Before you

7.

Riley's POV

Only half an hour later, Lando and I were standing in front of Max's door.

I don't know why he so desperately wanted to prove to Max that he was over his ex, when he clearly wasn't.

It was okay to not be over your ex, but I had to agree with Max that Lando was not in a good place right now.

Lando grabbed my hand, intertwined our fingers and looked at me. "You okay?"

"I am definitely okay" I nodded. Pretend that I like him wasn't that hard. I mean, I didn't hate him or anything.

That was something right?

"Hi mate, glad you could make it" Max smiled as he opened the door. He looked at me with a smile. "And you must be the girl Lando likes?"

Lando cleared his throat a little. "Yes this is Riley, Riley this is Max" he introduced us.

"Hi Max, nice to meet you" I said as I dropped Lando's hand and held my hand out to Max. "Nice to meet you too Riley" he smiled, shook my hand and winked at Lando.

"Kelly is in the kitchen" Max mumbled as he walked inside.

"Kelly?" I whispered to Lando. "His girlfriend" he whispered back, put his hand on my back and guided me inside.

Max's place was beautiful, he had a penthouse in the same building where Lando lived.

His living room was huge, not really my style but I could see why he liked it.

"Hi, sorry I was preparing some drinks" a girl walked out with a few drinks. "I am Kelly"

She handed me a drink. "And you must be Lando's girlfriend"

"No, we are not quite there yet" I said with a smile. "He didn't ask me to be his girlfriend yet"

"Yeah well, we don't know each other that long yet" Lando tilted his head to me.

"Anyways" Kelly waved it off. "Where did you guys meet?"

I smirked a little at Lando. I knew they were gonna ask us.

"At the supermarket" Lando replied. "She bumped into me with her cart"

I nodded enthusiastically.

"Aw cute" Kelly nodded.

The dinner went fine actually. We managed to answer the basic questions and tried to keep the subjects on their relationship instead of our fake one.

"So Riley, what do you do for work?" Max asked.

"I am working as an employee manager for a company" I kept it vague, I wasn't lying though, just let out a little detail that it was actually my dad's company.

"Oh fun" Kelly smiled. "And do you live in Monaco?"

"No, I actually live in London" I answered. Lando snapped his head to me. He didn't know this yet and he made it a little too obvious.

I looked back at him, smiled a little. He smiled back at me, put his hand on my thigh and squeezed it a little.

I don't know what he was trying to say with this. Was he trying to tell me I was doing good? Or that I needed to shut up?

I had no idea.

"So Riley, are you coming to the next race?" Kelly asked as she looked at me.

"Uh, I don't thin-"

"You surely are coming, no?" Max interrupted me with a smirk. "Didn't Lando ask you yet?"

"We actually want to keep our relationship private" Lando looked at Max.

"Oh, so now it's a relationship?" Max tilted his head at him.

"No, well kinda-I mean maybe" Lando shrugged. Okay, he was making a mess of this and I didn't know what to do to save it.

I put my hand on his arm, smiled at him. "I would love to go to one of your races but-"

"Awesome" Max interrupted me. "Then I am sure Lando can fix that, no?" He looked back at Lando who was looking at me.

"Uh-yeah sure I can" he mumbled.

"Oh it's gonna be so much fun!" Kelly smiled widely.

Lando and I just looked at each other. Yeah it sure was gonna be interesting.

We might have survived this dinner, but how were we gonna survive an entire weekend?