His forehead creased. “Why not?”
I stared at him for a minute, wondering if he was actually expecting me to answer that. “Oh, I don’t know. Take a look at the way you keep your apartment. Or the way you dress . . . any other time but tonight.” I eyed his T-shirt and casual slacks. It was like he’d been possessed. “Even the way you organize your fridge. That picture does not align with this one,” I finished, eyeing the scene at McGregor’s.
“My goal isn’t to be congruous and predictable in every facet of my life, you know?” His attention diverted to the bar, where he lifted two fingers at a guy who looked like he benched redwoods for a warm-up.
“Then what is your goal, Mr. Suddenly Stoic?”
“To be unpredictable. To surprise myself. To change, evolve, that kind of thing. How boring would it be to be born, live, and die the exact same person, believing the exact same things?” He lightly pulled on the ends of my bob-cut wig.
“That’s a romantic’s way of viewing life,” I said.
“No, that’s a realist’s view. To imagine we can go through life without changing is a fool’s doctrine.”
A waitress with corkscrew red hair and a face full of freckles set a couple of nearly black beers in front of us.
Lifting my glass, I clinked it against his. “Like your soul?”
He tipped his beer at me before taking a sip. “And my heart.”
“And your stache,” I added, setting my beer down without taking a drink.
“Still too scared to drink in my company?” He flicked my glass. “Afraid of what might happen after if you lower those unscalable inhibitions of yours?”
“Oh, to have the delusions of an ego-bloated psychopath.”
Relaxing into my chair, I took a few minutes to survey the scene. I’d always been a people-watcher; that was part of what drew me into writing. Observing, without interacting. Being the fly on the wall. I’d learned more about humans from watching than I ever had from conversing.
When my gaze returned to Brooks, I’d forgotten about his “disguise.” A laugh spurted from me when I noticed one corner of his mustache had curled away from his lip.
“We look ridiculous,” I said, re-adhering the corner to his skin.
“Well, you do. I look distinguished.”
When I slugged his arm, he rubbed it. “Okay, my turn.” He cracked his knuckles and leaned in. “Would you rather marry someone who wasn’t ‘the one’ or spend the rest of your life alone, waiting for said solidarity?”
My head rolled as I groaned. This question-and-answer game had remained a practice in torture. At the same time, I could appreciate its merits. In a handful of weeks, I felt like I’d gotten to know more about Brooks than I knew about most people in my life. The carte blanche to ask any question and the stipulation to answer honestly meant those skeletons in the closet eventually toppled out.
“Alone and waiting,” I answered. “No question.”
Brooks contemplated that with another drink of beer. “Really? You’d rather miss out on a chance at a family and everything else that comes with marriage for the gamble your one true love is out there?”
“A family is possible without the traditional method. Welcome to the twenty-first century.” I patted his hand. “I’d just rather spend my life hoping than resigned. Wouldn’t you?”
“Is that your question?”
My eyes rolled. “Sure.”
“No, I would not,” he said emphatically. “I would rather marry someone who might not set my life on fire, but had the potential for feelings to mature, than spend my whole life alone.” Half of his face pulled up. “That sounds like a terrible way to waste your life.”
My fingers skimmed beneath my wig to scratch my head. My hair follicles were suffocating. “A waste of a life is spending it with someone you learn to tolerate.”
Brooks huffed. “Next question.” He rubbed his hands together. “Would you rather marry me or . . .” He held up his finger when I started to protest. “Or that manchild from your apartment building who has been calling or texting you every day since you moved out?”
“How do you know he’s been contacting me?” I asked, my mouth falling open.
“Your phone.” He shrugged, all innocent-like. “That you keep on counters as though you’re inviting any passerby to check out.”
“I’m not even surprised,” I said as he circled his hand at me, waiting for my answer. I eyed my beer, actually considering chugging it before answering this question. “I’d rather marry you.” I glared at the smirk growing on his face. “Because at least we’ve already figured out one important component to making a relationship work.”
His smirk only deepened. “We had no problem figuring that out, did we?”
“I meant living together,” I exclaimed, scooting my chair away from him. “We’ve figured out how to live together.”
He stared at me over his beer. “That too.”
Lowering my sunglasses so he could see my eyes, I ran with the streak of bold that had surged inside. “Would you rather marry me . . .” I paused long enough to give him time to interject, but he stayed quiet. “Or the girl in layout who’s always hovering by your cube?”
Brooks gave me a funny look. “Easy. You.”
I pursed my lips when I felt the smile coming. “Why?”
“Sorry. That’s two questions. I already answered your first.”
My shoulders fell. “Really? You’re going to play all ‘by the book’ like the good rule-follower we both know you aren’t?”
“When it comes to you encroaching on my question territory, yes, that is how I’m going to play it.” He twirled the corner of that nasty stache again, able to make me laugh even when I was annoyed with him. “Uh-oh. Two o’clock. Pretty sure we’ve got some diehards who aren’t buying the disguises.” Brooks tipped his hat a bit lower, his gaze flickering to a few ladies pressed up against the bar, whispering to each other as they kept glancing back at our table.
“Or they could be discussing the atrocity that thing on your face is.” I slid my beer beside his empty one since I wasn’t going to drink it.
“That might be possible, if they weren’t all wearing a certain pin on their jackets.”
Seeing what he was talking about, I nodded. “I like them.”
“The phones are coming out,” he said, taking my arm to guide me out of my seat.
“They don’t recognize us. You’re overreacting.”
He took my hand and wove through the crowd toward the door. The women’s phones followed us.
“It physically pains me to say this, but I think you’re right,” I said, adjusting the bangs of my wig so it covered as much of my face as possible.
“Sweetest words I’ve yet to hear.” He shot me a grin when we were about halfway to the door, but that was when things went south.
The trio of women had defied the laws of motion and somehow gotten in front of us, blocking our escape. The one in the middle had an I’m With Her pin on her jacket, but her eyes were gushing I’m With Him.
“You’re that couple, aren’t you?” she asked us. Well, she asked Brooks. Brooks attempted to scoot around the woman wall, but they moved with us. “Don’t you even think about sneaking past without posing for a picture with us.”
My teeth worked at my lip for a moment. “Only if you promise not to post them publicly. For your eyes only, okay?”
I didn’t want to fathom what Conrad would say if he found out Brooks and I had been sneaking out on private dates.
“Our eyes only,” the woman with the bright pink lipstick said, drawing an X across her chest.
As the women staggered between us, Brooks gave me a look, double-checking to make sure I was good with this. I answered by winding my arms around the women closing in and smiling at the camera phone they’d convinced someone at the nearby table to take a picture with.
“You are just hard all over,” the older woman of the bunch cooed as her hand moved from Brooks’s side
to capping behind his shoulder. “Your thoughts on romance might not align with mine, but I’d be willing to take a temporary hiatus to the dark side with you.”
My eyes lifted behind my dark glasses as the other women rocked from their snickers.
Brooks shot me a flash of a grin before the person holding the camera gave the “say cheese” prompt. The three women around me stuck out their chests and smiled like they were vying for Miss America. In contrast, my posture wilted at the same time as an indigestion bubble burst in my throat. Great. I probably looked like I’d just swallowed a cat. Alive and clawing.
After the picture, the women took their time thanking us for our time, probably because they were hoping Brooks would take them up on their dark side foray offer. If these were my so-called followers and he’d managed to change their minds with a porn-star mustache and a hard body, I was in trouble. Where were the diehard romantics? The ones who were immune to a sharp jaw and eyes so expressive they could make a girl blush with one look?
When Brooks managed to whittle his way through the women toward me, his hand circled my arm before we carved a path toward the exit. But with the commotion from the pictures, a crowd had formed, phones raised and flashes going off from every direction.
“Think if we ask real nice, they’ll all agree to keep those pictures to themselves?” I said to Brooks, even as I noticed one girl pulling up her Instagram app one hot second after snapping a pic of the two of us.
“I’m more concerned with how I’m going to explain this mustache to my grandkids one day.” Brooks scooted a guy blocking the door so he could get a photo out of our way.
“Grandkids? That requires you to actually like a woman long enough to procreate. Which, Neanderthal, doesn’t follow your relationship creed.”
Brooks’s arm swung behind my back, partly speeding me up, partly shielding me as we shoved through the pub’s crowded doorway. “A man wanting to sow his seed is as base instinct as it gets. Of course I want offspring.”
“Offspring. Sowing seeds.” I pretended to fan myself. “If that doesn’t turn a girl on . . .”
A noise rumbled in his chest as we finally burst free of the pub. Fresh, cool air spilled around me, and it was so refreshing I had to take several long breaths.
“Hey, Double-oh-Seven, your disguises suck.” I ripped off the wig and glasses, stuffing them in my purse.
Brooks had already torn off the mustache but left the ball cap on. He was about to say something when a group of guys staggered out of the pub, immediately making bowing motions at Brooks. They must have been drunk. It was the only explanation for why they’d be pretending to worship the man with a red patch of skin in the shape of a mustache on his upper lip.
“I think you’re being deified.” I tipped my head in the direction of his admirers.
“Deified by a gang of drunkards. Not exactly my life’s calling.” Brooks slung his arm around my shoulders to steer me down the street when a chorus of whistles sounded.
“You’re the man, Mr. Reality!” one of them called. From his voice, he’d achieved puberty all of one week ago. “No way I’m letting a chick trick me into a life sentence of monogamy.”
Sighing, I gave Brooks one of my looks he’d gotten used to by now.
In response, he gave me one of his I’d gotten used to as well.
“You go on and live your best life there, chief.” Brooks shot the band of bros a thumbs-up and kept going.
“I bet you’ve scored some serious tail. Some seriously hot tail.” The sound of footsteps echoed behind us until the most sober of the bunch managed to catch up. The one with a beer T-shirt nudged Brooks after giving me a once-over. “Kinda dropping down a few leagues to prove your point though, eh? But whatever it takes, man. Take one for the team.”
My mouth was opening to breathe fire when Brooks blinked a few times as though he’d been roused from a nap. “Sorry, I missed all that.” He barely glanced at the kid as he picked up our pace. “I was too busy wondering how many times your mom has cursed herself for not insisting your dad pull out when you were conceived.”
A confused look pulled at the guy’s expression before he fell behind, the jeers and laughs of his friends echoing into the night.
“Mr. Reality, keeping it real!” a different voice shouted, followed by more laughter—except for who I assumed was Beer Shirt, cussing them all out.
My arms wound around me as my head swam with a dozen different emotions.
“Forget what he said.” Brooks slid closer, his arm staying around my shoulders. “That guy wouldn’t recognize a good woman if he had ten lifetimes to try.”
My head shook. “It’s okay. I’m used to it.”
“Used to what?”
I pulled at the scarf knotted around my neck, combing through the tangled mess that was my hair. “Being told to stick to my league.” I motioned back at the ensemble of ding-dongs who’d moved on to harassing a couple of young women with unoriginal catcalls. “In high school, it was when the captain of the basketball team asked me to winter formal. The cheerleaders weren’t having that. In college, it was when the guy with the nice car and smile asked me to a frat party. The sorority girls practically staged a revolt.” I felt my mood aiming south from the mere mention of those miserable moments. “I learned a long time ago not to tie my self-esteem to some jerk-off’s opinion.”
Brooks was watching me as we strolled down the dark sidewalk. “Well, can’t say I don’t understand their motivations.”
“Whose motivations?”
“The guys. And the girls. It doesn’t take a genius to recognize the whole package when a guy sees one. That being you.” Brooks tipped his head in my direction. “And those girls clearly felt threatened and would rather run you off than be forced to up their game and maybe improve themselves.”
Thinking back to the girls who’d teased me to tears, it was almost laughable to consider those air-brushed-to-perfection specimens feeling threatened by me in all of my baby-fat-and-frizzy-hair glory. “I’ve certainly never considered it that way. I just wrote it off to the world being full of beautiful mean girls, their sole mission in life to make the awkward, chubby girls feel as pitiful as possible.”
Brooks made a pfft sound. “Pretty on the outside. Ugly on the inside. That only gets a person so far in life for so long. Where do you think those girls are today?”
“Are you asking the petty me? Or the higher ground me?”
“Like you even need to ask.”
I clapped a couple of times as I conjured a scene of payback. “Festering in some rusted-out trailer, getting their sanity unspooled by four insufferable kids under five, waiting for the husband to bring home the case of beer and pork rinds but knowing he’s likely giving it to the widow hillbilly three trailers over.”
When I glanced over, I caught Brooks giving me an impressed look. “And look where you are now.”
I thought about that. Where I was. In New York City, vying for my dream job, already in possession of an impressive career. But I was alone, never having come close to a relationship that parlayed into a walk down an aisle. My career life was on point. My love life was non-existent.
“What about you? What were the high school years like for Brooks North?” I asked.
“About the same as yours from the sound of it.”
I stopped moving.
“What? I was a late bloomer. Took some time to mature into all of this manly goodness.” He waggled his brows at me, grinning when I laughed. “You think you’ve got horror stories from those days? Not even. The first time I asked a girl I thought was in my league to homecoming, she laughed in my face. Then she told her friends and they all laughed in my face. For the next three years of high school.”
My eyes narrowed at the sidewalk. “You? A nerd?” I tried to envision it. I couldn’t.
“Nerds had more status on me. I was more a . . . disease.” Brooks’s hand tightened around my shoulder. “Then college rolled around and I ditched the glass
es, put on fifty pounds of mass, and testosterone decided to finally give me a jawline. After that, I never had any issues getting dates. In fact, I’d leave a party with a dozen new phone numbers. Now, why did I go from zero to hero in a few short years?” He glanced at me, waiting.
“Hero might be an exaggeration . . .”
He gently pulled my hair before continuing. “Nothing about my personality changed—”
“You mean you were just as charming then as you are now?”
“My looks. Those changed. If that isn’t evidence that humans are shallow, I don’t know what is.”
“So that’s yet another reason why you believe what you do? Because high school girls avoided you and college girls couldn’t get enough of you?”
One of his shoulders lifted. “What would you infer from that?”
“Your pheromones went into overdrive, making you irresistible to any red-blooded female?” I spurted off. “Because you’re not that good-looking.”
He gave me a look that told me he knew I was lying. “When you strip any of us down, you’ll find us all either heeding or lying to ourselves about survival of the fittest. Looks, status, money—it all equals survival. That’s all this relationship dance is about, Hannah. I know it isn’t pretty, but the truth usually isn’t.”
Even as he finished, Brooks drew me closer, his fingers absently playing with the ends of my hair. Survival or not, instinct or more, the connection forming between us could not be denied.
“Hey, North?” My head dropped to his shoulder. “I would have gone to homecoming with you.”
“Hey, Arden?” His mouth floated to my ear. “That would be the only reason I’d consider going back and reliving those years of my life.”
“Arden! North! Your asses in my office!”
That was the sound I, and everyone else in the office, was greeted with on Monday morning.
“If I had a dime for every time I heard that . . .” The chair across from mine whined as Brooks rose. He waited for me outside of my cube. “Let me take the lead on this.”
Dating the Enemy Page 18