Pretend I'm YoursA Single Dad Romance

by Vivian Wood

  “Yeah, just go ahead and wake me up with a bomb like that and take off,” he said. “Call me when you figure it out. Or if you need me for anything at all. Okay?”

  “Okay, love you,” she said.

  “Love you, too, whore.” Harper made her way to the kitchen.

  “Hey,” she said with a smile.

  “What were you doing in there?” Sean asked.

  “Nothing, I just didn’t want to wake you.”

  “I wouldn’t have minded,” he said as he sipped a green concoction. “I’m going for a shower, if you want to join me.”

  “Actually, I thought I’d make breakfast,” she said.

  “Oh.” Sean looked surprised. “Alright. I can make it for you, I won’t be that long—”

  “No, it’s okay,” she said. “I’ll do it.”

  When she heard the shower turn on, she pulled out a pan and began to whip three eggs into it with a splash of milk. Harper folded in a handful of spinach, but paused at the cheese. An omelet was already fatty enough. Finally, she added a sprinkling of parmesan instead of the shredded pepper jack or cheddar Sean kept in the fridge. Baby steps, she reminded herself.

  She slid the fluffy omelet onto a plate and halved a few strawberries to go alongside it. Harper managed a few bites of the omelet, and willed herself to eat all of the fruit. The shower turned off, and she quickly spread the breakfast across the plate. It thinned it out, hopefully enough that Sean wouldn’t notice.

  You’re getting fat, the voice inside her head taunted. Her hands roved across her stomach. It was definitely less concave than this morning, the fat from the eggs and cheese already glued to her insides. Fucking cow. You barely deserve Sean as it is, and then you go and screw it up by getting pregnant? If this baby survives, you’re just going to fuck it up like Mom did with you.

  If she just kept restricting like she used to, maybe everything would take care of itself. It would look like a natural miscarriage, and maybe Sean wouldn’t even find out. Why tell him until the third trimester anyway? A lot of people keep pregnancies a secret until then, what with miscarriages being so common in the first trimester …

  “Stop it,” she muttered to herself. Harper piled another bite of omelet onto her fork. It quivered before her lips, a slick glob of yellow. A wave of nausea flooded her, but she forced it into her mouth anyway.

  You’re so fucking pathetic. She began to retch and spit the partially chewed blob back onto the plate.

  Harper rushed to push the remainder of the food down the garbage disposal. She ran the water and turned on the grinder while she rinsed the plate.

  Sean appeared just as she flicked off the disposal. “Already done?” he asked.

  “I was hungry,” she said with a smile. “There’s some extra eggs for you if you want it.”

  “Thanks,” he said. “Are you going to the gym?”

  “Do you think I should?”

  A look of hurt spread across his face. “Not necessarily … you just usually do this time of day.”

  “Oh.” She was flustered and scurried to cover it up. “I don’t know.” The least you can do is skip the gym today. It was the kind voice, the one she rarely heard. Give your body a break. Give the baby a break.

  That was some comfort. She watched Sean polish off the eggs in a few fast bites. “You don’t need the gym,” he said with a smile as he put the pan into the dishwasher. “Come on. I’ll give you a workout in bed.”

  She grinned as he picked her up and carried her into the bedroom.

  17

  Sean

  Harper stretched her limbs on the couch. She moves like a cat, he thought as he tore off the charcoal sketch from the pad. Languid and smooth. Once she’d become used to his eye on her, she’d relaxed. Sean set up the stretched canvas on the portable stand and began to mix the acrylics on the same board he’d used for over a decade. It was stained a cocktail of colors, layers deep.

  He’d already had every line of her ingrained in his memory, but it was different to allow those lines to flow from his head—from his heart—through his fingers and onto something real. Something tangible. Something he could keep if he loosened his grip and she slipped away.

  Now, his fingers full of the muscle memories of her, he could begin the acrylic painting that would keep her. Immortalized.

  “What are you doing?” she asked. Harper had tucked into a thick book, long ago given up hope that he’d let go of this project.

  “Moving onto acrylic.”

  “The charcoal’s done? Isn’t that enough?”

  He gave her a half smile. “Charcoal is just a warm-up,” he said.

  “Can I see?”

  “Later. I’d rather you see them both at the same time.”

  She gave him a faux pout. “Fine,” she said.

  It took him ten minutes to blend the perfect reds and browns together to capture her hair. It caught fire in certain lights, but burned a slow and deep ember in others. The yellow undertones of her skin, so contrary to the rest of her and cradled below the nearly constant pink glow of her blushes, also took plenty of experimenting.

  “Tell me something honestly?” she asked.

  “Sure.”

  “How many other girls have you painted?”

  “None. Not like this at least.”

  “Then how?”

  He shrugged. “You know. Live models. I took quite a few classes when I was a kid and a teenager. In college. Occasionally I’d hire my own private models.”

  “Oh.” She worried at her lip.

  “Jealous?” he asked.

  “No,” she said, too quickly.

  “Aren’t you going to ask what those private models looked like?” he asked.

  “No. But if you really want to tell me …”

  He gave a laugh. “There weren’t that many. One weighed four hundred pounds. I know because she was quick to tell me. One was a double amputee from a car accident.”

  “Wait, what?”

  “You wanted to know,” he said. “I was interested in capturing what we don’t usually see in art. What we don’t normally consider beautiful. Trust me, it was much more challenging, and enjoyable, than the usual wannabe models that showed up for figure classes. No offense,” he said quickly.

  “None taken,” she sniffed. “I think I worked hard enough to warrant not being envious of a wannabe model. So … how many times did you paint them? The private models?”

  “I met with each of them maybe three to five times each.”

  “Where are those paintings now? Can I see them?”

  “Sure,” he said. “But they’re in storage, back on the East Coast. Eventually I’ll have everything shipped here. They’re not the most outstanding in terms of sheer artistic merit, but they’re interesting.”

  Sean’s phone vibrated angrily on the glass dining table. “Shit, sorry,” he said. “I thought that was on silent.” He reached over to switch it off, but paused at the name. Seeing Ashton’s name light up his screen shot him back months in the past.

  “Who is it?” she asked. Harper sensed the shift in the air.

  “I think it’s Ashton,” he said.

  “Seriously?”

  “Yeah, hold on.” He paused and considered taking the call in the other room. But what was the point? It was the two of them now, Harper and him. She might as well listen. He held up a finger to his mouth and answered the call with speakerphone. “Hello?”

  “Sean?” He thought maybe Ashton’s voice would have changed since the accident, though that didn’t make any logical sense. But it was the same voice he’d known for over a decade. The same voice that egged him on in college, that was cool and soothing on the nights his parents drove him nearly over the edge.

  “Hi, hey, Ashton,” he said. “How’s it going? Sorry, that’s kind of a stupid question.”

  “Yeah. It is,” Ashton said. There was an edge in his voice that hadn’t been there before. Sean couldn’t tell if it was reserved just for him, or maybe it
was permanent. “Although I guess I could say I’m better than I was a few weeks ago. Or at least I’ve been told.”

  “Ashton … I’m sorry, man,” he said. “For everything, for that night, for taking so long to come and see you.” He could feel Harper’s eyes on him. When he looked up, she gazed at him with empathy in her eyes.

  “You’re sorry?” Ashton gave a curt laugh. “Sorry’s for bailing on the bar tab. That doesn’t really cut it.”

  “I’m … I don’t know what else to say,” Sean said.

  “You can start by saying you’re not going to cause trouble with the lawsuit. I don’t have the time—or the energy—to make this a huge ordeal in court. So I’d appreciate it if you’d just suck it up and do the right thing.”

  “The right thing? Wait, you’re moving forward with the lawsuit?” Sean hadn’t heard anything from T, and he knew she wouldn’t waste any time if she had news. “Has your attorney talked to mine? Do you—”

  “That’s a question to ask your lawyer,” Ashton snapped. “Regardless of what bullshit they discuss though, I can promise you that yes, the lawsuit is moving forward. You’re not getting out of this with some kind of deal or plea bargain or any of that crap.”

  Anger began to simmer in Sean, but he willed it down, swallowed it like an uncomfortable lump in the throat. “And what exactly do you think I’m guilty of?” he asked. “I don’t know how much you remember of that night, but you were driving. We were both drinking, but those were your drugs. The blow, the pills—”

  “Oh, were they?” Ashton asked. “Can you prove that? The pills were stolen. I know I was the only one with coke in my system, but can you prove you didn’t provide it? That you weren’t the dealer, not just mine but a shitload of other people’s?”

  “You know that’s not true,” Sean said slowly.

  “Does a jury know that’s not true? How do you think that would look to them? And since I was so messed up, on drugs that it appears you supplied, don’t you think you should have taken charge of the situation? Not let me drive? Wouldn’t that have been the responsible thing to do?”

  “This is bullshit and you know it,” Sean said. “What are you getting out of this?”

  “Well, for starters, I have a six-figure hospital bill that needs to be paid. But beyond that, my lawyer says I have an equally high amount of pain and suffering he’s more than happy to assign a dollar amount to.”

  “Hospital bills?” Sean asked. “What about your insurance? What—”

  “Insurance?” Ashton asked with a laugh. “Yeah, you rich kids take that shit for granted. I was a twenty-something recent college grad and an entry-level job! What kind of insurance did you think I had?”

  “So it’s about the money,” Sean said. It’s always about money.

  “Of course not!” Ashton said. “What is it with you trust fund babies? Always on about the money. It’s about the principle, you fucking prick. You got off without a scratch, and I was in a coma for almost six fucking months! Six months I won’t get back. And you just got to prance back to your goddamned gilded life like nothing happened—”

  “Is that how you think it went?” Sean asked. Harper flinched at the edge in his voice, but he couldn’t pull back now. “I was in fucking hell!” he screamed at the phone. “And, in case you weren’t informed of this, I spent quite a bit of time since then in jail.”

  “And you should have! Fuck, Sean, you should be in prison right now! If it weren’t for your daddy’s money bailing you out—”

  “You know what? Fuck you,” Sean said. “You want to keep going with the lawsuit, fine. And you want to see what money can really do? Let’s just see how your DA does against one of the best attorneys in town.”

  “You’re going to fucking pay—”

  Sean reached over and cut off the call before he could hear anything more.

  “Are you okay?” Harper asked gently. She moved to get up, but he gestured for her to sit back down.

  “I’m fine,” he said. “I just need to cool off. You mind if I just keep drawing?”

  “I … I guess,” she said. “If that’ll help.”

  “I need to keep my hands busy,” he said.

  Harper leaned back against the couch and opened her book. He noticed that for several minutes, she didn’t turn the page. Her muscles were clenched and her jaw was clamped. Still, the meditative movement of his fingers and hands rocked him back to a soothing state.

  What could Ashton really do? Would a judge or jury really buy the whole idea that Sean was some nefarious drug dealer? He shook his head. There was no context for him to gauge either way. But there was also no way Sean would just go ahead and plead guilty to something he hadn’t done.

  He was already guilty enough, racked with it.

  18

  Harper

  Harper pressed her lips together as she clicked “book.” There was no turning back now—at least not without forfeiting half the thousand-dollar booking fee. She’d spent the past week researching eating disorder rehabilitation options in the Hollywood area. Part of her thought she should go all in Girl, Interrupted style, though she wasn’t prone to hiding chicken carcasses under her bed.

  More realistically, the outpatient options seemed like a better fit. There was no way she could afford inpatient, especially now that her insurance had lapsed, and she wasn’t about to let Sean pay for it. Besides, she wasn’t that bad. Am I?

  She’d delved into the first-person accounts and binge-watched To the Bone on Netflix three times in the past five days. The feeding tubes, the insane roommates, the banding together to help each other hide the vomiting in the bathroom, it was just all too much. What Harper needed right now was structured support—and Sean. Their situation was already so delicate, and he needed her, too. What would he think if she just up and left for a stint in rehab?

  Harper sighed. She’d have to tell him now. Fortunately, part of the therapy process at Golden Hills Rehabilitation was working with family and loved ones in group sessions to complement individual therapy. Although she loathed the idea of spilling her worst secrets in front of him, even filtered through a therapist, maybe that’s what they needed.

  She peeked into the living room and saw him curled over one of his sketch pads. Harper shifted her weight from side to side and practiced her opening line. Hey, so you know how I’m weird about food? sounded not serious enough. Guess what, I’m anorexic. But I’m getting help! That wouldn’t do either.

  Harper still didn’t know what she’d say as she approached him from behind. Instead, she snaked her arms around his neck and buried her face into his cheek. Sex as a salve wasn’t the smartest idea, but it might make for a better introduction to bad news.

  Sean went stiff immediately. “What is it?” he asked coldly.

  Harper knew that if she pulled her arms away now, it would kickstart a fight. And it would be a fight where she didn’t have any leverage. “Nothing,” she said meekly. “I just … I wanted to tell you … I’ve booked myself into an outpatient program. For eating disorders.” It was a little easier to tell him like this, not having to see the expression in his eyes. She started at the sketch on the pad. It was her, but she could really only tell from the familiar dress he’d captured. The girl on the paper looked longer and lither than she’d ever be.

  “Rehab for an eating disorder,” he repeated. It wasn’t a question. “Like anorexia?”

  “Yeah,” she said, embarrassed. “And bulimia, binge eating disorder …” as she let the sentence trail off, she felt a thick veil of shame drape over her.

  “And that’s what you wanted to tell me? Anything else?” he asked coldly.

  She felt a small piece of her die inside, just crumple up and fall away. This is exactly why you shouldn’t tell him, she chided herself. Now what are you going to do? “No, nothing,” she said meekly. Slowly, she unwound her arms and retreated back to her room. There was no telling when he’d be in one of his moods. And once he was in them, she couldn’t ga
uge when he’d come out. It could be minutes, hours, or a couple of days.

  Harper clicked the door quietly behind her and flopped onto her bed. As she opened her laptop, she clicked through the saved movies on Netflix. She loaded the Thin documentary as she prepared to lick her wounds.

  Sean burst through the door right as the opening credits started. “Jesus,” she said and snapped the laptop shut. For a few seconds the music still played from the speakers.

  He stood in the doorway, nearly took up all the space. For a moment, he wavered, uncertain. “If you need to get help, you should,” he said finally. “I’m … I’m here for you. I’m sorry, I’m not very good at this.”

  All the years of restriction, of fat pinching and measuring bubbled up inside her and began to pour down her cheeks. She was racked by decades of self-hatred and there was no stopping the ugly sobs once they started. Harper reached for words that were buried deep inside her, not even knowing what they were. But the sheer pressure of keeping it all down kept them from coming out.

  Sean came to her, sat on the bed and held her close. She cried into his shoulder. “No,” she finally choked out. “You’re full of crap,” she said. “I’m a fucking mess, I know it.” Once the words started, they wouldn’t stop. “You know what’s going to happen, don’t you? I’m going to get fat. Even without the feeding tubes and everything, they make you fat in those places.”

  He stroked her back, firm yet soft. “You’re not fat now, and you’re not going to be fat if you get help. You’ll get healthy.”

  “Healthy’s just a nice way of saying fat,” she said. Harper pushed her closed eyes into his shirt and let it sop up the saltwater. “And all this body positivity shit that’s going around now. Talking about ‘vanity sizing’ and that fucking shit. People think fat is good now!”

  “First of all, a person can’t be fat anyway,” he said. “Fat’s a necessary part of the body. You can have fat, and it can shrink or expand, but you can’t be fat. Second of all, if you’re passing out and making yourself throw up—are you making yourself throw up?”