The Decoy Girlfriend(51)
“Yikes. All the more reason to ask him to help you out.” Ava waggles her eyebrows. “Maybe in more ways than one.”
“I’m fake-dating someone who’s fake-dating someone else! This is bad advice!” Freya yelps. “You’re supposed to tell me not to be seduced by his charms because he doesn’t know what he wants yet.”
Ava snorts. “I think that ship has sailed. Anyway, I think he probably does know what he wants. That’s why he suddenly wants rules, right? He’s scared to want what he wants. But when his movie is out and he’s a free man . . . maybe the two of you can get together?”
Freya’s eyes widen. “He hasn’t made me any promises. I don’t expect anything.”
Ava’s knowing look pierces straight into her soft, squishy heart. They both know what Freya desires, even if she can’t admit it out loud, not even to Ava. If she speaks into existence what she wants—who she wants—it’ll hurt even more if she can’t be with him.
“I don’t know him the way you do,” says Ava. “So maybe I’m talking out of my ass, but maybe he thinks keeping his distance is the smart call here. I mean, your situation is kinda like Love Island.”
Freya’s amused. “We’re not walking around half dressed. Even before the rules, I wouldn’t have.”
“Not like that!” Ava snorts. “Think about it, in ‘real life,’ if either of you got the ick, you’d go your separate ways and wouldn’t have to see each other again. But continuing to live together for weeks, even when it hurts to be around the other person . . . when you crave to kiss them and be with them again . . .”
Freya starts, mind picking up where Ava trailed off. That’s a good point. She hadn’t stopped to consider that her feelings would still be there even after she returned to Stori’s. That his would be, too.
Taft is, she knows, above all else, a romantic at heart. Even in a contractual relationship, his desire to deeply know another person and be known in return is undeniable. He would hand over his heart in an instant—which is exactly why she can’t take it. Because even though they live in the same city, they’re worlds apart, and she doesn’t want either of them to know what it’s like to have their heart beating so far away, living lives that never quite intersect.
She’s a writer, so, naturally, she knows the most eloquent way to respond.
“Shit,” she says.
Ava’s mouth tugs into a sympathetic smile. “It’s scary to dive into something new when it might not work out and you’ll still have to see each other every day. No one wants to be the lovesick islander moping around the villa,” she imparts, all wise and sage.
As Freya absorbs Ava’s advice in silence, the sound of the front door opening is shockingly loud.
The boys are back.
“Ava, I’ve gotta go,” she says as she hears Hen’s paws scrabble across the wood floor.
“I don’t want you to get hurt. Seeing this through is going to be hard.” Ava looks like she wants to say more, but in the end she settles for a long sigh. “I don’t envy you.”
Freya almost ask her what she means, but then she realizes she understands. She holds up two fingers in a pinkie promise. “I won’t. Books over boys.”
That’s the way it has to be. She’s convinced of it now.
* * *
—
Taft catches the tail end of Freya’s conversation when he returns home. He knew about the writing sprints and made sure to leave the house for a few hours to give her privacy. As he kicks off his shoes and puts away Hen’s leash, his lips quirk into a smile.
“Books over boys” is such a Freya thing to say, he thinks fondly as Hen trots off to greet her. Her stacks of books have started to cover most of the surfaces in his living room, bookmarked with envelopes filled with her looping scrawl. No scrap of paper is safe.
He rather adores his charmingly frugal pack rat of a roommate.
Roommate. The word sticks in his craw, ill-fitting and not the way he sees her at all, despite his best efforts. Taft’s mouth twists. But that’s all she can be. His rules had made sure of that.
And he’s regretted it every minute since.
Before, he might have jokingly announced, “Honey, I’m home!” The words still find their way to his tongue. He stuffs them back down his throat. Nope, not happening.
It’s nowhere as easy to ignore how he feels about her, though. Especially when the evidence is everywhere. His eyes skip over the writerly paraphernalia: the mood-setting licorice-and-lavender soy candle, the motivational word count tracker filled with gold stars for every one-thousand milestone reached, and a nearly empty pack of Haribo gummy bears. She’s saved all the green ones . . . for him?
Finally, his gaze settles on the moss-and-magenta-striped blanket Freya wraps around her shoulders on cool mornings, neatly folded over the arm of the couch. It was the last thing her mom ever crocheted, and it tugs at Taft’s heart that it’s the only way Freya can be hugged by Anjali Lal now.
“I’m back!” he calls out, following her voice to the kitchen.
Freya’s sitting at the table, chin propped on her raised knee, looking thoughtful. When he enters, she looks up from her laptop with a welcoming smile. “Hey. Good walk? You were gone a long time.”