Suddenly, I had a deep-seated need to know everything there was to know about this strange woman sitting in front of me. To know every memory she carried around. To witness every experience that had molded and shaped her into this unique creature who seemed like the strongest woman I’d ever known and, at the same time, the most fragile.
“Any other reasons you picked me? Besides the romantic notions of location and grammar?” Her voice drifted through the fog I was lost in.
Feeling this way about her was not what I’d planned on. If I’d known she would draw these kinds of deeply buried emotions from me, I never would have chosen her. Going with someone who lived on the opposite side of the country who spoke in LOLs and BTWs would have been better.
I couldn’t feel for her. I couldn’t.
It had led to my demise before. I couldn’t let it crumble what I’d worked so hard to build.
She was waiting, slipping that chunk of ice around in her mouth and looking at me like she didn’t loathe me as much as she had at the beginning of the night.
I had to make sure she kept her levels of despise high. Since I seemed incapable of being detached, I had to ensure she positively loathed me so that when I lost my head and leaned in, she’d lean away. So that when the time came when I couldn’t restrain myself any longer, all she saw was an arrogant, selfish bastard.
I didn’t just want her to hate me—I needed her to hate me.
“You seemed available,” I said, finally answering her question.
“Available?” Her forehead creased.
“Yes, available,” I continued, working my jaw. “Whenever I sent you a message, you’d get back to me right away. It didn’t seem to matter how early or how late. What day of the week. What holiday. You always got back to me quickly.”
At first, she digested what I’d just said. When she bit down on the chunk of ice, I knew she understood. Her face fell for a moment, almost like she wanted to cry, then it moved into something I was used to seeing directed my way.
“You choose me because I had no life. That’s what you’re saying?” Anger burned in her eyes. Disdain pulsed from her in waves, but I thought I could still see it if I looked really closely—the sadness she was disguising.
I wanted to drive my butter knife through my eye for making her feel like that, but it was better this way. She was better if she kept me at a distance.
“You seemed like you didn’t have a lot of commitments, that’s what I’m saying,” I said. “The fewer commitments you had, the more you could commit yourself to this.”
When I waved between us, she crossed her arms and looked away. With the darkness seeping in through the windows and the gentle flicker of candlelight glowing between us, it was hard to tell, but her eyes looked different now. Like she might be about to cry.
Shit. This was exactly why I wanted to keep emotions out of the equation.
I wanted to say something, though I didn’t know what, then our dinners arrived. Nina barely seemed to notice the plate the waiter settled in front of her.
I needed to leave. I’d had enough for one night. If I stayed any longer, hurting her even more was inevitable.
“Would you take a picture of us?” I slid my phone from my jacket and held it out for the waiter.
From the corner of my eyes, I saw Nina’s eyes narrow like I’d somehow betrayed her. When the waiter stepped back from the table, lifting the phone at us, I leaned across the table a little. Nina stayed where she was.
“We wouldn’t want to forget to ‘document’ our first date.” She didn’t sound pissed, just kind of removed.
I should have wanted to sigh with relief that we were back on track. But I felt something squeeze in my chest when that cool removal hit me.
After the waiter took the picture and handed my phone back, I rose from my chair.
“I’ve got to go,” I told her. She wouldn’t look at me. That was a good thing, I told myself. “I have a meeting.”
“Go ahead.” She waved in my direction and folded her napkin into her lap. “I have nowhere else to be, no one else to be with, so I’ll just stay and eat dinner alone. Wait for your message to come in, so I can drop nothing to get back to you. Be your beck-and-call girl. That’s me.”
I came around the side of the table. I was looking at her, but I knew she wouldn’t look back. I’d done the job of pushing her away, and I’d done it well. “I’ll call Ezra. He can drive you home when you’re done.”
Her jaw tightened. “That’s okay. The bus works just fine. All hours too.”
The thought of her on the bus, alone, at night . . . it made something that felt like a vise tighten around my neck. “I don’t think so. I don’t like the idea of you on the bus.”
I didn’t miss the way her hands curled in her lap. “Why? Because some other foreigner might try to lure me away from you to earn a green card?”
Afraid someone else might take you away from me, afraid something might happen to you, afraid you might take yourself away from me. Yes to all of it. “I need you to stay safe.”
“Why?”
Instead of telling her the truth, I went with the opposite. I went with the lie because wasn’t that why we were there? A lie. A falsity. A deception.
“Because I like to protect my investments.”
According to the Max Sturm Approved Timeline, it was time for our second date. Since he got to plan the first one at a restaurant that couldn’t even get a hamburger right, I was choosing today’s.
After he’d ditched me at dinner, I invited Ezra over to eat Max’s dinner. A lobster tail that size should not end up in a dumpster, plus I didn’t want to eat alone. I did enough of that at home. He did, albeit reluctantly, then he escorted me home as Max had instructed. On the bus, as I’d demanded.
Max was paying me to marry him, but there was no amount of money he could offer me to submit to him. I would not be ordered, instructed, or manipulated.
Dinner. Just thinking about it made me slump into the park bench a little deeper. What a disaster. It had started out great—or good, at least. It seemed like we might have been getting along, which was an added bonus since we’d be spending a lot of time together over the next few years, but then I felt like the rug was pulled out from beneath me.
He’d gone from warm to cool. From open to distant. From kind to mean. I didn’t know Max well enough to determine which of those traits he embodied most, but I wasn’t sure he’d let me get close enough to figure that out.
Which was a good thing, I told myself. I didn’t want to get too close. I didn’t want him to get too close. Distance was a very good thing in our situation. Removal was even better. We could be amiable with each other but had to keep walls up and borders drawn for this to work.
It was a Saturday afternoon, and like the Pacific Northwest was inclined to do in the fall, it was drizzling. Maybe not the best day for an outdoor date, but contrary to what Max thought, I had commitments. Like my day job.
I managed to check the new phone Max had picked up for me and keep hold of five leashes at the same time. I hadn’t missed a call or text from him, but he was late. I wondered if this was his way of paying me back for being late last week. Probably. He seemed like the type who believed in payback. Although while I had public transportation to blame for my tardiness, Max was not the public transportation type.
With Kate’s help, I’d managed to open one of those silly social media accounts. I had a whopping twelve friends already which, sadly, was more than I thought I would have. When I’d posted the picture of Max and me at dinner—Kate had added the commentary—I’d received a myriad of comments ranging from Wow! to Damn girl.
When I looked at the picture, I saw a relationship of convenience. A man who was merely enduring the woman beside him. A woman who positively despised the man sitting across from her. I saw it for what it was.
No one else did though. I guessed that was a good thing. If friends were already convinced we were a thing, hopefully, it would
be that much easier to convince the federal government.
Taco, the hellfire Chihuahua on the end of one of the leashes, was starting to dance circles around Tank, the Great Dane. If Max didn’t show up soon, I was going to have to ditch him on our second date because trying to keep five dogs still when it was time for their walk was like locking a kid in a candy store and telling him not to touch.
That was when I noticed someone moving down the sidewalk toward me. Just from that damn confident stride alone, I knew it was him. Max walked, moved, sat, and looked like he ruled this planet and the next one over.
It was revolting. That was the story I was attempting to sell to myself.
I waited until he was a few steps away before I acknowledged him. It was a Saturday afternoon—raining and cool—yet there he was in his three-piece suit and fancy shoes like he’d just come from an important business meeting.
“Do you sleep in your suits too?” I said, noticing he wasn’t wet. That might have been due in part to the umbrella he was clutching, but it was almost like even the rain was too intimidated to get close.
“I would. If I slept.” When Max took a good look at me stretched out on the bench, his forehead drew together. “In case you didn’t get the weather report, it’s raining. Will be all day long.” He moved around behind the bench to slide his umbrella over me, which was kind of charming. Except I was already drenched, so it didn’t matter.
“You better give that expensive suit the same report before it gets itself good and ruined.” I twisted on the bench to look back at him. The shoulders of his jacket were already darkening from the rain. So was his hair, and his face, and . . . I cleared my throat and twisted back around.
That was when Taco leapt into my lap to growl at Max.
Keeping his umbrella above me, he held out his hand for Taco to sniff. Or bite. Who knew with that little beast.
“Your day job,” Max said, not flinching when Taco nipped at the air around Max’s hand.
“In all its fame and glory.”
Max smiled at the menagerie of dogs tangled around me, Taco now licking his hand like it was a meat popsicle. That dog didn’t like me that much yet, and I’d spent the last six months walking him thirty minutes three times a week.
“So,” I started, pulling my new phone out so he could see the time. “Who isn’t respecting whose time today?”
He didn’t look at the phone. He was looking at me. “You told me twelve thirty. It’s twelve thirty.”
“No, I told you twelve fifteen,” I argued. I picked up the last dog here at twelve fifteen. Why would I have told him to meet me fifteen minutes later?
Then his phone, which matched mine save for the color, settled in front of me. My text with the time and place was on the screen.
“You told me twelve thirty.”
Well, crap. “Oh.”
“I respect you, Nina. That’s all-inclusive. Your time, your opinions, all of it.” When I stood, Max came around the bench, hovering the umbrella back over me.
“You just met me. What have I done to earn your respect?”
“Agree to marry me.” He shrugged, stating that so matter-of-factly I didn’t think anything of it until his words had a chance to settle in and spread.
God, I was marrying him. The reminder made my stomach draw in on itself. The next three years of my life would be shared with Max. We’d exchange vows. Rings. We’d live together.
We’d get divorced.
That’s what I focused on. The reality instead of the fantasy.
“Nice second date idea.” He held out his hand for a leash, so I gave him two.
He was a big guy, but I gave him the smallest dogs, Taco and Bruiser, the English bulldog. They were the bloody terrors of the bunch, and I might have been interested to see how he handled himself with two little demons dragging him down the sidewalk in hot pursuit of a skateboarder.
“Yeah, sorry. I don’t have a lot of free time this week, so I figured I could multitask our date.” I glanced at him as we started down the sidewalk, led by a team of five dogs. His suit was wet, and he was holding the leashes of two dogs that were birthed in hell. His date maybe hadn’t been my kind of thing, but it had been more considerate than mine was. “Do you mind?”
He shook his head. “It’s nice to get some fresh air. I’m cooped up in my office so much that this is a welcome break.”
“Even if you’re a walking puddle by the end of this?”
Max’s eyes moved to my shoulder farthest away from him. He scooted closer and adjusted the umbrella, so I was totally sheltered. “Even then.”
I bit my lip when I inspected him, droplets of water rolling down his hair. “Really, I’m okay. If I was worried about the rain, I would have brought my own umbrella.”
“Yeah, but I’m not okay with it.” Max turned with me as I rounded the corner. Miraculously, Taco and Bruiser were trotting along like the perfect gentlemen they never were. “Besides, what kind of enamored lover would I be if someone we knew saw us and I wasn’t holding my umbrella over you?”
Now I understood. I slid out from beneath the umbrella a little. “So you’re doing this for the show?”
Max moved with me, the umbrella hovering right above me. “I’m doing this because I want to.”
“But you just said—”
When he sighed, it wasn’t one of those short, subtle ones. “Are you going to do this all the time? Analyze everything I do and say?”
Probably. This was such an unusual situation, made even stranger by the foreign things I felt for him. Sometimes I wanted to smack him across the face, and sometimes I wanted to do something else. I disliked him as much as I liked him, but that wasn’t really the unsettling part—it was how extreme each feeling was. I’d never felt much more than apathy and general disinterest around guys, but I felt neither of those with Max.
Instead of arguing over the umbrella any longer, I glanced at him hovering a foot above me. Whatever they fed boys in Germany, growth hormone must have been sprinkled into everything. “You’re kind of a giant, you know that?”
He smiled, shaking his head at my sudden turn in conversation. “You’re kind of . . . a non-giant.” He seemed to edit his answer when I issued a warning look at him.
I wasn’t short. I was a perfectly average five four.
We walked the dogs in silence for a few minutes after that. Crossing Main Street put us down by the long stretch of paths that led along the Willamette River. The drizzle had grown into more of a shower and Max was pretty much just dripping water from everywhere now. It didn’t seem to faze him any—he still had that level, even expression.
“I went over your biography,” he said.
I was wondering how long it would be before he brought that up. “Do you have any questions?” I swallowed, keeping my eyes forward.
“Lots of them. But the beauty of spending a few years together is that we’ll have plenty of time to go over them.”
I was relieved he wasn’t going to pepper me with questions right now, but it sounded like the questions would come. Eventually. I’d almost rather just get them all out of the way now. “Beautiful.”
“I should mention there was a section you forgot to—”
“I didn’t forget to do it.” I blushed internally when I thought about some of the questions I’d left blank. “I chose not to.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s personal.”
Max’s socks must have been wet because I could hear them squishing with every step he took. “It’s all personal.”
“Extra personal.”
Max’s hand holding the umbrella dropped to the outside of my arm and gently shifted me toward the edge of the path. At first, I thought he was trying to get me closer to him, but then I noticed the cyclists whipping down the trail in front of us. “Not when you’re sitting in front of the USCIS officer it isn’t.”
“Not yet.” I shook my head adamantly. No way in hell I was answering those questions
for him right now. “Eventually, but not yet.”
“You don’t have anything to be embarrassed about. I won’t judge.” When Taco yipped at the cyclists streaming past us, Max made a weird hissing sound and Taco shut the hell up. So not only did the humans around him behave like he was a God, the canines did too. “At least I won’t unless I find out you have some kind of freaky fetish, and then I’ll judge.” He nudged me, smiling, but I kept my eyes forward.
He was confusing me. A few days ago at dinner, he’d left in such a cool rush, and now he was saying and doing things that were almost . . . tender. Thoughtful.
“I’ll fill it out,” I promised, sneaking a little more space between us. “Just not yet.”
“But you already know my answers to all of those questions.”
My stomach dipped. “No, I don’t. I didn’t read a single one.”
He broke to a stop for a second. I kept moving.
“What? Really?” he asked as he caught up. “It was the first part I went to when I opened yours.”
My eyes lifted. “Of course it was. Because you are of the male species.” I tried to swallow the heat I could feel rising up in my throat from thinking about him flipping to that section first. Why he’d want to know those answers. What he’d hoped to read there. What he’d think when he found out the real answers.
“Come on.” Max nudged me again, and this one I felt seep inside me a little. How he’d made it past the iron casing I never took off, I didn’t know, but I didn’t like it . . . at the same time, I did. “I’m a guy who’s just agreed to be celibate for three years. Give me something. Anything. One answer.”
I caught myself looking at him from the corners of my eyes. His suit was pasted to him, hinting at a body . . . I was not going to waste a goddamn second fantasizing about. “If you’re expecting me to feel bad for you and your celibacy, not going to happen. You’re the one who signed up for it.”
Max’s umbrella continued to bob above me as he kept powering down the path. I usually kept a slower pace, but the conversation was firing me up, and I didn’t want to have any energy by the end of it to give him any more sideways inspections or think about what his body looked like under the wet layers of his suit.