The Pretend Girlfriend (13 page)

Gwen's heart could have just melted. She loved her father, and all his quirks. "Okay, dad. Love you, too... Bye."

Aiden came up behind her, his arms wrapping around her waist and clasping above her navel. He, too, said, "Bye."

The door closed. Gwen listened to her father's footsteps recede down the hall. Her smile didn't falter until she felt sure he was out of earshot. She shrugged out of Aiden's arms.

"What was that?" she said, rounding on him. She was grateful that he'd gotten her out of the situation, but it was his fault she was in it in the first place.

"Oscar-worthy, I think... Can we discuss..." Aiden said.

"And what was with the prolonged handshake thing?"

"That? Oh, old business trick. It establishes dominance, for one. It also can make the party on the receiving end quite uncomfortable, which in turn makes them more willing to believe what you have to say..."

"And they teach you that sort of thing at Harvard?" Gwen said, not sure what to make of Aiden using what could be construed as an unscrupulous business negotiation tactic on her poor, innocent father.

Aiden shook his head, "No, actually. Henry made sure I knew that from a young age."

"Like father, like son, I take it?" Gwen said, crossing her arms and leaning back against the door.

It was a low blow. Aiden actually flinched, and Gwen realized that she went too far. "Aiden..." she said, meaning to apologize.

He held up one finger to silence her. "Forget about it. Have you had a chance to review that contract you apparently signed without bothering to read first?"

The tone in his voice stung, but Gwen took it. She deserved that one, at least.

"Yes, actually... What was with the back hug?" she said, her mind still fixed on that story they'd just finished telling her father.

"Well, we're supposed be in a relationship, aren't we? He needed to see that. And what was with that Titanic bit?"

"The devil's in the details, isn't it? Doesn't it take detail to make a convincing lie?"

Aiden just shrugged.

"What? Now that seems like something they'd teach you at Harvard."

Aiden smiled and shook his head. It wasn't a very big smile, but it still showed more teeth than usual for him. Suddenly, it reminded Gwen of the wolfish grin on his face in her dream. And that just made her think about the rest of that dream. She swallowed at the sudden dryness in her throat.

"You really don't know what they teach at Harvard. Someone ought to write a book..."

"Hey, can we get our heads back in the game, here?" Gwen said, trying to take her mind off the image of a certain bed in a particular fantasy condo, "Let's go get some food and talk about it. I'll go grab my copy of the contract."

She tried to walk by him, but he put his hand on her shoulder. "Are you okay? It seems like something's gotten into you..."

She brushed his hand off, "Nothing! Nothing's gotten into me, okay? There's nobody around to see, so you don't need to touch me."

"I didn't mean anything by it... And yes, some food sounds great. It's amazing how making something up like that gives you an appetite. Oh, and Gwen?"

Almost at the door to her room, Gwen looked over her shoulder at him.

"You look cute in those glasses... Gwenny."

Glasses!
Gwen thought, reaching up to touch the frames. She'd totally forgotten she had them on. Her cheeks heated, and she rushed into her room before Aiden could see.

"Never call me that again!" she said, horrified.

"Which? Gwenny, or cute?" Aiden replied.

Though, as she rushed to grab the papers from her desk while pulling her glasses off, she wasn't quite sure whether she'd blushed in embarrassment with being caught wearing them, or from him thinking they made her look cute.

She took a moment to close her eyes and breathe a few deep breaths, trying to return to the present, and reality.

Remember
, she told herself,
it's all a fake. He doesn't like you, and you don't like him. Don't forget.

When she opened her eyes, the first thing she saw was her bed, with its covers all messy from her moving about during her dream.

"How could I forget something like that?" she said.

"What? Almost ready?" Aiden said, knocking on her bedroom door.

"Nothing! And yes," she replied, folding the contract and shoving it into the purse, which hung by its strap from her chair.

She got ready, pulling on her shoes and checking her hair quickly in the mirror. As usual, Aiden stepped in to open the door for her.

"Oh, hey!" Beatrice said, standing on the other side, her fist raised, ready to knock. Gwen bit back an exclamation.

B
oth Aiden and Gwen had tried to explain that they just wanted to have lunch together, as in just the two of them. But Beatrice wasn't having any of that. Gwen could sort of understand as they walked down the street towards the Starbucks. Aiden walked between the two women, the three of them moving as one when they had to step around the knots of other pedestrians also using the sidewalk.

Gwen could almost understand. After all, B hadn't really seen them together before, so she was curious. And Gwen also got the impression that, while B had run into Aiden at parties before, she'd never really interacted with him.

Still, the timing couldn't have been much worse. How were they supposed to go over things if people kept interrupting them like this? And every time it happened, they needed to pretend they were a young, compatible couple.

To that end, Gwen held Aiden's hand. She could tell he felt about the same as her, from the way he kept squeezing her fingers every time Beatrice opened her mouth with another question or observation.

And, though Gwen didn't yet feel quite ready to admit it to herself, she also felt a little jealous. Guys always liked Beatrice. And Aiden was her type: rich and good-looking. What if Aiden made a move? They weren't in a real relationship after all... What if Beatrice made a move?

Aiden shot her a quick look, and she realized just how hard she squeezed his hand. She forced her fingers to relax.

Gwen banished those thoughts.

"I can't believe I'm responsible for this!" Beatrice said.

"I beg your pardon?" Aiden said. They stopped at the street corner, waiting for the light to change. The Starbucks was just across the way; Gwen could see the line of people waiting to order, with glimpses of the display case full of various baked goods in the gaps between the bodies of the people making up that line.

"Oh? Didn't Gwen tell you? I'm the one that brought her to Astor's party. I practically had to threaten to kill her..." B started.

"How fortunate for me, then, that you didn't. Have to kill her, that is. The light's changed; come on. My treat," Aiden said, leading the women through the crosswalk.

She and Beatrice took seats at one of the few remaining tables while Aiden went to get in line, having taken their orders. Gwen watched him go, squeezing her hand into a fist to try and get some blood back into it.

"This is just crazy!" B said.

"Tell me about it..."

"Really. I mean, I still can't believe it myself. How did the date go last night?"

"The date?" Gwen said.

Beatrice nudged her with her elbow. "Yeah, you know, skipping out on the movie and the vodka - which I fully intend to get back from you, by the way, to go out on some super romantic spontaneous dinner date?"

"Oh, that..." Gwen said, recalling Henry Manning and his interrogation all too clearly, "It was fine."

"Just fine! Just fine? Gwen, are you sure about this? About him, I mean? He's handsome and all..."

"I thought you didn't like him?" Gwen said.

Beatrice shrugged. "A girl can change her mind. Gwendolyn Gertrude Browning..."

"That's not my middle name..."

"...You're not just taking up with Aiden because he's rich and pretty, are you?"

"No!" Gwen said.

"Oh really?" B said, smiling as she leaned back in her chair, apparently able to tell she'd touched a nerve. "'Cause I gotta tell you, this is weird. I mean, what's with that contract he made you sign?"

"Contract? She knows about the contract?" Aiden said. He held three grande lattes in his hands.

"Yes, I know about the contract..." Beatrice said.

Aiden licked his lips, and they began tightening into a thin line. He stood there beside the table, the three hot drinks clutched in his hands.

Gwen's train of thought went something like this:
Oh crap oh crap oh crap oh crap...!

Working quickly, she stood. She took the lattes from his hands and put them on the table, sliding one across to Beatrice. Then she held Aiden's hand and sat down, giving his arm a surreptitious tug. He shot her a look, but sat down.

Gwen laughed, "Yeah, she was there when the courier came and made me sign it then and there. We talked about how weird it is that you need to sign a non-disclosure agreement to date someone from your company..."

"What's with that? Afraid she's gonna do some insider trading or something?" B said, removing the lid from her cup. The latte steamed, and she took a sip from it.

Aiden's fingers relaxed their death grip around her hand.

"It's standard practice," Aiden said.

Practice, that was a good word, Gwen thought. Today sure was giving them both all the practice they could ask for and more in getting their act together. And then she felt grateful for B's company. Aiden sent her a sidelong glance that spoke to the earful he wanted to give her about all this, but couldn't.

"Weird, if you ask me. Thanks for the latte, by the way," B said.

"No problem. And yeah, it's weird, I agree. But if something feels right..." Aiden said, bringing their clutched hands up above the level of the table so that Beatrice could see, "...Then it's worth a little extra effort. I think you'll have to agree with that."

"Nothing wrong with a little weirdness," B agreed.

The next hour felt like an examination to Gwen, with Beatrice acting as the proctor. She and Aiden needed to keep up appearances, using little terms of endearment (Gwen grew to hate the word "sweetie" quite quickly) and, most of all, the touching.

They'd stopped holding hands shortly after the conversation about the contract, and Gwen could tell that Beatrice noted. So she made it a point to hold his hand the rest of the time. She laughed at things Aiden said even when they weren't at all funny, and even leaned in to give him a quick peck on the cheek a couple times.

Soon enough, he caught her drift and they shifted from holding hands to him having his arm around her shoulders, pulling their bodies closer together.

And the thing was, doing all this wasn't nearly as hard as Gwen anticipated. She liked to think it was because of their recent trials by fire proving they could act well together. And it certainly had nothing to do with that stupid dream. Or the way she could smell Aiden's cologne, held close to him like she was.

B
eatrice finally begged off later in the afternoon somewhere in the area of 2 PM. She tossed her paper latte cup in the recycling bin on the way out. She waved at them, and Gwen and Aiden watched her disappear down the street.

As soon as she was gone, Aiden dropped his arm from Gwen's shoulders, sighed, and rubbed at his eyes with the heels of his hands.

The absence of his arm left a cold strip across her shoulders that she tried to ignore.

"Wow," Aiden said, "And you've been friends with her for how long?"

Gwen pulled her latte across the table and looked down into the cup. It was almost half full still, but cold. And she still felt hungry. Aiden had gotten their drinks, but they never got like lunch they wanted. Not as though they could have anyway, what with the sheer volume of words escaping Beatrice's lips.

"We met in first year," Gwen said, wondering whether to swallow a few mouthfuls of the lukewarm beverage anyway. She wanted to get back to her apartment and gobble down a few of those PB&J sandwiches she'd been intending on making before all this started.

"And has she always spoken at such length?" Aiden asked.

While it was okay for Gwen to be irritated at her friend, it wasn't okay for Aiden to be.

"Yes, she does talk a lot. You don't have to talk like that, you know, all proper and grammatically correct. No one's here testing you."

If Aiden heard the annoyance in her voice, he pretended not to notice. "See, now that is something they teach you at Harvard: the importance of precise language. And, speaking of language, why don't we discuss the contract like we originally meant to?"

"Only if we can finally get some food. I'm starving! Aren't you?" Gwen said.

"That sounds good... I'll go get us some wraps and we can eat while we go over the details."

"No! I mean... Yeah, but can we do it back at my apartment?" Gwen said, choosing not to mention that she had her copy of the contract in her purse. Maybe he would forget that she'd grabbed it and agree to go back just based on that alone.

"Fine. It does get a little tiring, being out in public, having to keep up appearances and all that," he said.

They grabbed a couple wraps and headed back. Gwen told him that he could go grab a seat in the living room while she went to her bedroom to hang her purse back up and throw her keys on the desk.

But Aiden followed her in.

"Can I help you?" she said, feeling defensive. Also, a touch embarrassed at the state of things. Her bed sheets were still in a tangle, and a large pile of dirty laundry made the corner its home.

He leaned against the doorframe, his hands in his pockets as he examined the space. Nothing really seemed to grab his attention until he saw the Big Ben poster on the wall by her desk. He nodded at it.

"Have you ever seen it? In real life, I mean."

Gwen slid a fingertip down the smooth surface of the print, as though she might somehow reach through it and find herself in London, craning her neck back to take in the famous clock tower.

"No. Maybe someday," she said.

"It's actually much nicer in person. You simply don't get the scale of something, the reality of it, from a picture."