When I looked at the picture, I saw a relationship of convenience. A man who was merely enduring the woman beside him. A woman who positively despised the man sitting across from her. I saw it for what it was.
No one else did though. I guessed that was a good thing. If friends were already convinced we were a thing, hopefully, it would be that much easier to convince the federal government.
Taco, the hellfire Chihuahua on the end of one of the leashes, was starting to dance circles around Tank, the Great Dane. If Max didn’t show up soon, I was going to have to ditch him on our second date because trying to keep five dogs still when it was time for their walk was like locking a kid in a candy store and telling him not to touch.
That was when I noticed someone moving down the sidewalk toward me. Just from that damn confident stride alone, I knew it was him. Max walked, moved, sat, and looked like he ruled this planet and the next one over.
It was revolting. That was the story I was attempting to sell to myself.
I waited until he was a few steps away before I acknowledged him. It was a Saturday afternoon—raining and cool—yet there he was in his three-piece suit and fancy shoes like he’d just come from an important business meeting.
“Do you sleep in your suits too?” I said, noticing he wasn’t wet. That might have been due in part to the umbrella he was clutching, but it was almost like even the rain was too intimidated to get close.
“I would. If I slept.” When Max took a good look at me stretched out on the bench, his forehead drew together. “In case you didn’t get the weather report, it’s raining. Will be all day long.” He moved around behind the bench to slide his umbrella over me, which was kind of charming. Except I was already drenched, so it didn’t matter.
“You better give that expensive suit the same report before it gets itself good and ruined.” I twisted on the bench to look back at him. The shoulders of his jacket were already darkening from the rain. So was his hair, and his face, and . . . I cleared my throat and twisted back around.
That was when Taco leapt into my lap to growl at Max.
Keeping his umbrella above me, he held out his hand for Taco to sniff. Or bite. Who knew with that little beast.
“Your day job,” Max said, not flinching when Taco nipped at the air around Max’s hand.
“In all its fame and glory.”
Max smiled at the menagerie of dogs tangled around me, Taco now licking his hand like it was a meat popsicle. That dog didn’t like me that much yet, and I’d spent the last six months walking him thirty minutes three times a week.
“So,” I started, pulling my new phone out so he could see the time. “Who isn’t respecting whose time today?”
He didn’t look at the phone. He was looking at me. “You told me twelve thirty. It’s twelve thirty.”
“No, I told you twelve fifteen,” I argued. I picked up the last dog here at twelve fifteen. Why would I have told him to meet me fifteen minutes later?
Then his phone, which matched mine save for the color, settled in front of me. My text with the time and place was on the screen.
“You told me twelve thirty.”
Well, crap. “Oh.”
“I respect you, Nina. That’s all-inclusive. Your time, your opinions, all of it.” When I stood, Max came around the bench, hovering the umbrella back over me.
“You just met me. What have I done to earn your respect?”
“Agree to marry me.” He shrugged, stating that so matter-of-factly I didn’t think anything of it until his words had a chance to settle in and spread.
God, I was marrying him. The reminder made my stomach draw in on itself. The next three years of my life would be shared with Max. We’d exchange vows. Rings. We’d live together.
We’d get divorced.
That’s what I focused on. The reality instead of the fantasy.
“Nice second date idea.” He held out his hand for a leash, so I gave him two.
He was a big guy, but I gave him the smallest dogs, Taco and Bruiser, the English bulldog. They were the bloody terrors of the bunch, and I might have been interested to see how he handled himself with two little demons dragging him down the sidewalk in hot pursuit of a skateboarder.
“Yeah, sorry. I don’t have a lot of free time this week, so I figured I could multitask our date.” I glanced at him as we started down the sidewalk, led by a team of five dogs. His suit was wet, and he was holding the leashes of two dogs that were birthed in hell. His date maybe hadn’t been my kind of thing, but it had been more considerate than mine was. “Do you mind?”
He shook his head. “It’s nice to get some fresh air. I’m cooped up in my office so much that this is a welcome break.”
“Even if you’re a walking puddle by the end of this?”
Max’s eyes moved to my shoulder farthest away from him. He scooted closer and adjusted the umbrella, so I was totally sheltered. “Even then.”
I bit my lip when I inspected him, droplets of water rolling down his hair. “Really, I’m okay. If I was worried about the rain, I would have brought my own umbrella.”
“Yeah, but I’m not okay with it.” Max turned with me as I rounded the corner. Miraculously, Taco and Bruiser were trotting along like the perfect gentlemen they never were. “Besides, what kind of enamored lover would I be if someone we knew saw us and I wasn’t holding my umbrella over you?”
Now I understood. I slid out from beneath the umbrella a little. “So you’re doing this for the show?”
Max moved with me, the umbrella hovering right above me. “I’m doing this because I want to.”
“But you just said—”
When he sighed, it wasn’t one of those short, subtle ones. “Are you going to do this all the time? Analyze everything I do and say?”
Probably. This was such an unusual situation, made even stranger by the foreign things I felt for him. Sometimes I wanted to smack him across the face, and sometimes I wanted to do something else. I disliked him as much as I liked him, but that wasn’t really the unsettling part—it was how extreme each feeling was. I’d never felt much more than apathy and general disinterest around guys, but I felt neither of those with Max.
Instead of arguing over the umbrella any longer, I glanced at him hovering a foot above me. Whatever they fed boys in Germany, growth hormone must have been sprinkled into everything. “You’re kind of a giant, you know that?”