The Decoy Girlfriend(43)
“Oh, um, you’ll be more comfortable in mine.” Quickly, he adds, “Eat. You need sustenance after last night. Boyfriend prerogative.”
Freya picks up her fork and finally takes her first bite. “Best boyfriend ever,” she moans around a mouthful. “Where did you learn to cook?”
“My mom. She was determined that her sons know their way around the kitchen. I guess she got fed up with my dad pretending not to know how to do anything to get out of helping.”
There’s a hint of a frown on Freya’s face, but she just nods. “So you have brothers?”
Taft swallows a mouthful of soft, succulent potato and egg. “Three.”
“I actually already knew that. Wikipedia.” She glances down at her plate and mutters, “Great. Waste of a question.” At his curious look, she explains, “I was thinking we could try getting to know each other for real. Like you suggested. I know you don’t really have to know me, but—”
“I’d love to.” He chews thoughtfully. “Might help if you ask me things you can’t google, though.”
“Well, it seemed like an organic way to segue into it.” Freya spears another piece of omelet and wraps her lips around it in a way he’s quite sure she doesn’t intend to be seductive.
It’s just egg and potato, nothing to get excited about. He directs this to his groin.
“Tell you what, there’s a technique my mom told me to try when I was younger and had some trouble making friends,” Taft says when Freya starts to roll a raspberry up around her plate with a slim pointer finger. “She said it was impossible for someone not to like you once they know ten secrets about you.”
“Uh, hate to break it to you, but you already know my biggest one.” She pops the berry in her mouth with a loud smacking sound. “Hi, I’m Mandi!” she chirps in a comically bad falsetto.
He hides his smile. “Small secrets. Familiarities that no one would know about you unless they really knew you. And it has to be stuff that isn’t the same for everyone. No generic bullshit. Like no saying you love finding a lost bill in your jeans pocket or getting an extra nugget in your ten-piece.”
Freya tears a mint leaf into shreds over what’s left of her omelet. “Isn’t that cheating? Fast-forwarding through the getting-to-know-you fun stuff?” She hesitates. “But I guess we aren’t really dating, so . . . Yeah, I guess we can try. Can’t hurt to arm ourselves with more info, right?”
Taft ignores the twinge in his heart. “I’m willing to bet it wouldn’t even take ten things to make someone like you.”
She gives him an awkward little smile, like she highly doubts that likelihood. “Oh, you know, this is a lot like how I develop my characters.”
“Yeah?” He can’t lie, he’s interested in the overlap.
“When I’m still in the sandbox stage, figuring out all my pieces and how they fit together, one of the first things I do is come up with ten interesting things about them. But like you said, it has to be really personal to them.” Freya makes a face. “No favorite colors—that is a terrible icebreaker—but I know yours is green.”
“Ah, see, now there’s something specific.” He grins. “You have strong feelings about icebreakers.”
She plays along. “And what fascinating insight into my psyche does that tell you?”
“I don’t know you nearly well enough to psychoanalyze you, but I’d probably infer that you’re someone who doesn’t do bullshit. You don’t want perfect, practiced answers. You want to wade through all the ugly and get it wrong ninety-nine times so you can find the right one on the hundredth. That’s why you haven’t written your second book yet, right? You’re committed to getting it right.”
For the longest moment, Freya doesn’t say anything. She just looks stunned. Taft’s horrified that he’s said something to offend her, something that it’s now too late to take back, which is the exact opposite of what he’d intended.
God, what had made him think he knew her enough for an on-the-spot dissection? And the way he’d just babbled all of that, as though he were trying to impress a teacher with the right answer. No wonder she’s looking at him like she can’t quite believe it.
The weight on his chest lifts when she gifts him with an open smile. “You’re right. I’m the Marie Kondo ‘I love mess’ meme personified. I may not use everything in the story, but the backstory percolates in my brain. Grounding technique to make them real. The important stuff will find a way.” She laughs somewhat self-deprecatingly. “Sometimes I don’t even see how it finds its way in until my fifth read.”
He’s aghast. “You read your book five times? And you don’t get sick of it?”
After Once Bitten, he stopped watching his scenes. There’s a cognitive dissonance he can’t escape when he watches himself be someone else on television, and unlike his football-obsessed father and brothers, he can’t watch the same plays over and over for research. He doesn’t even like rereading books, but he can bet that Freya does.
“Five at least.” There isn’t a hint of exaggeration in her earnest voice. “Trust me, when you’re an author you never sit down to write a book without being completely in love. It’s torture sitting your butt down to write if you resent every minute of it.”