Elena thought about how her life would be if Will stayed in Glensford. Not much would change, he’d be here and she’d still be in love with him. Her heart sank at the thought. She didn’t know if she could do it, or if at some point the emotions would get the better of her and she’d just tell him.
Will smiled at her, the type of smile that unraveled everything Elena felt about him, that made her want to reach out and hug him, kiss him, tell him that Cecilia wasn’t the person he should be with. She pressed her hands to the sheets.
He wouldn’t feel the same way, and then their friendship would be over. She’d be alone again.
“Will,” Elena said, right when it looked like he would walk away. She grabbed his hand without meaning to. He looked caught off guard, wide-eyed now.
“Yeah?”
“If you get into NYU, go. Okay?”
His smile faltered. His hand tightened around hers. “And if I don’t get in, what then? Would you be okay with me staying?”
“Of course,” Elena said. “You’re my best friend.”
He nodded. “And you’re mine.” He let go of her hands. “Sleep until the bell rings. I’ll drop by to drive you home.”
If she went home with Will, Elena knew she’d break down in the car and tell him everything, about the back rent, about the new building owner, and possibly about her and Marco. Maybe not that it was a lie, but that the whole relationship thing was starting to overwhelm her.
“Marco’s dropping by,” Elena said. “He texted me earlier today. He wants to have a study date.”
Lie. Lie. Lie.
Will looked surprised, but only for a second. “Then I’ll see you tomorrow morning?”
“Yes,” Elena said. “Definitely.”
When he’d left, Elena pulled out her phone and searched for Marco’s name.
She texted him, hoping this wouldn’t cost her too much later on. She doubted Marco Silva did favors without wanting something in return.
Chapter 14
Can you pick me up from school today? We need to talk
Marco stared down at the text. This was it. Elena was going to call off the whole thing. Was the money not enough? Maybe it wasn’t worth it. Still, here he was on his way to pick up his fake girlfriend from school.
“Just pull up to the curb,” Marco said to Greg. “I’ll get the door for her.”
Greg said nothing. He pulled up to the curb. Marco got of the car, knowing people would stare, hoping they would. He knew he had to play his role of boyfriend now, made sure everyone saw it. Maybe then Elena wouldn’t change her mind and dump him.
Elena appeared in the distance. She walked over to him, her short brown waves bouncing as she went. The sun glared in her glasses, so Marco couldn’t tell if she was looking at him or at the people around them.
“Hey,” she said. “Thank you for coming, I know it was short notice. Can we drive around for a bit?”
“Okay,” he said. It meant she wanted to talk, which in turn meant there might be room to negotiate. He opened the door. Elena paused, giving him a look that asked why he was doing that, but then slid into the backseat anyways. Marco went in after her, motioning for Greg to get the car moving before Elena even had a chance to speak.
She sat quietly as the car moved out of the parking lot. Marco watched her and he realized she looked terrible, like she had the flu or maybe something worse.
“Are you sleeping?” he asked.
“Not enough apparently,” Elena said. She kept her eyes on the road. “Do you have somewhere we can go, somewhere that isn’t Melo’s or the country club or my family’s bookstore, maybe somewhere where we can talk, mostly alone. No offense, Greg,” she said, “but right now the moving car’s just making me dizzier.”
“We can go to Lucas’s apartment,” Marco said. He still had the spare key his brother had given him from his short stay there. “My brother’s not home until eight or nine most days. He has a night class on campus. It’s not too close, either, like a twenty minute drive.”
“Let’s go there,” Elena said, “if it’s okay with your brother.”
“Greg,” Marco said. “Can you take us to Lucas’s.”
Elena said nothing else until they were out of the car and in front of Lucas’s apartment building.
Even as he closed the door behind him and followed Elena inside, Marco kept quiet. She walked ahead of him, seeming to take in the place. She stopped every so often, and looked around.
“It’s a really nice place.”
Marco didn’t agree. He thought his brother’s whole place could use a remodel, maybe furniture that didn’t look thrifted.
“What did you want to talk about?” he asked. It probably wasn’t the thing to start with. Rather, he should’ve offered Elena something to eat or drink, maybe a flu shot or some antibiotics.
Elena sighed. She took a seat on one of the stools at the breakfast bar. “I don’t know.”
“What?” Had she brought him all the way here to mess with him? Was this her way of ending things?
“I mean, I don’t know what to start with,” Elena said. “There’s a few things.”
Marco took a seat on the stool across from her. He hadn’t realized how close the seats were, how small the breakfast bar was, until now. His knee grazed Elena’s as he sat.
“Well, pick one,” he said. He thought that sounded harsh. “I think it’d be easier if you went with one thing.”
“Okay,” Elena said. “I have a question.”
“Um, okay.”
“Is Cecilia a good person?”
At the mention of the name, Marco sat straighter. “Cecilia’s a wonderful person,” he said. “She’s one of the best people I’ve ever met. She speaks so many languages, and she travels everywhere but is never snooty about it. She’ll never let anyone be alone either, like she’ll make sure everyone’s included no matter what. And she’s beautiful and she knows it, but she never likes people to define her with that.” He paused, because Elena was smiling as she looked at him.
“You really like her, don’t you?”
“Yeah, I do. I’ve spent the last four years absolutely head over heels for her.”
“Why didn’t you tell her you liked her sooner then?”
What was this, twenty questions? Marco watched Elena, waiting for her to say something mean, or maybe point out the fact he’d told her to confess her feelings for Will when he’d spent so much time hiding his feelings for Cecilia too.
“Well, first off she always had someone else she liked. Trust me, I tried at first, but a lot of guys like Cecilia. And I’m a grade below her so we didn’t have many classes together, which made it harder. Then she was single, and I tried one night to tell her, we kissed too-”
“You kissed?” Elena asked. “Really?”
Why did she sound so surprised?
Marco nodded. “We did and then she left the next day, and I didn’t see her until right after she came back. Then she pretended like it hadn’t even happened.”
Elena looked a lot less sick now, like her interest in his story had given her new life.
“There’s has to be more to it than that,” Elena said. “You don’t just kiss somebody and leave.”
“Okay, so maybe I kissed her, then she kissed me back, and then Heather, her friend, interrupted us. I didn’t get a chance to say anything.”
“What did you say before you kissed her?”
“She was talking about something else,” Marco said. “About the stars, how she really wanted to have a fashion line with that theme, and she was so excited about it, like this one idea could change the world.” He could see Cecilia now, standing in the gardens behind the banquet hall, her hair longer then, flowing behind her. She’d looked beautiful, wearing a silver dress that made Marco think she looked just like the stars she loved so much.
Marco might have had one too many glasses of wine that night, but he knew he wanted to kiss her then.
“She didn’t do anything wron
g,” Elena said. “You kissed her without asking her to and then you expected something. It doesn’t work that way. You can’t make someone like you just by kissing them.”
“She kissed me back,” Marco said. “And it wasn’t like a total surprise - we kept talking and she leaned in closer too. I was just the one who initiated it. I mean, when you kissed your real boyfriends, your past ones I guess, did you ever ask, hey, can I kiss you?”
Elena’s cheeks flushed. “I haven’t had boyfriends.”
“Okay,” Marco said, remembering that she’d probably been in love with Will for a long time. “But you’ve dated people, kissed them, right?”
“One person,” Elena said. “My freshman year, and actually I did ask. I said, should we kiss now?”
Marco nodded. Well, that didn’t prove his point. He also couldn’t comprehend how you could go through high school only having kissed one person. Sure, he’d had a crush on Cecilia for longer than he could remember but that didn’t mean he didn’t enjoy dating or kissing other people.
“Well, moving on from our kissing stories, or why I like Cecilia, what else did you want to talk about?” He didn’t think Elena had brought him here just for that.
Elena nodded. “Also, I needed how to figure out how to keep Will from driving me back home today.”
“Why?” Marco asked. “I thought you’d like that sort of thing; more time with you means less time with Cecilia.”
Elena shook her head. “I don’t think about it that way. Will can date Cecilia if he wants, as long as she doesn’t end up being a bad person.”
“You don’t care that he’s dating someone else?”
“I do,” Elena said. “But after he dated my best friend, Mia, I learned to control it, not always, but most days. Just because I want to be with him, doesn’t mean he’ll want to be with me.”
Marco laughed at that. “I thought we went over this; you should at least try, risk things changing. I took a risk when I kissed Cecilia, and when I tried to tell her how I felt at the dinner. I’m still here.”
“Yeah, but are things between the two of you the same?”
Marco thought about it. He hadn’t seen Cecilia much, aside from the dinner and the embarrassing ride he’d had to ask her for. She’d texted him maybe once, but he hadn’t texted much either. He’d been too busy trying to figure out things with Elena, with the whole situation. Had things between him and Cecilia changed? Yeah. She’d spent a year without trying to reach out to him, and when she got back it was like they were merely acquaintances.
“See?” Elena said. “I don’t want to sit and think about how everything between Will and I would change if someone asked me that. I’m happy with how things are now.”
Marco said nothing. Lucas’s apartment suddenly got a lot quieter. He didn’t have the energy to give Elena a lecture on why she should tell Will how she felt. She might be right, maybe in her own situation.
“Is there anything else?” Marco asked.
Elena bit her bottom lip, and he realized he was watching her lips. He looked past her. “When was your first kiss?”
“That’s random-”
“If you answer, I’ll answer back.”
Marco shrugged. “I think it was with a girl at summer camp, maybe the summer before eighth grade.”
Elena nodded. Why were they discussing this? Was this something that she thought they should know about each other in order to make their fake relationship seem more believable?
He waited for her answer. It looked like she was still thinking about his.
Finally, Elena said, “I was fifteen, freshman year. I kissed a guy I didn’t know in a closet after he spun a soda bottle and it landed on me.”
Marco laughed at that. “It sounds like right out of some early 2000s movie. Is seven minutes in heaven still a thing?” He remembered then he’d played a few rounds of that at some birthday party in high school, a long time ago. He didn’t tell Elena that, though. He sighed. “Are you okay? Not to be mean, but you looked kind of sick when I picked you up.”
“Stress,” Elena said. “I get like this when there’s too much going on. I usually had Mia, my other best friend, to talk it through with, not that Will doesn’t listen. It’s just he always has to fix things, and sometimes I don’t need solutions, just someone to listen.”
Marco tilted his head. “Am I that someone today?”
“Kind of. You’re the person who happens to know what’s going on and so you’re the only one I can actually talk to.”
Marco nodded. He figured that made them sound like friends, but they weren’t friends. He wasn’t her friend. Aside from the few times he’d stopped into Bee’s Books, Marco knew next to nothing about Elena Castro. She liked to read, her dad was her family, she loved Will, and she had absolutely no intention of telling him. Oh, and her first kiss had been with a stranger during seven minutes in heaven.
It looked like the facts were building up.
“I guess I should get home,” Elena said. Then she paused. “Are you working tonight?”
“No,” Marco said. “Tomorrow. You?”
“Saturday,” Elena said. He remembered then, Laura had pulled him aside to let him know she’d make sure he and Elena didn’t work the same shifts, so people wouldn’t gossip.
“Why?” Marco asked.
“Can I stay here to finish some homework?”
“Uh, sure,” Marco said. He probably had some homework he could work on too, stuff he couldn’t finish right before class. He just didn’t know why Elena wanted to work on hers here.
“I don’t want to go back yet,” Elena said, as if reading his mind. “If I do, Will will ask what we did, my dad will go upstairs to write and assume I’ll watch the register. Customers will come in, and right now, I just need quiet. I know this all is-”
“I get it,” Marco said. He grabbed his phone from his blazer pocket, tying out a message to Greg to come back later. “Lucas has a desk you can use.”
Elena shook her head. “I can work here,” she said. “Thank you.” Then she looked at Marco, with a deep intensity in her eyes. “I mean it. Thank you.”
“You should text your dad,” Marco said. “Tell him we’re having a study date or something.”
He spread his things out on one half of the breakfast bar, while Elena took the other half. He worked on his homework, looking up every so often at Elena. She worked quietly, reaching for the bridge of her glasses whenever they went too far down on her face. It was like she completely forgot he was there.
She caught him staring.
“What is it?” she asked, patting her face. “Did I draw on myself?” She asked the question like it was a truly serious matter.
Marco smiled. “No,” he said. “You just look really into what you’re doing.”
“It’s an essay for AP Euro,” Elena said. “I’m not focused, just lost.”
“You don’t like history?”
“Not as much as fiction.”
Marco’s grandfather would have a heart attack if he heard that. Marco didn’t mind it, though. He’d probably choose fiction too. He motioned for Elena to get back to her essay. She did, right as Lucas walked through the door.
Lucas jumped when he saw them.
“What are you doing here? I thought you’d broken in.”
“Yeah, Lucas,” Marco said. “I’m a burglar who sits down at your breakfast bar to do homework.”
“Are you guys like on a date?”
Marco nodded. “Study date. We tried Melo’s but people kept trying to take pictures. So we came here. Is it okay?”
Lucas nodded. He set his things down. Were those newspapers in his bag? He must have noticed Marco watching because he slid his backpack from view.
“You’re more than welcome to stay,” he said. “I’m going to get ready for the gym, but my place is your place. It’s good seeing you again, Elena.”
Elena nodded. “You too. But we were actually finishing up. Is it okay if I use your bath
room before heading out?”
When she’d left the room, Lucas turned to Marco. “So you guys are like a thing now? I mean officially? I don’t think I’ve ever heard you use study and date in the same sentence.”
“She’s my girlfriend,” Marco said. “Okay? And we’ll be going, so you can get ready for bed.”
“I’m going to the gym,” Lucas said.
“Right.” Marco stopped. “By the way I need to ask for a favor.”
Lucas nodded. “Before you do, I wanted to ask if you planned on taking Elena to the tango exhibition next week. I was going with Heather, before the breakup, so now we have two extra tickets. I sent you an email with a link.”
“Tango?” Marco asked.
Lucas nodded. “Cecilia and Will are going. I thought it’d be a nice double date for you guys.”
That caught Marco’s attention. He could work with a double date, see how Cecilia and Will interacted, maybe make Cecilia jealous.
He nodded quickly. “We’ll be there,” he said.
Chapter 15
Elena reread Darcy’s first confession.
She let the words sink in, despite knowing the rejection Elizabeth Bennett was about to give him. It didn’t matter because she’d read the book a dozen times, knew there was a happy ending for the protagonists. She sighed.
“Are you swooning over Darcy again?”
She looked up from the seat she’d taken behind the counter. It was Friday. She’d come back with Will straight from school, to run Bee’s for the afternoon. She hadn’t heard anything from Marco since yesterday.
She smiled at Will, who’d offered to help shelve some new inventory. He’d been doing the task slowly, letting Elena sneak glances at him from behind her book.
Will could never be a Darcy, he was too sweet for that. He was staring at her and she still hadn’t answered his question.
“Not so much swooning as pining after,” Elena said.
“Well, I hope Marco doesn’t get jealous.”
Call It One-Sided (Call It Romance Book 1) Page 10
