Baby for the Brute_A Fake Boyfriend Romance

by Penelope Bloom

  I guess fucking fangirls and riding shotgun in private jets doesn’t exactly compare to chopping firewood and doing repairs on this old and busted up cabin.

  Like usual, my memories of the whirlwind of fame leave a sour taste in my mouth. My modus operandi has always been to do whatever feels like the biggest “fuck you” to everyone and everything at any given moment. Pretty simple philosophy, really, especially when you’re so angry that it feels like there’s acid in your stomach and fire running through your veins. For a while, partying and being the world’s favorite asshole felt like the answer. I’d think about how my parents and my perfect sister must be seeing my face on gossip magazines while they waited to buy their groceries, or how they’d have to field questions from their friends about me and my latest scandal. It felt good, in a twisted and fucked up kind of way, at least. Like scratching a mosquito bite until it bleeds—at least it doesn’t itch anymore.

  And then… My eyes wander past Alec to the window by the front door that overlooks the hill where I buried my parents. Yeah, boo-fucking-hoo for me. I dared the universe to give me its worst, and go figure, it has a nastier sense of humor than me. A car accident, of all things. I didn’t even believe it at first because my parents always drove like they were ninety years old, and on their way back from church with a few cartons of eggs and two bowling balls in the back seat. “No sense hurrying to an accident,” was one of my dad’s favorite lines. It still feels weird to think about them with anything but the twisted, black anger I carried for so long.

  Old memories. Old pains. No sense dwelling on it now, except I decided to come to the cabin they were living in when they died, where I have nothing else to do but dwell. Maybe Alec isn’t the only dumbass in the room after all.

  I run a hand through my hair and sink back down on the couch, glaring at Alec in the vague hope that maybe I can scare him away, along with the rest of the world.

  “The contract,” he says, not deterred in the least.

  He wears thick-rimmed glasses and converse shoes with skinny jeans, along with one of those dumb square ties. He could’ve just walked out of a cell phone commercial trying to target “hip teens,” but I knew him before all the money from my book deal lined his pockets. Unfortunately, he is the same, squirrely kid, so I can’t even say money changed him. The only difference is that he pays out the ass now to buy clothes that look beat up instead of just buying cheap clothes and treating them like shit for a few weeks. He also has an irritating habit of not flinching away from me even when I’m at my worst, which is why I guess he’s lasted this long as my agent.

  Alec was made for business, through and through.

  “The contract,” I say in a bored tone. “I don’t want to write their book. They can shove the contract up their asses for all I care.”

  “What about the millions you’ll pay for breaching it if you don’t write the book?”

  “I’ll pay it. The rent here is pretty cheap. I think I’ll manage.”

  Alec shows a rare flicker of anger. Actual anger. “This may not mean anything to you, Chris, but I staked my career on you when I took you on. If I can’t manage to get my client to follow through for one of the most profitable book deals of the century, my reputation is shot. I won’t be able to get work. Does that mean anything to you?” He clamps his mouth shut, nostrils flaring as he watches me for any sign of compassion or sympathy.

  Tough luck, Alec. All the softer emotions were burned out of me a long damn time ago. You want anger? I’m your man. Want sarcasm? Sure, if I’m in the mood. If you have tits and you’re looking for a life-changing experience, well, you’re a few months too late, because the only thing I’ve felt like fucking lately is the world—and not in the literal sense.

  He makes a disgusted sound and gets up, turning around to point at me before he leaves. “You do realize you’re not the only person in the world who has to go through shit, right?”

  “Fuck you,” I growl.

  He shakes his head and slams the door behind him. I take a swig of my beer and set it roughly on the table, sitting up and grabbing my laptop. The only solace for me since I’ve come up here has come in the most unexpected place I would’ve ever thought. I wrote a romance book. It started as a joke, and then for a while it was yet another metaphorical middle finger, but somewhere along the way, it turned into something else. For a few paragraphs at a time I’d forget to hate everyone and just write. Then it was pages at a time. Then after just a few weeks I’d cleaned up and finished the entire book.

  I’m still not sure why I wrote a romance, of all things. If I want to go all therapist on myself, maybe I’d guess it is because there’s been so much anger in my life that part of my mind was craving something softer. Sounds like bullshit though, even to me. Maybe I just wanted to write a book where people fucked. Hell if I know.

  For a while, it just sat there on my computer collecting electronic dust, because there was no way in hell I wanted to deal with the media firestorm a romance novel by Chris Savage would ignite. It was only when drunk inspiration led me to slap the pen name, T.S. Barnes, on the book that I actually put it out there for the world to see—or at least the small corner of it my romance novel reached. I even hired a personal assistant no one has ever heard of to handle all the behind-the-scenes crap I can't be bothered with. Most days, that includes all things email related, meaning I don't have to keep up with fan emails or anything but the writing. On a whim though, I click on the email account for T.S. Barnes and scan the inbox.

  The first email that catches my eye has the subject line “I feel like a crazy fan for sending this, but…” It’s from “bookwhoresanonymous@gmail.com”. When it comes to my own name, the words “crazy fan” work on me like bug repellant on a mosquito. I never wrote You’re Fucking Wrong to be a masterpiece or to change the world. It was just the best idea I had at the moment to piss off my perfect family. So when people wanted to gush to me about how much they loved the book, I felt like a fraud. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve never really drawn a moral line at fraud, but I prefer to do it on purpose instead of by accident.

  A crazy fan for T.S. Barnes is another matter entirely. I’ll never admit it to any living soul as long as I live, but I put some of myself in that book. Maybe more than a little. Hell, I might have even enjoyed it in a few places. So I scan the email with more eagerness than I’d like to admit.

  Dear T.S.,

  You probably get this kind of email all the time, so please don't even feel like you need to reply or anything. I just wanted to let you know that, well, I basically had a fangasm all over your book—like that scene in Ghostbusters when they are cleaning up after the… Yeah, T.M.I., I know. In all seriousness, your voice is unique. I don't know how else to put it. When your voice came through it was like nothing I've ever read. I could feel every single emotion and see every detail.

  Anyway, I’m going to step away from my computer before I admit to anything else embarrassing, like how many times I’ve already read your book. Orrrr the fact that I kind of plan on making a little shrine for it in the center of my bookshelf. Or even how I am too embarrassed to review it on my blog because I won’t be able to stop from dropping all professional pretense and just typing a three page long, “Eeeeeeeeeeeee!!!”.

  P.S. Your newsletters have your personal address at the bottom! Most authors change that to a P.O. box or something to protect their privacy.

  P.S.S. We live super close. Like *really* close. So if you ever need a jump start on your car from a crazy fan or some sugar or whatever, just shoot me an email! I’m kidding. Unless you actually need anything, then you can definitely email me.

  I slowly close the laptop with raised eyebrows and an odd sense of… something swirling in my chest. I'm afraid to call it pride because I've met crazy. I've fucked crazy. And I’m pretty sure I just got an email from crazy. Still, it’s the first real praise I’ve read for something I wrote that I feel is from me. The real me.

  I throw back the last of my
beer and take one final look at my laptop. Scorn rises up in me to push back any good feelings the email conjured up. Have I really lost it enough that a single email from a fan has me thinking I’ve accomplished something?

  All I need to do is look around at the ruins of my life to get a crystal clear view of exactly how far I've made it. I'm dressed like a drunken lumberjack, sprawled out on the couch in my dead parents' house, hiding from the world that is quickly forgetting me, all while getting sappy over a single fucking email. Yeah. I've come really far… just not in the direction most people plan on going.

  3

  Lindsey

  Brooke and Amelia sit with me at our scratched up kitchen table. If someone looked in the window at this very moment, they would probably think we were grieving the loss of a close family member--or maybe getting ready to perform some kind of satanic ritual--from the dark looks on our faces.

  “Maybe he just forgot,” suggests Amelia after what feels like thirty minutes of silence.

  All our eyes are on the same thing. The flowery, one hundred percent cotton paper pressed with gold-gilded lettering. A wedding invitation from my Ryan, my ex-fiancé.

  “No way he forgot,” Brooke says. “That’s your venue, the one you guys were planning to have your wedding at. He fucking did that just to piss you off, I know it.” If Amelia is the sweet and innocent one of us, then Brooke is the enforcer. She’s pretty when she sleeps, but as soon as she wakes up, she works her face into a permanent don’t fuck with me expression, that may or may not be the cause of her being single at age twenty-six, despite the enormous draw of getting to live in a house full of three brokeass women who can barely pay rent. On second thought, maybe it’s not her resting bitch face that is keeping the guys away.

  Brooke presses her lips together until they make a single, stern line. “He is trying to get under your skin. That fucktoad.”

  I try not to grin. Brooke’s vulgar vocabulary is robust, but I've learned not to laugh, even at her most creative or surprising turns of phrase because she can just as quickly focus her anger on me when she's really worked up. "So the best thing for me to do is ignore it. I don't want to give him what he wants," I say.

  “Or you could go and eat all the expensive wedding food,” suggests Amelia. “There might even be crab cakes.”

  “Crab cakes are not the end-all-be-all of cuisine, Meels,” I say. She had them one time when I got my first deposit from the ads on the blog and I was feeling optimistic about our financial future. The three of us went to a nice seafood restaurant and I thought we’d have to tie Amelia down to keep her from storming the kitchen for seconds and thirds of the crab cakes. Now I’m not entirely sure if it’s just a running joke to her, or if she really dreams about crab cakes floating on puffy clouds every night.

  “Agree to disagree,” she says, eyes distant and almost dreamy.

  “Focus!” Brooke snaps. “We’re not ignoring this shitpiss asshole’s invitation, first of all.”

  “We?” I ask, eyes scanning the invitation again and confirming that I was the only one invited.

  Brooke plows on, ignoring me. “And we’re not going to go there to eat the food, crab cakes or not.”

  Amelia opens her mouth to add something, but Brooke doesn’t stop to let her.

  “We’re going to sabotage it,” she says in such a low, evil whisper that even I’m a little surprised at her depravity. Brooke can get overly protective, but sabotaging a wedding—asshole ex or not—is beyond even her usual level of twisted.

  “No,” I say. “Not a chance. Ryan broke things off with me. He didn’t kill my puppy or poison me. Guys are allowed to not like me.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong,” Brooke says.

  Adorably, Amelia nods her head, eyebrows furrowed.

  “I appreciate it,” I say with a sigh. The truth is that I want to do something dumb and crazy like sabotaging his wedding. If only because it would calm the wild, confusing anger and shame I feel inside. Amelia’s role is to be the sweet, innocent one of the family and Brook’s role is to be the enforcer… Mine is to be the voice of reason, even if I hardly feel like it lately.

  I stand suddenly, going to the fridge to grab a box of wine. Time for some liquid oblivion. “Anyone else want some?”

  One box of wine and a few hours later, my head is spinning. Amelia fell asleep on the couch after a single glass, and Brooke is baking cookies—if she's ever on edge, I know I'll find her in the kitchen. The funny part is that she never even eats what she bakes. She just throws it in a Tupperware and forgets about it. Unfortunately for my waistline, I don't usually forget when there are cookies sitting around.

  I stumble to my room, brushing my shoulder against the wall as I try to keep from tripping over a cord or a table leg. There’s a notification on my computer. A new email. Several new emails, in fact. I scan through the list with eyes that seem to want to go in different directions until I see one from T.S. Barnes. I click it immediately, feeling a touch of my drunken haze slip away with my excitement.

  Lindsey,

  Thanks for the email.

  T.S. Barnes

  The email is still followed by a personal address, a sure sign that T.S. didn’t even read my email. I snap my laptop shut as an alcohol-induced idea materializes in my head. You want to blow off my email, T.S.? Well, maybe you should've been nice to the crazy fan who knows your address. I pull out my phone and take a picture of the address, stuffing it in my pocket before I try to walk outside as casually as I can.

  “You’re not driving,” snaps Brooke.

  “You’re right. I’m just going for a walk. Maybe even a pee in the woods. Is that allowed?”

  She scowls over her bowl of cookie batter. “It’s getting dark, Lindsey.”

  I stagger forward, the half box of wine I drank doing the talking for me. “Then I’ll keep my eyes open real big, okay? Sheesh,” I say, opening my eyes as wide as I can. I lose a little tiny bit of credibility when I run into the door as I turn around.

  “You have to open doors to get through them,” Brooke mutters.

  I wave my hands in annoyance over my head and yank the door open.

  It’s chilly outside, but I’m too stubborn to go back in and get my jacket. I plug T.S. Barnes’ address in my phone and tell it to give me walking directions. I’m surprised when I see it’s just a little over a mile away, but the direction is uphill. We live on a wooded mountain, but our house is near the base of the mountain and there has never been any real reason for me to go anywhere but down the mountain and toward town. As a kid, we’d play around in the woods some, but I think we all felt creeped out by the idea of going up the mountain where the foliage and trees get so thick you can’t see the house.

  It's only a few minutes before I've walked beyond the point I'm even vaguely familiar with, and I don't think it has anything to do with my swimming head. I nearly faceplant several times when my feet get caught on roots and branches, but by some miracle, I make it through the thickest patch of trees relatively unscathed. I'm sure if I wandered the dirt road that winds between all the houses on the mountain, I'd find a path that would take me to her house, but in my drunken brain, it makes a whole lot more sense to just walk in a straight line to it, trees or not.

  I glance down at my phone after a while and see I'm supposedly only a tenth of a mile away from T.S. Barnes' house. I look around, not seeing anything but trees and more trees and the ever-steepening hill, but push forward anyway. I finally lose my footing this time, tumbling down into a bed of dead leaves and scraggly vines that latch onto me. I try to tug my arms and legs free but wince as I feel tiny thorns all along the vines slice through my clothes and prick my skin in dozens of places at once.

  The pain goes a long way toward sobering me up—that and the maybe not-so-crazy fear that this will be how I die, trapped in small vines no thicker than the cord of my phone charger. I’m not even drunk enough on boxed wine for how pathetic this is to go over my head. I thrash and make
a sound like a wounded animal for a while until I realize I have my keys in my pocket. With a little effort, I’m able to saw through the vines and break free, but not without a body full of stinging cuts and a hair full of dead leaves for my trouble.

  I’m about to check my phone for the direction to his house again when I hear leaves crunching nearby. I look up, eyebrows drawn and heart suddenly pounding. Each surprise pushes the alcohol more and more out of my system. I’m finally sober enough to wonder what the hell I’m doing trekking through the woods to a stranger’s house over an email.

  The bushes in front of me are parted by two tattooed hands. A man steps through the brush, dusting off his pants. My eyes wander to his long and lean, denim-clad legs. He wears a flannel shirt with half the buttons undone and no shirt beneath despite the chill. My eyes reflexively dart up to his face when I see the hint of the bare skin of his chest, which is covered in two black raven wing tattoos. I'm struck by the strangest sense of familiarity when I see his face.

  “Aren’t you…” I half-whisper.

  “Yeah,” he growls in a voice that’s low and full of a rough, almost sultry rasp. “I’m the guy who owns the cabin you’re creeping around outside of.”

  I open my mouth, holding my hands up as I struggle to think of a way to explain how this isn’t exactly what it looks like. The more I look at him the more sure I am. I came here to find T.S. Barnes, but Chris Savage just busted out of the bushes in front of me. My brain spins while I try to put the pieces of this impossible puzzle together. It’s like getting out of your car on the side of the highway to pee in the woods and seeing Chris Hemsworth come bursting out of a lake.