Chapter 3

Chapter Three

Holiday

“And extra whipped cream,” I informed the server at the diner. Danny and I stopped here every year and got a massive breakfast to fortify us for the marathon ahead. It was an essential part of surviving.

Danny looked at her phone and frowned.

“What’s up?” I asked.

“Oh nothing. Just my parents wondering if I’m going to die alone under a pile of cats. As if there’s something wrong with being single and happy and owning cats. They got upset when I reminded them that statistically the happiest people are single women. Now I’m being message lectured. Same old, same old.” She rolled her eyes, but I knew it hurt her. Being compared to her siblings was something she’d dealt with her whole life.

“I’m sorry.” She sipped her coffee and waved me off.

I glanced at my phone and saw that Mom had sent me a picture of the mistletoe she hung up every year, suggesting that I should kiss Danny under it.

Same old, same old.

I rolled my eyes.

“You know, since our families are so convinced that we’re together, we should just lie and say that we are. Then they might actually leave us alone.”

I’d said it as a joke, but as soon as the words were out of my mouth, I dropped my fork and almost screamed.

“That’s it!”

People at the tables around us stared for a second before going back to their own meals.

Danny rolled her eyes. “H, be serious.”

“No, I am. This would solve all our problems. We’re already comfortable with each other. It would be so easy. Just pretend we’re together to get everyone off our backs and then we can say we went back to being friends in January or something.” We could cross that bridge when we needed to. Right now, our main mission was dealing with our families and this was the perfect solution. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought of it before.

“Danny, this could work!”

Why wasn’t she jumping up and down with me? Not that I was jumping, but I was definitely bouncing in the booth.

Danny kept staring at me as if she was waiting for me to say I was joking. I wasn’t.

“Lie to our families? Isn’t that unethical?”

I snorted. “If it would get them to leave us alone, does it really matter? We wouldn’t have to lie if they weren’t like that.”

Our server arrived with our huge breakfast plates and I dug into my apple cinnamon Belgian waffles with enthusiasm. Danny stared down at her breakfast plate filled with eggs and bacon and sausage and home fries and toast. I also had a frothy latte in front of me while Danny had just put a little cream in her coffee. No fun, I always told her.

“Danny. It’s only confirming what they already think is true. So is it really a lie when everyone already believes it?”

She looked up and I forced myself to stare into her eyes. She always said that they were boring brown, but that wasn’t true. They were a deep, rich color that made me think of soil and wood and coffee. I thought her eyes were incredible. I’d have to save that compliment for her for later. Right now, I had to get her to agree to this plan that was going to save us a whole lot of annoyance.

“Danny. Just go with me on this. It’ll work.”

Why was I having to talk her into this? What was her hesitation?

It was only for a few days and then we could go back to our regular lives. Plus, if we pretended to date and then broke up, it would take care of next year too.

Neither of us had anything going on with someone else, so it couldn’t be that she was seeing someone. Unless she had a crush that I didn’t know about, but that was highly unlikely. Wasn’t it?

“Wait, is it because you like someone?” I had to know.

Danny shook her head and picked up her fork. “No, it’s not that. It just doesn’t feel right.”

“Well we’ve tried everything else, so why not this?” There really wasn’t a good reason not to do this.

She sat back in the booth and crossed her arms. “This is a really bad idea, Holiday.”

“If by bad, you mean brilliant, then yes, it is.” This had to be one of my best ideas.

Her lips twitched and I knew from experience that I was breaking her down. She might be stubborn, but I was stubborner.

“We can totally do this. Just hold hands a few times, call each other baby, make eyes at each other, and it’ll be done.” We’d probably have to kiss at least under the mistletoe, but we could get to that later.

Danny and I were already pretty comfortable with each other physically, which meant it wouldn’t be that hard to bump up the touching a little bit to make us seem like we were closer than we were. Snuggling a little more with Danny wasn’t a hardship. And it would be fun to pretend to flirt with her in front of people. See if I could get her all flustered. Danny was a hard person to fluster under most circumstances.

“Come on, think about it. I’ll wait,” I said, putting my focus on my waffles. I didn’t want them to get cold. While I ate, I let Danny think. She’d come to the right conclusion, I just knew it.

I was almost halfway through my waffles when she let out a deep sigh and I didn’t even need to look up to know that I’d won.

“Fine. Okay? Fine. But we’re going to need to make some ground rules and set some boundaries on what we’re comfortable with.”

Now we were talking.