Real Fake Love

by Pippa Grant

  But trying to write is better than staying here and pretending life is great when his mom is dating my ex-fiancé and his grandmother will probably put The Eye on me too if she finds out I’m only playing the role of Luca’s girlfriend.

  When I dance into the bathroom upstairs, yank my pants down, and sit, I fall butt-first into cold toilet water.

  “Aaaaah!”

  I almost clamp my hands over my mouth, remember I’m touching the edges of a toilet seat that’s probably gross, and instead squeeze my lips together and pray no one heard me.

  “Hello?” Nonna yells.

  “Who’s there?” Luca’s mother shrieks.

  “Luca? Is that you?”

  “Of course it’s not Luca! He doesn’t scream like a girl!”

  “Oh. Then it’s his floozy, isn’t it?”

  Oh god.

  Oh god oh god oh god.

  I didn’t lock the bathroom door, which means one of them is going to find me in here sitting in toilet water with my hooha hanging out, and Luca’s mom is probably naked too, and this is not how I want to start my day.

  “Don’t come in!” I screech. “And why didn’t you teach Luca to put the damn seat down?”

  “That’s his father’s fault!” his mother yells back.

  Nonna snorts loudly enough to scare Dogzilla, who bolts into the bathroom after pushing the door open with her nose.

  “Bullshit,” Nonna hollers. “It’s those last two assholes you tried to make Luca’s stepfather!”

  “That was seventeen years ago, you witch!”

  “Would you two wait until after coffee to start this?” The bathroom door swings open again, and there’s Luca, with his hair perfect and his pecs solid and his arms the very definition of arm porn, not to mention the black athletic shorts slung low on his hips and showing off his happy trail, striding into the bathroom built for one and taking up all the breathing room while I sit in toilet water soup with my arms crossed to block his view of my beaver and my shorts hanging around my ankles.

  “I love them both, and I can’t stand them together,” he mutters.

  “Get out,” I hiss.

  “Are you okay?”

  Happy Henri who’s had a solid week of good writing days, lots of sleep, and a chance to binge watch the first season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer recently would smile brightly and assure him I’m fine and that I meant to do this in the name of research so he’d leave.

  I am not Happy Henri this morning, nor have I had enough sleep, enough writing time, or enough Buffy time. But I fake it anyway, because that’s what I do. “Yes! I’m great! Fully awake now and ready to start the day! So refreshed! Especially on my bottom!”

  His lips twitch.

  His lips twitch.

  The nerve.

  “Who starts their day at this hour?” his mother calls.

  I glare at him, since his mother can’t see that.

  He swipes a hand over his mouth. “Two seconds. I’ll get you clean clothes.”

  Oh, he thinks it’s going to be that easy, does he? “Pick out an outfit for Dogzilla while you’re at it. She and I are going to a cat-fé so I can get some work done.”

  If he doesn’t know what a cat-fé is—you know, a café where cats are welcome—he doesn’t show it.

  He merely turns and leaves the bathroom so I can hustle my flat butt out of the toilet water, shake my shorts off, and dive over my cat to hide in the tub before he returns.

  I pull my shirt off and toss it over the boring blue shower curtain—which goes remarkably well with all the seventies-yellow tile in here—and crank the water, then scream again as the ice-cold flow surges out the showerhead in needlepoint spikes instead of the bathtub faucet.

  Dogzilla hops her lazy butt up onto the tub shelf and peers at me. She loves showers, but she, too, has her limits.

  And yes, my cat loves showers.

  And I love her for loving showers, because it makes her unique.

  The door opens. “You being attacked by the shower demons?” Luca asks.

  “You may leave your sacrifice on the sink and see yourself out.”

  “But, honey, I need to shower too.”

  I freeze.

  He did not.

  He. Did. Not.

  I peek out the back of the shower curtain, exposing nothing more than my eyeballs and nose.

  Luca’s peeling his shorts off.

  “What are you doing?” I whisper.

  “Selling it,” he whispers back.

  “You can just—just—” Oh, god, his butt.

  No, that’s not a butt.

  That’s an ass.

  Muscle. And curves. And dimples. And muscle. And the backs of his thighs. And—

  I wrench my gaze to the window above the toilet. “You can stand there and make noises like you’re in here.”

  “But then I won’t come out wet.”

  And now I’m wet, and not because of the shower. Thanks, Luca. “It’s six million degrees in here. We’re all already wet.”

  “I can’t still smell like sweat and dead leaves and ant guts when I leave this bathroom, Henri.”

  “Then we’ll both take fast showers and fake that we’re in here together.”

  “You told me yesterday that you’ve seen naked men before and that we had to do this.”

  “Yes, but you’ve never seen me naked before, and I’m having a very bad day, and maybe I don’t want to do this right now.”

  “Do you have four belly buttons and an eyeball in the middle of your breast?”

  “What? No. Of course not.”

  “Seen one, you’ve seen them all. And I’ve seen more than one, so trust me, it’s just a body.”

  I glare at him, which is a mistake, because glaring at him means looking at him, and he’s standing there stark naked.

  With everything hanging out.

  Hoo boy.

  Naked Luca.

  He’s right, of course. He’s not the first naked man I’ve seen.

  But he is the first naked man I’ve seen with muscles like that, and a scruffy jawline like that, and eyes like that, and basically, it’s like being in a room with one of the heroes from my books come to life and sculpted before me, and right now, I like my heroes way more than I like any man I’ve ever been naked with, which is confusing all the neurons firing in my brain and overwhelming my hormonal systems.

  Which is to say, I’m so freaking relieved that I’m not a guy, or I’d be popping a visible boner.

  Whereas he’s totally unaffected in the would-be-boner area.

  Duh. Of course he’s unaffected. He can only see my eyes, my nose, my forehead—where that massive vein I got from my dad is undoubtedly throbbing—and my hair.

  My crazy, curly hair with the double misplaced cowlicks that make it look like I’m related to Lucifer when I get stupid and cut it this short.

  When I was little, my eyebrows used to point wrong too.

  It’s entirely possible I’ve had so many failed weddings because my parents and sister always put that picture in the rehearsal dinner slide show.

  The one of me in a red dress from when I was six and fisting a fork with the tines up and the flash hit my eyes wrong and made me look like I had the fires of hell burning inside to go with the weird horn curls and the tilted-up devil brows.

  Luca’s face twitches, but he’s grinning through it. “Your brain is a terrifying place, isn’t it?”

  “Only one way to tell.”

  “I’m not going to ask you what you’re thinking.”

  “I meant you could read my books, Mr. Know It All.”

  Someone knocks at the bathroom door. Dogzilla whines. That’s a bad sign.

  “Luca?” his mother calls. “I’m coming in.”

  My eyes try to pop out of my head. My heart tries to gather all my other internal organs and assure them this is going to be okay, but we all know it’s lying.

  And Luca?

  Luca dives into the shower.

 
With me.

  “No, Mother, you’re not,” he yells back.

  “I have to pee!”

  “Hold it!”

  “I can’t hold it! I gave birth to you. Do you know what that does to a woman’s bladder?”

  “Should’ve been doing your Kegels,” Nonna calls.

  Luca drops his head to the shower wall. His golden skin is speckled with water droplets that are getting thick enough to slide down all the curves of his various muscles that I usually know the names for, but my brain has short-circuited.

  He doesn’t smell like ant guts.

  He smells like delicious. Like whatever the male version of brunch is. Not because he smells like food, but because he smells better than anything I’ve ever smelled, and brunch is the best-smelling meal of them all.

  I blow out a breath, turn my back so he can’t see my private bits, and stick my head under the hard needle-prick pounding of the water.

  Yet, I can still hear it when the racehorse known as Luca’s mother starts doing her business.

  Holy—just wow.

  That’s some seriously loud peeing.

  I glance back at Luca.

  His green eyes meet mine.

  His mother keeps on keeping on with her toilet business.

  And then she farts.

  My eyeballs are once again in danger of popping right out of their sockets. Luca’s face is contorting thirty-two ways to Sunday, but this time, he’s not annoyed.

  Oh, no.

  He’s trying not to laugh.

  His mother farts again, the sound echoing first in the toilet bowl and then around the small bathroom, and he sticks a knuckle in his mouth as he wrenches his gaze away from me, but it’s too late.

  I saw it.

  I saw Luca Rossi’s full smile, all that mirth dancing in his eyes, his cheeks dimpling up behind that layer of dark scruff, and I want to lick it.

  I want to lick his smile and claim it as my own and live in the glow of it for the next seventy years.

  Oh, hell…I’m doing it again.

  I’m falling for a guy because he smiled.

  I poke him in the ribs, then immediately wish I hadn’t touched him, because gah, his skin is smooth and hot and wet, and now I want to lick that too.

  The peeing stops, and his mother gives one of those relieved sighs as he shoots me a raised-eyebrow, silent what?

  I mouth quit being attractive to him, but his brows and cheeks do that I can’t understand you twitch.

  His gaze dips.

  And the man’s not looking at my shoulder.

  I squeak and turn my back on him, but I can feel him looking at me. At my neck. My backbone. My hips. My lackluster butt. My skinny legs.

  Oh, crap. Have I shaved recently? And why didn’t I think about that last night before I put my shorts on?

  Oh my god.

  Oh my god, I met all of his baseball friends and Mackenzie with hairy bigfoot legs on top of everything else.

  “God, is there anything better than a good piss first thing in the morning?” his mom asks.

  “Showering with my girlfriend without having to listen to my mother take a piss two feet away comes to mind.”

  “Then you should’ve bought a house with more than one toilet.”

  “You could’ve peed in the yard. I have a shovel out there behind the tree too.”

  “I agree with your mother, Luca Antonio, and you know I hate to do that,” Nonna yells. “There’s buying a fixer-upper, and then there’s being an idiot. You’re being an idiot. Henrietta, you have your work cut out for you with this one. If you’re woman enough to follow through with the job.”

  “Quit baiting my girlfriend, Nonna,” Luca hollers back.

  Dogzilla adds half a meow and gingerly steps down into the tub.

  The sink turns on, and I make a mental note to not shake hands with his mother because she does not wash for twenty seconds. A moment later, the door closes.

  I suck in a deep breath, grateful that the water’s finally hot in here. “May I please have the shampoo?” I whisper.

  It appears over my left shoulder.

  And it’s Kangapoo.

  Of course.

  I’m going to smell like Luca Rossi for the rest of the day.

  “Need help?” he murmurs entirely too close to my ear.

  “No! I need you to back up,” I whisper back.

  “We have to make sex noises.”

  “We—what?”

  “They think we’re in here trying to have a good time. We need to sound like it.”

  “Are you trying to make me uncomfortable?”

  “No, that’s merely a bonus side effect.” He raises his voice. “Here, babe. Get my back?”

  “Only if you get my front,” I reply.

  My back is still to him, which means I’m going to have to rinse this shampoo out face-first, and talking about washing him is making my entire body flush.

  “Oh, god, yeah, that’s good,” he says.

  I look back.

  He’s staring up at the ceiling.

  And there’s absolutely no movement below his waist.

  Am I that unattractive that I don’t even get a quarter of a woody? Not that we’re having sex.

  We are so not having sex.

  But I’m standing here with every cell in my body getting turned on by his earthy male scent and the hard planes of his body and that damn smile, whereas he can’t even fake a teeny tiny bit of attraction in his primitive parts.

  Life sucks sometimes.

  Especially when this is pain I need to endure to grow and learn and not repeat all of my past errors.

  “Oh, god, Luca, you know I love it when you do that,” I say in a breathy voice loud enough to carry over the water.

  He makes a choking noise.

  “Get a room,” Nonna yells.

  “Quieter,” I hiss loudly to Luca, still in my sex kitten voice, which might be having an effect on his penis?

  Maybe?

  He growls and turns away so I can’t see. “I can’t be quieter, Henrietta,” he replies, equally loudly-but-pretending-to-be-trying-to-be-quiet. “You know what your body does to me.”

  “Good lord, he wasn’t this enthusiastic over the supermodel he took to Evan’s wedding last year,” his mother says.

  “No meat, no good lovin’,” Nonna yells back. “Not that she has the right kind of meat either…”

  I suck in a breath, because I’m not entirely certain exactly what they’re saying, but I get the gist of it.

  I’m not Luca’s type.

  Also, when I suck in that breath, I get a nose full of water since I jerk my head up at the same time. As I’m coughing it out, Dogzilla lets out a panicked meow!, a cold draft makes the shower curtain waft toward me, and I realize Luca’s gone.

  There’s frantic whispering outside the bathroom. I stick my head under the hard spray so I don’t have to hear it.

  I know I’m not all that pretty. I know I have a weird personality.

  You can’t have five failed engagements and not have something wrong with you. You can’t.

  But I don’t need Luca’s family rubbing it in my face.

  Coming here was a bad idea.

  He’s right. I should’ve tried therapy again.

  Maybe with a female therapist this time.

  Or virtually, with the voice distorted to intentionally sound like a robot.

  The bathroom door slams shut, and the shower curtain wrenches open at the back of the tub. “They’re leaving,” Luca tells me.

  “That’s not necessary. I know I’m not a supermodel, or even attractively curvy, and—”

  “Quit making excuses for people who are total dicks to you.”

  I blink at him.

  Dogzilla, who’s been sitting at the edge of the tub, cautiously climbs down into the shower to rub my legs while the needle water pelts her.

  And Luca keeps scowling, which is unfortunately as hot as him smiling, and my backstabbing body is n
ot immune.

  Not in the least.

  He needs to leave before he starts to smell me.

  His green eyes are going dark. “As long as you’re living under this roof, you’re going to talk back to dicks and you’re going to have a spine. Understood?”

  I nod once.

  His cheek twitches. He glances down at my body once more, and then he yanks the shower curtain closed.

  The door clicks a moment later.

  And I don’t know what happened, but I do know one thing.

  I’m in a mood to write something hot and sexy for the first time in ages.

  15

  Luca

  I’m hustling my mother out the door when she pauses to give me a hug and follows it with one of those mom looks. “I’m not trying to be an asshole to Henri. I do know how it feels to be let down by a man, and I am taking that into serious consideration with my own next steps, but if Henri is honestly going to be a part of your life, then she needs to know what she’s up against stepping foot into this family. Especially with your grandmother being who she is. And if she’s something you’re doing to get your grandmother off your back, she deserves better. I’d rather scare her off thinking I’m the ass than have her leave with the wrong impression of the man I know you can be.”

  “You can do that without being a dick.” She can, can’t she?

  Hell, I don’t know.

  Can I be involved with Henri in any capacity without being a dick? Probably not, because she definitely shouldn’t get close.

  I shake my head. Problems for another day. “Also, maybe try being the bigger person the next time Nonna baits you.”

  That earns me an eye roll. “I will when she does.” Her brows furrow, and she opens her mouth like she’s going to say something else, then sighs, kisses my cheek, and walks away, leaving me realizing I don’t actually know what else she wanted in her trip out here beyond the same as Nonna—making sure I’m alive since I’ve been avoiding everyone’s phone calls.

  Unease settles into my bones as she pulls away from the curb in her rental car.

  Probably partly because there’s clearly something on her mind that she didn’t want to talk about, and I’m guessing it’s Jerry.

  Partly because showering with Henri was weirdly fun, even if it was embarrassing as hell that Mr. Winky was playing Mr. Dinky.