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Hunter
Aflash of silky maroon enters my peripheral vision as Lydia lowers herself into the passenger seat of my car. It’s Saturday afternoon and I’m picking her up at her apartment so we can head to the wedding.
“Hey,” she says, settling into the seat and closing the door. “You ready for this?”
“As I’ll ever be,” I say. I glance over at Lydia and the long-sleeved maroon dress she has on unexpectedly stirs something in me. I’ve never seen her in that color, and it’s striking on her. It’s not just the color of her dress that’s striking, though—it’s also the neckline.
The neckline is…plunging.
I quickly pull my eyes away and focus on pulling out onto the road. But only a couple seconds of silence pass before I realize I’m being an asshole by not saying anything about her dress.
“You, uh...you look nice,” I say, keeping my eyes out the windshield.
“Oh, thanks,” says Lydia. She flips down her sun visor and slides open the mirror. “I don’t know about my hair, though. Do you think I should put it up?”
I glance over to see what she means. I’d been too distracted by her dress to get a good look at her hair. But now I see that she’s wearing it down in loose curls.
“No, it looks good,” I say. “Not that I know jack shit about hair.”
Lydia laughs. “As long as you don’t think it looks bad, that’s good enough for me.”
I draw my eyes back to the street, but I can feel Lydia’s eyes rove over to me.
“You look nice, too,” she says after a second.
“You helped me pick out the clothes,” I remind her, giving her a shrug and smile. “Hey, you’re going to give me directions, right? I don’t know where I’m going.” I guess seeing Lydia all dressed up like that had gotten me a little flustered and I’d just started driving.
“Right,” she says. Lydia pulls up directions on her phone and tells me what the next few turns are going to be. The next one’s not for another half-mile.
“So,” she says, after we’ve established where we’re headed, “guess we should probably talk about this whole fake relationship thing, huh?”
“Sure,” I say. It’s only been a few days since I brought up the idea, and we haven’t really talked about it in detail.
“Since people are going to ask…how long have we been dating?”
I shrug and slow for traffic. “Couple days? Weeks? Does it matter?”
“It just matters that we’re on the same page.” Lydia thinks for a few seconds. “How about we say a couple weeks? If we say much longer than that, my parents and my sister are probably going to get after me about not telling them sooner. And any less and it might seem suspicious.”
“Sure,” I say. Then another thought occurs to me. “And how did it happen? Did we just…look at each other one day and fall in love?”
Lydia laughs. “Um…that couldn’t sound more fake, Hunter. You don’t just look at someone and fall for them. There’s gotta be…you know…a significant moment or something.”
“Like?”
Lydia blows air out between her lips. “Like…you saved a small child from running into the street or something. And I was there to witness it.”
“I saved a small child?”
“Don’t make fun of me. It was just an example. We don’t have to use that.” She points out at the road. “Take a left.”
I nod and pull into the turn lane. As we’re waiting for the light to change, we keep brainstorming ideas for our so-called special moment.
“Maybe I saved you from running into the street,” I joke.
“Why would I run into a street?”
“I don’t know. You were running away from a bad date?”
