hypnotic. “About the space between two people and how loud it hums. Hot looks that burn through busy rooms.” His voice softened, sending a shiver through her. “This is one thing I know exactly how to fake. Trust me. No-one who sees us together will pity you.”
Oh, she just bet. Even now, her breath hitched under his gaze. There was no doubt in Rae’s mind that Zach could play the doting boyfriend dangerously well—so well, she’d completely forget it was fake. “It’s not a good idea.”
“It’s a great idea. Look—I know how this shit goes. Not ex-husband shit,” he added, “but messy shit. Without some kind of buffer, you’ll spend all weekend avoiding knowing looks and awkward questions. Hell, avoiding your fucking ex. I know you must have writer friends, or something like that—”
Her lips twitched, because she absolutely did not. She was too flaky to manage it.
“—but I can’t stop feeling like…” He huffed out a breath. “Like you’d be alone. At the very least, you need someone to cheer when you win that award. Why shouldn’t it be me?”
He asked the question like the answer actually mattered. She tapped her tongue against the inside of her cheek and tried to dredge up a decent response. It was difficult, not because there were none, but because a not-so-secret part of her didn’t want to argue. It wasn’t sensible or mature or especially clever, but she wanted to bring a fake boyfriend along to a work event her ex-husband was involved in. And, for reasons she couldn’t bring herself to examine too closely, she wanted that fake boyfriend to be Zach.
But one thing still bothered her. “You’re not doing this because you feel bad about Friday night, are you?”
For a moment, he actually looked thoughtful, picking up his beer and fiddling with the label. She held her breath. After a while, or possibly a lifetime, he spoke. “No. I’m doing this because I honestly think you’d do it for me.”
That was what tipped her over the edge of Decision Mountain. She smiled, the knot of tension in her belly finally loosening, the heavy dread she’d carried floating away. “I’ll make you brownies forever.”
“You’d better.”
“I’ll tell you every story before I tell anyone else.” Once she got around to writing them again.
He laughed and reminded her, “You already do.”
“I’ll owe you a thousand times over,” she insisted. She’d never meant anything more in her life.
Zach knew that helping Rae was the right decision because when he woke up the next morning, he still wanted to do it. She wasn’t there in front of him, needing him, but he still had the desire to be there for her, which meant it was real—not a bad habit, not a compulsion, not an attempt to make himself indispensable. Just a friend plotting a mildly ridiculous scheme to help another friend. Just Zach being himself.
Helping Callie with her car that weekend didn’t feel quite the same.
He didn’t often give up his Saturdays, or rather, he didn’t anymore. Once upon a time, offering the help his friends invariably needed had been part of his weekly routine. But since his mother’s diagnosis, his world had shrunk to a hopeful, hopeless pinpoint made up of frantic family, and his friends had sort of… faded. Of course, Ma was better now—or coping, anyway—so here he was, just like the old days, freezing his balls off on Callie Michaelson’s drive.
Well, no, not exactly like the old days. Before, he and Callie had been friends, so she would’ve asked him for this favour at the pub or something—instead of hunting him down at work like he was a bleeding gazelle.
Zach paused under the hood of her car, the uncharitable thought catching him like a scratchy tag in a new shirt. That wasn’t really how it had happened, was it? She’d just been passing by. It had been pure chance. But as he bent over Callista’s engine, hands busy, mind idle, it almost felt like his time was being spent for him. This favour was so much smaller than the one he’d happily offered Rae, but it felt a hell of a lot heavier.
Before he could dwell on that, a familiar, reedy voice interrupted his thoughts.
“Zachary Davis! I thought that was you!”
Enid Hutton wobbled toward him on her stick-thin legs, her threadbare cardigan flapping in the brisk wind and a big, steaming mug in her bony, wrinkled hands.
He dropped his wrench so fast he almost broke his own toe, then hurried over