Dear Sexy Ex-Boyfriend

by Lauren Blakely

  But whatever.

  It was just a kiss for the hashtag.

  The sighs, the gasps, the little murmurs were just by-products. If there was more to the kiss than damage control, we wouldn’t be joking so well, getting on like we’ve always done.

  * * *

  Summer: Little do they know we are experts at this ruse. Heck, we could enter a contest for most believable fake fiancée kissing. Oh, speaking of contests, I have news!

  * * *

  Oliver: I’m all ears. Digital ears. But ears nonetheless.

  * * *

  I reread my last note. I might sound like I’m trying too hard at friendship. But hell, we are friends. It’s not trying. It just . . . is.

  I truly want to know her news.

  * * *

  Summer: The magazine just informed me I won the prize for the essay!

  * * *

  I pump a fist, thrilled for her.

  * * *

  Oliver: That’s brilliant!!! You deserve it! Everything is coming up aces.

  * * *

  Summer: Crazy, right? It’s $5000!

  * * *

  Oliver: Is it enough for the final funding for your gym, with the classes and whatnot?

  * * *

  Summer: Not quite, but it sure does make the shortfall a little easier to manage.

  * * *

  As I’m typing out a reply, a new post from Twitter pops up under the hashtag thread, with a series of replies too.

  * * *

  @MenAreJerks: I bet he’s still a douche.

  * * *

  @PeopleAreJerks: He looks like he’s a good kisser. Therefore, a douche.

  * * *

  @ILoveJerks: Jerks are the best kissers.

  * * *

  I take a screenshot and send it to Summer.

  * * *

  Oliver: Ah, Twitter still thinks I’m a jackass. C’est la vie.

  * * *

  She seems to take her time answering. The dots pop up, indicating she’s typing, but they stop every few seconds, making me curious.

  What are you trying to say, Summer?

  Hell, I’m dying to know.

  And then, finally, she sends something, but not to me.

  There’s a new post on the social media feed, in a reply to ILoveJerks.

  * * *

  @SummerTime: I don’t know if jerks are the best kissers. I do know that Oliver is.

  * * *

  And there goes my fucking resolve not to think about kissing her.

  My brain can go fuck itself.

  18

  Oliver

  “This tastes like blackberries and a fireplace on a cold winter’s night.”

  The declaration comes from Geneva the next night at the wine tasting in Soho.

  She holds the glass of merlot up high, sniffs it again, then takes another sip. “With a hint of . . . leather.”

  “The finest leather,” Jane seconds from her post next to Geneva.

  My client turns to Summer, who’s by my side looking elegant in a black dress that, if it were up to me, would plunge lower. But the V-thing it’s got going on works its powers of distraction nevertheless.

  Geneva reaches for a fresh glass from a nearby table and thrusts it at my date. “What do you think, Summer? I’d love your opinion.”

  Summer shakes her head. “I’m honestly not a wine person.”

  Geneva frowns. “Oh? I thought Oliver said you liked wine?”

  Summer jerks her gaze to me. “You did?”

  And shit, fuck, bugger. I forgot to debrief Summer properly on the way over, forgot to tell her I told Geneva that she enjoyed wine. Because of that damn dress. It’s like Lex Luthor designed a dress with my personal kryptonite. Or maybe that kiss fried too many brain cells going into tonight.

  Jane widens her Mayday eyes, trying to signal that I need to get my act together.

  “My apologies, Geneva. Summer’s never been a wine fan,” I say, dropping an arm across my date’s shoulder. “But I wanted to come, and I knew she’d be a good sport about it, because she is a great sport.”

  Summer gives an aren’t we cute grin. “That’s me. Sometimes he even calls me sport.”

  What?

  I would really like to roll my eyes now. I’d never call her “sport.” Maybe “strawberry.” Or “petal.” Or “cupcake.” She does look a bit like one right now . . . as in, good enough to eat.

  I push out a laugh as I shift my gaze to the woman by my side. “But most of the time, I call you cupcake.”

  “Yes, it is so dear when he calls her ‘cupcake,’” Jane chimes in.

  I press a kiss to Summer’s cheek. And the kiss seems to do the trick.

  “For a moment there, you had me thinking you don’t really know your fiancée. With the wine and whatnot.” Geneva wags a finger at me. She’s grinning, but her grin says, You damn well better know your fiancée.

  I toss my head back and laugh at that ridiculous suggestion. “I know her incredibly well. Have for years.”

  “They were practically inseparable in high school, from what I heard,” Jane adds.

  “We were. And we never drank wine together then either,” Summer says.

  “Such well-behaved teens,” Jane says.

  “And I can at least sniff it now,” Summer chimes in, grabbing the glass and lifting it to her nose. “Yes, it does indeed smell like bacon.”

  Geneva frowns.

  “I meant leather.” Summer quickly corrects herself. “I meant it smells like fine leather. The finest.”

  Jane grins.

  I squeeze Summer’s arm tighter, then drop a kiss onto her cheek. “Leather. Bacon. Sometimes it’s one and the same.”

  “I love bacon,” Summer blurts out. “That was a compliment. Bacon is awesome. They should make bacon wine.”

  Geneva tilts her head, considering us for a beat. The woman is more skeptical than I’d like her to be, and it’s much harder to play pretend than I anticipated.

  Time to prove it’s real. I draw Summer close and plant a quick kiss on her lips that’s not so quick after all. Because she’s delicious and the taste of her lips goes to my head, making me want more of them. So I linger just a little bit longer. “Your lips taste like cupcakes,” I murmur.

  And Summer breathes out hard.

  That makes Geneva smile bigger.

  “Such an affectionate couple. I swear, some days you can’t pry them apart. Now, let’s go try that Syrah,” Jane says, steering Geneva away while shooting me a get it together look.

  I turn to Summer. “‘Sport’? I would never call you ‘sport.’”

  She swats my arm and chides in a whisper, “And I never would have said I didn’t like wine if I’d known I’m supposed to love it. Maybe if you had told me that instead of spending all that time on the fictional first time we shagged.”

  “Fair point. But also, bacon wine?”

  “Someone should make it.”

  “No. No one should make it.”

  “If someone made bacon wine, I might like wine.”

  “Stop. Just stop. Bacon wine sounds horrid.”

  “Bacon wine, bacon wine, bacon wine,” she whispers, taunting me, and I can’t help but laugh.

  “Woman, you need to get a grip.”

  She bonks my shoulder. “And you need to brief me properly.”

  “Fine. On the way home, we’ll work on our cover story for next time. But for now, I have a solution.”

  “What’s that?”

  I waggle my hands. “Did you know I’m incredibly affectionate?”

  “Is that so?”

  She raises her eyebrows flirtatiously, and I tempt fate. I run my fingers over her leg.

  Her breath catches the tiniest bit, and if she wasn’t my fake girlfriend, my fake fiancée, I’d think it was sexy.

  But this is all pretend.

  It’s a lucky thing I’ve always been so good at make-believe. For instance, I know that if your pretend love affair comes into doubt, y
ou should touch your fake fiancée as much as possible.

  At least, that’s my rule and I’m sticking to it.

  19

  Oliver

  This is weird.

  It shouldn’t be, and yet it is.

  I take a drink of my IPA, set the glass down, and try to focus on whatever Logan is going on about—something vitally important, judging by the sound of his voice.

  “So it lets you take down the enemy faster,” he says, staring intently at us. “Make sense?”

  “Right,” I say, but I’ve missed how we’re taking down the enemy or even why we want to. I don’t even remember who that is exactly.

  At this moment, my libido is my most obvious foe, taking over a larger portion of my brain than it normally controls, say, 99 percent instead of the usual 95 percent.

  Thank fuck our mates are here with us at Gin Joint on Wednesday night, because I need the buffer with Logan.

  Which is another thing that’s unusual—I’ve never needed a buffer with Logan when it comes to his sister because we’re all friends.

  But this is the first time I’ve seen him since I kissed Summer. Since I had my hands all over her. Buffers are absolutely necessary because I’m thinking about his sister naked.

  “So, that’s the plan, guys. Can you do it?” Logan asks, looking at me, then at Jason, then at Fitz, who rolls his eyes as he downs the rest of his drink.

  “Dude. I knocked out Blake MacAvoy from Ottawa the other night. Yes, I think I can take out this fucker from Lehman.”

  Yes! Paintball. Sneak attack strategies. That’s what we’re talking about. I can focus on that, not on how insanely strange it is to be sitting across from Logan after thinking about the huge boner his sister gave me last night.

  But there is no brain space for boners now.

  None.

  Zero.

  Not even if I think about her lips.

  Her smell.

  The way she curved her body against mine.

  Nope.

  I’m not getting aroused again.

  Especially while I’m sitting here with my mates. Three great big, hairy male mates. There are no better boner killers than that.

  Maybe I should just stare at them to erase the image of Logan’s sister melting in my arms by the carousel, sighing against my lips as that guy snapped our pic, and emitting that sexy little gasp when I kissed her for the hashtag.

  When I touched her face, her cheek, her jaw.

  And when I kissed her a second time last night.

  I definitely need to focus on something the opposite of enticing, and these fellas will do.

  Logan with his dark hair, who looks nothing like his twin sister.

  Jason and his familial relationship to me.

  Fitz and his beard and his ink, the familiar face of one of the NHL’s top D-men. Who’s our paintball ace.

  Done. Summer is no longer in my head. Ejected.

  “Perfect. You’re our secret weapon,” Logan says.

  “It’s good to have a ringer on our team, isn’t it?” Jason gestures to Fitz, who winks.

  “I got your backs, boys.”

  “If we didn’t have Fitz,” Logan says, always planning for contingencies, “I’d invite my sister because she is the most competitive bastard I know—”

  Dammit to fucking hell. Why did he mention Summer? Why not show me a picture of her in that dress again and just kneecap me now? Though, admittedly, I wouldn’t look away.

  “Wait. More than me?” Fitz asks, mortally offended. His million-dollar-a-year job depends on him being ruthlessly competitive.

  Logan arches a brow, considering Fitz’s question. “Maybe not more than you. But close. Only, she won’t play paintball with us. She says it’s”—he stops to sketch air quotes—“‘Neanderthal.’”

  “Smart woman,” Jason remarks, then gestures to the bar where his wife is mixing drinks. “And speaking of smart women, I’m going to see my bride and nab a refill.”

  I raise my empty glass. “Same here. On the refill, that is.”

  We head to the bar, where a couple of hipster guys are checking out Fitz. The taller of the pair says, “This is my chance. I should go talk to him. I’ve had a crush on him forever. But do you think he’s involved with one of those guys?”

  “Probably, because who wouldn’t want him? It could be your shot though. You have to take it, Gavin. Do it,” the other one urges.

  Jason shoots me a smirk and quietly says, “Should I tell them the good news that he’s not with one of us? Or do you want to pretend you’re engaged to Fitz as well as Summer?”

  I lean back, catching the eye of the taller of the guys at the bar. “Sorry, mate. Fitz is with this guy,” I say, clapping my cousin on the back.

  Jason mutters under his breath, “Fucking hell. You beat me to it. Also, what if Fitz was into him?”

  “Fitz is a big boy. He can make his own moves.”

  “You’re a terrible wingman.”

  “That may be true.”

  After we refill our drinks, Jason says he’s going to spend time with his bride, so I return to the boner-killers, settling into my chair and turning to Fitz. “By the way, those guys at the bar are devising a strategy to come talk to you.”

  This gets his attention. He raises a curious brow. “Are they hot?”

  I give him a Seriously? look. “How am I supposed to answer that?”

  “Do you have eyes?”

  “I do.”

  “Can you not tell if a dude is good-looking?”

  “Are we talking about George Clooney?” Logan asks. “Because I can tell, empirically, that George Clooney is good-looking. Beyond that, no one.”

  Fitz huffs. “So you’re saying you can tell if someone is good-looking only if they’re the gender you want to sleep with? Unless it’s George Clooney? That’s the line you draw?”

  “It’s called the Clooney Line,” I supply. “He’s the only guy a straight guy can tell is empirically good-looking.”

  Fitz smiles, wagging an I’ve caught you finger at Logan. “You want to sleep with Clooney—admit it.”

  Logan laughs, nearly spitting out his beer. “No. I don’t.”

  Then to me, Fitz says, “But if you had to sleep with a dude, it’d be Clooney.”

  I shake my head. “I don’t want to sleep with Clooney.”

  “If not Clooney, who would it be?”

  I shoot him a look like he’s nuts. “Are you barking mad? I’m not going to answer that. Can you say which movie starlet you’d shag?”

  He shudders. “Fair point. But I’d do Clooney for sure. I don’t mind the gray hair.”

  “How open-minded of you,” I say.

  Fitz’s grin spreads, and he leans his elbows on the table, counting off on his fingers. “But if you really want the movie star list, it goes something like this—Idris Elba, Adam Driver, Kit Harington, Henry Cavill, Michael B. Jordan.” He stops, furrowing his brow. “And Michael Fassbender. For obvious reasons.”

  Logan blinks. “Why is that obvious? What’s the reason?”

  Fitz’s jaw drops. “You don’t know?”

  Logan stares at him blankly. “No. That’s why I asked.”

  Fitz gestures wildly to Logan’s phone on the table. “Just google his name. You’ll see what comes up as one of the search terms.”

  Logan picks up his phone as Fitz says, “Also, I forgot to add Liam and Chris to the list.”

  “The Hemsworths?” Logan asks, momentarily distracted from the search mission.

  Fitz shrugs, giving a wolfish grin. “Yep. Both. Same time.”

  “And you know they are brothers?” Logan asks, ignoring his phone now.

  “Well, they don’t have to bang each other,” Fitz deadpans.

  I clear my throat, continuing down this path of absurdity because it is indeed a fantastic murderer of the libido. “How are you shagging them both at the same time?”

  Logan cuts in, narrowing his eyes at me. “Did you really just ask
him that, Oliver? It’s patently obvious. Same way you’d do the Olsen twins.”

  And that does it for me.

  Not the prospect of Fitz taking on the Hemsworth brothers, because, whatever, who cares who he bangs.

  But it’s the image of me doing the Olsen twins.

  I used to watch Full House reruns, for fuck’s sake, and that’s the most massive boner killer of all time.

  “But for the record, I can tell if a woman is pretty, unlike you dickheads.” Fitz gestures to Logan. “His twin sister. Very pretty.”

  And here we go again. Back to Summer. Back to picturing her blonde hair, her brown eyes, her glossy pink lips.

  I. Can’t. Win.

  “Thanks. She takes after me,” Logan says, then swings his gaze to me. “Speaking of my sister, dude, what the hell? Why are you two engaged?”

  I shake my head. “We’re not a real thing. Also, use your library voices, arseholes. It’s a bloody fake engagement. I don’t need the whole bar knowing.”

  “Whatever. It’s funny,” Logan says, swiping his screen, then swiveling it around to show us Twitter, of all things. “So, now you’re America’s Best Boyfriend. You turned that shit around in two days. Well done, my man. Well done.”

  I take a small bow. “Thank you.”

  Fitz taps on the picture of Summer and me. “So, tell us more about this kiss, Ollie.”

  My skin goes hot. The hair on the back of my neck stands on end, and every detail of kissing Summer flashes before me, image after delicious image. The moment should be no different than any other moment in my life, but it keeps flipping before my eyes.