Bigger Rock

by Lauren Blakely

  I nearly choke on my orange juice.

  My dad starts to correct him, but Mr. Offerman keeps talking, that big baritone leaving no room for interruption. “My wife would love to meet Charlotte. All my girls would, too. We have such a family-centric business, and it’s so important to maintain that during a visible transition time, considering the media interest and all. I love knowing that they’ll see this committed side of you”

  I part my lips to correct the misunderstanding. To tell him Charlotte is just a friend. That we’re only business partners.

  But his smile right now is like his signature on the deal itself. I make a line of scrimmage decision.

  Mr. Offerman already thinks Charlotte is my long-time girlfriend, and that pleases the punch out of him. What if she was more? Go big or go home.

  “Actually, Charlotte and I have just been friends since college,” I say, then take a beat to deliver what he wants. “But we started dating a month ago, and we just got engaged last night. I couldn’t be happier to share the news here. She’s my fiancée now.”

  Harper drops her fork, my father blinks, and Mr. Offerman lights up. We’re talking Rockefeller Christmas tree style. He’s beside himself with glee over this family environment he just waltzed into. He thought he was getting a playboy, and instead he’s landed a groom-to-be.

  “And I would be thrilled to bring my beautiful and brilliant fiancée to your dinner tomorrow,” I add, then flash my dad a big grin before I dig into my scrambled eggs. My sister is staring at me like she’s about to commence a cross-examination. I’m sure she will later. But I have a busy day ahead of me now.

  All I have to do is convince Charlotte that this is part of our pact.

  4

  Standing on the street outside the restaurant, Dad runs his hand through his hair. His brow is furrowed. His expression is flummoxed. He just sent Mr. Offerman off to the Fifth Avenue store in a town car, letting him know he’d join him there soon.

  But first he must grill me. Understandably.

  “When were you going to tell me?”

  Here’s the thing. I can’t tell him I’m faking it for Mr. Offerman.

  If my dad knows that I just pulled that engagement out of my ass for the sake of his business deal, he’ll think he has no choice but to apologize to Mr. Offerman. He’ll walk up to him, fix on his Honest Abe look, and say he’s sorry, but his son was just joking. That’s the kind of man he is, and the kind of business he runs. And if he has to go back to his hand-picked buyer, tail between his legs, and confess that his party-boy son put his foot in his mouth, that’ll screw up his big sale in a heartbeat.

  Nope. Can’t let that happen.

  I won’t put my dad in the position of being in on this fake engagement. But the fact is, he needs me to be engaged. I saw the look in Mr. Offerman’s eyes when I dropped the E word. As Single Spencer, Man About Town, I’m the wild card in this deal that’s not quite sealed. With a ring on Charlotte’s finger, I become the golden child.

  So I do something I don’t want to do, but I have to do it.

  Pad the lie. Make it airtight.

  “It just happened last night, when I asked her.”

  “I didn’t even know you were dating,” he adds.

  A woman in a tight pink skirt and black heels walks in our direction. She shoots me a flirty look, and I’m about to smile back when I realize I need to cut myself off.

  Ouch. I’ve just handcuffed my favorite appendage for the next few weeks.

  But that’s okay. I can do this. I can pretend to be engaged. I can put my dick on ice. So to speak.

  “I wanted to tell you right away, and well, ‘right away’ was this morning.”

  “How long have you been together?”

  Keep it simple. Keep it short.

  “It all happened so quickly, Pops,” I say, adopting a look of wonderment and hopefully puppy-love for my bride-to-be. “We’ve always gotten along so well, as you know, and been great friends. I think it was one of those things where the one for you is just right under your nose, but we didn’t realize it for the longest time. Then one night a few weeks ago, we admitted that we had feelings for each other, and…bam. The rest is history.”

  Wow. Did that sound believable or what? I can so do this.

  Dad holds up a hand. “Not so fast. What does that mean? The rest is history? How did you propose? And for Christ’s sake, where did you get the ring from? If you say Shane Company, I will disown you,” he says in mock seriousness.

  I need a ring, stat. A big-ass ring. The son of a jewelry magnate would get nothing less for his lady.

  “We fell in love fast, Dad. We dated for a few weeks.” That sounds plausible enough. But it would sound a little better like this… “That was all we needed, because it was built on the foundation of years of friendship. You know what they say. ‘Marry your best friend,’” I say, though I have no clue if anyone really says that. But even so, I might as well be slamming the basketball into the net with that one, because it sounds fucking awesome. My dad nods in understanding as I finish my ode to my fictional love affair. “When you realize that you can’t go a day without the woman you adore by your side, you need to make her yours, whether you’ve been dating a few weeks, or been in love with her for years. So I proposed last night. Couldn’t wait any longer. When you just know something is right, you go for it, don’t you think?”

  He sighs in delight as a cab swoops along the road. “I couldn’t have said it better myself.”

  He should hire me to write his ads. That was money.

  “But no, I don’t have a ring,” I say, then I wink. “Would you happen to know somewhere that I could get one right away?”

  He strokes his chin, pretending to be deep in thought. “Ah, I just might know the place.” He laughs at his own cleverness and clasps my arm. “Come by at two, and Nina will hook you up with a beautiful stone and setting. You can’t be engaged without a ring from Katharine’s.”

  “Truer words…”

  My phone buzzes in my pocket. Charlotte’s ringtone—the Darth Vader entrance march. She picked it herself as a joke.

  “Charlotte,” I say to my dad as I gesture to the phone.

  “Maybe change that now that she’s going to be your wife,” my dad suggests. Then he points at me, a smile on his face. “Hey! That was my first official piece of advice to you as a soon-to-be-married man.”

  A momentary spate of nerves lodges in my chest. What if Charlotte won’t go along with the plan? What if she laughs at me—as she fucking should—and tells me this is the craziest idea in the world, and no way is she going to do it?

  I tell myself not to panic prematurely. This is what friends do for each other. They pretend they’re going to marry you when you need them to. Right?

  The ringtone sounds again. Vader is marching closer.

  “You should answer it now. Women like that,” my dad says. “Hey. That’s my second great piece of advice.”

  I steel myself, slide my thumb across the screen and go into character. “Good morning to my beautiful bride-to-be,” I say in a smooth, romantic voice.

  She cracks up. “Why are we playing so early? Don’t tell me you started hitting the sauce on a Friday morning? Are you drunk off your ass already, Spence?”

  “I’m just drunk on you. Where are you right now?”

  “Just talked with one of our suppliers. Got us an even better deal, thank you very much. Nachos are on you next time. But why are you acting like a lovesick weirdo?”

  “Well, sweetheart,” I say, meeting eyes with my dad, who gives me a thumbs up as I lay it on thick for his benefit, “I’ll come see you shortly, and you can tell me all about it in person.”

  “Okay,” she says slowly. “But the deal is good, so I don’t have to give you the play-by-play in person, or even on the phone. I need to go jump in the shower anyway. And no, don’t say it. I’m not literally going to jump in the shower.”

  I laugh. “Of course. I’ll be there in twe
nty minutes. I can’t wait to see you, too.”

  I almost say pookie before I end the call, but then I’d have to relinquish my balls to the Guys’ Committee. I like my balls. I’m rather attached to them.

  I end the call before she can protest and then give my dad a knowing look. “The woman needs me.”

  My dad waggles his eyebrows. “You must heed the call.” He rubs his hands together. “This is the best news ever. I couldn’t be happier. I’ve always liked Charlotte.”

  And I couldn’t feel any guiltier. I rarely lied to my dad as a kid. I’m pretty sure I’ve never done it as an adult. The morsels of guilt zipping around inside are new to me, and they’re kind of crummy. But it’ll be worth it. The deal memo’s done; the contract will be inked in a matter of days. This little lie will help the transition go smoothly.

  He grabs me in a big embrace. “Call your mother later. She’ll want to hear it all from you.”

  “I’ll give her all the mushy details,” I say, wincing inside as I prep to lie to Mom as well.

  I catch a cab to Charlotte’s. Along the way I text Nick to cancel. Family stuff this weekend. Gotta bail tomorrow. We’ll celebrate another time?

  It’ll take him hours to reply. Nick is the rare breed of modern man, sometimes spotted in the wild without a screen in his face. He’s a pen and paper kind of guy, due in no small part to him being a world-class cartoonist.

  As the yellow car zips along Lexington Avenue, I look up Bang Her, the hot bartender, then fire off a quick text: Sorry, babe. Something came up, and I need to see the fam. Another time.

  Her reply arrives thirty seconds later. You have an open invitation with me. :)

  Those are two of my favorite words—open invitation.

  But she’s not the one I’m thinking of when I arrive in Murray Hill. It’s the woman behind a massive bouquet of…balloons?

  5

  Easily, there are three dozen of those suckers. All the size of Martian heads, in every shade of pastel known to HGTV.

  A centerpiece balloon rises in the middle, higher and prouder than the rest. That one is the lone bright shade. It’s blood red, and I think it’s supposed to be shaped like a heart, but it looks like a big butt to me.

  I hand the cabbie a twenty, telling him to keep the change, and shut the door behind me as he screeches off in search of the next fare.

  I can’t even see her face. Or her chest. Or her waist. The top half of her is entirely obscured by balloons, but I’d recognize those legs anywhere. Charlotte ran track in high school, and has strong, toned legs with muscular calves that look like sin come to life when she wears high heels. Come to think of it, they’re fuck-hot right now in white socks and sneakers. She must have been out for her morning run earlier today.

  Peering down the street at her, I watch the scene unfold as I eat up the sidewalk with long strides. She tries to hand the bouquet to a mother pushing a stroller. The mom gives her a shake of the head and a sneer. As I cut the distance to ten feet, she offers the balloons to a girl who looks to be about ten.

  “No way!” the girl shouts, and runs the other direction.

  From behind the balloons, Charlotte heaves a frustrated sigh.

  “Let me guess,” I say as I reach her. “You’ve either ditched The Lucky Spot to attempt a new career as a balloon peddler, or Bradley Dipstick has struck again?”

  “Third time this week. He can’t seem to understand the meaning of the words ‘we are never getting back together.’” She yanks the balloons away from her face, but they bat her hair. She tries again to slam them away, but static cling is working against her. The pastel fuckers are relentless, and a slight breeze keeps jamming them closer to Charlotte’s hair. “These are the world’s most obnoxious balloons, and I swear the other residents are whispering about his plan to get me back, since they all know about what he did in the first place.”

  “He just sent them, I take it?”

  “Yes,” she says through gritted teeth, as she clutches the bouquet. “About two minutes after I called you, I was heading out to get a quick coffee, and the doorman rang to tell me they had these balloons for me. But they were too big to fit in the elevator, so could I please come take them? Even if I wanted to keep them I wouldn’t be able to get them to my apartment.”

  “And you’re trying to give them away?” I ask as I extend a hand, gesturing for her to give them to me.

  “I thought perhaps a child might enjoy them more than an adult woman. Shockingly, I’ve outgrown my balloon fetish.”

  A bus groans to a stop outside her building, and a plume of exhaust sends a balloon straight for Charlotte’s face.

  “Oomph,” she utters, as a vile cotton candy pink balloon attacks her.

  I grab the tangled mess of string and jerk it away from her, then hold them high above my head. “We can’t just let them fly away into the sky? Float over Manhattan in shades of garish Easter egg?”

  She shakes her head. “No. Balloons eventually lose their helium and then they float down. They get stuck on trees or fall to the ground, and animals eat them, and get sick, and that is not okay.”

  Charlotte is a softie. She loves animals.

  “Gotcha,” I say with a nod. “Just so I’m clear. Are you okay witnessing the massacre of three dozen obnoxious balloons right about now?”

  She nods resolutely. “It might scar me a little bit, but I’m confident I can get through it.”

  “Cover your ears,” I say, then grab my keys with my free hand and proceed to stab each balloon with a loud pop, including the ass-shaped one, until I’m holding a limp bouquet of broken rubber.

  Sort of like Bradley.

  Here’s everything you need to know about how Bradley earned his stripes as a total asshole. He and Charlotte met two years ago since they both lived in the same building. They started dating, hitting it off and going strong for a while. They talked about moving in together. They decided to buy a bigger place on the tenth floor and get engaged. Everything was going swimmingly until the day they were all set to sign the papers on the two-bedroom, and Bradley headed down early to—get this—“check out the pipes.” Yeah, that was his real excuse.

  When Charlotte arrived, pen in hand, Bradley was banging the realtor against the kitchen counter.

  “I never did care for those steel counters,” Charlotte had said, and I’d been so proud of her for coming up with that zinger in the heat of the moment.

  Of course, in reality, she’d been devastated. She’d loved the guy. She’d cried on my shoulder as she told me the story, zinger and all. That had been ten months ago, and when Bradley finally ditched the realtor, he embarked on a campaign to win Charlotte back.

  With gifts.

  Abhorrent gifts.

  I stuff the flaccid balloons into the garbage can on the corner. “The animals are safe now from his reign of terror.”

  “Thank you,” she says with relief, as she grabs a tie from her wrist and yanks her hair off her face and into a quick ponytail. “That was like a pastel explosion of pathetic. Once you killed them, they were pretty droopy, too.”

  “Like Bradley?” I ask with an arch of the eyebrow.

  Her lips quirk into a tiny grin. She’s trying not to laugh. She covers her mouth. Charlotte has never been one to kiss and tell. She never shared details of their sex life—not that I wanted to know any. But she was a vault.

  So the fact that she’s holding up a thumb and forefinger, and mouthing a little bit is a huge deal for her.

  For me too, it turns out.

  I’m a guy, and therefore I’m in competition with all men, all the time, so I can’t help but feel a surge of triumph.

  That is so not an issue for me whatsoever.

  “Let’s get you that coffee and I’ll tell you why I was acting like a lovesick weirdo.”

  6

  As she pours sugar into her cup, her eyes widen. As she adds a drop of half and half, they turn into saucers. And as she brings the coffee to her lips, her eyeballs
practically pop out of her head.

  When I mention the dinner tomorrow, she nearly spits out the hot beverage.

  Then she clutches her belly, clasps her hand on her mouth, and shudders with laughter. “How do you get yourself into these situations?”

  “I like to think it’s my wit and charm, but in this case, it might have been my big mouth,” I say, with a what can you do? shrug. Thing is, there’s only one answer to that question—I have to show up with a fiancée. Which means she has to say yes, so I turn serious. “Will you do it? Will you pretend to be engaged to me for a week?”

  The laughter doesn’t stop. “That’s your brilliant idea? That’s your best solution to the foot-in-the-mouth problem?”

  “Yes,” I say, nodding, staying firm to the plan. “It’s a great idea.”

  “Oh, Spencer. That’s fantastic. Really, truly, one of your best ideas ever.” She leans against the creamer counter at this hip little coffee shop near her place. “And by ‘best idea,’ I mean ‘worst.’”

  “Why? Tell me, why is it such a bad idea?”

  She takes a deliberate pause, then holds one finger in the air for emphasis and speaks. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but you want this fake engagement to work, right? You want to pull it off?”

  “Yes. Obviously.”

  She stabs her finger against her sternum. “And so your bright idea is to ask me?”

  “Who else would I ask?”

  She rolls her eyes. “You’re aware that I’m pretty much the worst liar in the universe?”

  “I wouldn’t call you the worst.”

  She stares at me like I’m crazy. I think I might be. “Do I need to remind you of the time in junior year when you and your friends pranked my dorm? If memory serves, I not only witnessed your prank, thanks to skipping out of The Notebook screening early, but my roomies got the truth about whodunit in about five seconds.”

  “You couldn’t have caved that quickly,” I insist, taking a drink of my coffee as I flash back to college. One of my buddies had been dating one of Charlotte’s friends. The girlfriend had hung his TV remote from a fourth-story window, since she thought he watched too much TV, and to get even he enlisted a bunch of us in a little furniture switcheroo. Trouble was, Charlotte caught us in the act, so I swore her to secrecy, promising we’d return everything after midnight.