Page 23 of Olivia’s Only Pretending (Sweet River #3)

First, Lucy and Adam went. Lucy was acting, and Adam was guessing. Lucy mimed singing.

Adam said, “Song title?”

She nodded.

First, she shook her head, as if to say no .

He asked, “No?”

That wasn’t right, so she tried again, this time wagging her finger.

“Don’t?” he guessed correctly this time.

She nodded excitedly.

Then he correctly guessed, “Go,” after she mimed pointing toward the door.

Quickly after that, she made a heart with her hands and then broke them apart.

“Don’t go breaking my heart?” He shouted his guess with his words running together.

The two high-fived at their victory. I chuckled into my big glass of wine.

Next, it was Jeff and my mom’s turn. My mom offered to act and Jeff guess. Jeff correctly guessed it was a person after my mom stood with her hands on her hips. Mom set her hands in front of her in the air and twinkled her fingers for mere seconds.

After only a beat, maybe half a beat, Jeff shouted, “Kenny G!”

Mom whooped.

“That was so fast. I didn’t even have time to register what she was doing,” Victor said from his spot on the floor beside my legs, his back resting on the couch I sat on.

“How?” Lucy gaped from the couch.

“I love jazz.” Jeff shrugged bashfully. “I recognized she was miming a saxophone right away.”

“If you think of a saxophone, you’ve got to think of Kenny!” Mom said, thoroughly impressed. She was a huge Kenny G fan. At Christmas, his albums played on a loop.

“He’s the king!” Jeff said, waving his arms emphatically.

“I’ve seen him live several times,” Mom said as the two returned to their seats on the couch. The two of them were lost to their own chit-chat.

“You girls go ahead,” Victor said to me, and I assumed Gracie, since we’d decided to be a team.

As I glanced around the living room, she was nowhere to be seen. “Gracie?” I asked.

A few of us looked around. She poked her head around the corner from the doorway of Lucy’s makeshift art room, her cell phone pressed to her ear. She pointed at it and mouthed, On the phone, you go ahead.

My only non-Victor option was gone. I felt my feeble attempt to get some clarity drifting away.

I turned to him. “I guess it’s you and me.”

Victor stood up from the ground as I got up from the couch, the rug fuzzy under my bare feet. I told myself I was being dramatic. Charades didn’t involve any touching, and that was really what I was avoiding with Victor.

“You’re a good guesser. I think you should guess, and I should act,” Victor said, rubbing his hands together.

“Agreed,” I said.

Lucy handed a scrap of paper to Victor from the hat as we strategized.

He read the paper and took in a sharp inhale, thinking for a few beats. He ran his fingers through his messy black hair. I watched his wheels turn. He turned to me and made quotations in the air with his fingers.

“A phrase,” I said.

He nodded in response. He held two fingers at his elbow.

“Two syllables,” I said.

He nodded again, walking over to me, so close that my jaw dropped a little.

His feet bumped into mine, and he grabbed my hip with one hand, then pressed the other warm against my upper back through my sweater.

My breath caught in my throat as he slid his hand around my upper back over to my shoulder, pulling on it until I dipped low.

My stomach was fizzy as his arms cradled me. My hair fell into the air around us.

“Victor,” I gasped, my voice lilting in question.

His gaze was heavy as it met mine, and he slowly brought his mouth closer to mine. His jaw was tight as our lips held a breath apart. My heart was skyrocketing as his mouth hovered over mine. His warm hands held me tight, my arm dangling by my side.

I looked straight into Victor’s caramel eyes.

His bore right back into mine. How on earth was I supposed to think clearly enough to make a guess when he was dipping me like this?

If he moved his mouth half an inch closer, he could kiss me.

My mouth pursed at the idea. His eyes dropped to my lips at the movement. He swallowed.

Lucy was oohing from her spot on the couch. My mom whispered conspiratorially to her that I looked like a bride.

Then, he twirled me right back to standing, taking a step back, putting distance between us.

I sorted my thoughts. Our pose mimicked wedding photos I’d seen. I looked like a bride being dipped. He looked like he was going to kiss me, like a groom at the altar.

“A dip and a kiss? A dip kiss?” I said shakily. My palms were sweaty, and my cheeks were pink.

“That’s right,” Victor said with a smile, raising his hand for a high five.

Our hands made contact.

“Team Volivia!”

I laughed as I fell back onto the couch, like it was a hilarious shenanigan, but my heart fluttered like a leaf in the wind.

Mom and Jeff kept guessing within seconds the rest of the night: Murder She Wrote , the Bible, and Ina Garten. They wound up winning the whole game. Lucy and Adam seemed oddly smug about how the game went, even though they lost.

Like maybe somehow they’d still won.

Lucy kept grabbing the phrases out of the hat for everyone. She wouldn’t have rigged it, would she?

Giving Mom and Jeff phrases that helped them get to know each other better.

Giving Victor and me a near kiss?

“Rematch?” she pleaded with Mom playfully, the two side by side on the couch.

I shook the thought from my head. “It’s getting late. I need to get home,” I announced, although Gracie still hadn’t emerged from the other room. I wondered who this lengthy phone call could be with.

“I know, you have work in the morning. Thanks for coming, anyway,” Lucy said as she wrapped her arms around me for a hug.

“It was so great to meet you,” Jeff said after Lucy released me from her arms.

“You, too,” I said.

He was still sitting on the couch with Mom. The two of them had been chatting like old friends. Mom looked at me with a question in her eyes, and I gave her a little nod of approval.

“Drive safe, honey,” Mom said as I made my way toward the door.

I was retrieving my purse from the coat stand by the doorway when Victor walked up behind me.

“Can I walk you out?”

“Of course,” I said, trying to sound normal. Another charade. Nothing felt normal between us.

As Lucy’s front door shut behind us, the crisp night air blew through my hair. I rubbed my arms for warmth as we paced down the front steps.

“Sorry if I crossed the boundaries during charades,” Victor said, his voice low and sincere.

“On the spot like that, I couldn’t think of another way to act it out, but then I saw how it shook you up.

I was sitting there the rest of the game, realizing all these other ways I could’ve acted it out that didn’t involve holding you in my arms.”

I stopped walking in the middle of the sidewalk and grabbed his elbow. “You don’t need to be sorry. You didn’t cross any boundaries. If anyone did, it was Lucy Rhodes for putting that phrase in the hat.”

“She probably hoped it would be her and Adam who got it.” Victor chuckled. The night sky twinkled with stars overhead.

“Whatever her intention, I know yours. We were just playing a game.” I tucked the cuffs of my sweater sleeves over my fingers. “You always handle me with care, Vic.”

We started walking again. My car was parked a few paces down the sidewalk.

“I wanted to make sure you were feeling okay, Liv.”

I couldn’t hide from Victor. It was like seeing me was a secret talent of his, the way some people immediately understand the keys of a piano. He knew something was off with me all night.

“I am feeling okay. How are you feeling?” I said, wanting to make sure he was doing okay through all this confusion.

Victor messed with the zipper on his leather jacket. “I’m great. I got to hang out with you and your family. Watch Mama Rhodes make a love connection in there.”

That made me laugh. Leave it to Victor to find a way to break the tension a little. “They were really clicking, huh? When he mimed the Bible, I swear she had hearts popping out of her eyes,” I said.

“I think she was smitten the minute he said Kenny G.”

“Yeah. Tonight was pretty fun,” I said.

The two of us stopped in front of my Prius parked along the pavement.

I should walk to my driver’s side door, say goodbye, and wave at him like I would any other friend.

But one thing was completely clear in the midst of all my muddled thoughts and feelings: Victor Hernandez was not just any other friend.

I looked down at my ankle boots. Do we hug goodbye? Is that too much? Should I try for an awkward side hug? We always hugged goodbye.

Going in for a hug felt weird. Not going in for a hug felt weird.

Victor sighed resignedly, slipping his hands into his pockets. A car sped down the street, headlights streaking through the dark.

I glanced up to find him already looking down at me. His eyes were creased in that familiar, thoughtful way of his. He was reading me like a favorite book, pages he knew, passages underlined and highlighted.

There was something heavy in the air between us. It felt like there was more to say, but I didn’t know how to say any of it.

“Olivia,” he said, his voice surprisingly commanding. “Good night. Drive safely.”

I bit my lip, pulling open my car door. “Good night. Thanks for being my charades partner.”

“Honestly, I might think twice before being your partner again. We were in dead-last place,” he said as I slid into my driver’s seat.

“It takes two to suck that bad,” I argued, sliding my buckle into place.

He leaned over my driver’s side door. His scent was woodsy and warm through the open window.

He pulled away, taking a step back onto the sidewalk. He closed the car door firmly. “Goodbye, Liv,” he said, raising his voice since the door was closed, giving the hood of my car a pat as he walked away.

I stared at my steering wheel. I knew he was respecting my wishes and honoring my no-more-touching rule … but I couldn’t put the keys in the ignition. I was hoping he’d come back and knock on my door.

Suddenly, a tap at my window jolted me from my thoughts.

It was Adam holding up my phone. I’d been so distracted tonight. I was going to drive home without my phone.

“This was sitting on the kitchen counter,” he said after I rolled down my window.

“I can’t believe I forgot my phone. Thank you for running it out to me.”

He handed it to me. “Living up to the absentminded professor stereotype, huh?” Adam chuckled.

“I guess so.” I shrugged. “I think I got distracted by everything going on.” Mom had a date, Gracie was on a dramatic call, and I was trying to keep my distance from Victor even as he dipped me and smelled warm and woodsy.

“It was one of the more dramatic games of charades I’ve ever played,” Adam admitted.

“No chance Lucy rigged it?” I tipped my chin curiously.

A smile cracked across Adam’s face. “I can’t say! Really, I don’t know!” He raised his hands up in surrender. “But I wouldn’t put it past her.”

I shook my head. “I bet she did.”

“Just the game bothering you?” Adam asked, sounding almost brotherly. He’d taken to checking on Gracie and me sometimes. A nice new member to our crew.

“It was mostly the game,” I said, twisting my phone in my lap. “But I have had a lot on my mind.”

“Funny enough, Victor said the same thing to me earlier tonight.”

I could just imagine Adam and Lucy both talking about me and Victor tonight as they cleaned up after dinner. The two of them were conniving together.

“I know Lucy told you about mine and Victor’s charade at work—letting everyone think we were dating.”

“She did.” He nodded, crossing his arms. “You having some regrets?”

I went to answer that of course I did. Things had been so confusing since it started … but I realized, I didn’t. I didn’t regret a second of it. I’d loved all of it. “No. Not one.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

“The whole charade got us a little confused. I think we’re both having trouble going back to normal.” Or maybe it was mostly me. I was the one who’d pulled his lips against mine last night.

“I’ve seen how important your friendship is to both of you.

I know it’s not romantic or anything between the two of you, but it does remind me of when I first met Lucy,” he said, the light from the streetlamps glinting off his glasses.

“Our relationship quickly felt like the home I’d always wished for as a kid.

Safe, welcoming, warm. All of it.” His face turned toward Lucy’s house, steps away.

“I know neither of you would do anything to lose what you have in each other.”

As I drove home that evening, headlights and streetlamps lighting my path in my small town, I thought about what Adam said.

Since I was a little girl, I’d wanted stability, reliability, so deeply that I found a way to give it to myself, so I’d never rely on it from anyone else.

But this relationship with Victor had somehow become a home for my heart. A place I could rely on. A stable ground beneath my feet. A birdhouse hanging in my trees.

I turned onto my street. I wasn’t just looking for clarity. I was trying to find the safest way to keep what we had.