‘Ah—’ She laughed quietly ‘—and you want to impress me with your manliness?’
‘Stop flirting, you two,’ Mormor interrupted, lifting up the tray with an ominous clinking of china. ‘Anyone would think you are boyfriend and girlfriend.’
‘We weren’t flirting,’ Jannes and Lara protested together.
‘Right, and the Pope doesn’t wear a hat,’ Mormor said. ‘Enough talking anyway. Jannes,
I need your help in the kitchen. Lara, make yourself at home, my dear. I’ll have your man back to you in a moment.’
‘I’m not—’
‘He’s not—’
* * *
‘How can you just refuse to believe two people who say they’re not together?’ Jannes asked in the car later, for what felt like the millionth time. He was pinching the bridge of his nose in that way he always did when he was tired, and it was reassuring to know that she wasn’t the only one feeling the after-effects of their late-night Love Island binge. It had been gone two o’clock when she had finally given in to sleep.
‘If anyone is up to the task it’s Mormor. Do you think she really didn’t believe us or was she just winding us up?’
‘I don’t know how you cannot believe it when you have the both of us there telling her we made the whole thing up.’
Lara nodded; she’d been thinking the same thing. ‘So she’s winding us up. Any idea why, other than to torture us?’
‘Honestly, when it comes to Mormor it’s anyone’s guess. So...what do you think?’
‘What do I think about what?’
Jannes gestured to her, and them himself. ‘About this whole dating thing. Fake dating.’
‘I don’t really get where this is going, Jannes.’
‘I was just wondering if it’s something that you’re still happy to continue,’ he said, looking a little awkward. He looked it; she felt it. She wasn’t sure that this was at all a good idea.
‘Even after all this with Mormor?’ she asked, going for the easy excuse, the one that didn’t give away too much about what she felt.
‘She’s clearly going to believe whatever she wants, regardless of what we say or do,’ Jannes said. ‘So maybe we should just do what’s best for us.’
She raised an eyebrow. ‘And you’re still sure that’s pretending to date?’
‘Well, you have all those family things that you were invited to at the wedding. The twins’ christening is soon, isn’t it? And the longer that we appear together the better it is for my chances of securing sponsorship. Just one appearance with you has generated more positive press than I’ve had in a year.’
‘I’m pretty sure that was your doing, with the special achievement award,’ Lara pointed out. He had earned that award, and she didn’t want him thinking that his successes were down to anything but his own hard work. She couldn’t take the claim for that.
‘And I think it’s because everyone adores you and they have to like me when I’m near you.’
She shook her head. ‘So you’re just using me for my adorability?’
‘No, we’re helping each other out. But I’m not going to push you into anything you don’t want to do. If it makes you uncomfortable, we won’t do it. It’s as simple as that. I don’t want to do anything that risks our friendship.’
Their friendship. Which they had to protect at all costs, because if they lost sight of that at the wrong moment then she was sure that they would do something stupid that would mean that she lost him for ever. And then they would both end up hurt, and broken, and without their best friend there to hand out tissues and help pick up the pieces. She couldn’t bear the thought of having to go through something like that without Jannes there in her corner. Or the thought of hurting Jannes, and then not being the one to hold him and help him heal.
‘You are my friend, Jannes, and all the hand-holding and kissing and stuff, that’s not important, is it? We know what we are to each other, and what we’re not. And as long as we remember that then the other stuff doesn’t matter. This just makes our lives a little easier, with no cost.’
‘And when we’re not in public then nothing changes,’ Jannes assured her. ‘We carry on as before. We’re friends, Lara. Nothing’s going to change that.’
Good, because she didn’t want to back out of this now. Later that night, as they tucked into a takeaway, she thought again about the family events she’d agreed to go to, and how she couldn’t even consider going without Jannes at her side. And it didn’t cost her anything to show up to Jannes’s events. It took dating completely off her radar, meant that she could concentrate on her work, her studying...and not on those commitment issues Jannes always seemed to want to make her talk about. It was hard not to think about those issues when she was with her family, faced with the evidence of how little she had meant to her father. How she had been a footnote to his real life. How easy she had been to hurt. How destructive following his desires had been for the two families that he’d destroyed.
With Jannes by her side, it had all felt...less bleak. She’d felt less disposable. Sure, it helped that no one was asking her about her love life any more, but it helped that he was simply there. Grounding her. Reminding her that she was present and she mattered.