I’m not sure what I expected her to say, but it isn’t this.

“It… it will only hurt him, I think,” Jack announces casually. “So we should just keep what happened last year between us, okay?”

“Oh, okay,” I stammer in agreement.

She flicks her hair out of her face again. “It was only one day, right?” she says, her quarter-moon smile pale in the dark. “It’s not like it meant anything.”

“Right,” I say. “Of course. It didn’t mean anything.”

Jack nods once, then turns on the heel of her work boot and stomps back inside the house, Paul Hollywood following closely. The door closes between us with a snick.

I stare at the empty balcony across from me long after she’s gone. I already knew what happened between us a year ago meant nothing to her. So why does it feel like my heart is breaking all over again?

Chapter Nine

“Well, that went off without a hitch,” I snap when Andrew and I are finally alone in our shared bedroom for the night, our stomachs full of Katherine’s short rib and Meemaw’s sangria, our fake smiles distorting our facial muscles.

Andrew leans back against the closed door and sighs. “It could have gone better, I suppose.” He smiles at me, like he believes his smile will solve all of our problems.

“Could have gone better? We are lying to your sweet old grandmas, and your sister’s best friend is like the Sherlock Holmes of fake-dating!”

“But tomorrow is a new day,” he says cheerfully. “The good news is, my grandmas and mom ate it right up. They’re all so desperate for me to settle down and make them grandbabies, they saw what they wanted to see: me, helplessly in love. As for Dylan, we’ll just have to be more convincing.”

“How do you propose we do that, exactly?”

Andrew scrunches up his nose. This is clearly his thinking very hard face. “I could kiss you more?” he suggests.

“Please don’t.”

“If you insist.” He crosses the room and flops down on the queen-size bed.

“There’s only one bed,” I point out to him. “Aren’t you going to valiantly offer to sleep on the floor?”

Andrew gets up, reaches for his rolling suitcase, and pulls a black leather toiletries bag from the front pouch. “No, I’m not.”

“In romantic comedies, the gentleman always offers to sleep on the floor in these situations.”

“I’m not a gentleman, and this is not a romantic comedy. Besides, we are two mature adults who’ve shared a bed before.” He pulls off his sweater and tosses it inside a giant armoire in the corner of the room before he sits down at a little vanity table and begins performing a multistep nighttime skin care routine.