Real Fake Love

by Pippa Grant

  Holy.

  Fucking.

  Shit.

  She’s in love with me.

  She thinks this is real.

  Is she the kind of woman who’ll buy her own wedding ring and plan the whole wedding and then expect me to show up?

  Better question—will it cost me my endorsement deals when the world buys into the crazy and believes that I’m the sixth guy who’s jilted her?

  Is this gonna cost me an endorsement deal?

  I need to call my agent.

  And maybe my lawyer.

  And probably the cops.

  Or maybe a few teammates. Maybe she can fall in love with Robinson instead. Maybe it’s not too late.

  “Luca? Honey, do you need to sit down?”

  I grab a glass, turn to the sink, wrench on the faucet, and a stream of water explodes out of the handle, spraying all of us.

  Including the ziti.

  And now I’m wondering if it’s my grandmother or the ziti that gives The Eye, but I don’t have to wonder for long.

  Because no matter what, I’m fucked.

  6

  Henri

  It’s a good thing I’m off love, because water all over Luca Rossi’s tight muscles and golden skin, with him in nothing but black boxer-briefs first thing in the morning is enough to give a girl some ideas.

  Lust.

  I can totally be in lust.

  Who wouldn’t be in lust with that backside?

  He’s bent over under the sink to turn off the water, which feels dang good soaking my clothes and face and hair—and yes, my cat totally agrees. She’s lying on the floor, on her back, letting the water rain all over her while I try to angle in to ask Luca if I can help.

  With anything.

  Not only is his sink exploding, but either the air conditioner is broken, or Luca’s the devil and likes it really, really hot.

  Lust is making me forgive a lot right now. Not that I have any right to be the forgiver—I did invade his home—but this morning, it appears I might have something he needs too.

  “You work from home?” his nonna asks me.

  I start to nod, but Luca leaps up from beneath the sink like he has the lightning-fast reflexes of a vampire, grabs me by the elbow, and drags me out of the room. “We’ll get your room ready, Nonna,” he calls. “Can’t wait for that ziti.”

  “Good job turning off the water, honey!” I say loudly, then add in a whisper, “Is ziti for breakfast normal?”

  “Stop talking. For thirty seconds, please stop talking.”

  He marches me up the stairs and into the guest bedroom, where he rears back as soon as he enters. “Christ on a meatball.”

  I peer around, but other than a few clothes on the bed and Dogzilla’s raccoon costume that I’m airing out after it got too close to a shampoo bottle that leaked in my luggage, I don’t see anything—oh.

  Wait.

  Right.

  My hero from my most popular series is taped to the window.

  I forget other people think it’s unusual that I had an eighteen-inch cardboard cutout made of him. I call him my muse, and he goes everywhere with me.

  “Oh. Er…sorry about Confucius.”

  Luca shuts the door—very gently, for the record, though I suppose you could call it very controlled—and pinches his lips together while he stares at the ceiling like he’s looking for divine intervention.

  “The fangs are because he’s a vampire, but his sworn enemy cursed him, so instead of being able to shift into a bat, he turns into a turtlecorn. He’s hoping I’ll get back to work on his series soon so that he can get uncursed.”

  More heavy breathing.

  Is he meditating?

  He might be meditating.

  “So, your grandma’s putting The Eye on you if you don’t get a girlfriend?”

  I’ve been writing romance novels since third grade, when I wrote my first book about a panda who fell in love with an eagle after my parents got divorced. I know a grandma who wants her grandson to settle down and get married when I see one, and TikTok Nonna definitely wants Luca settled.

  He’s still counting the spiderwebs on the ceiling. With his eyes closed. “Has anyone ever told you that you’re terrifying?”

  “That was why my first fiancé left me.”

  “I’m not going to marry you, so if you’re thinking about falling in love with me, you can leave.”

  “Um, yeah, duh. I’m going to pretend to be your girlfriend to get your grandmother off your back, apparently until the end of the season since I heard enough to know that it’s what you’re most worried about, and you’re going to teach me how to not fall in love. Preferably with your clothes on, because you’re hot, and not because your air conditioner doesn’t work. Also, I’m off sex. It complicates the love thing.”

  His eyes drift open as he lowers his head to look at me, but his eyes aren’t drifting all the way open, which is a problem, because when his lids are at half-mast like that, it gives me ideas about him having ideas, and we are not doing that.

  “Are you never going to have sex again?”

  Gah, the sex voice. He’s using a sex voice.

  I blow out a short breath and shake out my hands. I can do this. It’s like he’s already giving me my first lesson. “I didn’t say that.”

  “So you want me to teach you how to not fall in love—which I can’t do, by the way, but I can tell you a few reasons love sucks—but you think you—you—can train yourself on how to not fall in love without learning how to have casual sex.”

  “Y-yes.”

  “Have you ever had casual sex?”

  I need to not answer that, because while my official record of being jilted stands at five, my college boyfriend—the one I lost my virginity to—technically counts as the prequel, since I started planning my wedding to him basically the minute he fell asleep after we did the deed the first time.

  Luca’s lips curve into a grin.

  It’s a wicked, wicked grin.

  He leans back against the wall, which makes his wet golden muscles stand out starkly in all their solid glory, like they’re yelling adore me! I’m beautiful! You want to touch me!

  “You haven’t,” he says.

  “One problem at a time, and the first problem is that your grandmother’s sneaking up the stairs to listen in on us.” She’s not, so far as I can tell, but I need to get control of this conversation before I lose my brain and ask Luca to marry me. “Also, is this a one-bathroom house? Why do you live in a one-bathroom house? And is she going to stay here? Or is she only threatening to so she can make sure that we’re dating?”

  He leaps to work, throwing all of my clothes into my suitcase, and when he touches my panties, the pair I’m wearing gets wet.

  And now all of me is officially soaked.

  I breathe through it, because this is okay.

  He’s right.

  I should learn how to have casual sex.

  Maybe that can be a lesson for after I break up with him. That’s how it has to go to satisfy his grandmother, right?

  This can’t be his fault.

  It can’t be even remotely close to his fault, which means not only do I have to break up with him, I have to have the reason above all reasons to break up with him.

  I’m going to have to tell TikTok Nonna that I’ve discovered I’m supposed to become a nun.

  I can’t use the kidnapped by a rockstar trope, or the found out I’m expecting another man’s baby trope, because in both cases, Luca, as my doting boyfriend, would come to my rescue and take my surprise baby as his own, except, surprise!, there wouldn’t actually be a baby. If we do the failed friends-to-lovers thing, he gets in trouble for not trying harder. Neither of us can develop amnesia, because if it’s him, his nonna won’t believe it, and if it’s me, The Eye would dictate that Luca nurse me through it.

  The only way Luca gets forgiveness from his grandmother and a delay of The Eye is if I discover I’m supposed to be a nun.

&nb
sp; Also? That’s so cool that he has a grandmother who gives The Eye.

  “Are you going to help me?” he hisses.

  Oh, crap. He caught me ogling his ass again. “I’ll get Confucius.”

  “No.”

  “But he’s my muse.”

  “He’s not going in my bedroom.”

  We lock eyes as I process exactly what he said.

  I’m moving into Luca Rossi’s bedroom.

  I’m moving into Luca Rossi’s bedroom.

  Possibly I hadn’t thought this all the way through.

  Possibly he hadn’t either.

  “Do you have two beds?”

  “What is this? A fifties sitcom? No, I don’t have two beds.”

  “So we’ll take turns sleeping on the floor?”

  “Don’t be a ninny, Henri.”

  “Did you just call me a ninny?”

  “You’re the one who wants two beds.”

  Uh-oh.

  Have I misjudged this? Was he glad I didn’t marry Jerry? Did he stay with me all grumpy-pants at the lake after my not-wedding because he likes me?

  Does he not hate love?

  Impossible. I’m good at reading between the lines, and my research confirmed he is so not the commitment type.

  I read an interview he gave one time talking about how much it shaped him when his parents got divorced.

  Weird how his parents’ divorce led to him never wanting love, while my parents’ divorce basically drove me to being a romance novelist and getting addicted to it.

  I shove my laptop into its case and lower my voice to a whisper. “You don’t want to have sex with me, and I’m not falling for any implications that you do, because I know you’re doing it to scare me off.”

  “Don’t I? Do you just lay there? Do you have a third nipple that’s super distracting? A birthmark in the shape of a poomoji? Would you call me another guy’s name when you come?”

  “No. I mean, that’s for me to know and you to not find out.”

  “Nonna expects to hear us having sex, probably often, from now until the end of the season. And she’s going to expect us to shower together. And she’s going to expect to walk into the kitchen and interrupt you giving me a blow job.”

  “Oh my god. You—you’re—you’re trying to get free sex out of me.”

  He yanks my suitcase off the bed, straightens, and glares at me.

  I risk a glance down south, and what does it say about me that I’m disappointed at the lack of Mr. Woody?

  Actually, what does it say about him that he can talk about sex with me without getting even the teensiest bit of a rise going?

  Does he have some kind of erectile dysfunction?

  Is he tiny?

  Or is he honestly not at all attracted to me?

  Yeah. I know.

  He’s not at all attracted to me.

  Which should be a good thing.

  Right?

  Because the point is to not fall in love.

  I square my shoulders and nod to him. “I agree to your terms. We’ll fake this relationship until your season is over. We’ll sleep in the same bed. Make noises like we’re having sex. We can shower together, because we’re adults, and it’s not like we’ve never seen naked bodies of the opposite sex before. But I’ll have to draw the line at the blow job.”

  His cheek twitches. “Great.”

  “Great.”

  We stare at each other.

  We’d probably stare longer, except at that exact moment, the smoke alarms go off.

  7

  Luca

  As if it’s not bad enough that I’m not scaring Henri away by making her think I want to have sex with her, now my house is burning down.

  I race downstairs to find Nonna fanning the open oven with a hot pad while flames shoot out of the ziti.

  “Your oven is possessed, Luca Antonio! I told you this house was a bad idea.”

  I dive for the sink again, trip over Henri’s cat, which is playing the role of a soaked floormat—and I’ll wonder later at the weirdness that’s a cat that seems to enjoy being wet—and I catch myself on the counter before I end up having to explain to the coaching staff that I can’t play today because I gave myself a concussion while trying to leap over a bunny-cat to put out a fire.

  Henri and I are having a talk immediately after this about where her cat is allowed to go in this house.

  No, we’re having a talk immediately about her and her cat leaving as soon as Nonna does.

  I fling open the cabinet under the sink, grab the fire extinguisher, jump back up, shove Nonna out of the way, and I commit the biggest sin of my life.

  I destroy the fuck out of her flaming ziti.

  Undercooked ziti?

  We eat it.

  Burnt ziti?

  We eat it.

  Ziti accidentally made with salsa instead of marinara because Nonna refuses to acknowledge that she grabbed an old pair of reading glasses that aren’t strong enough anymore?

  We eat it—and then we throw away the reading glasses when she’s not looking and blame it on my cousin Angie’s dog.

  Ziti covered in whatever this chemical shit is that comes out of a fire extinguisher?

  No way.

  Not even for the sake of The Eye.

  Heat courses down the back of my neck, and it has nothing to do with the fire I extinguished, and nothing to do with living in a house lacking air conditioning in August, and nothing to do with anything other than the ooooooh, fuuuuuuuck on the tip of my tongue.

  I ruined Nonna’s Eye ziti.

  I can’t look at her. If I look at her and she’s gone full-mob-boss Nonna, I will be incinerated on the spot. Or, more likely, run over by a firefly mascot in an out-of-control clown car while warming up between innings in center field, because that would be appropriate karma for ruining Nonna’s Eye ziti.

  Dead by the only thing I dislike in my happy place.

  No, that would be too good for me. Glow the Firefly in the runaway clown car wouldn’t kill me. He’d probably break all my bones—like what happened to Alonzo—and then no team will want me, and where will I find my happy place then?

  But worse—

  If I look at Nonna and she’s crying over her flaming ziti, I will have confirmed for myself that I am the worst grandson in the history of grandsons, and there are a fuck-ton of bad grandsons out there, and while I’ve never wanted to be number one, I don’t want to be number four billion either.

  Is my junk shrinking?

  Is she The Eye-ing my junk and shrinking it right now?

  “Oh my god, that was beautiful! I got it all on video, Nonna. You want me to text it to you so you can fix it up for TikTok?”

  I briefly close my eyes, imagine myself turning and extinguishing Henri too, decide that would probably get me put in jail, which might be a safer place than here in this kitchen, and instead give the now-smoking ziti one last spray, because damn if that shit didn’t flame up again.

  I risk a glance at Nonna.

  If her hair is rainbow unicorn sparkles, her face is confused llama with a side of twitching cheek and convulsing lips. “You destroyed my ziti.”

  “Technically, my oven did.”

  “You have a possessed house that aided and abetted the crimes you wanted to commit in your mind.”

  This is bad.

  I’ve pissed off Nonna before. There was the incident with her rhododendrons when I was eight. The replica statue of Michelangelo’s David that I ran over when I was learning to drive. The time I mistook her priest for a new boyfriend and pissed on the side of his car.

  I’ve never felt this level of you fucked up good now, idiot.

  Henri leaps between us. “I know a guy who can help with an exorcism. I met him while I was doing research. And I downloaded a grocery app for Crunchy—the organic grocery store?—and I was about to order some yogurt and bananas and tea anyway, so if you let me know what you need, I can add it quick. Easy-peasy!”

  Nonna peers ar
ound my new fake girlfriend, but I leap away before The Eye can land on me.

  It doesn’t count if I don’t look at her and accept The Eye, does it? “Team meeting. Emergency. Mascot problem. I’ve gotta get to the park.”

  Yes.

  Yes, I’m running away. I’m being a total and complete chickenshit.

  Ask me to save a dog from a burning building, I’m in. Ask me to read Everybody Poops to a hundred first-graders, and I’m there. Ask me to stand naked in a shower and get recorded rubbing shampoo in my hair, and—

  Okay, not a fair comparison, since I get paid to do those commercials.

  But still.

  I’m not a chickenshit.

  Until it comes to my grandmother.

  In fact, right now, I’m snagging my keys and dashing straight to Fluffy Maple.

  That’s my car. I named her my internet stripper name. First pet, first street.

  Which isn’t important, because The Eye can probably outrun Fluffy Maple. Especially since my wheels top out at about sixty-seven, and the maximum speed limit between here and Duggan Field is forty-five, and that’s only on the one stretch of College Boulevard for about a mile.

  “Luca?” Henri calls.

  Dammit.

  I forgot to kiss my fake girlfriend.

  I pivot, dash the seven steps from my driveway to my front door, dip her back in one of those kisses you see in the movies, except she’s off-balance, and something wrenches in my back—nothing the physical therapist at the park can’t handle—and her lips smush against my nostrils while I suck on her chin.

  I spin her back up, refuse to look her in the eye, yell, “Can’t wait to have wild monkey sex with you tonight,” and dash back to my car, hoping the threat of wild monkey sex is enough to convince her to leave.

  I would dive into Fluffy Maple through her window if I had to, because I can sense Nonna coming.

  My grandmother’s coming like tornado storm clouds. You think it’s on the horizon, until bam!

  There she is.

  My pulse is racing. My mouth is dry. Henri’s chin tasted like some weird kind of lotion, and now I have a dry tongue that tastes like dead-flower-flavored Vaseline.