nuclear option. There's no going back from it."

I chewed my thumbnail. I didn't like the pit in my stomach that kept urging me to protest. To tell him that it didn't have to happen that way. That we could still pretend to date afterwards. That maybe it would make us seem even more serious...

Except that was probably exactly why he didn't want to go through with it, even if it was just pretend. He probably didn't want anyone to think it was any more serious with me than it had to be to get William and Madeleine to split up. After all, I was just a scholarship student, and he was Theo Ellerby. I wasn't the kind of girl he'd change his ways for. I wasn't the kind of girl he'd ever date for real.

"I hate Thanksgiving," he grumbled, kicking the seat in front of him and getting an angry "hey!" from one of his midfielders.

"You could always come home with me." The words tumbled out, shoved up and through my mouth by that something in my stomach before I could choke them off.

Theo froze. Only his head moved when he looked over at me, his expression completely unreadable. "I've...never missed a family Thanksgiving before."

Of course he hadn't. Why had I even entertained the idea that he'd change that for me?

With a shrug, I folded my arms and turned away to hide my mortification. "It was just a suggestion."

He touched my elbow. "Do you want me to?"

I looked sidelong at him, but his face was still, annoyingly, unreadable. I couldn't tell if he was horrified or amused or shocked. I threw my hands up in defeat. "I mean, if the alternative is your house or the nuclear option, I'd obviously rather you come home with me."

"And meet your family?" A hint of a smile tugged as his lips, an echo of the lopsided one from his car, right after our disastrous double date. Almost as if he...wanted to.

All the tension that had crept into my shoulders collapsed, banished by the flutter in my chest. "Only if you promise to behave."

His smile grew. "Haven't you heard, Emdubs? Moms can't resist me."

I rolled my eyes, despite the grin that tugged at my lips. "Is it too late to change my mind?"

"Yup. Called it, no take backs." He play-punched my arm. "Look at you, coming up with the plan that saves the day. You know what, Emdubs? I'm actually kinda proud."

I pressed my head to the window and turned as far away from him as I could manage if only to hide my huge, ridiculous grin.