Last night’s “date” had brought in a staggering number of viewers. Or if you were me, a paralyzing amount. So much so, I could not make myself repeat the figure out loud or in my head. As popularity spread, street teams had assembled, blasting out on social media any sightings of Brooks or me, some so hardcore they could be found waving posters on the sidewalks outside the World Times building, showing support for whichever side of the love debate they found themselves on.
I’d even heard whispers that advertisers were spending upward of six figures for a fifteen-second advertising spot parsed in at the bottom of the screen during the live dates. It was a circus, and Brooks and I had become the main attraction. Merchandise had gotten out of control, expanding beyond T-shirts and pins and bleeding into every department imaginable. When I’d caught sight of cupcakes in a local bakery that had leapt onto the Romance Versus Reality bandwagon, I considered boycotting them. Until I noticed the fresh lemon bars being placed into the display and sidelined my principles for five minutes.
It had gotten to the point where I’d actually considered asking for a body guard or some surly-looking giant who would flank me whenever I took to the streets, because mixed in with the harmless diehard fans were a few who gave off the psycho vibe. Or as Quinn had put it, the ones who’d rather skin me and carry me as a handbag than ask for a photo with me.
“You about ready in there, Hannah?” A staccato of knocks sounded outside my bedroom door as I pulled on my last boot.
“One sec,” I replied before swiping on a fresh coat of lipstick and raking a brush through my hair. When I threw open the door, Brooks was standing right outside it, which made me flinch.
He chuckled. “You’d think you’d have gotten used to that by now.”
“Used to what? Having someone plastered against my door with a creepy look on his face?” I waited for him to step aside, but he didn’t budge. Discreetly, I shifted back.
“You can’t go out like that.” His brows pulled together when he took a good look at me.
“Excuse me? I can go out however I want.” My eyes skimmed down my outfit. A light jacket, jeans, and boots. It was casual at its best, but it wasn’t like we were heading to the Four Seasons.
“If you do, we’re not going to make it two steps outside the door before being recognized.” He retrieved a paper bag from the floor before coming inside and upending the contents onto my bed. “Incognito in a bag.”
He selected a pair of wide-rimmed glasses from the stash and slid them on. When he held out his arms and did a slow spin, I collected a few other items for his disguise. It was like taking Superman and putting dorky glasses on him though; not exactly a convincing disguise.
“Are you sure this is a good idea? Going out in public like this?” I stepped into him, lifting onto my tiptoes to position a ball cap on his head. “We’ve always done these things in private.”
“These things?”
“You know what I mean.” Shuffling through the pile of goods, I found something I couldn’t resist.
“It will be fine. That’s why I went to the costume store and stocked up like I was considering a career change into the secret agent field.” He frowned when I tore off the sticker backing of the fake mustache.
“What? It’s not like you bought this for me,” I said, pressing it into his upper lip before smoothing it out. Even pasting a fake mustache onto him, my body wasn’t immune to the warmth of his breath on my wrist or the way his throat moved when I touched him.
“How do you know? Plenty of women have mustaches.”
My hands dropped when I realized they were frozen against his jaw. “Yeah, except red-haired women usually don’t grow black mustaches.”
“Case of the drapes not matching the carpet?” He shot me a wink, twirling his fake mustache.
My hand shoved his stomach. “Stop acting like a pubescent boy. It’s too predictable.”
“Who said I’m acting?” He nudged me as he passed by to sort through what was left on my bed. “Okay, my turn.” Grabbing an emerald-green silk scarf, he wound it behind my neck before knotting it tight.
“Because my neck is so recognizable.” My fingers rolled across my hip as he gathered up a few more things. When he held up the dark brown wig styled straight with a blunt cut, I stepped back. “I don’t think so.”
But he was already gathering up my hair, twisting it on top of my head. “You put a predator stache on my face. You’re getting off easy with a wig.”
“I hate wigs. They make my head itch like crazy,” I argued, though I stood still when he slid the heinous thing into place. “And I don’t look good with short hair. Makes my cheeks look like two balloons about to pop.”
Brooks exhaled, moving the wig around a bit before stepping back. “Nah, you can pull off short hair.” He plunked a pair of huge sunglasses on my face, fighting a smile when he took in his masterpiece. “Though I do like you better as a redhead.”
“Yeah, and I like the non-predator look on you better too,” I grumbled as I grabbed my purse from the doorknob. “Actually, no, you look more like an 80s porn star with that stache.”
Brooks followed me toward the front door, a wicked smile creeping into place. “And how would you know what an 80s porn star looked like?”
“Oh, please. Nice attempt at entrapment there, Hugh Cox.” I tipped my cat-eyed sunglasses at him. “For your information, I’ve never watched 80s porn. I’m more a fan of the 70s era.”
The keys in his hand dropped as he was about to lock the door.
I played it cool, waiting for him at the elevator bay.
He was jogging, from the sound of his footsteps.
“You look flushed,” I noted.
He recovered instantly, that unfazed expression going into place. “It’s not every day a man comes across a fellow aficionado of the golden age of porn.”
We were both holding back laughter as we climbed onto the elevator.
“Your apartment still going to be ready to move into tomorrow?” Brooks asked as we watched the floor buttons light up in descending order.
“So long as my upstairs neighbor doesn’t forget to turn off her bath again tomorrow, it’s all set.”
“Yeah. That’s good,” he said, but there was no conviction in his voice.
I knew the feeling.
Spending the past few weeks in the same living space as Brooks had been eye-opening. Not only that, it had been easy; both of us had settled into a pattern that I’d never experienced before when living with a roommate. Usually, increasing one’s level of tolerance was required for sharing a space with another human being, but this felt less about tolerance and more about harmony. We moved through our daily lives as though it were a dance we’d learned in another life and were performing unconsciously in this one.
“Like I said before, don’t feel like you have to help me get settled back in. It’s only a few bags of stuff. I can manage on my own no problem.” When the doors opened, Brooks waited for me to get off first. “Besides, with all of the time we’ve been spending together, you could probably use a break from me.”
Brooks tipped his baseball cap an inch lower before he shoved open the outside door. “A break from you? What would I do with myself then? I don’t like all of that peaceful, quiet stuff.”
I glared at him through the dark lenses. “Not sure insulting your date is the best approach to getting her to view you as something more evolved than your ape ancestors.”
He made a few blaring ape calls, swinging his arms around like a brute.
“I thought the idea was to not draw attention to ourselves,” I said, indicating the people wandering the sidewalk with us.
“You make a good point.” His arms went back at his sides. “This one time.”
My eyes lifted. He was already getting on my nerves and we hadn’t even arrived at our destination. “Where are we going?”
“Not far.”
“Not far as in a few blocks or a few miles?” I motioned at my boots. “Because I am not the superhuman triathlete who doesn’t break a sweat until mile ten.”
His mustache pulled at the corners from his smile. “Good of you to finally acknowledge my superhumanness.”
“I meant super more in the vein of abnormal.”
“Thank you again.”
“Can a person say anything to you without you taking it as a compliment?” I asked, my fingers twitching from the urge to itch my head.
“Doubtful.”
“I guess I know where everyone’s lack of self-confidence got filtered to.”
He shrugged without a hint of shame before dodging in front of me to swing open a door. “Not far,” he repeated, waving me inside the bustling joint.
“McGregor’s?” I said, reading the rusted metal sign hanging above the door. I’d never heard of the place, but rowdy Irish pubs weren’t the worst place to spend an evening.
“Trust me. You’ll love it.”
“As who? Hannah Arden or Trixie Derriere?” I stepped up to the door, the scent of beer and fried fish rolling over me.
“Would you get your stuffy little derriere inside before I throw you over my shoulder and volunteer you to stand on the bar and recite a limerick after chugging a car bomb?” He nudged me inside just enough so the door could close.
“Whatever. Hugh.”
As I made my way inside, it was refreshing to find no one really paying attention to anyone else. Everyone was too occupied with their own conversations, their beers, or their games of darts.
It was a unique mix of people stuffed in a place that looked and smelled like it had been around since before any of the skyscrapers. McGregor’s appeared to be the watering hole for just about every breed of person one could find on the diverse island of Manhattan.
“Quick!” Brooks had to shout above the noise, pointing at a small table in the back where a couple were getting up and leaving.
“It’s just a table. Not the cure to cancer,” I shouted back.
“Yeah, well, finding an open table at this place on a Friday night runs about the same odds as finding that cure.” Brooks pumped his fists as we barreled into the empty seats.
“I’m kind of regretting keeping this date a secret.” When I went to lift the sunglasses onto my head, he slid them back over my eyes. “It would do the world good to see just how imbalanced you really are.”
He pointed into the crowd of people acting more like it was the last night on Earth instead of a Friday night in April. “Makes me relatable. They’ll only love me more.”
I ignored him and scanned the crusty menu. I wasn’t a snob when it came to places I’d visit, but I had standards for hygiene. “This does not seem like your kind of place.”
His forehead creased. “Why not?”
I stared at him for a minute, wondering if he was actually expecting me to answer that. “Oh, I don’t know. Take a look at the way you keep your apartment. Or the way you dress . . . any other time but tonight.” I eyed his T-shirt and casual slacks. It was like he’d been possessed. “Even the way you organize your fridge. That picture does not align with this one,” I finished, eyeing the scene at McGregor’s.
“My goal isn’t to be congruous and predictable in every facet of my life, you know?” His attention diverted to the bar, where he lifted two fingers at a guy who looked like he benched redwoods for a warm-up.
“Then what is your goal, Mr. Suddenly Stoic?”
“To be unpredictable. To surprise myself. To change, evolve, that kind of thing. How boring would it be to be born, live, and die the exact same person, believing the exact same things?” He lightly pulled on the ends of my bob-cut wig.
“That’s a romantic’s way of viewing life,” I said.
“No, that’s a realist’s view. To imagine we can go through life without changing is a fool’s doctrine.”
A waitress with corkscrew red hair and a face full of freckles set a couple of nearly black beers in front of us.
Lifting my glass, I clinked it against his. “Like your soul?”
He tipped his beer at me before taking a sip. “And my heart.”
“And your stache,” I added, setting my beer down without taking a drink.
“Still too scared to drink in my company?” He flicked my glass. “Afraid of what might happen after if you lower those unscalable inhibitions of yours?”
“Oh, to have the delusions of an ego-bloated psychopath.”
Relaxing into my chair, I took a few minutes to survey the scene. I’d always been a people-watcher; that was part of what drew me into writing. Observing, without interacting. Being the fly on the wall. I’d learned more about humans from watching than I ever had from conversing.
When my gaze returned to Brooks, I’d forgotten about his “disguise.” A laugh spurted from me when I noticed one corner of his mustache had curled away from his lip.
“We look ridiculous,” I said, re-adhering the corner to his skin.
“Well, you do. I look distinguished.”
When I slugged his arm, he rubbed it. “Okay, my turn.” He cracked his knuckles and leaned in. “Would you rather marry someone who wasn’t ‘the one’ or spend the rest of your life alone, waiting for said solidarity?”
My head rolled as I groaned. This question-and-answer game had remained a practice in torture. At the same time, I could appreciate its merits. In a handful of weeks, I felt like I’d gotten to know more about Brooks than I knew about most people in my life. The carte blanche to ask any question and the stipulation to answer honestly meant those skeletons in the closet eventually toppled out.
“Alone and waiting,” I answered. “No question.”
Brooks contemplated that with another drink of beer. “Really? You’d rather miss out on a chance at a family and everything else that comes with marriage for the gamble your one true love is out there?”
“A family is possible without the traditional method. Welcome to the twenty-first century.” I patted his hand. “I’d just rather spend my life hoping than resigned. Wouldn’t you?”
“Is that your question?”
My eyes rolled. “Sure.”
“No, I would not,” he said emphatically. “I would rather marry someone who might not set my life on fire, but had the potential for feelings to mature, than spend my whole life alone.” Half of his face pulled up. “That sounds like a terrible way to waste your life.”
My fingers skimmed beneath my wig to scratch my head. My hair follicles were suffocating. “A waste of a life is spending it with someone you learn to tolerate.”
Brooks huffed. “Next question.” He rubbed his hands together. “Would you rather marry me or . . .” He held up his finger when I started to protest. “Or that manchild from your apartment building who has been calling or texting you every day since you moved out?”
“How do you know he’s been contacting me?” I asked, my mouth falling open.
“Your phone.” He shrugged, all innocent-like. “That you keep on counters as though you’re inviting any passerby to check out.”
“I’m not even surprised,” I said as he circled his hand at me, waiting for my answer. I eyed my beer, actually considering chugging it before answering this question. “I’d rather marry you.” I glared at the smirk growing on his face. “Because at least we’ve already figured out one important component to making a relationship work.”
His smirk only deepened. “We had no problem figuring that out, did we?”
“I meant living together,” I exclaimed, scooting my chair away from him. “We’ve figured out how to live together.”
He stared at me over his beer. “That too.”
Lowering my sunglasses so he could see my eyes, I ran with the streak of bold that had surged inside. “Would you rather marry me . . .” I paused long enough to give him time to interject, but he stayed quiet. “Or the girl in layout who’s always hovering by your cube?”
Brooks gave me a funny look. “Easy. You.”
I pursed my lips when I felt the smile coming. “Why?”
“Sorry. That’s two questions. I already answered your first.”
My shoulders fell. “Really? You’re going to play all ‘by the book’ like the good rule-follower we both know you aren’t?”
“When it comes to you encroaching on my question territory, yes, that is how I’m going to play it.” He twirled the corner of that nasty stache again, able to make me laugh even when I was annoyed with him. “Uh-oh. Two o’clock. Pretty sure we’ve got some diehards who aren’t buying the disguises.” Brooks tipped his hat a bit lower, his gaze flickering to a few ladies pressed up against the bar, whispering to each other as they kept glancing back at our table.
“Or they could be discussing the atrocity that thing on your face is.” I slid my beer beside his empty one since I wasn’t going to drink it.
“That might be possible, if they weren’t all wearing a certain pin on their jackets.”
Seeing what he was talking about, I nodded. “I like them.”
“The phones are coming out,” he said, taking my arm to guide me out of my seat.
“They don’t recognize us. You’re overreacting.”
He took my hand and wove through the crowd toward the door. The women’s phones followed us.
“It physically pains me to say this, but I think you’re right,” I said, adjusting the bangs of my wig so it covered as much of my face as possible.
“Sweetest words I’ve yet to hear.” He shot me a grin when we were about halfway to the door, but that was when things went south.
The trio of women had defied the laws of motion and somehow gotten in front of us, blocking our escape. The one in the middle had an I’m With Her pin on her jacket, but her eyes were gushing I’m With Him.
“You’re that couple, aren’t you?” she asked us. Well, she asked Brooks. Brooks attempted to scoot around the woman wall, but they moved with us. “Don’t you even think about sneaking past without posing for a picture with us.”
My teeth worked at my lip for a moment. “Only if you promise not to post them publicly. For your eyes only, okay?”
I didn’t want to fathom what Conrad would say if he found out Brooks and I had been sneaking out on private dates.
“Our eyes only,” the woman with the bright pink lipstick said, drawing an X across her chest.
As the women staggered between us, Brooks gave me a look, double-checking to make sure I was good with this. I answered by winding my arms around the women closing in and smiling at the camera phone they’d convinced someone at the nearby table to take a picture with.
“You are just hard all over,” the older woman of the bunch cooed as her hand moved from Brooks’s side to capping behind his shoulder. “Your thoughts on romance might not align with mine, but I’d be willing to take a temporary hiatus to the dark side with you.”
My eyes lifted behind my dark glasses as the other women rocked from their snickers.
Brooks shot me a flash of a grin before the person holding the camera gave the “say cheese” prompt. The three women around me stuck out their chests and smiled like they were vying for Miss America. In contrast, my posture wilted at the same time as an indigestion bubble burst in my throat. Great. I probably looked like I’d just swallowed a cat. Alive and clawing.
After the picture, the women took their time thanking us for our time, probably because they were hoping Brooks would take them up on their dark side foray offer. If these were my so-called followers and he’d managed to change their minds with a porn-star mustache and a hard body, I was in trouble. Where were the diehard romantics? The ones who were immune to a sharp jaw and eyes so expressive they could make a girl blush with one look?
When Brooks managed to whittle his way through the women toward me, his hand circled my arm before we carved a path toward the exit. But with the commotion from the pictures, a crowd had formed, phones raised and flashes going off from every direction.
“Think if we ask real nice, they’ll all agree to keep those pictures to themselves?” I said to Brooks, even as I noticed one girl pulling up her Instagram app one hot second after snapping a pic of the two of us.
“I’m more concerned with how I’m going to explain this mustache to my grandkids one day.” Brooks scooted a guy blocking the door so he could get a photo out of our way.
“Grandkids? That requires you to actually like a woman long enough to procreate. Which, Neanderthal, doesn’t follow your relationship creed.”
Brooks’s arm swung behind my back, partly speeding me up, partly shielding me as we shoved through the pub’s crowded doorway. “A man wanting to sow his seed is as base instinct as it gets. Of course I want offspring.”
“Offspring. Sowing seeds.” I pretended to fan myself. “If that doesn’t turn a girl on . . .”
A noise rumbled in his chest as we finally burst free of the pub. Fresh, cool air spilled around me, and it was so refreshing I had to take several long breaths.
“Hey, Double-oh-Seven, your disguises suck.” I ripped off the wig and glasses, stuffing them in my purse.
Brooks had already torn off the mustache but left the ball cap on. He was about to say something when a group of guys staggered out of the pub, immediately making bowing motions at Brooks. They must have been drunk. It was the only explanation for why they’d be pretending to worship the man with a red patch of skin in the shape of a mustache on his upper lip.
“I think you’re being deified.” I tipped my head in the direction of his admirers.
“Deified by a gang of drunkards. Not exactly my life’s calling.” Brooks slung his arm around my shoulders to steer me down the street when a chorus of whistles sounded.
“You’re the man, Mr. Reality!” one of them called. From his voice, he’d achieved puberty all of one week ago. “No way I’m letting a chick trick me into a life sentence of monogamy.”
Sighing, I gave Brooks one of my looks he’d gotten used to by now.
In response, he gave me one of his I’d gotten used to as well.
“You go on and live your best life there, chief.” Brooks shot the band of bros a thumbs-up and kept going.
“I bet you’ve scored some serious tail. Some seriously hot tail.” The sound of footsteps echoed behind us until the most sober of the bunch managed to catch up. The one with a beer T-shirt nudged Brooks after giving me a once-over. “Kinda dropping down a few leagues to prove your point though, eh? But whatever it takes, man. Take one for the team.”
My mouth was opening to breathe fire when Brooks blinked a few times as though he’d been roused from a nap. “Sorry, I missed all that.” He barely glanced at the kid as he picked up our pace. “I was too busy wondering how many times your mom has cursed herself for not insisting your dad pull out when you were conceived.”
A confused look pulled at the guy’s expression before he fell behind, the jeers and laughs of his friends echoing into the night.
“Mr. Reality, keeping it real!” a different voice shouted, followed by more laughter—except for who I assumed was Beer Shirt, cussing them all out.
My arms wound around me as my head swam with a dozen different emotions.
“Forget what he said.” Brooks slid closer, his arm staying around my shoulders. “That guy wouldn’t recognize a good woman if he had ten lifetimes to try.”
My head shook. “It’s okay. I’m used to it.”
“Used to what?”
I pulled at the scarf knotted around my neck, combing through the tangled mess that was my hair. “Being told to stick to my league.” I motioned back at the ensemble of ding-dongs who’d moved on to harassing a couple of young women with unoriginal catcalls. “In high school, it was when the captain of the basketball team asked me to winter formal. The cheerleaders weren’t having that. In college, it was when the guy with the nice car and smile asked me to a frat party. The sorority girls practically staged a revolt.” I felt my mood aiming south from the mere mention of those miserable moments. “I learned a long time ago not to tie my self-esteem to some jerk-off’s opinion.”
Brooks was watching me as we strolled down the dark sidewalk. “Well, can’t say I don’t understand their motivations.”
“Whose motivations?”
“The guys. And the girls. It doesn’t take a genius to recognize the whole package when a guy sees one. That being you.” Brooks tipped his head in my direction. “And those girls clearly felt threatened and would rather run you off than be forced to up their game and maybe improve themselves.”
Thinking back to the girls who’d teased me to tears, it was almost laughable to consider those air-brushed-to-perfection specimens feeling threatened by me in all of my baby-fat-and-frizzy-hair glory. “I’ve certainly never considered it that way. I just wrote it off to the world being full of beautiful mean girls, their sole mission in life to make the awkward, chubby girls feel as pitiful as possible.”
Brooks made a pfft sound. “Pretty on the outside. Ugly on the inside. That only gets a person so far in life for so long. Where do you think those girls are today?”
“Are you asking the petty me? Or the higher ground me?”
“Like you even need to ask.”
I clapped a couple of times as I conjured a scene of payback. “Festering in some rusted-out trailer, getting their sanity unspooled by four insufferable kids under five, waiting for the husband to bring home the case of beer and pork rinds but knowing he’s likely giving it to the widow hillbilly three trailers over.”
When I glanced over, I caught Brooks giving me an impressed look. “And look where you are now.”
I thought about that. Where I was. In New York City, vying for my dream job, already in possession of an impressive career. But I was alone, never having come close to a relationship that parlayed into a walk down an aisle. My career life was on point. My love life was non-existent.
“What about you? What were the high school years like for Brooks North?” I asked.
“About the same as yours from the sound of it.”
I stopped moving.
“What? I was a late bloomer. Took some time to mature into all of this manly goodness.” He waggled his brows at me, grinning when I laughed. “You think you’ve got horror stories from those days? Not even. The first time I asked a girl I thought was in my league to homecoming, she laughed in my face. Then she told her friends and they all laughed in my face. For the next three years of high school.”
My eyes narrowed at the sidewalk. “You? A nerd?” I tried to envision it. I couldn’t.
“Nerds had more status on me. I was more a . . . disease.” Brooks’s hand tightened around my shoulder. “Then college rolled around and I ditched the glasses, put on fifty pounds of mass, and testosterone decided to finally give me a jawline. After that, I never had any issues getting dates. In fact, I’d leave a party with a dozen new phone numbers. Now, why did I go from zero to hero in a few short years?” He glanced at me, waiting.
“Hero might be an exaggeration . . .”
He gently pulled my hair before continuing. “Nothing about my personality changed—”
“You mean you were just as charming then as you are now?”
“My looks. Those changed. If that isn’t evidence that humans are shallow, I don’t know what is.”
“So that’s yet another reason why you believe what you do? Because high school girls avoided you and college girls couldn’t get enough of you?”
One of his shoulders lifted. “What would you infer from that?”
“Your pheromones went into overdrive, making you irresistible to any red-blooded female?” I spurted off. “Because you’re not that good-looking.”
He gave me a look that told me he knew I was lying. “When you strip any of us down, you’ll find us all either heeding or lying to ourselves about survival of the fittest. Looks, status, money—it all equals survival. That’s all this relationship dance is about, Hannah. I know it isn’t pretty, but the truth usually isn’t.”
Even as he finished, Brooks drew me closer, his fingers absently playing with the ends of my hair. Survival or not, instinct or more, the connection forming between us could not be denied.
“Hey, North?” My head dropped to his shoulder. “I would have gone to homecoming with you.”
“Hey, Arden?” His mouth floated to my ear. “That would be the only reason I’d consider going back and reliving those years of my life.”