Dashed by Amanda Quain

Author:Amanda Quain
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Mom was on her third course already, and as our server (not Ramon, unfortunately, although even Ramon couldn’t save me from this) removed her lobster tail from its shell with perfect technique, she continued to pepper Gabe with questions.

“Tell me what it is you do, again,” she asked for the millionth time, cutting into her lobster. I felt my shoulders tense, like they’d done every time Mom had interacted with Gabe. But Gabe, sitting on my right, was holding it together remarkably well. Almost too well. This smiling, overly polite guy barely felt like the Gabe I knew.

“I run the sound for the shows on board.” He hadn’t touched his own lunch, which was my only indicator that he was uncomfortable, too. “I only come on contract during the summer, though. I’m still in school the rest of the year.”

“Where do you go to school?” Edward was enjoying his spaghetti carbonara with gusto, unaware of the high level of awkward I was feeling. Next to him, Elinor’s smile was indulgent—she liked Gabe, that much I could tell. And Marianne was acting like a proud mother, like it was entirely because of her that I’d found myself a Gabe in the first place.

“I just finished my freshman year at Carnegie Mellon,” Gabe said, giving his best attempt at a smile as he poked at his food. “Electrical engineering.”

“That’s a great school,” Elinor said, and Gabe shrugged, modest.

I was deeply, incredibly confused.

Which didn’t make any sense. Because Gabe was doing exactly what I’d asked of him, when I’d frantically messaged him from the pool deck and begged him to come to lunch and keep the illusion going that we were, if not deeply in love, at least interested enough in each other to hang out constantly. He’d agreed—especially when he’d heard we were eating in one of the specialty dining rooms that Edward had gotten us into in honor of Mom’s visit—and met us at the entrance fifteen minutes later in, of all things, a pair of khakis. I’d never seen him wear anything that wasn’t black before, so that was jarring enough, but it turned out to be just the tip of the iceberg.

He was unfailingly polite. Not charming, exactly—I could still see his discomfort, and I suspected my family did, too, though it didn’t stop Mom from giving him the third degree. But he was giving off every impression of a guy who was super into a girl and trying to impress her family. He’d even, at one point, looked over at me and squeezed my hand, just once, under the table, which was confusing in its own way, because why bother doing something like that where no one in my family would see? (Although I suspected Marianne saw it, from the way she smirked.)

And I didn’t hate any of that. I’d asked for it. What I hated was the way it made me feel. Because when I watched Gabe with my family, watched him work to fit like a puzzle piece we’d always been missing, I felt something pang deep in my chest.

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