Page 40 of Fly with Me

Joni had come back to the area to help care for her aunt, and Olive and Derek were already really hoping her job here became permanent. As if agreeing with Olive about Joni being a kindred spirit, Gus took up residence on Joni’s lap. She gave him all the behind-the-ear scratches he could take.

“I think Olive should make a pro/con list,” Joni said.

Olive’s phone vibrated. A text from her mom insisting she check her email. Ugh. Not right now. Olive sucked down the last gulps of wine and then held out her glass in a silent plea. Since Derek was the best, he filled the glass almost to the very top.

He topped off his own glass too. “I think Olive should say ‘fuck your fake dating trope, I’d rather be in one of those novels where the characters have hot sex the whole time in old-timey clothes.’”

Never mind. Derek was not a hero. Asshat.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Joni squinted at Derek.

He tugged Olive’s bun before grinning at Joni. “Take a trip to the romance section next time you’re at a bookstore. If you know, you know.”

And Olive did know. She had a few shelves of romance novels in her apartment—most of which had been gifts from Derek—and at least several of them began with this exact setup.

Joni moved from under Gus’s head and went to the counter and grabbed a legal pad from her bag. She sat back down, and Gus set his head right back on top of her legs. She smiled at him encouragingly and rested the pad of paper on his broad back. “So, pros first?”

Derek plopped down next to Olive, nearly spilling her wine. “She’s hot, and she looked at Olive with sex eyes.”

Joni laughed. “You want me to write ‘sex eyes’?”

“Right at the very top.” He tapped the legal pad.

Olive rubbed a spot in the center of her forehead. “Be serious, you guys. This is—”

“Olive, this entire situation is ridiculous. How can we be serious about it?” Derek looked to the ceiling as if he were silently asking a higher power for patience.

Olive smelled her wine and then put it back on the coffee table. “Look, Stella wants to do this because her work is full of sexist tools who aren’t giving her the promotion she deserves. And that’s not okay. She’s amazing. Really, really a good person. She deserves—”

“Could help Stella’s job,” Joni recited as she wrote. “And in the cons, Olive might get hurt.”

“What do you mean, might get hurt?”

“You have strong feelings about Stella.”

Derek nodded in agreement.

Joni put down the pen on the pad, which was still balanced on Gus’s back. “And you’d be signing up to have a fake relationship for the next few months. That might be confusing and risky. You light up when you talk about her, Olive.”

“She so does.”

“I do not. And, risky?”

“Yes, risky.” Joni clicked the pen on the pad. “Any time you put yourself out there, there’s unknowns. There’s opportunities to get hurt.”

“Okay, alternative theory time.” Derek swirled his wine. “Stella has real feelings for Olive, and this is a way for them to get close so that they can eventually be real girlfriends.”

Joni pursed her lips skeptically.

Olive made a noise reminiscent of a wrong-answer buzzer on a TV program and gave a thumbs-down. Gus got angry enough at the loud noise that he scampered off Joni’s lap and back to his inner-tube-sized bed in the corner. “She said something at Disney about being so focused on her job, she wasn’t good at relationships. If she actually liked me, she would have asked me to actually be her girlfriend and not her fake girlfriend.”

Derek shrugged. “Maybe she’s just a terrible communicator?”

Olive’s face colored with outrage. “Hey, she’s—”

“I’ll add that.” Joni began writing on the list again. “Stella might be a terrible communicat—”

“Don’t write that.” Olive grabbed the pen out of Joni’s hand. She stood and began pacing while clicking and unclicking the pen over and over. What if what Lindsay said at the hotel had gotten into Stella’s head? Made her think Olive was some hypercritical, unforgiving, and emotionally parasitic mess.