“We’re making you brunch,” Amanda declares.
My girlfriends have just shown up on my front porch in a giant posse, arms full. A waffle iron, bags of fruit, grocery bags stuffed, I assume, with ingredients.
I cross my arms. “Oh, come on,” I say. “You want to pick my brain, and you know food is the best way to soften me up. You know if you showed up here empty handed and tried to get the dirt, I’d kick you out without ceremony.”
Amanda and Rachel exchange looks. “There may be some truth to that,” Amanda admits. “Waffles with berries, bananas, whipped cream, dark chocolate sauce, and mini marshmallows?”
As much as I don’t want to talk about it—any of it—I’m ravenous and a total sucker for brunch food. Amanda knows me.
I hold the door open wide enough for Amanda and her minions to pass through. Amanda, Rachel, Lucy, Jessa, Mari (Zara asleep in the sling on her chest), and Jessa’s bestie and business partner, Imani. They tromp into the kitchen, set their bribes on the kitchen counters, and get immediately to work.
“What’s all this?” my grandfather harumphs, shuffling into the kitchen.
“Hello, Mr. Hott,” Amanda says, and the other women echo her. My grandfather doesn’t bother to respond to the greetings, just repeats his question.
Amanda delivers her food porn litany.
My grandfather crosses his arms. “Is there enough for me?”
“Of course!” Amanda says. “And thank you for the party invitations!”
Thanks mostly to Aunt Meryl, invitations to my granddad’s eighty-fifth are out, and RSVP cards have started appearing in our mailbox. Every day there’s a new bunch, and my grandfather combs through them, growling when he doesn’t find what he wants. I know what he’s looking for—responses from my brothers.
I want to tell him it’s not going to happen, but I know he won’t listen. He’ll keep up his hopeful march down to the mailbox to check every day, and he’ll continue being disappointed, listlessly dropping the uncooperative replies onto a pile for Aunt Meryl and me to deal with later.
My grandfather waves off Amanda’s thank you. “Call me when it’s ready,” he says.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper to her when he’s gone.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she says. “He’s adorable.”
“Tell that to my brothers,” I grumble. “Maybe if they’d seen it that way, they’d have stuck around.”
Amanda’s eyes linger on me, but she doesn’t say anything else.
“So,” Amanda says, as she starts cutting up pineapple. “Now that we’re here, you might as well tell us everything. I mean, everything we can’t see from watching the video!” She emits a sound that definitely qualifies as a squeal.
“You know there’s no squealing,” I remind her. “I can kick you out. And keep the food.”
Amanda snorts. In her own way, she’s defiantly who she is, which is what I love best about her, even if sometimes she and I don’t exactly see the world the same way.
“You’re famous!” Lucy says. “You look so amazing in that video. You’re all glowy!”
“Pretty sure the glowy was just your makeup job and the lighting in the restaurant.”
“And his viewers are soooo shipping you two,” Imani says.
“The shipping is pretty dang cute,” Jessa agrees. “So much for ‘don’t read the comments.’”
That’s one thing I feel super lucky about. Maybe it’s because Bear’s not an A-list celebrity, but we don’t seem to have gotten the usual barrage of hate-comments about what the hell he sees in me or that he could do better. Most people think we’re cute, the perfect couple—so outdoorsy! And they both love food! Not that there aren’t haters—there are a few—but I feel like I can ignore them.
What I can’t ignore is how weird it makes me feel to be shipped with Bear by thousands of people when I don’t know if it’s actually what I want.
That kiss. It was so…
It was so not the other kiss.
“So…?” Rachel asks. “Was it all that and a bag of chips?”
All their eyes are on me, their faces lit and expectant, and…
I don’t lie. Like, ever.
Mostly because I’m the world’s worst liar. I think I was born without the gene that lets you arrange your face for public consumption. Mine tells everyone the truth instantly.
But I have to try, because if I don’t, there will be a million questions.
What do you mean it was okay?
I mean, you like him, right?
Hanna? You like him, right?
And knowing them, they will somehow manage to pry everything out of me. Not just how shallow things with Bear felt, but also…
Kissing practice.
Which didn’t feel like practice at all. It felt like The Real Thing in a way not much else has in my life.
That’s the last thing I want to have to explain to the eager-eyed women crowded around me.
“It was fun!” I say, as buoyantly as possible.
There’s a collective sigh of relief, and I realize: They wanted this date to go well almost more than I did. It’s a strangely heart-warming realization, how much my friends care about me, even if they don’t always… get me.
I give them a skeletal outline of the evening, focusing on the food, on how much I enjoyed the restaurant, on the kiss itself, and not all the staging that preceded it or the editing that came afterwards, or the comparative study my mind can’t stop making.
Apparently, my acting skills are better than I would have guessed, because no one questions my narrative. And when Amanda pulls out the video for us to watch again—my third time watching—my enthusiasm for the kiss looks pretty great on camera.
So maybe I can lie when I’m sufficiently motivated.
I’ll admit, the first thing I thought when I saw the finished video, was that Easton would see it too. He’d see the eager look on my face and the way I closed my eyes at the last minute, leaning into Bear and coasting my hand into his soft hair.
Take that, Mr. I Can’t Do This. This guy can.
Not that Easton cares, one way or the other. But still.