Fairytale Love - Becca & Brian(18)

"Oh." Becca looked startled as she turned to him.

Great. Here he was fantasizing, daydreaming, obsessing over a moment  they'd shared together and she'd forgotten he was in the car. Perfect,  just perfect.

"She had some pictures to give me that she found on her  I-will-have-a-clean-attic mission that I guess she's been on the past  year." Even though he knew that Becca was trying to be present, she  couldn't have sounded more preoccupied.

"Pictures of what?" Brian knew that it was a stupid question and he was  grabbing at straws here. He figured they were more than likely pictures  of Becca growing up, but he wanted to keep her talking so his mind  didn't have the chance to mutiny with more boner-inducing thoughts.

"I haven't looked at them yet." Becca's voice sounded distracted.

He heard her take a deep breath in through her nose and out through her  mouth before she, once again, turned and stared out the window.                       
       
           



       

Maybe she was just stressed out about the drive she hated so much. Maybe  she was nervous about shooting the show. Actually, the more Brian  thought about it, the less it made sense that she'd agreed to do it in  the first place.

When he'd been packing yesterday and tying up some loose ends, his mom  had come in to let him know how his dad's doctor's appointment had  gone-which, knock on wood, his dad was still getting stronger by the  day-and he'd told her the news that not only had he gotten the show but  Becca had as well. His mom had immediately jumped to the foregone  conclusion that Becca had turned down the opportunity. Even after he'd  explained that Becca was, actually going to do it, his mom had just  stood in his doorway shaking her head, looking slightly horrified.

After she'd asked her son several questions, the first one being, "Why?  Why in the world would Becca do that?" Brian realized that he had no  idea. Honestly, as much as he'd tried to run the breakfast, when they'd  gotten the calls, over and over in his head, he couldn't for the life of  him remember how her conversation had gone. He didn't recall her  actually agreeing to be on the show.

He'd just assumed that she would say yes; which was insane when he  thought about it. Becca hated attention in any form. She liked to be the  observer-behind the scenes. Unlike Brit, his baby sister, Becca did not  suffer from YSS (youngest sibling syndrome), which was a term he'd  coined to explain his little sister's constant need for attention and  approval. She'd pretty much grown out of it once she'd hit high school,  but every once in a while, it would rear its ugly head.

"Are you nervous about filming?" Brian asked in a pathetic-slash-generic  attempt to open up a dialog he should have had with her yesterday, at  the table, before he'd grossly taken for granted the fact that she'd hop  on board the crazy train at Reality Show Station and he would no longer  be the lone passenger to whatever the destination might be.

"Are you?" she snapped back, being uncharacteristically defensive.

Brian's eyes cut to hers for only the briefest of moments, because he  really did need to keep his eyes on the road, but he was also trying to  gauge where this out-of-the-blue reaction had come from. She did not  look happy. In fact, if Brian were pushed to classify her mood, he would  have to say that it was downright pissed.

Okay.

"Not really," Brian said, trying to answer her question in the most  benign way possible. He didn't want to say anything wrong and agitate  her any more than she so obviously was.

He could have sworn that he heard her mumble, "Of course not," under her breath.

When he glanced quickly over at her, she immediately masked her facial expression to neutral.

"Oh, that's good," she said with what he easily read as forced sincerity.

To say that Brian had been up in his own head since finding out the news  yesterday would be like saying that Chicago was breezy-true but a  severe understatement. Only now was the last twenty-four hours coming  back to him like a fogged bathroom mirror clearing when you blast it  with a hair dryer. It started out with a tiny circle of realization and  quickly spread until the entire memory reflection became crystal clear.

Becca hadn't agreed to participate on this show. In fact, if anything,  she'd been trying to turn it down. At the very least, she'd been on the  fence, but she'd had one foot on the not-doing-the-show side. So why,  why, had she agreed to do it?

Shit. Brian's jaw tensed as he tightened his grip on the steering wheel.  It was because of him. As the mental puzzle pieces in his mind locked  into place, he was able to see the big picture.

Brian had been stressed, upset, and the second he'd found out that Becca  had been cast, the dark cloud of doom that had been hanging over his  head had instantly disappeared. Not having to leave Becca to go on this  insane adventure had been like hot rays of sun-hope. In his mind's eye,  he could see the moment that the indecision clouds had parted from  Becca's stunning, blue eyes. It was when he'd reacted like she was  going, not even waiting to see if she actually wanted to do this.  Because she'd seen how happy and relieved the thought of her being on  the show had made him, she'd resigned herself to doing exactly that.

That was Becca. His Beckles. She always put the needs of others before her own. Especially his.

He had to fix this or, at the very least, acknowledge her selfless  sacrifice. He should make sure that his Scooby Doo detective skills were  actually sniffing out the right conclusion to the  why-is-Becca-doing-this mystery. He figured the direct approach was the  best.                       
       
           



       

"Why did you decide to do this?" Brian asked, having a pretty good idea  that her answer was going to land him in the totally-insensitive-ass  category.

But if the category fits …

* * *

Becca's heart began pumping so fast that you would have thought it was a  sprinter in the Summer Olympics going for the gold. What-in the name of  all that is holy-was she going to tell him? One thing was for sure, it  wasn't going to be the truth.

If she did that, then Brian would feel responsible for her decision. And  she couldn't let that happen. Brian had enough weight on his shoulders  between his parents' health issues and Brit's tuition needs. Not to  mention that, if this show didn't go well (meaning Brian didn't win),  then he'd have to officially bury his dream where dreams go to die-in  the responsibility graveyard under the no-options soil.

No, she needed to come up with some other reason why she'd made the  decision that was making it feel like she had an ulcer the size of a  grapefruit eating away at the lining of her stomach.

Biff's voice from Back to the Future popped into her head. "Think, McFly, Think."

"Same as you. The money," Becca lied through her teeth, staring straight  ahead, careful not to look to see if Brian ‘bought' it. That would be a  classic liar's move.

If lying were an art form, growing up, her sister Krista would easily be  a master in its practice. Her redheaded older sister didn't lie often,  but when she did, it was truly something to behold. Most of her sister's  tall tales had centered around trying to spend alone time with her then  high school boyfriend, now fiancé, Chase.

Whether her sister was saying that she was going to be spending the  night at a friend's house, when really she was going camping with Chase  or that he hadn't been in the house when their parents had been gone,  the key Becca had observed to pulling off a whopper of a fib was to have  total, complete, and unwavering confidence in what you were saying.  Basically, you had to subconsciously convince yourself that the words  you were saying were true.

Becca didn't think she'd be able to pull off that master level of  deceit, but she was hoping to at least reach believable status and  squeak by without any more questions on the unwanted topic of her  motivations.

"The money?" Brian repeated, clearly not picking up what she was laying down.

"Move along. There's nothing to see here," she heard the Stormtrooper from Star Wars say.

Why couldn't he just drop it? She knew the answer to that; because it was Brian. That's why.

"Yep," Becca confirmed, nodding for emphasis. Then, even though she knew  she shouldn't elaborate, she continued, "Stanford is not cheap, and my  parents have already ponied up a lotta dough putting Haley, Krista, and  Jessie through school. I'm not trying to win this thing. Obviously, I'm  rooting for you to win it. But the guaranteed twenty Gs will help."

Becca forced herself to stop talking. First, she wasn't talking like  herself, which was her biggest ‘tell' when it came to lying. "Ponied  up," "lotta dough," and "twenty Gs"? For some reason, whenever Becca  lied, instead of growing a long, wooden nose like Pinocchio, she would  try to sound "cool" or "hip" and end up sounding like an idiot. She  wished her nose would just get larger. It would have been much less  embarrassing.