by Stella Rhys
“Oh, because… I heard about you and Mike. And I’m so sorry. I know you were having a really rough time adjusting.” She thrust a hand into her perfect hair. “God, what is even wrong with me? I’m just rambling on and on about my life when you just had your heart completely obliterated.”
“Oh.” Her blunt phrasing surprised me. “Oh… no, don’t worry about it. I’m actually doing much better these days.”
“Good! I mean, yeah, look at you! You’re out of the house, you’re looking great,” she said enthusiastically, gesturing at my dress. “Where are you even off to?”
“I was on my way to lunch at Louisa’s, but apparently it’s closed for renovation,” I laughed at myself as Hillary’s bright eyes lit up further.
“Omigod, perfect! Come to my restaurant then! You’ll have tons of privacy ‘cause we’re technically not open yet, obviously, but we’re doing a menu tasting to train staff today, so you should totally come! I’m sure everyone would love to meet the mind behind the menu. And I really want to do something for you. Please.” She took both my hands in hers. “You’re being so incredibly brave about the breakup. You deserve to have something nice,” she said, giving my hands a squeeze just before her eyes flew up and behind me.
And… here we go. I knew that it was Drew who had just walked out even before I heard his annoyingly impatient question.
“Alright, woman. Where we going?”
I refrained from rolling my eyes, instead flashing Hillary my best smile.
“Hillary, um, this is my… this is Drew,” I said, chickening out of dropping the B word. Hillary, poised as she normally was, took a good three seconds to find her words.
“Drew. Drew Maddox,” she said for him as he extended his hand. There were visible stars in her eyes as she took it a broke into a grin. “Wow. I’m a huge fan,” she said before stammering. “I mean – technically, I’m not an Empires fan since I’m from Baltimore, but I’m certainly an admirer of your game. And your career, in general. You’re kind of a big deal,” she said, blushing as she laughed at herself.
Drew gave an easy chuckle then nodded at me.
“Thank you. Well, maybe you can tell my girlfriend that. She’s generally pretty unimpressed with me.”
I raised my eyebrows. Until now, Drew Maddox. I had to grin up at him, giving a little wiggle of the brows to commend him for so smoothly dropping the G word.
“Yes, well, Evie’s never been much of a sports fan, but I’m sure she’s much more impressed with you than she lets on,” Hillary laughed politely. “But anyway, hold the phone. I need to ask – how and when did you two even meet?” she asked, her voice a breathy mix of curiosity and excitement.
“Well, my friend Emmett has been dating Evie’s friend Aly for a year and change now, and Evie and I met…” Drew squinted at me as he pretended to think. “When was the first time we met, babe? This stuff is your department,” he grinned as he watched my face promptly fall with annoyance. Not only did his last sentence piss me off, he was suddenly forcing me to be the one to bullshit on my feet. Goddamn you, Drew, I willed him to hear my thoughts despite the sweet smile I flashed him.
“Umm…” I turned back to Hillary. “Actually, I’d seen Drew first at my restaurant in East Hampton. That was last year and I remember hiding behind a door and thinking wow, that’s… a whole lotta man,” I laughed, since that was actually true. Of course at the time, Drew didn’t see me because yes, I was hiding behind a door, and of course, he had only shown up at the restaurant to meddle with Aly and Emmett’s budding relationship. In the meanest way possible, too, but that was Drew. “Then I met him at one of Aly’s parties a few months ago. He was just being… a really cocky asshole and I was actually super annoyed with him. But I guess he wound up feeling really bad, because he ended up reaching out to me pretty much right after the whole Mike thing. I think Emmett mentioned to him that I was single and Drew,” I beamed up at him, “was just kind of pathetically desperate to see me again. I think to make up for what a dick he was the first time. So he begged and begged Aly for my number – for days, he did – and, well… here we are!” I finished brightly as Drew squinted.
“That’s… not exactly how it happened.”
“It is,” I shut him down as Hillary gave me a playful smack.
“Oh, Evie, don’t be smart – that’s romantic!” she giggled as Drew circled an arm around my waist and pulled me tight into his side.
“Yeah, babe. Don’t be smart.” I looked up to find those wicked green eyes glinting at me. He dropped his gaze to my lips and his voice to a murmur. “You know what I like to do to that mouth when you get smart.”
I swallowed hard, simply staring back at his look of mischief till Hillary broke the silence.
“Whew! Is it getting hot out here?” she teased, fanning herself. “Guys, I’m so sorry – I just realized I’ve been making my Lyft wait forever for me. I’m headed to the restaurant now. Tell me you’re coming?” she asked me. Since I was hesitant, she appealed to Drew with a grin. “I’m sure you need tons of calories to nourish that body,” she lilted. “And I’ll have my kitchen make you anything.”
“Sold,” Drew said as Hillary squealed with excitement and squeezed my hand.
“Don’t worry. Mike’s been dropping by for PR stuff but he definitely won’t be there today,” she said before letting herself eye Drew as he went ahead of us to the car. “Not that you’re even thinking about Mike anymore,” she giggled, grabbing my hand and squeezing it tight as she dragged me to the car.
Well. That much she had right.
Since the past couple of days, I’d definitely been thinking about my ex significantly less.
Merryweather was a beautifully bright, sunny restaurant located in the heart of Park Slope. Its main dining room was a creamy white color with white tables, wooden chairs and comfy booths topped with navy blue leather cushions. Prior to us walking in, the staff had been hanging around by the bar, huddled around an iPad to read a new press release about the restaurant.
It was actually one that Mike had put out, and it was about one of the dishes I designed, so oddly enough, it felt as though everyone were studying a keepsake of Mike and my famous teamwork. Great. I gulped, prepared to feel that dark spiral of emotion I fell into anytime I thought of the good I once had with Mike. Standing there, I waited and waited for it to hit.
But this time, it didn’t come.
“Team!” Hillary’s bell-like voice rang out. “This is my friend Evie Larsen who designed the majority of our menu, including our Truffled Lobster Pot Pie that all the blogs are talking about!” she gushed, gesturing toward me. But it was a lost cause. The whole staff was staring open-mouthed at Drew, and after an initial five seconds of dumbstruck silence, they ambushed him for pictures. “Guys! Hey, please – the man’s here to eat!” Hillary protested but I brushed it off.
“Oh, don’t worry. He loves it,” I said just as I caught Drew’s death look.
He hated this, I could tell, but I needed a breather from him. After filling my head with images of what he might do to my “smart mouth,” Drew had sat next to me in the back of the Lyft, casually massaging the back of my neck while fielding Hillary’s questions about everything from baseball to us to how he managed to see me on his tight baseball schedule.
“It’s tough. The only way to see her every day is if she moves in, but she keeps resisting,” he laughed with Hillary while I sat entirely too stunned to speak. “But I’ll get her to cave eventually,” he said, casually running his fingers up my neck and into my hair. My eyes went wide as he grabbed a handful and gave a firm tug. “I think she just likes to give me a hard time,” he smirked as I felt a thousand hot tingles shoot fast up my thighs.
The bastard.
I didn’t know what he was doing to me or why he was so good at acting like a boyfriend when he’d never been one in real life, but I needed time to catch my breath, so even after he got seated and Hillary had the kitchen send out food, I kept off to the sid
e and caught up with her.
“But wait – how did this even happen so fast?” she asked in a hushed voice since we were within earshot of Drew’s booth. “I feel like I liked a picture of you and Mike on your Instagram like, a month or two ago, and suddenly this? How?” she whispered excitedly while playing with a lock of her dark brown hair.
“I mean… the media thinks we’ve been together for longer but it’s pretty much been since after the whole Mike thing,” I improvised. “I didn’t know what to do with myself, and I guess Drew did. He picked up the pieces of me, he put them back together and then… boom.”
“Love,” Hillary nodded.
“Yeah. I guess when you believe in it, it has a way of finding you,” I said, making Hillary’s face crumple with emotion just before one of the chefs in the kitchen called for her attention.
When I returned to the table, Drew was already laughing.
“Impressive crock of shit right there.”
“I was acting,” I said tartly, sliding into the other side of the booth since I wasn’t sure I could handle sitting so close to him again just yet. “That said, I don’t think it was a total crock.”
“So if I believe in love, it’ll find me?” Drew smirked.
“Yes. I think so,” I huffed, taking as sip of my mimosa. “I think if you were more open to the idea of love and trust – platonic or not – you’d have more of it in your life.”
Drew stared at me as he chewed for what felt like a full minute.
“I’ll pass,” he finally said.
“You don’t love your parents?” I challenged.
“Not the way most people love their parents.”
“What does that mean?”
“I have good memories of them. I text them back. I keep pictures of them in my house,” Drew said, showcasing that long torso as he leaned back in his seat. “But I don’t trust them. I would never rely on them for comfort. Or happiness.”
I could feel my eyebrows rising higher and higher.
“That’s… insane.”
“Clearly, we have different definitions of that word.”
“And were you always like this?”
“No. But I wasn’t always a professional baseball player.”
“Again, what does that mean?”
His lips hardened to a line as he eyed me with irritation.
“It means I appreciate my mom and I like my dad okay, but he treats me like an ATM and promises business loans on my behalf to people he barely knows, just because he wants to feel like the king of La Palma, Florida,” Drew answered, drumming his long fingers on the table. “Before I even got drafted, he took out a million dollar line of credit in my name and maxed that shit out in three months. I said something he didn’t like in an interview and he told my entire hometown I was on drugs. Tell me I should trust him.”
The drumming stopped and he looked up at me with those intense green eyes. My mouth opened and shut.
“Okay. Yup. Definitely not someone I’d trust,” I relented. “Sorry,” I frowned, wondering why I of all people had the nerve to criticize his relationship with his family. “Really. I didn’t mean to sound judgmental. I actually know all too well how that family stuff feels.”
Drew’s eyebrows pulled tight for a second and I thought he was going to ask me about myself.
But he didn’t.
And for some reason, I let that hurt my feelings.
Jesus, Evie. Get it together, I scolded myself after several minutes of quiet. My first official date of this contract and I’d already let myself get hot and bothered over Drew’s fake flirting, and irrationally upset by his lack of interest in my personal life. Remember the whole part about this being entirely for show? Stop letting him fluster you, I berated myself, taking one long, deep breath before mentally resetting.
Alright.
You got this. On with the show.
And for the rest of lunch, I was fine. Mostly fine. But somewhere toward the end of our meal – about three courses and two rounds of drinks later – I could tell from the way Hillary was peering at me and talking in a hushed but frantic voice on the phone that something was up.
“Hey. Hil.” I caught her hand when she passed by our table. “Talk to me. Everything okay?”
She launched straight into her default cheery mode.
“Of course! Yes, everything’s fine!” she said brightly, but when I gave her the look, her shoulders fell. “Okay, okay, Mike just called and said he was dropping off some stuff for the restaurant – but I totally saved it and now it’s just his colleague coming! So don’t worry, you’re in the clear!” Hillary said breathlessly with a big smile. “Mostly in the clear.” She winced. “Pretty sure in the clear.”
I blinked, my heart stopping at just the thought of an unexpected run-in with Mike. While with Drew no less.
Really, Evie? You agreed to this. You wanted this, I reminded myself, though in my own defense, I had always imagined that Mike would find out about Drew and me from afar – probably in a tabloid, and definitely not in person. There was something a million times more nerve-wracking about debuting our coupledom to Mike in person. It gave me no wiggle room to act convincingly in love with Drew. I mean it was one thing to act passably couple-like in front of Hillary, but Mike? The one person in this world who knew me best?
It was a lot of pressure.
“Suck it up,” Drew said the moment Hillary was gone. I flashed him a look.
“Excuse me?”
“You’re pouting because you’re afraid you can’t convince Mike that you fell for someone else. But you’re already in this, so suck it up and give it everything you’ve got.”
“Are you recycling game day pep talks with me right now?”
“Yes. They work because ninety percent of all challenges are mental. If you believe in yourself, you can accomplish anything you want.”
“That’s something people say when they have multimillion dollar Nike contracts and zero percent body fat. That’s basically as useless to me as ‘believe in love’ is to you.”
“Well, the difference here is that you have no choice but to go with it, because you actually have to see Mike at some point.”
“Of course. Whereas you never plan to fall in love because dying alone sounds so fun?”
Drew stared blankly at me. What little humor was left on his face disappeared, and suddenly I felt like I had crossed some line. I bit the inside of my lip, watching his broad shoulders stretch the seams of his shirt as he leaned slowly forward on the table.
“Listen.” One gravelly word and he sent a chill up my spine. “If you want to talk about love, I can tell you honestly that the one and only thing I love in this world is baseball. I don’t love people. I love this game. I love playing for this team. And right now, my career with them is on the line so if you don’t think you can act like you belong a hundred percent to me, then you need to let me know right fucking now.”
Jesus. I returned his stare, resentful of being spoken to like a child.
“Easy, okay? I can do it.”
“Show me then.”
“Show you what?”
“That you can play this role,” he said. “Convincingly.”
“What do you want me to do? Jump your bones right now? We’re in the middle of a restaurant,” I scoffed.
“Get creative.”
I bristled at his completely humorless tone, but I also knew that between the two us today, I was the one whose performance was slacking. And since I’d already vacated my tiny Long Island apartment and had zero intention of ever going back, I heaved a sigh, tossed back the last of my mimosa and slid out of the booth.
On with the show, I reminded myself, keeping my eyes locked on Drew as I rounded to his side and knelt facing him on the seat.
His stare was so unflinchingly serious that I wanted to roll my eyes.
Oh, I’ll make you smile, asshole, I smirked as I put a hand on his muscled shoulder and leaned into his lips.
“B
aby,” I purred, managing to suppress my need to snort right in his face. A little thrill darted over my skin as I let my hand fall from his shoulder down to his chest. Fuck, that’s hard, I noted as I leaned in close and bit my lip. “Please don’t be mad.” I rubbed his chest and took satisfaction in how I could feel him exhaling at my touch. “I promise I’m all yours, and if you don’t believe me, I’ll make it up to you when we get home tonight. Okay?” I finished softly, in the sweetest, breathiest voice I could muster.
Amusement gleamed in Drew’s eyes. I could tell he was fighting it, but finally, the corners of his mouth curved up.
“And you’ll wear the little maid costume with the garters, right?” he smirked.
I rolled my eyes.
“Totally. As long as you wear the male version of it and help me do my laundry.”
“If you think this isn’t getting me hard, you’re wrong.”
“Jesus,” I snorted, pushing away from him.
Drew laughed as he caught my hand to pull me back but just as he did, I heard Hillary’s gasp. I gasped myself, startled as I turned to find her standing at the other end of the room, staring at what I thought was us till I realized her gaze was going past my shoulder and out the window.
I looked over just in time to see someone turn away from our window.
He had clearly been looking in a second ago, but now he was storming toward the front door, and all I needed was a half-second glance at those brown curls and that red and blue polo to know exactly who he was.
It was Mike.
9
EVIE
I had to give Hillary credit for rushing outside and doing her best to convince him not to come in. She went as far as to tug on his arm and try to lead him across the street, but despite those efforts, it wasn’t long before Mike was dragging her back to the front door of the restaurant, his neck and jaw so tight it looked like he might burst a capillary.
“Holy shit,” I said, stunned and only vaguely aware of Drew’s hands guiding me to sit next to him.
“Breathe.” He was unfazed as he draped an arm over my shoulder. “We just did rehearsal and now it’s showtime. I thought you were ready.”