by Cassie Cross
“Just specific bar fights,” I say, wanting to make him smile a little.
It works. “Yes. Specific. You don’t have anything to worry about, I’m not…I’m not like gossip sites make me out to be.”
Well, I can certainly understand how he feels. “I’m not either.”
“Sounds like the fake love of a good woman is going to soothe the inner beast,” I tease.
“That’s what I’m hoping,” he says with a tentative smile.
“So, I keep you out of bar fights, and—”
“I fake love you so thoroughly that women want to be you—”
“And men want to be you,” I finish for him.
“And both of them will want to rush to your movies,” Claudia says. It strikes me that River and I are basically in the middle of the weirdest job interview ever.
“You have a movie coming out soon?”
He nods. “December. It’s my first drama, and I need to prove that I’m viable in the genre.”
I nod.
“Well,” Claudia says, clapping her hands together. “Keith and I wanted to invite you here for a chemistry test of sorts, and I’d say you both passed?” She looks to Keith for confirmation, which he gives enthusiastically.
I look over at River. “Well, I guess you’re officially my first fake boyfriend,” I tell him. “Congrats.”
He laughs. “Thanks. I did tell the kids in my eighth grade class that I had a girlfriend who lived in Canada, so I’m sorry that you don’t have the honor of being my first. Although I guess you’re the first one who actually exists.”
“I’ll take it.” I look at Claudia and Keith. “One thing bothers me, though…” I look over at River, who has Gigi sleepily draped over his left forearm. “River and Skye? Isn’t that too…I don’t know, on the nose?”
“We were hoping to make that work to our advantage.” Keith says.
River shifts in his seat. “How so?”
“Instead of coming up with some cutesy portmanteau like Skyver for the two of you, we’re going to push Elemental,” Keith explains.
Bile creeps up the back of my throat and I instinctively wretch. “I hate it. Please don’t do that to us.”
“We need a hashtag to use on social media,” Claudia says, trying to appeal to my business sense. “We’ve got a couple hundred fake fan accounts to get it trending once your’re ready to be outed.”
“Use Skyver, I’m begging.”
She sighs, exasperated. “We’ll try, but I guarantee your fanbases will come up with Elemental on their own, so you might as well get used to it.”
I guess I’ll jump off that bridge when I come to it. “When are we going to be outed?”
“On the red carpet at Friday’s premiere,” Claudia says.
“Won’t that get everyone talking about us instead of the movie?” River asks.
He’s already concerned about overshadowing me, which earns him a point in my book.
“They’ll be talking about you by circulating pictures with the two of you standing in front of a step and repeat with the movie logo all over it. Trust me, it’ll drive traffic if we do this right.”
“What does doing it right entail?” I ask.
“You two are great actors, but you’ve really got to sell it. Get to know each other, get comfortable showing affection. Sell. It.”
I gulp and look over at River, who’s staring right back.
“Yeah,” he says, his voice a rough whisper. “I think we can do that.”
Claudia and Keith give us a rundown of what they have planned for us so far. We have my premiere coming up on Friday, a party for a cologne that River did some modeling for a couple weeks after that, then Claudia wants us to take a long weekend trip to a beach house in the Caribbean that Keith’s venture capitalist brother owns to show people that things are getting serious. After that we’re going to plan something for the holidays, and then the showmance calendar is tentative until after River’s premiere in February.
The prevailing idea is that we’ll “break up” at the beginning of March, with a few friendly coffee dates to show that things are on good terms.
Then both of us can move on to real relationships, with our careers firmly in the stratosphere if everything works the way it should.
Gotta love Hollywood.
Claudia and Keith leave us alone for a few minutes after the meeting is over to get our bearings.
“How do you feel about things?” he asks, gliding his hand along Gigi’s back.
I sink back into the couch cushions and sigh. “Having my life splashed all over the internet is my least favorite part of this whole job.”
“Mine too.”
“I intentionally try to insulate myself from that, so I don’t really keep up with it. That’s why I’m not that familiar with your work,” I admit.
He lets out a huff of a laugh. “I wouldn’t expect you to be. You’ve been in some critically-acclaimed projects. I’ve been in Sucker Punch Three.”
“Sucker Punch Three probably banked more than half of my projects ever did.”
“Yeah,” he sighs. “We all know the almighty dollar rules the world.”
“That it does. I hope this winds up being worth it.”
He glances up at me, blue eyes pinning me in my place. “It will be.”
I swallow down the butterflies swarming in my stomach. He reaches out and takes my hand, his strong fingers wrapping around mine. I gasp and look down at where we’re touching. It’s new and surprising, but it feels right. Which is wrong, because this is fake. Fakeity fake, fake fake.
River grins. “We’ll probably have to practice that a little.”
“Practice what?”
“Touching, kissing. It’s gonna have to be part of the act if we’re gonna sell this like Claudia and Keith want us to. You not being repulsed by holding my hand is probably a start.”
He’s teasing me, but for some reason I can’t let the idea that I could ever be repulsed by him take root for even a second. “Trust me, I’m definitely not repulsed.”
I loosen my fingers and glide my hand along his forearm, just to show him so. If he notices that I notice the goosebumps on his skin, he doesn’t mention it.
“That’s good,” he says. “We should get to know each other a little better.”
“To sell it,” I say.
“Yeah, to sell it.”
“Maybe you could come over to my place around seven tomorrow?”
He nods and takes out his phone. “Yeah, give me your number and you can text me the address.”
I notice there’s a picture of him and another girl on the screen, and swallow down my disappointment. I give him my number and take Gigi back, then stand up and get ready to go. Getting lost in something fake with an actor is stupid. It’s a business arrangement pure and simple.
“We should probably leave separately, just in case,” I say.
He seems a little startled by the shift in my mood, but agrees with me anyway. “Should I bring dinner?”
I shrug. “I like Thai. I’ll probably be hungry around then.”
He grins. “Okay, sounds like a plan.”
He stands as I walk towards the office door, and calls out my name just before I open it.
“Yeah?” I ask, turning to face him.
“It was really good to meet you.”
“You too,” I reply, then practically run to my car.
Chapter Three
I drop Gigi off at home and go for a run to work out the nerves in my system. I go for one mile, then two, and on the third time that I’ve completed my regular trek around the neighborhood I decide that the situation calls for the big guns.
After a quick shower, I decide to drop by Kendall’s house. She’s in the middle of starting up a small editing studio, and while her business partner Jordan is busy doing some of the office construction himself, a lot of the editing work is falling to Kendall. She sticks her head above water every few days, and knowing her she’s pro
bably out of patience and out of food.
I stop by the grocery store to pick up some sustenance for her, opting for a lot of ready-made food that she can just pop in the microwave without having to think about it or plan too much. I throw in a couple of bottles of good wine, because every hard-working girl needs a little luxury in her life.
It takes seven knocks and ten minutes for her to finally open up her door, and when she does, she looks like a complete madwoman. The bags under her eyes look almost comical, her hair is coming out of a bun that she probably put up at least two days ago, and she has a pencil tucked behind one ear, a pen behind the other. She’s wearing a pair of glasses on her face and another is pushing her hair back.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen her this bad.
I definitely should’ve bought more wine.
“Skye?” she asks, a little confused, like she’s seeing a mirage.
“When is the last time you slept?”
A few seconds pass, then she shrugs. “I don’t know.”
I step around her to get inside, and head to the kitchen to put the groceries away. The place is a disaster, but her desk is pristine. Typical.
“I explicitly told Jordan it was his responsibility to keep you from getting like this,” I say, feeling a little angry. I know he’s busy, but he’s her friend too and he knows how she gets.
“He’s been working on the studio. He came over yesterday and I pretended to take a nap.”
“How do you pretend to take a nap?”
“I snuck my laptop into my room and pretended like I was sleeping.”
I sigh. “Kendall.”
“I know, I know.”
She watches me as I hoist the bags onto the island.
“You brought me groceries?”
“I know you, and I’m guessing you ran out of food from the last delivery I had sent over.”
She hums noncommittally. “This morning, actually. I had peanut butter smeared on toast, a bagel and an egg. You don’t want to know what I did with them, but I will say that they absolutely don’t go together.”
I wretch at the thought. “No kidding. Well, now you have some pre-made meals and a couple of bottles of wine. Please don’t make anything weird with any of them.”
She places her hand on her heart. “I promise.”
She sneaks out at some point while I’m putting her food away, and I find her back at the desk. Of course.
What this woman needs is an intervention.
“You better save what you’re working on, because I’m going to remove your power sources in five minutes. Then you’re going to get up and take a shower while I clean up this…absolute mess that you’ve been living in.”
She slides around in her chair and looks for a few seconds like she’s going to fight me on this, then thinks better of it.
“Ten minutes, and you have a deal.”
I know better than to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. While she works, I get to picking up her dirty clothes and get a load of laundry going. At the twelve minute mark, I forcibly remove her from her chair and send her into the bathroom after frisking her to make sure she wasn’t smuggling any hidden electronics.
I decide to order a pizza instead of raiding the pre-prepped food I bought, so she can have it through the week. I have her apartment mostly clean and a second load of clothes in the dryer by the time pizza arrives.
Kendall walks out into the living room wearing her PJs a few minutes later. Her hair is in a wet bun and she looks a lot more relaxed than she did when when I got here. She wraps me up in a tight hug.
“Thank you for taking care of me,” she says, voice muffled by my shoulder.
I squeeze her tight. “Just returning the favor.” I can’t count how many times she’s kept me company on set, brought me chicken noodle soup when I was sick, or let me cry all over her for one reason or another.
She pulls away and her face brightens when she sees the pizza box on her coffee table.
“You got Romano’s?”
“And a bottle of your favorite red.”
She happily skips into the living room, plops down on the floor, opens the box and digs in. This is the way we usually do late dinners, no silverware or plates necessary. I bring the wine glasses and a few paper towels over and take a seat beside her.
I give her a minute to enjoy her slice before I start in on the reprimanding.
“You work too much, Ken.”
She sighs like she knew this was coming. “Please, we cannot fight near the pizza. I won’t allow it.”
“Not fighting, just observing. I know you and Jordan are busy, but please take care of yourself. You scare me a little when you’re like this; I worry that you’re going to fall asleep in a bowl of cereal and drown or something.”
“What a way to go,” she laughs. “If that does happen, please tell me you’ll make stupid jokes like, ‘Kendall really milked life for all it was worth.’”
“Turns out those charms weren’t so lucky after all.”
She crinkles her nose. “I would never die in a bowl of Lucky Charms. I hate marshmallows.”
I nod. “Good point.”
“This is an interesting conversation considering I’m working on a commercial for a cereal. Some low-carb thing that tastes a little bit like artificially sugared cardboard. Weirdly, I like it.”
“That should be the tagline,” I tease, biting off a piece of my pizza.
“So…what have you been up to?”
“I had a meeting with Claudia today. She set me up with a showmance.”
Kendall nearly chokes on her pizza. “A what?”
“A showmance. A fake—”
“I know what a showmance is, I just wasn’t expecting to ever see you in one.” She picks at a string of cheese. “Why, because of Cam?”
I sigh. “Yeah, she thinks it’s a bad look for him to be moving on and happy while the only social media play I get is when you and I go out for ice cream.”
“She better not be dissing ice cream.”
I pat Kendall’s leg to calm her down. “She’s not. She’s just dissing me eating it instead of making out with some hot guy for show.”
“Is he actually hot?”
I consider lying about it for a split second, but think better of it. Kendall knows my taste, she’ll know what’s up before the lie even fully forms on my lips. “Yeah, he’s hot.”
Her eyes widen and she turns her body toward mine. “Who is it?”
“River Holloway.”
She gasps. “Oh my god, he is hot. All I’ve seen him in the news for lately is getting into fights.”
“Yeah, that’s why she picked him. He needs a little love to clean up his rough edges. In the public eye, I mean.”
“Mmm-hmm,” she hums, totally onto me. “Was he nice?”
I smile and nod. “Yeah. Gigi ran after a dog while I was sitting at a coffee shop, and I ran after her. He grabbed my bag and my coffee, then managed to catch me when I nearly fell after I got tangled up in the leashes. Gigi loves him, she wouldn’t leave him alone the whole meeting.”
“Wait, so you guys met before Claudia propositioned you?”
I shoot her a look. “You don’t have to say it like that.”
“You know what I mean.”
I nod. “Yeah. We met before.” I conveniently leave out the part where I kind of wanted him to ask for my number.
She knocks her shoulder against mine. “Sounds like fate to me.”
“Don’t go getting any weird ideas about us ending up together.”
“Someone falling in love with you is definitely not a weird idea.”
I resist the urge to awww.
“So, what does this entail? Premiere dates, party dates, date dates?”
“Yeah, and a trip to the Caribbean in a few weeks to show people that we’re getting serious.”
“How long will you be getting serious for?” she asks.
“Until the beginning of March. His next movie come
s out in February. After that we’ll have an amicable breakup and remain friends like a couple of fake exes.”
“Are you gonna have to kiss and stuff?”
I bite my lip. “Yeah, I think so. I guess it’s a good thing I’m used to faking it, although I don’t know how we’re going to do it. Rehearse? He’s coming over tomorrow, I don’t even want to think about how awkward it’s all gonna be.”
“Well,” Kendall reaches for another slice of pizza. “If you don’t want to practice with him, I’ll happily be a stand in.” She waggles her eyebrows, then breaks out laughing, probably a symptom of sleep deprivation.
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
After a few seconds, she looks at me thoughtfully. “You know, forced proximity to someone who looks like that AND having to pretend like you’re falling in love? That’s a danger zone for sure.”
Don’t I know it.
“Are you already in trouble?”
“Absolutely not. It’ll be fine,” I say, playing it off.
She looks at me out of the corner of her eye with a wry smile that makes me think she doesn’t believe me.
In a desperate move to change the subject, I grab the remote from the table and turn on the TV. “Feel like watching Sucker Punch Three?”
Chapter Four
In the hours before River comes by, I’m more nervous than I have any right to be. My housekeeper was just here the other day, but I clean everything again just to make sure everything is spotless. I don’t want River to think that his fake girlfriend is a slob. That takes up most of my morning, and Gigi’s asleep on her little bed after a noble attempt at battling the vacuum cleaner on my behalf.
I take a nice long bath to relax, and spend way more time than I should on making my hair and makeup look like I didn’t spend any time on it at all. After that, all there is to do is wait.
And I wait a while, finding little projects to occupy myself with. I send my parents an email, then text my brother to see how he’s doing. He calls me a few minutes later and immediately notices the nervousness in my voice. I spill the beans to him about my arrangement with River, and surprisingly he thinks it’s a great idea too. That makes me feel a little bit better about the whole thing, even though my nerves are still completely shot.
