by Sienna Ciles
“Well, Stefan here has kept her such a mystery,” Mark pointed out. “You can’t blame us all for being curious.”
I had to admit that Emma was right: this was going to shape up to be an interesting night. I had gone in with all kinds of bravado, but now that I was in the midst of it, I wasn’t sure how long we were going to be able to keep it up. We just didn’t know anything about each other.
“He wouldn’t even tell us how he met you,” Monique told Emma.
“I like to keep my personal life personal,” I protested, hoping to cover for the fact that I still wasn’t telling them.
“It’s a good story, actually,” Emma said, and I looked at her, hoping that she wasn’t going to crash my whole plan.
“Oh! Tell us!” The champagne came and that gave us a reprieve as the waiter opened the bottle and poured it around the table, and then the first courses arrived.
“Do you want some of my shrimp?” I hoped against hope that the topic of how Emma and I had met would have passed as everyone else settled into their appetizers.
“Sure, do you want some of my bruschetta?”
I looked at it. Normally I don’t like frou-frou things with fruit and cheese, but I had to admit that what she ordered looked pretty good.
“Why don’t we split and share?” That would make us look like more of an established couple. Julian and Helena were dividing up their appetizers, but Nate and Jessica were both the type to never share plates.
“Absolutely,” Emma said, moving her first course plate closer to mine. I took one of her bruschettas and scooped my shrimp onto her plate, along with some of the sauce it had been served with.
“So, what were you saying before about how the two of you met?” Emma and I both had full mouths, but I knew that my friends weren’t about to give up on the idea of prying into our supposed relationship. I could only hope that Emma was going to come up with something we could remember and stick to for the rest of the night.
Chapter Eleven
Emma
“Did Stefan ever tell you what I do for a living?” I’d finished off one of his shrimp, and I decided to kind of toy with Stefan a bit and also try and get through the dinner itself as well as I could.
“He didn’t, actually,” Mark replied.
“We all kind of figured he either met you modeling or at the bar. Somewhere like that,” Jessica said.
“Well, actually, I work at a flower shop.” I’d figured that it would be easiest to stick as close to the truth as often as possible.
“The story is so boring,” Stefan interjected.
I grinned. “He’s only saying that because he comes across a bit like a jerk in it,” I told the others.
“Surprise, surprise,” Monique said, giving Stefan a wicked look.
“Tell us! Stefan, don’t you interrupt her again,” Jessica insisted.
“So, I had this late delivery to make—our driver had already gone out, and my boss and I noticed that we’d missed something,” I started. I told them more or less the actual story of how Stefan and I had met, leaving out that it had only been the day before, and my embarrassment at finding out the flowers were from his mother. “He asked me out and against my better judgment, I decided to give him a shot.” I grinned at Stefan.
“And somehow, I managed to charm her enough to convince her to keep going out with me,” he added.
“That sounds like him,” Mark agreed. “I’ve always wondered why he hasn’t had more success with women, long-term; he’s objectively a good-looking guy and in spite of being a cocky asshole, he’ll give you the shirt off his back.”
“He’s only a cocky asshole because he knows he’s hot,” Helena theorized. “If I hadn’t ended up with Jules, I might have taken a spin. No offense to you, Emma.”
“I can’t really take offense at that,” I pointed out. “How did you and Jules end up together?” And that, thankfully, started the discussion around the table of the different couples’ relationships. Apparently, Julian and Helena had gotten married only about half a year before, and Mark and Monique had gotten engaged on New Year’s Eve. Jessica and Nate had been together for two years, and they weren’t getting married anytime soon, but they’d moved in together in the past year. We finished the first course and then the pasta arrived, and I was grateful that it wasn’t a huge portion—just enough to really enjoy it without being a full meal on its own.
The group managed to empty the bottle of champagne and the guys ordered another one, since it would go equally well with all of the things people had chosen. I had to admit that I agreed with Stefan that his friends and their girlfriends were actually pretty decent; they all seemed to have good senses of humor, and having dinner with them wasn’t all that different from hanging out with my friends or my coworkers.
“So, you have to tell us, what’s Stefan like to date?” Jessica was obviously beginning to get a bit tipsy, and so was I. Three glasses of champagne, even after I’d managed to sleep off the little bit of a buzz I’d gotten with Gretchen and Becky earlier in the day, had me feeling a bit loose.
“You sound like you want to jump ship,” Nate said, shaking his head in pretend disapproval.
“No, I just want to know if he’s as hard to live with as he likes to pretend,” Jessica said.
“Well, we aren’t living together, so I don’t know how that would change things,” I told her. I glanced at Stefan and tried to think about how to navigate the minefield of talking intimately about someone I had only met and briefly spoken to the day before.
“Give us the nitty-gritty,” Monique suggested.
I laughed, trying to buy myself some more time, and I decided to just make things up. “He’s actually really thoughtful,” I told them. “For my birthday, he got together with my boss and secretly ordered a ridiculously huge bouquet of my favorite flowers.”
“That sounds exactly like something he’d do,” Helena said, nodding.
“Why on earth would you get flowers for someone who works in a flower shop?” Jessica shook her head in disapproval.
“Because I know she works there because she loves it,” Stefan said with a little smile. “She’s been teaching me all about the meaning behind flowers—there’s a whole ‘language’ of flowers from back in the day, when people couldn’t sext each other.”
I laughed at that, but I was actually a little touched that he had even remembered what I’d said the night before.
“He also made me dinner,” I told them. “I came home from work, and there was that giant bouquet, and dinner was ready.”
“She liked the bath better than the meal, I’m pretty sure,” Stefan said with a wicked grin, and I playfully smacked his arm.
“You promised you’d keep our private life private,” I told him tartly.
“I’m not saying what we did in the bath, just that there was a bath,” Stefan countered.
I felt my phone vibrating on silent mode in my purse, on my lap, and I knew it was Sabrina or Nora or Ginger, wondering how things were going. I managed to change the subject and get the rest of the group talking, and my phone buzzed a few more times while I tried to keep looking like I wasn’t distracted.
The third course came, and I offered to split my trout with Stefan, who’d gotten braised short ribs; he agreed to it and I playfully kissed him on the cheek, falling into the role—or so I told myself. I was actually feeling a lot more positive about Stefan than I had been since we’d met.
I got the guys at the table to tell stories about my supposed boyfriend and learned things about him that I would never have suspected: he’d paid for Nate’s hospital bill when Nate had needed emergency surgery and had been between jobs, he’d helped Mark make the connections he’d needed to start his business. As much as Stefan Doss still came across like a cocky ass to me, I could see that underneath all that, he was actually pretty decent, which was refreshing.
I excused myself to go to the bathroom when I couldn’t ignore the buzzing from my purse anymore.
I wasn’t about to wreck things by making Nora and the others worried enough to actually check up on me, and I didn’t want them to be worried. Besides which, I actually did, at least a little, need to use the facilities after so much champagne.
I left the table and found the bathroom, and in the privacy of one of the stalls, I finally took out my phone.
The first text I’d gotten was from Sabrina. Is he as much of an ass as he seems like? I snickered to myself.
You’ve been at that table for a while, so he can’t be that bad, Ginger had sent me. Nora wanted to know if she was going to need to order another round of drinks or if the story had already fallen apart.
I replied to them all, saying that Stefan was still an ass, but he was at least a good-looking, and probably pretty decent ass; that I was still perfectly safe, and that I was probably going to just go along with whatever the plan for the group was. If you guys hit a stopping point of your own, you don’t have to stick around for me. There’s another course after this one, and then I think the plan is to go for drinks. I sent it and finished up in the bathroom, washing my hands and checking my makeup in the mirror. My phone buzzed again before I could leave the restroom. Keep us updated! I told Sabrina that I would let them know when I made it home, and that if anything came up, I would tell them. I put my phone back into my purse and left the restroom, prepared for more questions about Stefan and the rest of dinner, and to find out what else the night would hold.
Chapter Twelve
Stefan
While Emma was using the restroom, I got to hear from my friends how lucky I was. “You finally managed to nab a woman who is not only is hotter than you but also probably smarter than you,” Helena said with a grin. “Congratulations, Stefan: you’ve acquired taste.”
“She seems like a hell of a woman,” Julian told me. “Keeps you in your place a bit.”
“Which is good to see,” Monique added. “Someone who can keep that man in line should be up for public office.”
“I’m not that bad,” I protested.
“No, you aren’t,” Mark said. “But she is kind of out of your league, you have to admit.”
I couldn’t entirely argue with him on that point. Even as a fake girlfriend, Emma had done way better than I would have expected from anyone.
Emma came back to the table then and I jumped to my feet, pulling her chair out for her. When she moved to sit down, I decided to go for the full effect: I leaned in and kissed her lightly on the lips. I realized a half-second after I’d committed to it that it was probably a bad idea, since there was no way that Emma could have anticipated that, but she went with it almost instantly, tensing in my arms for just another fraction of a second and then deepening the kiss a little bit, almost teasingly.
“All right, you two,” Nate said. “Cut it out or get a room and let us have your desserts.”
I pulled back and grinned at Emma and saw she was blushing again, but otherwise, her composure was still in place. I let my hand slide to the small of her back as she sat down, and I sat down again as well; I didn’t want to take my hand away, but if I wanted to keep eating, I would have to.
The rest of the dinner went even better than the beginning, with everyone getting along. Emma chatted with my friends and their girlfriends as if she’d been part of the group the whole time I’d claimed we were dating, instead of only meeting them an hour or so before. By the time we’d finished our desserts, I was insanely glad that I’d met her. If nothing else, she’d made what could have been an annoying night of my friends pitying me for being single into a night where I was another one of the guys, with a hot girlfriend who was too good for me.
We paid for the champagne we’d ordered along with the pre-paid meal and sat at the table for a bit longer.
“Are we ready to move on to the bar?” Monique looked around at all the rest of us.
“I think so,” I said. “You good, Em?”
“I think I’m okay for the night to go on a bit longer,” Emma replied. Nate got a couple of Uber rides for us—there were too many in our group for just one—and Emma and I decided to ride with Helena and Julian to the next place: Frenchy’s. Me and the guys had always liked to go there, since it was open after the bar I worked nights at closed.
Frenchy’s wasn’t that far, so there wasn’t a huge amount of time in the car with Helena and Julian, but Helena made it clear to Emma that she wanted to hang out again sometime, “just the girls.” Emma gave me a quick look and said that she’d love to, too, and that they’d figure something out sometime.
We got to the bar, and I put my arm around Emma’s waist as we walked in together, pulling her a little bit closer to me.
“This night isn’t going too badly, is it?” I whispered in her ear, and she grinned.
“So far, we seem to be pulling it off,” she answered. The bar wasn’t getting really busy yet, but there were about half a dozen couples already there when we arrived, a few of them on the dancefloor together while the rest sat around watching and listening to the music. We found one of the booths along the wall, and the girls took up their roost there while me and the other guys went to the bar to get drinks.
Shit—I have no idea what she drinks, I realized as we waited for the bartender to come over. I could try texting her, but I wasn’t sure that would solve the problem and also it would call attention that for all that I’d been dating Emma for a year—according to my claims—I didn’t know something so basic as her favorite drink. Since I was a bartender almost half of my life, that would be the first thing I should know about a woman I was dating. I would have to take a guess.
“I’ll get a whiskey-coke, and…” I pressed my lips together for a moment. “And a Tanqueray and tonic with extra lime.” I could only hope that Emma fell on the side of loving gin instead of being one of those people who absolutely couldn’t stand it. If that happens, we’ll just “accidentally” spill it and get her something else.
We got back to the table and Emma’s eyes lit up when she saw the drinks in my hand. I hoped it was for the gin and not for the whiskey-coke, and when I carefully handed off what I’d ordered for her, I was relieved to see her eagerly squeezing both limes into the bubbly, clear beverage.
“Stefan likes to tease me for the fact that I might as well be drinking Pine-Sol,” Emma told the girls.
“With extra lime, no less,” I added, shaking my head in pretend disapproval. Jessica had gotten a vodka-cranberry, Helena had gotten a Tom Collins, and Monique had a glass of wine, so Emma was definitely in relatively good company, even if none of the other girls were going quite as hard as she was.
“You’re the one who convinced me to try it that way,” Emma said playfully, reaching over and pinching my ribs. I yelped and almost spilled my drink, and I was pretty sure that more than almost anything else we’d done that night, that moment sold the idea to my friends that Emma and I had been dating for a long time.
The night wore on, and at one point, I saw Emma’s eyes light up again, as a song came on: Arctic Monkeys, “The Hellcat Spangled Shalalala.”
“Wanna dance?”
Emma nodded eagerly to my question, and I led her away from the booth and onto the dance floor. I was mostly just glad that I had a chance to get her alone, really alone, for a bit; sitting so close to her for so long reminded me of why I’d wanted to call her in the first place, above and beyond the need to cover for my single status. She was undoubtedly hot, and I couldn’t understand why she didn’t already have a boyfriend.
We danced to the music, and it was obvious that it was one of Emma’s favorites, the way she moved to the beat. I held her close and waited for the song to be over, and we kept dancing into the next song. When I was pretty sure she wasn’t quite as excited about that one as she’d been about the one before, I leaned in. “Do you want to stick around here... or do you think we could break away for a bit?”
Emma pulled back from me just a little and looked up into my eyes. “Well, you are supposed to pa
y me eventually,” she said with a wry grin.
“You’re right. We can hit up the ATM.”
Emma shook her head. “If you’re inviting me back to your place to take this party private, I am not getting money from you first.”
“Would you rather be paid after?” I raised an eyebrow.
“I didn’t say what we were going to do at your place for sure,” Emma pointed out.
“True,” I agreed. “But I owe you for tonight. Let’s get out of here, and I’ll pay you, and then we can decide what will happen next. How about that?”
Emma considered it for a moment and then nodded. “I like that idea. Besides, I could use five hundred dollars.”
I laughed and led her off of the dance floor.
“As great as tonight has been, I have a present for Emma for V-Day that I can’t exactly give her in public,” I told my friends, to hoots and cheers from the guys and laughs from the girls.
“Well, you could, but I think we’d both end up spending the rest of Valentine’s Day in jail,” Emma countered, smirking at me slightly.
I nudged her, and for a second there was a private joke between us, a double-meaning that no one else at the table knew about. It felt—for just a second—like we were actually boyfriend and girlfriend.
Chapter Thirteen
Emma
I wasn’t sure how I felt about the five hundred dollars in my purse, but as Stefan and I stepped into his apartment, I knew that I actually felt—surprisingly—really good about him.
“Do you want another drink?” he asked.
I thought about it. I was a little bit tipsy from the champagne and the gin-and-tonic, but I wasn’t drunk, and I didn’t want to be. “I think I’m okay for alcohol for tonight.”
“Coffee? Tea?”
I laughed. I couldn’t help myself. “When did you get all polite?”