Between Us

Chapter 7 — Just Dinner

He took me to a place called Remi's.

Not a fancy restaurant — I want to be clear about that because when Zane Carter asks you on a date, even a fake one, your brain immediately starts preparing for something unreasonably expensive and uncomfortable. But Remi's was just a small spot about fifteen minutes from campus, tucked between a pharmacy and a phone repair shop, with wooden tables and handwritten menus and the kind of lighting that made everything look warmer than it was.

I noticed he'd chosen somewhere I wouldn't feel out of place.

I didn't say anything about that. But I noticed.

We got there at 7pm on a Friday, which meant the place was busy enough that people would see us but not so packed that we couldn't talk. Strategic. Very Zane.

He was already there when I arrived — sitting at a corner table, scrolling his phone, wearing a dark shirt that looked deliberately simple in the way that expensive things always do. He looked up when I walked in and something crossed his face that he smoothed over quickly.

"You came," he said.

"I said I would."

"People say things."

I sat down across from him. "I'm not people."

He almost smiled. "No. You're really not."

The first ten minutes were genuinely awkward.

Not terribly awkward — more like the specific awkwardness of two people who know each other well enough to talk easily but are suddenly in a setting that changes all the rules. We looked at the menus longer than necessary. I rearranged my cutlery twice. He checked his phone once and then put it face down like he'd made a decision about it.

"So," he said finally.

"So," I said back.

A beat.

"This is weird," he said.

"A little bit."

"We talk every day."

"I know."

"Why is this weird?"

I looked up from my menu. "Because every other time we've talked it was either accidental or academic. This is on purpose and has no agenda."

He considered that. "We have an agenda. Keira."

"You know what I mean."

He did. I could tell by the way he looked at his menu instead of arguing.

Food helped.

Once we ordered and the drinks arrived things loosened up the way they usually do when you give two people something to do with their hands. I got jollof rice and chicken because I was not about to perform sophistication for anyone, fake boyfriend or not. He got the same thing which made me laugh a little.

"What?" he said.

"Nothing. I just expected you to order something with a name I couldn't pronounce."

"I grew up eating jollof rice."

"You grew up in a house with a gate and a generator."

He pointed at me. "That's stereotyping."

"Is it wrong?"

A pause. "No." He picked up his fork. "But I still grew up eating jollof rice."

Somewhere between the food and the end of the evening the awkwardness just — left. I don't know exactly when it happened. One minute we were two people carefully performing normalcy and the next we were just talking, the way we talked in the library or after tutoring sessions, except easier somehow.

He told me about the first time he failed an exam — not BIO 215, a different one, in secondary school, and how he'd sat in his car for an hour before going home because he didn't know how to tell his father.

I told him about the day I got my scholarship letter. How I'd read it four times because I was convinced I'd misunderstood something. How my mum had cried and I hadn't because one of us needed to stay practical.

He listened the way people rarely listen — not waiting for his turn to speak, actually listening.

"You're always practical," he said, after a moment.

"Someone has to be."

"Does it ever get exhausting?"

Nobody had ever asked me that before.

I looked at my glass. "Sometimes," I admitted. "But the alternative is falling apart and I can't afford that."

He didn't say anything immediately. Didn't try to fix it or offer a solution like most people would. Just nodded slowly like he understood — and I got the feeling he actually did.

We stayed longer than we needed to.

The restaurant was half empty by the time we finally left, the Friday night crowd thinning out around us while we'd been too busy talking to notice. Outside the air was cool and the street was quiet and we walked back toward campus slowly, unhurried, like neither of us was in a rush to end it.

About halfway back he said — not looking at me, "You know you don't have to do that thing."

"What thing?"

"Where you make everything sound fine. With me." He kept his eyes ahead. "You don't have to."

I didn't know what to say to that.

"I'm your fake girlfriend," I said finally, aiming for lightness.

"I know what you are." Something quiet in his voice. "I'm just saying. You don't have to."

We walked the rest of the way in silence — but it was the heaviest kind of silence, the kind that's full of things that haven't been said yet.

At the point where our paths split he stopped and looked at me properly.

"Same time next week?" he said. Casual. Easy. Like we did this all the time.

I looked at him.

"This is still pretend," I reminded him.

"I know," he said.

"Okay," I said.

"Okay," he said back.

I went inside.

I sat on my bed in the dark for a while.

And for the first time since this whole thing started, I genuinely couldn't tell the difference between pretending and not.