I was still naked when the first ray of morning hit me. Julian had one arm wrapped loosely around my waist. He didn’t even stir as I shifted to look at him. He snuggled in closer under the comforter and sighed happily when I ran my fingers across his back.
Julian Wright was in bed…with me.
Part of me couldn’t process that. I was still waking up. Dawn had broken, but my brain hadn’t caught up. It was likely because I was hungover as shit. My head pounded. My stomach roiled. The light was too bright. But still, I wanted to preserve this memory forever.
Last night had been a dream. It didn’t even feel real despite all the obvious reality around me. I didn’t normally get drunk. Definitely not drunk enough to sleep with Julian Wright. Definitely not drunk enough for everything that had happened last night. Yet here I was.
I wanted to lie in this dream forever, but I couldn’t.
With a sigh, I scooted out of the bed. Julian’s arm dropped into the empty space. I flicked the covers up around him and then tiptoed to the dresser. I threw on my sleeping clothes and tugged my wild hair up into a half-ponytail. I needed something to drink, Tylenol, and my anxiety meds. None of which were in this room with Julian.
I snuck one more glance at his sleeping form before stepping out of the bedroom. My foot hit a creaky board, and I winced.
“Jennifer?” my mom’s voice called from the kitchen.
I cursed under my breath, deeply regretting leaving the sanctuary of Julian’s arms, and then stepped into the kitchen. “Hey, Mom.”
“Breakfast?” she asked, cracking eggs into a bowl.
“Sure.” I poured myself a glass of water and fished out my pills from my purse. I downed one with two Tylenol, hoping it would do its trick fast enough to let me deal with my mom.
“How was your night?”
“Good.” I took a seat at the island.
“You came in late.”
“We went out with Chester.”
My mom smiled brightly at my brother’s name. “I’m glad to see you two are getting along.” Then she frowned. “Did he tell you?”
“Tell me what?”
“He and Margaret broke up.”
“Oh,” I whispered.
Well, that explained his behavior last night. My brother was a chameleon. He took on the shape of the people around him. Around my parents, he was the perfect son. Around Margaret, the perfect boyfriend. Around me, the antagonistic, older brother, smarter and wiser and better in every way. But last night, he hadn’t been any of those things. He’d existed with people I didn’t know, in a world I didn’t understand. But I’d seen a weight lifted off of his shoulders.
“He didn’t say.”
“Well, you know your brother. He’s very private.”
“I could see that they were fighting. What happened?”
My mom shook her head. “He said that she wanted to move home with him and find a job in Lubbock, but that the spark wasn’t there anymore.”
“That’s sad. I liked Margaret.”
My mom slid a plate of eggs in front of me. “Speaking of relationships.”
Oh boy.
“You and Julian?”
“Yeah?” I asked, reaching for the fork.
“He seems like a nice boy, Jennifer, but are you sure this is what you want?”
“What?”
“He’s a Wright. You know what they’re like.”
“I don’t know what you mean, Mom. One of my best friends is a Wright.”
“And look how she treated you before she became your best friend,” my mom said adamantly. “She was cruel to you in high school, and she didn’t even know your name before she hired you to nanny her child. The child she had a shotgun wedding to cover up.”
I winced. That was all true and looked bad, but I didn’t judge Sutton for her past. We were friends now. That was what mattered.
“I don’t see what Sutton has to do with this.”
My mom sighed and leaned against the island. “I’m looking out for you, dear. You show up here with a man we’ve never met and say he’s your boyfriend. He’s driving a Jaguar and wearing fancy designer clothing. He’s your boss.”
“It’s not like that.”
“Maybe you think so, but what about everyone else at your work? Don’t you see what it looks like?”
My face bloomed red. “Mom…”
“It looks like he’s screwing his secretary.” She held her hands up and stepped back. “Excuse my crude language, but I don’t want him to use my baby. What is that man doing with a photographer at his work?”
“Are you saying that he’s slumming it?”
“No, honey, I would never say that.” She shrugged. “I mean, if you were a pharmacist, I might understand it better.”
“Mom!” I gasped.
“But that isn’t what I’m saying,” she said quickly. “I don’t want you to get in over your head. I see the way you look at him, Jennifer, like the sun rises when he’s in the room. What happens when he’s had his fun and leaves? What happens to my bright girl?”
I looked away from her, a deep hurt burrowing in my chest. What would happen? Julian and I were fake dating. Just a fake relationship for the month. We had a plan, a goal. Make the next month bearable. Deal with graduation so that I wouldn’t be alone and make Ashleigh jealous. Then everything had gotten complicated.
Of course, I’d always had feelings for him, but they weren’t reciprocated. We were lying to my parents. Lying to Chester and Margaret and everyone we had come in contact with this weekend. Julian wasn’t madly in love with me. He wasn’t my boyfriend.
I almost confessed it all to my mom. But what would that do but prove her right? The deep, yawning chasm in my chest deepened at the thought of how bad he could hurt me. He held my heart in his hands, and he didn’t even know it. We’d had sex. It had been…unbelievable. But I couldn’t just have sex with Julian Wright. I wasn’t Annie. One-night stands and friends with benefits would never, ever work for me. I fell fast and hard. And crashed just as devastatingly when it all inevitably went south.
My mom stepped around the island and dropped an arm around my shoulders. “I know you like him. I like him, too. He’s charming and funny. I want to make sure that you don’t get hurt.”
“Is there a way to ensure that?” I asked her desperately.
She laughed softly. “No. Unfortunately. But the one thing I do know is that it has to be equal. Does he feel the same for you as you do for him? If the answer is yes, then ignore me, dear. If he doesn’t though…well…”
I swallowed and nodded. If he didn’t, then he’d hurt me. And Julian didn’t feel that way about me. That was why we had started faking it to begin with. Sex only made it more difficult. As much as I wanted to do it again, I couldn’t. Not if I wanted to have a heart after this month was over.
My mom kissed my cheek. “I love you.”
“I love you, too, Mom.”
She went back to the stove as a rumpled Julian stepped out of the back. He found me with bedroom eyes, a quirk of his lips letting me in on our secret from last night.
“Morning,” he drawled.
“Good morning,” I whispered.
“Eggs?” my mom asked him.
“No, thank you, ma’am. I was thinking of ducking out and getting us Voodoo Doughnuts. Jen, you want to walk with me?”
I shook my head. “I need to shower. Still feel the bar on me from last night.”
He frowned at my words. “All right. Doughnut preference?”
“Whatever you get will be fine.”
“Okay,” he said, drawing out the word. He looked up at my mom. “Anything for you, Mrs. Gibson?”
“Oh, I can’t stomach the calories,” she said, touching her waistline. “Jen probably shouldn’t either.”
My blush moved to the tips of my ears. Yes, I’d gained some weight in the last couple years. My body had changed, too. My hips widening and thighs going with it. Plus, I truly hated working out. Nothing about it was fun. I wanted to be like Annie, who cared about running and soccer and shit, but I just didn’t care. I’d never been coordinated either. The best I’d managed was two years of marching band in high school.
Julian’s gaze narrowed at my mother. I’d never seen him look at anyone but Ashleigh and his father like that. “Jennifer can eat whatever she likes.”
“Oh, of course,” my mom said. She seemed oblivious to his disdain.
“You can jump in the shower. I’ll wait for you to get doughnuts,” he offered.
I bit my lip. Might as well get this over with. Ripping the Band-Aid off wasn’t going to be fun here or in the Jaguar, driving six hours back home.
“Sure,” I said tightly.
I took the quickest shower of my life and didn’t even blow my hair out. Just dropped it into a messy bun on the top of my head, the short strands still wet and slightly curling against the nape of my neck. I pulled on a gray T-shirt, tucked into a flowy floral skirt, and sandals I’d worn last night.
Julian was waiting outside. “That was fast.”
“I thought you’d still be inside.”
He averted his gaze to the door. “It’s a nice day. Want to walk?”
“Yeah, sure.”
The day was about as beautiful as Texas summers ever reached. As if the universe knew how incredible our previous night had been and wanted a sunny spotlight on it.
My mind was still reeling from the conversation with my mom. Like…fuck. She meant well. I knew that much. She really did. But the things that she’d said, whether or not true, were the reason I hadn’t wanted to have that conversation to begin with.
“You’re quiet,” Julian said.
“Just talked to my mom. I guess Chester and Margaret broke up.”
“Thought that was clear when he got into the tub at the bar last night,” he said with a laugh.
“I mean, I knew they had been fighting.” I glanced up at him, and his eyes were on mine. Same Julian. Perfect smile, perfect look, perfect everything. He didn’t seem to be a totally different guy. He was the same guy I’d known for years. “I didn’t realize it had gotten that far.”
“Eh. It was probably for the better. She seemed upset.”
“True.”
“It sucks when relationships end, but not every person you meet is forever.”
That was the damn truth. I’d dated enough duds to know that. I had thought that Margaret was the one for Chester. Showed how much I knew about relationships. And anyway, I was using this distraction so that I didn’t have to discuss what was happening with me and Julian.
“Here we are.” He yanked the door open on the bubblegum-pink building with a Voodoo Doughnuts sign hanging from the top.
We entered a room that smelled like straight sugar and looked like a kaleidoscope had exploded. We moved against the brick wall to get into the line behind a spattering of bedraggled college students.
“What do you like?” he asked.
“There are so many choices,” I whispered as I stared at the plethora of doughnut options before me.
“I’m partial to the Mexican Hot Chocolate and The Blunt.”
I coughed, and then my eyes tracked to what was actually a doughnut rolled into a blunt. “Well, they have everything here, don’t they?”
“Pretty much.” Julian leaned against the wall as we waited our turn. “So, about last night.”
I bit my lip. I didn’t want to talk about it. I didn’t want to ruin it. “What about last night?”
“It happened.”
I laughed. “I know it happened.”
He smirked. “Good. I was worried when you weren’t there in the morning.”
“Well, actually…” I ran a hand across the back of my neck.
“What’ll ya have?”
I jumped at the woman standing before us. I hadn’t realized we’d gotten to the front of the line. The woman was all of five feet tall with bright blue hair up in giant Leia buns on the sides of her head. Her eyes were heavily winged, and she was clearly high as fuck.
Julian didn’t even glance back as he said, “She’ll have The Dick.” My jaw dropped open. “With Bavarian cream.”
The woman glanced over to my look of shock and then snorted. “Absolutely.”
He grinned at me devilishly. “What?”
“Nothing,” I said with an embarrassed laugh.
He ordered a dozen other doughnuts, paid, and took the bright pink box to carry back with us. We stepped outside, and he opened the box and held out my doughnut on a napkin.
“I cannot believe you ordered that for me.”
“Go on. Eat it,” he teased.
And I couldn’t keep myself from cracking up as I took a giant bite of the chocolate-covered dick doughnut. White cream exploded out of the end, spraying onto the sidewalk in front of us. I was sputtering with laughter at the display.
“Oh my God,” I gasped.
Julian stepped forward with a napkin and wiped the cream from my chin. “It’s polite to help clean up.”
“You’re ridiculous.” I couldn’t stop laughing.
“Ah, but you’re laughing now, and that’s better.” He tossed the napkin into the nearby trash. “I thought you might be freaking out.”
“I…” I paused.
He was right. I had been freaking out.
He smiled intuitively. “And there’s no reason to, Jen. This was supposed to be a fake date, and now, it looks complicated. It doesn’t have to be. Let’s just keep it casual.”
“Casual.” Could that even work? I took another bite of my doughnut, so I didn’t have to ask the hard questions.
“I’m having fun. You’re having fun, judging by how you’re devouring that dick doughnut.”
I sputtered again. Fuck this fucking doughnut.
“It’s delicious.” I challenged him by taking another bite.
He chuckled. “So, let’s just, you know, have fun. Okay?”
My mom’s words echoed in my head. That I liked him more than he liked me and I was going to get hurt. She was probably right.
But I wanted this anyway.