Over the weekend, Tackle It hit a milestone: ￡3,000 in one-off donations had been made since the Dr. Rugbae video went viral. Zaf had posted about it online, received an unholy number of likes and comments, and the total donations had bumped up even higher. He’d made Fatima a bowl of rasgulla roughly the same size as her head, because she was a genius mastermind who deserved to be recognized as his niece again, and he’d gone out with Jamal to a milkshake bar in town that offered a ton of old arcade games. Basically, he’d had a great fucking time. But for some reason, when he remembered the highlights, the first thing that came to mind was Danika sending him an emoji wearing a party hat. Probably because she never used emojis.
And the fact he’d noticed that, and was now ascribing significance to it, made Zaf want to smother himself.
It turned out that was physically impossible, though, so he compromised by rereading one of his favorite books on Sunday. A romance, obviously. Happy ending, obviously. That was what he wanted: a happy ending. And yes, he’d learned the hard way that those didn’t always last, but he wasn’t going to shoot himself in the foot by getting attached to a woman who didn’t want one at all.
The reminder worked.
During their Sunday-night phone call, he barely mooned over Danika at all. During his post–phone call wank (unavoidable—she had a sexy voice, okay?) he kept things fast and thoughtless. On Monday, when she turned up at his desk to fake flirt before and after class, Zaf remembered through every smile and lingering look that this was all for show. It. Was. All. For. Show.
And when she texted him later that morning, her messages like little rays of sunshine no one else would ever see?
That was friendship, obviously. Friendship, full stop.
DANIKA: I can’t wait for lunch.
DANIKA: Not the fawning all over you and feeding you grapes part. The food part.
Huh. Zaf hadn’t realized grape-feeding was on the fake-lunch-date cards at all, but suddenly he couldn’t wait, either.
DANIKA: My stomach is eating itself. RIP me.
ZAF: Didn’t you eat your protein bar?
DANIKA: Yes, I ate my protein bar, you absolute parent. It’s a shame I don’t have a daddy kink, or I might get off on those things.
Zaf set his jaw and shifted in his seat. She kept . . . saying things like that, these past few days, and it was getting harder and harder not to bite.
ZAF: Come and get another one.
DANIKA: You want me to choke down two in one day?!
He should probably be offended, but he found himself laughing into his hand, disguising the sound with a cough and a glower when a passing group of students stared at him. Once they were gone, he set his tiny smile free and typed out a response.
ZAF: That’s not very polite.
DANIKA: I can’t leave my strategic library position to come and get a protein bar. My seat by the window will be stolen. The risk isn’t worth the tasteless but protein-rich reward.
ZAF: Are you telling me you don’t like my protein bars?
DANIKA: They taste like cardboard.
DANIKA: Keep giving them to me, though.
As if he had any intention of stopping.
ZAF: For food emergencies?
DANIKA: You ask so many questions. I’m working now, I have to go.
And she really did go. There were no more texts during her breaks—not a single one—and she didn’t show up to lunch, either. Zaf leaned against a lamppost by the food court, staring longingly at the noodle van and the library in turn, like a man with a desperate craving for chili bean sprouts and books. Or chili bean sprouts and a bookish woman. Whatever. Clearly, he was delirious with hunger, since he’d finished his store of snacks around 10 A.M. as always. Hours ago now.
He checked his phone again, but there was no response from Dani to his latest nudge. Since his brain was his brain, his first thought was that she’d died. She’d taken the stairs and fallen, or she’d been crushed between those fancy moving bookshelves—the ones with signs on them saying to shout before you pulled the levers, only no one ever did.
Lucky for Zaf, he was used to shoving unreasonable worries away, so he drop-kicked those ideas into the sun and moved on.
In reality, he’d probably been stood up by his fake girlfriend. Ouch. Of course, knowing Dani, it was equally likely that she’d just gotten distracted—that she was lost in a book or a journal, her phone at the bottom of her bag, time a distant concept she preferred not to play with. Which would be fine, if it weren’t for the fact that they had social media stalkers to manipulate into free publicity.
And, wow, it all sounded incredibly mercenary when he phrased it like that. But still.
Zaf needed to be seen with Dani before this flash in the pan . . . un-flashed. He wasn’t about to let a single fake-lunch-date opportunity slip through his hands. So, for the good of Tackle It—obviously—he had no choice but to hunt down his girlfriend.
His fake girlfriend.
Obviously.
The low murmur was a familiar fixture in her dreams. “Hey. Danika.”
Danika, said with those soft, round consonants. Dani smiled, squeezing her eyes tight against the light. If she could fall asleep properly and sink fully into this dream, she might see Zaf as well as hear him. And seeing him was always a thrill.
Unfortunately, her inner eye remained stubbornly blank. She might have sulked over that, if it weren’t for the feel of a large, warm hand stroking her hair.
“Dani.” The whisper was quieter and closer, now. She felt the warmth of a body beside hers, caught the scent of coffee beans and spiced citrus—a scent she usually tried not to enjoy, because sniffing people was . . . just . . . odd. But it was okay to sniff people in dreams. Or to fantasize about taking the whole of them, making them yours, popping them into your mouth like a glossy, round grape, seeds and all, and trusting they wouldn’t choke you. For example.
“Sweetheart. Wake up.”
She’d really rather not. Even though her position was a little uncomfortable and her pendants were digging into her chest, this dream or half dream or whatever was too heartbreakingly lovely to abandon.
“You’re drooling on a book.”
“Shit,” Dani blurted, and jolted upright in her seat. At which point, a few things became immediately obvious: first, that she had fallen asleep in the library. Second, that she had not drooled on a book, but if the ache in her cheekbone was anything to go by, she had used a book as a pillow. And third, that Zaf was here.
Why was Zaf here?
Not that she minded, exactly. He was quite nice to have around, she supposed.
He was sitting beside her at one of the long library desks, and he appeared to have forgotten the meaning of personal space—again, not that she minded. Zaf was close enough that she could count his sinfully long eyelashes, and if she wasn’t mistaken, the delicious weight at the back of her neck was his hand. A wave of pleasure thrummed through her stomach.
He was holding her neck. He was holding her neck. His palm cradled the line of her spine and his thumb stroked the side of her throat, and her clit ached in time with every slow sweep. Apparently, she had a thing for being grabbed by large men. Funny how she’d never noticed that until this moment. Of course, she didn’t usually let anyone grab her in public, since it had always seemed disturbingly proprietary, and Dani was not property. So why, exactly, was she allowing Zaf the privilege?
As if that thought had deactivated some sort of mental firewall, the last of her faculties returned. All at once, she remembered why Zaf was there, why he was holding her as if they’d been married for sixteen years, and why he was staring at her with a slight, sweet smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.
Fake relationship. For . . . reasons. Lunch. To be . . . seen. And . . .
“Oh, crap,” she said. “I’m late, aren’t I?”
His smile widened into a grin, which was an absolutely shocking turn of events for a man with such epic resting bitch face. “Maybe.”
“I’m sorry,” Dani blurted, then wondered why she was apologizing. She was a terminally disappointing date, and I’m sorry had never changed that. The phrase was usually just an opportunity for whomever she was with to wrench her flaws wide open and list them all in excruciating detail. Not that Zaf had a right to do that, because they weren’t really in a relationship—she was doing him a favor, for heaven’s sake—and anyway, she hadn’t meant to fall asleep, so really, what was to be done?
Except . . . well, she supposed something could’ve been done. Something other than accidentally standing him up. She didn’t like the idea of standing him up, not even for a library power nap.