My Favorite Holidate: A Standalone Holiday Romance

Wilder

I’m wavering. I don’t usually waver.

But then again, my mom doesn’t usually call when my fake girlfriend is in the car. My fake girlfriend who’s feeling more real by the minute. My fake girlfriend who knows I don’t want to lie to my mother.

Still, my finger hovers by the answer button on the car’s dash.

Fable looks at me with concern, then says, “I can just be quiet. She doesn’t have to know I’m here.”

The thought sends my mind reeling. Reminds me of my father and his lies. The way he hid his whereabouts when he went out and gambled. How he’d call from quieter places to hide the fact that he was in a casino. My heart squeezes with a wave of emotion for Fable. For her willingness to make this easy for me. For her eagerness to help. But I won’t ask her to double lie by pretending she’s not even in the car.

I don’t waver as I say, “No.”

“Wilder,” she says, like she can convince me otherwise. She could probably convince me of a lot of things. But in this case, I’m not bending.

The phone rings again.

“I won’t pretend you’re not here,” I tell her, resolute, then hit answer.

“Hello, Mom,” I say.

“Hi, kiddo,” she says.

Fable whips her gaze to me, her warm eyes dancing with delight. “Kiddo,” she mouths.

“How’s everything going? Also, we’re not alone. Fable is in the car with me. She works for the team,” I say, then with barely a pause, I add, “we’re seeing each other. But she’s not my direct report.”

There. That last part will matter to my mother. Just like it mattered to Bibi and, well, to the employee handbook.

Fable waves to the dashboard screen though, of course, Mom can’t see her. “Hi! I can’t wait to meet you. Wilder has told me so much about you. How is London?”

Mom takes a second or two before she answers with, “London is lovely, but so is Evergreen Falls. And are you heading there too?”

“I am,” Fable says. “We’re in Wilder’s car right now. Also, did you know he can change the battery in a smoke detector, Ms.—” Fable turns to me, asking with her eyes for Mom’s last name.

“Hunter. Elizabeth Hunter,” I supply.

“Ms. Hunter. He also fixed my toaster. He’s a handyman! So thank you, since I can only assume this is your excellent work,” she says.

“As a matter of fact, I’m pretty handy. I did teach him all those things, but credit to him too. He was dead set on knowing how to do everything. So glad he’s put those skills to good use.” And just like that, Fable is charming my mother.

“Well, he is an Aries. They’re determined and independent,” she says.

My heart should not be beating faster. It should not be surging simply because Fable remembers details about my mother, like her passion for the signs of the zodiac. But it is. It fucking is.

As I drive and they chat, I fight off a fresh wave of feelings for Fable. Must focus on the road. Only the road. Not on the ease with which the woman I’m supposedly seeing is winning my mother’s heart.

When they’re done chatting, my mom clears her throat. “Wilder, I have a question about Mac’s gift. Can you send me a photo of Penguin’s tail?”

I laugh. “You think I have a photo of the cat’s tail?”

“Yes. I do,” she says. “I bet it’s on your camera roll. I bet you took one of her this morning.”

Fable’s jaw drops, like I’ve been busted. Then, more amused than she’s ever been, she jumps in, saying, “He did, Ms. Hunter. He did. He loves taking pictures of the cat.”

My mom sighs happily. “He takes them for Mac.”

“It’s so sweet,” Fable says.

“Yes, I’ll send you one when we stop,” I say to my mom.

“Well, stop soon! I’m finishing her gift—Penguin’s portrait—and I want to get the tail just right.”

“Yes, Mom,” I grumble.

Mom chuckles in response. “Now you can keep him in line, Fable.”

I wince, guilt slicing through me. Fable was right when she said it’d be hard to lie to my mother. My mother’s not like Bibi. She’s not constantly trying to set me up. She understands why I’m relationship-free. She’s the same. She knows romance isn’t a thing that works out for some of us, and she’s happy nonetheless.

She’d understand this fake-dating thing with Fable. Except, I don’t want to ruin anything for my pretend girlfriend, who leans closer to the phone to hit the mute button. Her voice is serious as she says, “I want to tell her the truth. We can’t lie to her. Please tell me you’re okay with it.”

The plea in her eyes. The vulnerability in her voice. The kindness of the gesture. Sometimes I wish she’d make it harder not to fall for her.

I hit the turn signal and say, “Yes.”

It’s easier than I thought it’d be, but that’s how it goes with her.

Fable unmutes the phone. “Ms. Hunter, can you keep a secret?”

“Oh, this sounds interesting. And of course,” my mom says as I turn onto the next exit ramp.

“Good. Because we’re going to need your help to pull this off,” she adds.

“Well, my day just got a lot more interesting.”

“This is vault level. The kind of vault that only a compassionate, balanced Libra who can see all sides can handle,” she adds.

“That’s me,” Mom says.

There’s a pause, a deep breath, then Fable jumps. “Wilder is not my real boyfriend.” Fable almost sounds disappointed.

There’s silence on my mother’s end of the line as I pull into the parking lot at a roadside store. Then she says, “Ah, this is one of those newfangled situationships?”

I appreciate her attempt to understand this, but it’s time to jump in. “Bibi is Bibi-ing, and Caroline is Caroline-ing, and you and I know it’s not going to happen. I needed a plus one for the wedding to ward them off, and Fable graciously agreed,” I say, quickly getting to brass tacks. “Her ex-boyfriend happens to be the world’s biggest prick and he’ll be at the wedding, so all the better that he sees she’s moved on.”

“To a better man,” Fable adds with an emphatic nod.

There’s a beat. Then, an “I see.” It’s like her Libra brain is weighing this new intel. “So it’s fake, but you’re actually going to the wedding together?”

“Yes,” I say.

“And traveling together?”

“Yes.”

“So the way I see it, it’s not really a lie. She is your plus one,” Mom says as I cut the engine.

“I am,” Fable says, with obvious pride.

“Well, I’ll keep your secret, but I can’t imagine anyone will be suspicious. You two seem like you actually like each other.”

She signs off, and I look at Fable with her gorgeous copper hair, her pretty pink lips, her creamy skin, her bold and bright attitude. Her spirit. Her energy. Her heart.

Little do they know it’s becoming a lot more than like.

“Popcorn?” I ask as we walk down the aisle of snacks at this roadside gourmet-ish shop.

“Well, it is a road trip,” she says.

“Three and a half to four hours. That makes it a road trip?”

She’s emphatic as she nods. “Yes, it does. And road trips require snacks. What do you like? Oh, right. Chocolate.” She stops in the sweets aisle. “Hold on—fancy chocolate.”

“I can’t help it if I have good taste,” I say, then let my gaze linger on her a little longer.

Her hand seems to flutter over her chest as she grabs a bar of salted dark chocolate. “You do. Also, snacks are on me,” she says, and she swings past me to head to the counter.

I dart out a hand and catch hers, tugging her toward me. Shaking my head, I say, “They’re not.”

“Wilder,” she says on a plea.

“You already stepped up and told my mom. I am buying the snacks and that’s just that.”

“Bossy,” she mutters.

I smirk. “Does this surprise you?”

“Not in the least.” Then she murmurs under her breath, a little sensually, “Sir.”

Well, then. There’s a whole lot of info delivered in that tone. I can’t not ask, “So not only does it not surprise you, it sounds like you don’t mind it either?”

She tips her chin up at me, challenging me with, “What do you think?”

I don’t think. I do. I slide my thumb along her pretty chin. God, it feels so good to touch her again. “That you like to give me hell. That you like to keep me on my toes. And that you love to give me a hard time.”

She leans into my touch, almost like she’s saying with her body don’t stop. “And I think you love all those things too,” she says in a husky voice that gives a little hint of her desire.

My thumb travels up to her cheek. She moves with me, her breath gusting across those gorgeous lips. “You’d be right,” I say, heat flaring inside me.

I could stay here all day like this, touching her face and trading quips. But we’re in a convenience store on the side of a road. I force myself to let go of her.

I take the food, buy it, and return to my vehicle with her. I slide back behind the wheel and turn on the car as she rips open the popcorn.

“Wait. Is it okay to eat in here?” She gestures to the dust-free dashboard and the heated passenger seat.

“Yes, of course.”

“Are you sure? It’s a nice car and everything.”

“And I can clean it if need be,” I say.

“From handyman to cleaning man,” she says, seeming amused, then she dips her hand into the bag and pops some in her mouth. She offers me the snack. I grab a couple kernels, then put the car in drive and head off, returning to the highway. Once we’re cruising along the highway on our way to the small mountain town I turn on a Christmas station, then return to what she did earlier with my mother as Destiny’s Child sings about Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. Fable took a big leap and trusted my mother with our secret—and she did it for me. “That was thoughtful of you, Fable. What you did with my mom,” I say, with some vulnerability.

“It just made sense,” she says, almost downplaying it.

But I won’t let her think it was no big deal. It was a big deal. “No. It was more than that. It meant a lot to me. The fact that you wanted to. That it mattered to you to tell her. I was…touched.”

She parts her lips, possibly to make light of it again, but she seems to stop herself. “Good. I’m glad. You’ve done so much for me already. I wanted to do something for you—something you wanted,” she says, her patent honesty hooking into my heart, making it soften even more for her. I didn’t think that was possible. And yet, it’s happening.

“It makes things easier. And you were right—I didn’t want to lie to her. Thanks for…” I pause, searching for the right words. “For making things easier for me.”

Her smile is warm and kind. “I had a feeling,” she says, then takes a beat. “Tell me more about her. I know she lives in London. She’s going to school there? Getting her master’s degree?”

“Yes, she finished her bachelor’s there too. A few years ago.”

“So she went back to study? Good for her. That’s so cool,” she says, as the highway narrows and we drive higher into the hills. The snow-capped peaks of Evergreen Falls aren’t too far away now.

“It was her dream for the longest time. When she was married to my father, she wanted to go. She even told him as much a few times when I was maybe ten or eleven. But he said it was too expensive and there was no need,” I say, my voice tight with simmering anger. “Of course the irony is he took what little college savings he’d had and gambled it away.”

She winces. “I’m sorry to hear that. Is it…an addiction?”

This isn’t how I’d planned to tell her. In fact, I’m not sure I’d planned to tell her at all. But she figured it out, and I don’t want to lie. Temporary though as this is, trust is vital. After all, we’re trusting each other with the secret of this fake romance. “Yes. He goes to meetings. But he relapses all the time. He’s had more one-day chips than I can count. His good friend, Victor, often keeps me posted on how my dad’s doing,” I tell her. “Victor is a blackjack dealer at one of the casinos and he’ll sometimes give me a heads-up since my dad doesn’t always give me the details. But Victor will let me know if Dad lost a big game or something. He looks out for him, which I appreciate,” I say, my shoulders slumping some, because I wish I didn’t have to rely on Victor. “When he does call—my dad—he’s almost always asking for money, and he’s utterly unreliable. I invited him to Thanksgiving a couple years ago so he could spend time with Mac, and he said yes, but then canceled at the last minute.”

Apparently, the valve has been opened and I can’t shut it off. “I don’t know if it was a poker game, or a woman, or he just couldn’t get it together. But he didn’t show, and I called Victor, and Victor didn’t even know what was going on. Mac was such a trouper when she went to bed, and she said she missed seeing him.” My jaw tightens at the memory. “The next time my father called a few days later, I told him that he’d let her down. He made up a song and dance about a last-minute shift and needing the money. Though maybe it was true. He loses most of what he has.”

“Wilder,” Fable says in a voice thick with emotions. “I’m sorry he’s got those demons and that they’re hurting you and Mac.”

But that’s not the full truth of it. “Sometimes he asks me for money,” I admit. “Sometimes I give it to him.” My eye twitches—a reminder that that’s not the full truth. Briefly, I look at her straight on. “Actually, most of the time I give it to him, Fable.”

Her voice is kind—a forgiveness. “I understand. Sometimes we aren’t always ready to do the hard thing. So we have to do something easier first.”

As we rush past a sign boasting that Evergreen Falls is twenty-five miles away, I steal a glance at my traveling companion. She’s beautiful, funny, and wise beyond her years. And she’s the first person I’ve confessed all that to. “I don’t usually tell people about him,” I say.

“I won’t tell a soul,” she says, then mimes zipping her lips and tossing the key.

That’s not what I was getting at though. “No, Fable. That’s not why I said that. It wasn’t to ensure you’d keep the secret.” I pause, so the weight of the words can sink in. “It’s because I wanted you to know.”

Perhaps it’s an admission of sorts.

She doesn’t say anything at first. The only sound in the car is the chorus on “Silver Bells” and the whooshing of the other cars on the highway.

Briefly, I wonder if I’ve said too much.

But my chest feels a little bit lighter. From having told her about my father, and about wanting her to know.

I don’t regret it.

At last she speaks, soft but clear. “I like knowing you.”

And it’s like my chest is expanding, making room for the way my heart is growing for her.

Too bad it’s only temporary.

As I slow at our exit, Fable points to a wooden sign painted red, with the words Welcome to Evergreen Falls in white on it. A red-and-green garland illustration coasts around the border of the sign, inviting us to enter this town that feels like it’s in another world. “I have a feeling we’re not in San Francisco anymore,” she says in a quiet voice.

“We’re not at all,” I say, and the distance from our regular lives is making me let down my guard even more.

Trouble is I’m going to need some kind of distance from my fake girlfriend in Evergreen Falls or else I’ll fall entirely in love with her before Christmas.