Page 79 of Pretender

A whole month without any blog posts about me.

The blogger hasn’t posted in a few weeks, actually, and I’m grateful. Maybe having a steady girlfriend removes the gossip around me?

One of the biggest gossip events of the year is coming up this weekend. The picnic in the Buckingham Palace gardens. I’m both excited about and dreading being Linnea’s fake date. It’s hard to be so close to her, but still feel like I’m miles away. Sometimes her eyes tell me she wants me to touch her, and then it’s gone again.

Regardless, I’ll need to step up. My performance at Mum’s brunch was shocking.

I need to be the man she deserves.

Present. Caring. Attentive.

And then, maybe, one day, she’ll let me in.

Hey, how’s your week? We’re still on for the picnic on Saturday, right? Lots of useful networking to do.

Of course, will be fun

Okay. That’s something. I recline in my office chair. Three days until I get to see her again.

“Have you been to this picnic before? Who can we expect to meet?” Linnea asks as Mo calmly weaves us through the streets from her Shepherd’s Bush home. Despite it being a forty-minute roundtrip, I insisted on picking her up so we could have some time alone in the car.

“There’ll be royal-adjacents and aristocrats, and owners of high-end hotels and bars who could stock Gisbon Lux. And some influencers and models, I’m sure.”

“Oh, any of your exes?” she asks, her gaze not entirely meeting mine, and I can’t tell whether there’s a note of jealousy in her voice or if I just hear what I want to hear.

“There may be someone I have dated, wouldn’t go as far as calling them exes.”

“Semantics.” She shrugs, glancing out the window and then back at me. “Is there anything about you that I should be aware of as your girlfriend? That someone we meet today might say?”

“Hmm… It’s hard to think of something that would come up. None of them know me very well.”

“It’s okay, we can brush it off as a new couple.”

“I love eighties rock.”

“Okay?”

“And chocolate cake.”

“Me too,” she says, stifling her smile in that way she does.

“My first name is Edoardo.”

“Really?” Her eyebrows shoot up.

I huff a laugh and shrug. “I’ve never told anyone that. It’s my grandfather’s name.”

She looks at me. For a moment there’s only the humming of the car on the tarmac underneath, and I sense she has more questions on the topic. Now isn’t the time.

“I have a tattoo,” I tell her.

“Oh? Where?”

“On my right thigh. It’s a fragmented goddess Venus.”

“Oh. What does that mean to you?”

I consider it for a moment—how to phrase it. “To me, it means that beauty can be imperfect.” I brush invisible dust off my trousers, hoping she doesn’t ask more about it. It’s true, but not the whole truth. The tattoo is also a reminder to embrace personal flaws, which is a topic I don’t want to get into.