by Lindsey Hart
Oddly enough, money made it hard for a person to be understood and liked for who they were.
Go fucking figure.
After a year of dating around, dabbling in relationships, having fun, doing the whole going out and being social thing, he decided what he needed was a hiatus.
And maybe the chance to be a little less- conspicuous. All his life, he’d craved recognition. It was the ultimate irony that when he’d finally got to the place he wanted to be, a place where he figured he’d achieved it, he wanted anonymity.
Was it so much to ask that when he took a woman out they weren’t already contemplating dollar signs and bank account figures, clothes and jeweler and private flights to exotic destinations.
Oh right. Of course, it was.
He liked himself online. Mr. Nightshadow36, a ridiculous name that he’d had far too much fun making up and typing into the stupid site, was an intriguing man. A man who could carry on a conversation. A man who was witty and didn’t get tongue tied. A man, who deep down, wasn’t still that little boy kids used to throw rocks at, who went to school hungry, who ate mustard sandwiches for lunch since there was no meat in the house.
Yeah… online he got to forget all about his clichéd past. He wished he wasn’t a rags to riches story. That he was old money. That his parents were stodgy and held house parties and that he’d been forced into an arranged marriage with some snobby bitch who didn’t like him but had his kids anyway so that they could both live for them and ignore each other forever thereafter.
At least he’d be married.
At least he’d have someone to fight with and be pissed off with and annoyed with. At least he’d have done his duty and provided his mom and dad with a few grandkids.
It was fucking true that money didn’t bring happiness. It bought him a big house, which was totally empty.
Yup. Trace Russell wished, more than anything on earth, he hadn’t turned into the ultimate parody of the sad rich guy who made his money and found it didn’t add worth to his life in any sort of meaningful way.
He wished he could kick his own ass.
It wasn’t a surprise, that once again, he couldn’t sleep. He never slept. He walked around like a zombie all day, so fucking tired, but when night rolled around- wide awake.
It was like he was burning up inside, but he could do nothing to quench the flames.
Annoyed, Trace threw back the sheets, but didn’t get out of bed. He let the cool air in the room chill him. It was nice, the pinpricks and chills against his clammy skin. He reached for his tablet and logged into the ridiculous dating site. There really is no hope for humanity.
He received anywhere between ten and twenty messages a day and had since he first joined two weeks ago. It had never spiked or tapered off. His pictures sucked. He made sure of that. The point wasn’t to get laid. The point was to find someone who had no idea who he was and stick with that.
He knew he could have whoever he wanted. That his eligible bachelor status and bank account made him a good catch for just about anyone. Models. Singers. Actresses.
He didn’t want any of that.
He wanted something real.
Yeah, he knew he was on an online dating site, but hell… he was desperate.
Trace scrolled through his messages, starting from the bottom up. He was annoyed at the single word ones. The ones that said HI and left it at that. He deleted the lame ones. He deleted the ones about people wanting to lick melted ice cream off his abs. And the ones about sucking on his toes (which weren’t pictured in any photos), and the ones about his ass (also not pictured).
He stopped when he came to the most recent message, the last message in his inbox. He clicked on it and his eyes widened. He found himself smiling less than a second into reading. His eyes quickly devoured the rest of the strange message.
I know, Mr. Shadow, that you probably get a lot of messages. You’re obviously built like sin and with a name like a villain instead of a hero, who couldn’t help but be attracted to you. Likely, you’ll think that I’m crazy or that I’m joking. I can assure you that I’m not joking. I don’t know about the crazy. Definitely nerdy. My mom would say I’m a lost cause. Still not sure about the crazy.
Anyway, I’ll get to the point. I wasn’t exactly popular in high school and I’m still not. I’m a classic charity case. I’m not asking for a pity fuck or anything. I know this is a dating site, so I’ll put that out there. I’m a nice girl. I have a cat and I might be on the verge of becoming a plant lady. Still not sure if I should write crazy in front of that. I work at a mom and pop shop. I love what I do. I have a few good friends, because I think in life, that’s all we really need. I have a brother and a mom and dad. They’re average. I’m painfully average.
The thing is, I have a high school reunion coming up. The big ten year. I think I’ve done a lot with my life. I’m happy with it and that’s all that counts. However, I’ll confess to being shamefully insecure deep down, as we probably all are. I just want for once, to feel like I excelled at something. Even, shamefully enough, if that’s my upcoming high school reunion. I don’t want to be the kid who gets picked on and bullied ten years later. I don’t want to come away an emotional wreck who needs to binge watch all my favorite comic book related movies as a form of self-help since I can’t afford real therapy.
I’m a geek at heart. Truly. And I love it. But for just one day, I’d like to be the cool kid when it counts.
You’re probably wondering (if by some mercy and miracle you’re still reading) how you can help. Well… in short, you’re hot. I think you’re more than that though. Your eyes are incredible. I’ll confess that I imagined what your mom and dad look like to give you such astonishing genetics. Damn, they did a good job. Next time you see them, you should thank them for your eyes. You look intelligent, witty, smart, charming. You also look like you have a little bit of a dark side. You have this vulnerability in your eyes that I was immediately drawn to. You look a little sad, like maybe you have a shit history or maybe someone said something particularly awful to you the day that photo you posted was taken. You also look like you’d be the life of the party when it counts and like you’d laugh until you cried, and you wouldn’t be ashamed at all of those man tears.
I’m probably way off. I’m not a stalker or even creepy, I swear.
I know this is a long shot, and by long shot, I probably have a better chance of marrying my teenage heartthrob (who just happens to be an animated character- I’m a geek through and through. Please don’t judge) than I do of having you meet me and agree to pose as my fake boyfriend for a day for my high school reunion so I can, for the first time ever, kick some prissy, snobby, fake, bitchy, jock, ass.
If you do decide that you’d like to win the Nicest Guy Of The Year award, message me back. I’m sure you’ll have good karma for the rest of your life for doing me this favor.
Thanks in advance,
Ashton (yes, I have one of those guy-girl names, but I truly am a girl). Also something I was teased unmercifully for growing up right along with the bad skin and the braces and the glasses.) I know my photo on here isn’t good and that’s on purpose. I can send you a real one if you’re interested.
For the record, I was captivated by your eyes first, your six pack second.
And also, for the record, you look a little like my favorite villain. Or like you’d play a good one, based on your looks. And villains are always more kick ass than the heroes. Even if they always lose.
Ash.
A sense of humor. Trace liked that. He admired the wit and the courage that had gone into the writing of that message. It was different. Different wasn’t always bad.
He’d always had a sense of chivalry. He wasn’t the knight in shining armor, but he was a sucker for a damsel in distress.
He’d been working on his appearance since that photo was taken. He’d grown out his hair. Put on a little weight, all muscle since he’d changed his workout routine. He still ran every single mor
ning, mostly in an attempt to clear his head, but he also ate protein like it was going out of style and bulked up.
All in an attempt to be unrecognizable.
It wasn’t just enough to go on some site and take shitty, unrecognizable photos of himself. He had to make sure he sold it in real life too. Like an undercover cop.
God, it would be so much easier just to have an arranged marriage. He stood by that.
Ultimately, he didn’t believe in the notion of love. That wasn’t possible for people like him in the current bullshit version of a life that was supposed to be all gold and unicorn farts. Yes- unicorn farts. Because his niece was just as obsessed as the rest of the world and just that morning, she’d happened to draw a unicorn farting out a rainbow.
Most of the world probably agreed with him, given that marriage was hard enough. Celebrities and rich people weren’t expected to maintain the norm.
He’d never wanted to be an average person, but it would have been nice to just have enough to be comfortable. He’d never expected the fame when he set out to help people get healthy and to make sure his parents were taken care of, that they could retire and stop working themselves ragged.
He couldn’t exactly regret the money, but was it a sin to just wish that people could leave him the hell alone for the most part? He should probably just buy a private island and hide away from humanity for the rest of his life.
Which would be tempting, if he knew he wouldn’t go crazy from the whole cabin fever, bush fever, whatever fever. The private island was so much more tempting with someone to appreciate it with. A real someone. A nice someone. Someone who liked cats and plants and was a little geeky.
Trace cleared his throat. His hand hovered over the tablet.
Why not respond? It might be fun. He’d get to play a role. This woman wanted a fake boyfriend. She wouldn’t be trying too hard to fall in love. She wouldn’t be looking into his background or going on sites that combined their photos to figure out what their potential offspring looked like. She wouldn’t have a list of expectations a mile long. She didn’t expect a mansion or to bathe in unicorn tears. Right- he should really get off the whole unicorn thing.
Even from the side, he could tell her profile picture was pretty. He liked her profile name too. TheDarkHorse. So mysterious. So unfeminine. So… different.
Okay, he was shit with descriptors. It was cool. She seemed funny. Legit. Down to earth. Painfully normal. She probably didn’t even own a shovel and if she did, she probably wasn’t looking to go gold digging with. Another bad analogy. It’s even worse than the unicorn shit. No pun intended.
Ha, fucking ha.
Trace hadn’t had fun in a long, long time.
His hands flew as he responded to her message. Even if he eventually regretted it, he was pretty sure he’d enjoy the ride until the horrible crash and burn ending.
CHAPTER 4
Ash
The first thing Ash did, shamefully enough, when her alarm went off at nine the next morning- not because she had anything to do or anywhere to be- but because if she overslept, she’d never be able to fall asleep on time to get up for work the next morning, was to open her laptop.
She was still logged into the dating site, since she hadn’t clicked out the night before. She remembered shutting her laptop and tossing it aside like it was a burning pile of dung.
Her heart leaped up annoyingly before crashing into the pit of her stomach when she eyed the mailbox. It had a single digit over the envelope symbol. One.
She had a message!
She really hoped it wasn’t just some random guy. Her breath came in hard, dizzying pants which caused a cold sweat to break out over her body. Her heart hammered hard and her pulse was so frantic she wondered if it might actually be dangerous for her health.
She could hear her mom in her head, going on and on about how she always got so worked up about the smallest things. Her mom actually had told her that it was possible to have a stroke at any age. Or a heart attack. And then she asked when Ash was ever going to find someone and settle down and have kids. Her mother, who was not a doctor by any stretch of the imagination, no matter how many scraped knees she’d bandaged or how many fevers and belly aches she’d banished, had set in just last week about the whole biological clock. To her twenty-eight-year-old daughter. Clearly, her mom hadn’t got the memo about forty being the new twenty.
Cut it out. Focus. She took a deep breath, the kind from her yoga class that she forced herself to go to once a week. In and out through the nose. Slow. Calm. Feel the earth beneath you… in and out, in and out.
It went to complete shit when she clicked the message and found that it was from him.
The half erotic dream she’d had the night before about those eyes didn’t help matters. Her body responded to his picture, which pierced right through her. If she’d been wearing panties under her long nightgown with the sleepy looking cat on the front, they would have been soaked. No need to worry about flames or combustion there. The flood would have definitely put it out.
Face on fire, Ash forced herself to calm down and read the message.
“Oh. My. God.” She realized that she was talking out loud. She cast a pointed glance at her cat, who, at fifteen, was sleeping soundly. She was always sleeping. She was fifteen and that was ancient for a cat. She pretended that it was perfectly normal to have a conversation with her sleeping cat. “He messaged me back.” She slammed a finger into the laptop’s screen. “He messaged me back AND he gave me his phone number!”
Slappy- yes that was her cat’s actual name, and no, she wasn’t responsible for it, didn’t move a muscle. She’d adopted him from the shelter two years ago when she was feeling lonely and sorry for herself. She was sure a cat would help. He did. Slappy was awesome. He was mean. Terrifying. A horror at the shelter who hissed and clawed at everyone. The staff felt sorry for him, since, he was brought to the shelter when his elderly owner died of cancer and no one in the family could keep him.
She’d walked in like a conquering hero and asked for the hardest luck case.
She’d walked out with Slappy.
It was love at first sight.
She bribed her way into his heart with a can of tuna, a soft warm bed, and her loving arms. Turns out, that was all the crotchety cat needed. No more hissing. No more clawing. No more slapping.
“Slappy?”
Still no answer.
Ash sighed. “Okay, well, that’s alright. You just keep on sleeping while I get up and do the dishes and my laundry and maybe get us a few groceries so we don’t starve.” She didn’t say the magic word. She wouldn’t tempt him with tuna, since it worked every single time. She had none in the pantry and didn’t want to disappoint the old guy.
She was half out of bed before she paused.
“Do you think I should call him?”
Slappy’s side rose and fell. Rose and fell. Rose and fell. He let out a little cat snore, oblivious to her plight.
“I should probably wait until this afternoon, just so I don’t look desperate. Isn’t that right?”
Slappy actually flicked his tail in response. It was probably just a random sleep twitch, but she was enthralled as if her cat had suddenly started talking, giving her magical dating advice.
Not that she was really dating. This would just be… like a business thing. A friendly thing. It would be fake, because they’d need to get right down to business and discuss things her fake boyfriend would already know about her. Know and love. God, he’d be wild for her. He’d love that her blonde hair was unruly and more knotted than it was curly. He’d love that her hips were a little too wide and her ass impossible to hide in any pair of pants. He’d love that she was tall and awkward, but also somehow looked like a woman with breasts that always got in the way. He was a man. Of course he loved that, fake or not. He’d love that she hated makeup, that she hated being girly, that she detested shopping.
And most of all, he’d share a love for hot, kinky, cospl
ay sex.
Okay… well- maybe it was best to come up with something better than that. Fake or not, it was embarrassing even thinking about her fantasies. He’d share a love of comics and board games. There. And also for hot, kinky comic character, role-playing sex.
“Yeah, I wish.”
Ash rolled her eyes. She grabbed for her cell, which was on the nightstand. She flicked it on and rolled her eyes when she saw the text from her mother.
ARE YOU STILL ALIVE? YOU HAVEN’T TEXTED ME FOR TWO DAYS.
There was an hour long pause, then…
MAYBE YOU’RE ON A DATE. IF YOU’RE ON A DATE, THEN I’M PROUD OF YOU. I’LL EXCUSE YOU FOR NOT ANSWERING ME BACK. IF YOU’RE NOT THOUGH, YOU HAVE NO EXCUSE. TALK TO YOUR MOTHER BEFORE I CALL THE POLICE AND REPORT YOU MISSING.
“She wishes I was on a date. She always wishes I was on a date. Always with the dating. Won’t she be surprised?” Her mom and dad didn’t live in Twin Falls anymore, named for the tiny creek that cut through the town, no visible falls in sight, but maybe she’d be able to kill two birds with one stone.
She couldn’t wait to call. She had no experience with being calm and cool and collected. She had even less experience being coy or flirty or making it look like she wasn’t desperate. She wasn’t into games. He’d read her message. He already knew what she wanted. He’d given her the number…
She didn’t know how to be anything other than who she was. A small-town girl with a big heart.
“A girl who loves cats.” Slappy still didn’t move. She turned to her cactus on the windowsill. It was growing in one of those terrarium things. It had been crazy expensive, but she was a sucker for a plant with a pretty face and that pink flower blossoming out of the little spiky stalk definitely counted. “And plants.” The rest went without saying. “And I’m going to rock this call. I’m going to take those sexy blue eyes back home to Twin Falls. And back to my mother. And I’m going to do it now!”
