Page 32 of Enchanted to Meet You

“Fine,” I said instead, sitting up and pushing my hair out of my face. “I’ll come. I’ll wear your stupid colors. But I am not sneaking a giant Crofton jersey out of this house past my entire family, so you’re going to have to work with me on logistics.”

“Already ahead of you. Kelcey’s picking you up from the dance studio after your class and you get ready in her car.”

“You’ve clearly given this an unsettling amount of thought.”

“I think about you constantly,” he said, in a tone so flat and deadpan that it took me a full second to register it as a joke rather than an actual confession, and by the time I’d processed it enough to fire something back, he’d already moved on. “Bring makeup and clothes you can change into fast. Kelcey’s not exactly known for patience.”

“This just keeps getting better.”

My phone buzzed against my ear with a second call trying to come through, and I pulled it away just long enough to see Nora’s name flash across the screen before I let it go to voicemail, already composing the lie I’d have to tell her about why I hadn’t picked up.

“Who was that?” Rhys asked, immediately, like he had some kind of radar for exactly when my attention drifted. Or, more likely, he heard the beeping of the incoming call.

“None of your business.”

“Doesn’t your boyfriend deserve to know who’s competing for your attention?”

“Nobody’s competing for my attention. You called me. I was doing homework.”

Somewhere in the background on his end, a door opened, and I heard his stepmom’s voice call something I couldn’t quite make out, muffled and distant, and Rhys’s tone shifted immediately.

“Yeah, I’m off in a second,” he called back, before returning to me at his normal volume. “I have to go. Family dinner. As you might have guessed, it’s mandatory.”

“Enjoy your forced family bonding.”

“Tomorrow, six. Don’t be late.” He paused, and something in the shift of his voice made me sit up a little straighter, phone gripped tighter than it needed to be. “And turn your music back up. It’s a good song.”

He hung up before I could process that, and I sat there for a full ten seconds staring at my phone screen going dark, feeling significantly warmer than the room’s temperature reasonably explained, before I reached over and cranked the volume back up exactly as loud as it had been, purely, I told myself, out of spite.

I spent the rest of the night doing chemistry with one eye on the window, watching the gold light in that upstairs room flick off sometime around ten, and told myself, unconvincingly, that I hadn’t been waiting for it.

ten

“I don’t think it’s fair that your boyfriend working at the cafe means you get food for free,” I told Imogen as we walked up our street after school on Wednesday. Sebastian and Lavender were a few steps ahead of us, laughing at something on her phone. The four of us had decided to walk over to The Corner Cup together since the weather was getting nice and, as much as I hated to think about it, the times for us to hang out together like this would become fewer and fewer soon when Sebastian and Lavender both went off to university in the fall. So even though I had to sprint inside and get dressed for dance class that started very, very soon, I was still taking my time walking home, enjoying us all getting to be together.

Imogen stuck out her tongue at me then took a happy bite of the sugar cookie Cole had given her along with the drink. “You’re just jealous that I have a boyfriend to give me free stuff.”

Unconsciously, my eyes flicked across the street to Rhys’s house. We were still at the end of the street, not quite passing his place yet, but my eyes locked onto it easily—mostly because I was suddenly realizing that Rhys was outside.

He was out on his front lawn, pulling his family’s push-mower out toward the grass. He was wearing a dark gray tank top clinging to his chest and back, hair messy like he’d just come from a workout. Every time he moved to adjust the throttle, the muscles in his shoulders flexed under the late afternoon sun. He looked absurdly athletic, broad, and completely unbothered by the cold breeze cutting down the street.

As if he felt my gaze, Rhys paused and looked in our direction. His eyes locked on me only for a moment before brushing past and landing on Sebastian instead. I felt like my breath lodged in my throat as he yelled, “Hey, Novak!”

All three of my siblings turned at the sound of their surname being called, but Rhys didn’t give anyone his attention except my brother. My heart pounded as I waited for his next words—I knew logically, of course, that he wasn’t just going to announce our fake relationship in the middle of the street, but that didn’t stop the fear from popping up.

It would have ramifications for him too, I reminded myself. He can’t say it’s fake publicly.

But would he make a comment about me anyway just to get under Sebastian’s skin? Something he thought would be innocuous to anyone who didn’t know what we were doing, but would be just enough for my siblings to start asking questions? I wished there was a way I could tell him to shut up without being too obvious.

“Nice performance last week.”

Sebastian narrowed his eyes at Rhys, clearly not believing the compliment. “Is that so,” Sebastian mused.

I let out an almost imperceptible sigh. This was normal. While Sebastian didn’t generally go out of his way to antagonize Rhys off the soccer field, Rhys was more than happy to start arguments. As long as he kept them about soccer today, we were fine.

“Didn’t know Parkhurst was giving out free lessons on how to give away possession in the final four minutes,” Rhys added, his voice carrying easily across the asphalt.

Sebastian stepped down to the edge of the curb, thrusting his hands deep into the pockets of his hoodie. His voice was sharp as he called back. “Brilliant feedback, Montgomery. Especially coming from a guy whose defense looked like a lost toddler for the entire second half of his game.”