Pretend Me Yours

Episode 2:The Offer

Chapter 2 The Offer

Aria didn't think about the man in the expensive suit again.

That was what she told herself, anyway.

She thought about it a little on the bus ride home the way he'd looked at her when she'd talked back. Not with anger, which she'd expected. Not with the cold dismissal she'd braced for. Just that slight shift. That flicker of something unreadable behind expensive eyes.

Then she thought about the $47 that had been deducted from her pay for the broken mugs and the dry-cleaning voucher her manager Sal had slapped on the counter afterward with a look that said don't make this a habit.

That killed any remaining romantic notions fairly efficiently.

She got home, ate toast for dinner, and checked her email.

Twelve rejections now.

She closed the laptop, held the locket briefly the way she sometimes did when things felt heavy, and went to sleep.

She was back at the diner by seven the next morning, and the morning after that, and the one after that. Three days passed. She picked up an extra shift on Thursday. She applied for more jobs data entry, reception work, a filing position at a legal firm that paid $13.25 an hour and asked for five years of experience for what was essentially alphabetizing folders.

She applied anyway.

It was on Friday afternoon, during the slow hour between the lunch rush and the dinner crowd, that Lena called.

Lena Torres had been Aria's best friend since they were twelve years old and sharing a bedroom at Sunnyside. She was loud, warm, relentlessly optimistic, and approximately seventy percent of the reason Aria had survived adolescence with her sense of humor intact.

"You sound terrible," Lena said by way of greeting.

"Thank you. I feel terrible."

"Still no callbacks?"

"One. They wanted someone bilingual."

"You speak some Spanish."

"Lena. I know how to order food and apologize. That's not bilingual."

Lena laughed that big, full laugh that Aria had always envied. "Okay listen. My cousin's friend works at a restaurant downtown, they need weekend staff. It's not glamorous but "

"Send me the details."

"Already did. Also Gerald texted me to tell me you owe rent. Why is Gerald texting me?"

"Because he's Gerald and he's unhinged. Don't text him back."

"I already texted him back."

"Lena."

"I told him you were good for it and that he should consider the emotional damage he causes with these aggressive reminders." A pause. "He left me on read."

Despite everything, Aria smiled. It was small and tired but it was real. "I'll figure it out. I always do."

"I know you do," Lena said, and her voice went soft in that way it sometimes did underneath all the noise was someone who understood exactly what always figuring it out had cost Aria over the years. "But you're allowed to not be okay sometimes, you know."

"I know."

She didn't know. Or she did but she couldn't afford to act on it.

They talked for a few more minutes and then Sal was waving at her from across the diner so she hung up and went back to work.

He was there when she turned around.

Not dramatically he wasn't standing in the doorway with the light behind him or anything that would have made for a good story later. He was just sitting at the counter, in a different suit from the one she'd destroyed, this one charcoal grey, and he was looking at the menu the way someone looks at something they have absolutely no intention of ordering from.

Aria stopped walking.

He looked up.

"You came back," she said before she could think better of it.

"I did."

"The coffee here isn't that good."

"No," he agreed. "It isn't."

She waited. He seemed comfortable with silence in a way that most people weren't like it didn't create any pressure for him, like he could sit in it indefinitely and come out the other side perfectly fine. It was slightly unnerving.

"Can I get you something?" she asked, slipping into professionalism because it was familiar ground.

"Sit down."

She blinked. "I'm working."

"I spoke to your manager." He glanced toward the back. "You have fifteen minutes."

Aria looked toward Sal, who was pointedly not making eye contact and polishing a section of counter that was already clean. She looked back at the man.

"You spoke to my manager," she repeated flatly.

"Yes."

"Without asking me."

"If I'd asked you, you would have said no."

She couldn't argue with that because it was entirely accurate. She pulled out the stool across from him and sat, arms folded, expression neutral. Whatever this was, she'd hear it. She was a practical person.

"I don't know your name," she said.

"Damien Cole."

She knew the name. Everybody knew the name. Cole Enterprises was on the side of three buildings downtown, in the financial news at least twice a month, and attached to a tax bracket that existed in a different atmosphere from the one Aria breathed in. She kept her face very still.

"Aria Bennett," she said.

He nodded once, like he already knew. Which, she was beginning to suspect, he did.

"How did you find me?" she asked.

"You work here. It wasn't complicated."

"I mean how did you know where to look?"

A brief pause. "I have resources."

"That's a polite way of saying you had someone look me up."

"Yes."

At least he didn't pretend otherwise. She'd give him that.

She studied him across the counter. Up close, in the flat afternoon light with no crisis to manage, he was even more precisely put together than she remembered every detail controlled, nothing accidental. But there were faint shadows under his eyes that his composure didn't quite hide, and something in the set of his jaw that read less like arrogance and more like a man who had been carrying something heavy for a long time.

She filed that away.

"Mr. Cole," she said. "Why are you here?"

He set down the menu.

"I need a girlfriend," he said.

The diner hummed quietly around them. Someone's fork scraped a plate two tables over. The coffee machine gurgled.

Aria stared at him.

"I'm sorry?"

"A fake one," he said, with the same tone someone might use to discuss quarterly projections. "For three months. My family is pressuring me toward an arranged marriage with a woman I have no intention of marrying. A believable relationship would resolve the situation without a prolonged family conflict."

"And you came to me because "

"Because you didn't flinch." He said it simply, like it explained everything. "When you spilled the coffee. When I spoke to you. Most people in your position would have apologized twelve times, offered to pay for the suit, avoided my eyes. You did none of those things." He paused. "I need someone who won't collapse under pressure. Social events, family dinners, press appearances it requires a specific kind of composure."

Aria was quiet for a moment.

"You want to pay me," she said slowly, "to pretend to be your girlfriend."

"Yes."

"For three months."

"Correct."

"And what exactly does that pay?"

He reached into his jacket and placed a folded card on the counter. She opened it. Inside, in clean printed type, was a number.

$200,000.

She read it twice.

Then she closed the card, placed it back on the counter between them, and looked at him.

"No," she said.

Something moved in his expression. He hadn't expected that. Good.

"No?" he repeated.

"No." She stood up, tucking her notepad back into her apron pocket. "I don't know what kind of person you think I am, Mr. Cole, but I'm not for hire. Not like that."

She walked back toward the kitchen.

She had made it exactly four steps when she heard him say, quietly and without any particular drama:

"Your rent is due in four days. Your second job let you go six days ago. You have three hundred and twelve dollars in your account."

Aria stopped walking.

The back of her neck was hot. Her jaw was tight.

She turned around slowly.

He was watching her, not unkindly, but with that same steady, unreadable calm. "I'm not trying to humiliate you," he said. "I'm offering you a solution. A business arrangement. Nothing more, nothing less."

The diner felt very loud suddenly. The clatter of cutlery, the hiss of the coffee machine, a burst of laughter from the corner booth.

Aria walked back to the counter.

She sat down.

"I have conditions," she said.

For the first time since she'd met him, something that was almost almost a smile crossed Damien Cole's face.

"I expected you would," he said