The Plus One

by Natasha West

  All the raised voices had caught the attention of Charlie’s parents, who were listening to the intrigue.

  ‘I hate to break this to you, but your sister’s new girlfriend is a fake’ Lilah spat.

  Maddie gave Lilah a look of bewilderment.

  ‘What in the fuck are you talking about?’

  ‘Her name isn’t Lucy. She’s a rental. Charlie hired her to pretend to be her girlfriend.’

  Maddie looked over to Charlie, who was praying for a sudden sinkhole to suck her into a muddy grave. Unfortunately for Charlie, the hotel stayed exactly where it was.

  ‘Is that true?’ Maddie asked uncertainly.

  Charlie looked at her sister, dread filling her heart. It was Maddie’s wedding day and everything Charlie had done to try and stop it from becoming about something other than Maddie had been for nothing. Charlie knew she was now about to ruin it utterly. But there was no turning back now. She was going to have to confess everything, here and now, in front of her parents. Humiliation was unavoidable.

  ‘Yeah, it’s true. There was a Lucy, but she dumped me a few weeks ago. I didn’t want to spoil your wedding, so I hired Amy’, she pointed at the woman in question ‘to play her.’

  Everyone looked at Amy. Unable to come up with a response that was even vaguely appropriate to the situation, she gave a small wave.

  Maddie was looking at Charlie as though she’d grown an extra head.

  ‘Why? Why would you do that?’

  ‘Because I know you don’t think I can keep a girlfriend. And I guess you’re right. But for once, I just wanted to feel like an adult. You’re my younger sister, for Christ’s sakes, and I always feel like a kid next to you. I mean, look at all this!’

  She gestured to the reception.

  ‘This is gorgeous and you did it. I can’t even manage to get a regular dental check-up. They keep sending me letters and still, I can’t do it!’

  Charlie felt a tear running down her cheek. Maddie watched her for a moment. And then she got to her feet, fury flooding her features. She walked over to where Charlie was standing. Charlie braced herself for whatever was coming.

  But as Maddie reached her, she walked right on past her to where Lilah stood.

  ‘You’re a real bitch, you know that?’

  Lilah’s mouth dropped open.

  ‘Maddie! I was just trying to-’

  ‘I know full well what you were trying to do! It’s one thing to shit on me, I accept that you’re a nasty cow, I’ve known you since we were toddlers. But if you think you can pick on my sister like that, you’re wrong. I want you to leave.’

  Charlie looked at her little sister, her eyes shining. She’d never loved her sister more than she did in that moment.

  Lilah was agog at how this situation had backfired. She considered arguing her case, but she already felt as though this moment had turned on her. All she could do now was take her remaining dignity and leave. But not without one last barb.

  ‘Your table settings are… subpar!’ she declared and swept grandly out. Her boyfriend Chris, who’d been mid sausage roll across the room, saw Lilah stomping out. He sighed and finished the roll, like a man having his last meal. He scuttled out after her.

  Dawn and Ed, who had been watching all this quietly, felt they should probably say something. Dawn went first.

  ‘Charlie, you lied to us. I thought that this person’ she gestured at Amy ‘was going to be part of our family. And now I find out she’s a stranger.’

  Charlie shook her head.

  ‘Yeah, I lied, but she’s not a stranger. We were’ she struggled briefly for a Mum-appropriate word ‘friends when we were young.’

  Maddie, who had still been fuming about Lilah’s behaviour, turned abruptly at that statement.

  ‘So that story that you told me earlier about camp, that was actually true?’

  Amy, who’d watched Charlie dealing with all this from the side-lines, in her view quite admirably, thought this was the moment that she should stand beside her again. She stepped closer to Charlie.

  ‘It’s true.’ Charlie said, looking at Amy ‘We fell in love a long time ago. But we hadn’t seen each other since then. I didn’t realise that she was the person I’d hired till she turned up today.’

  Maddie turned to Amy.

  ‘Amy, is it? Did you mean that thing you said about my sister giving you another chance?’

  Amy nodded.

  ‘Yes. It was funny how all this happened, but I’m grateful I had to the chance to meet Charlie again. We’re going to’ she looked to Charlie nervously ‘date, now, I guess.’

  Charlie smiled and nodded back.

  ‘I hope so.’

  ‘So, I just want to get a handle on this. You met when you were teenagers, had some crazy passionate thing, then broke up. And then you hired a stranger to come here and play your girlfriend, and it turned out to be your first love? And now you’re going to give it another go?!’

  She turned to her parents, who, true to tradition, were letting the bride take the lead here.

  ‘Mum, Dad, did you catch all that?’

  Dawn and Ed had been trying to play catch up for the last few minutes but they were just about there. Ed nodded.

  ‘I think so, yeah.’

  Maddie blew out a whistle of amazement.

  ‘Have you ever heard anything so romantic in your whole life?!’

  Dawn and Ed turned to each other. Ed shrugged at his wife, and she understood that he’d decided to roll with the punches here. It was what she loved about her husband, because if it was left to her, she’d have blown her top at all this nonsense. But Ed had made a different decision. Part of her knew it was the better one.

  ‘I don’t think I have love, no’ said Ed to Maddie.

  Everyone, Charlie, Amy, Maddie and Ed, turned to Dawn. She looked at all the eyes on her, including her soggy faced oldest daughter, who had clearly done all this to get some familial approval, and she couldn’t find it in her to say something negative about the situation.

  She turned to Amy and said ‘Well, Amy, the invitation to Sunday dinner is open. Whenever you’re ready.’

  Amy and Charlie looked at each other, swapping a brief grin. They could see this for what it was. Dawn had decided to give Amy a chance.

  ‘I hope that’ll happen, Dawn. Thank you.’

  Dawn nodded. Even if this girl in front of her had a different name than she’d originally thought, she still appreciated her excellent manners.

  ‘I’ll look forward to that’ said Ed ‘And I still reckon I was right about you. I think you’re going to make our daughter very happy.’

  Amy and Charlie both started to blush at that. Dawn knew Ed had gotten a little hyperbolic due to his excitment at this odd development. Her husband was nothing if not a drama queen.

  ‘Slow down, Ed. They’re only just started going out. Don’t buy a hat for the wedding yet.’

  Charlie laughed at her Mum’s joke, a rarity due to her husband’s tendency to overshadow her sense of humour. Dawn gave her daughter a peck on the cheek and said ‘We’re going to the bar. We’ll leave you to it.’ And off they went.

  Maddie grabbed Charlie and Amy’s hands and said ‘Look you two, there’s still a couple of hours left, can we cut out the theatrics now and just have a good time?’

  Charlie laughed in sheer relief.

  ‘So I didn’t ruin your wedding?’

  ‘Are you kidding? I’ve done all this planning because I wanted a special, unique day. But it was just like every other wedding. Until I found out that a real life rom-com has been going on all day. And it happened because of my wedding! This is tell-your-grandkids type stuff. I love it!’

  She turned to Josh, who had been keeping his head down. It was sister business, and he was sensible enough not to intervene unless directly called to do so.

  ‘Come on, you. Let’s dance.’

  Josh took Maddie’s hand and they span off into the still lively dance floor.

&
nbsp; Paige suddenly came dashing up to Charlie. Charlie couldn’t imagine what was she was going had to say on the topic, but her guess was something critical.

  But Paige touched Charlie warmly on the shoulder.

  ‘I just wanted to let you know that you don’t need to be embarrassed. I used Rent-a-Date once. They were fantastic.’

  Charlie sighed. It was official. Amy had been right. Paige was actually a decent person. Charlie had been the bitch all along. She grabbed hold of Paige in a hug that took them both by surprise.

  Charlie said thanks ‘Thanks Paige’ in her ear. Paige gave her a warm smile and flitted away.

  Charlie and Amy were left looking at each other.

  ‘So’ Amy said. ‘You wanna dance?’

  And Charlie took her hand.

  Just as they walked onto the floor, YMCA by Village People started to play and they looked at each other with a joint eye roll. It was all wrong. Not the romantic song they could have done with to finish the night off right. But Charlie and Amy had had all the luck they were going to get from this day. From here, it was completely up to them to get it right.

  They joined the rest of revellers, making letters with their arms with everything they had.

  Chapter Twenty

  Fourteen months later

  Charlie awoke from a dream to hear her phone ringing. She scrabbled around, irritated, desperate to stop its shriek.

  ‘Hello’ she bellowed into the mouthpiece.

  ‘Sis, you’re not still asleep? It’s eleven AM’ Maddie said, too loudly for the current volume level of Charlie’s phone.

  ‘Had a late one, what’s up?’

  ‘I need a favour. Jake is screaming his head off and I need a break. Could you just take him for an hour, so I can go to the gym or something?’

  Jake was Maddie’s new-born, only three months old. Maddie and Josh hadn’t wasted much time once the wedding was out of the way. Charlie loved the little bugger, but she wasn’t fully awake yet and the thought of trying to quiet a screaming infant was not completely appealing.

  Still, Charlie could tell her sister needed her. She couldn’t refuse. She agreed to be there as soon as she could and hung up. She climbed out of bed and staggered toward her bathroom. Steam slipped from the door as she opened it.

  ‘Hey, I hope you’re not using all the hot water’ Charlie called in.

  Amy’s head popped out from behind the shower curtain.

  ‘Well, I can tell you’ve woken up in a gorgeous mood.’

  It was true, the phone breaking into Charlie’s sleep had been a bad start to her day. But the sight of her beautiful, naked, wet girlfriend in her bathroom was enough to cure Charlie’s gloom.

  Charlie grinned at Amy.

  ‘I just need a bacon sandwich and to get in there with you and I’ll be sunshine and smiles.’

  The curtain shot across the rail and Charlie hopped enthusiastically in.

  It had been an interesting year for Charlie and Amy. It had begun the day after the wedding. Amy had called her and asked her to go to dinner. In a week’s time. Charlie accepted, hating that she’d have to wait so long, but knowing that it was best not to rush. And when that date came around, Charlie and Amy spent the evening chatting, getting to know each other, finding out if the strange way they’d been dropped back into each other lives was just a fluke. But it seemed it wasn’t. They never stopped laughing all evening. And Charlie was sure to stick to soft drinks.

  At the end of the night, she kissed Amy lightly on the cheek and went home without trying anything. She wanted to be sure that sex wouldn’t define the relationship.

  By date four, several weeks later, it felt safe to say there was more than sexual chemistry at work. And this time there was no rush. They both took their time and it was even better than the time at the hotel, not to mention the tent incident. But the next morning, Charlie worked against every instinct she had and did not assume that this meant they were together. She was taking a very old fashioned courting approach to the whole thing. Charlie knew that if she was going to blow this thing, it wouldn’t be by making the same mistakes she always made. She’d learned her lesson on that score. Amy was worth the wait.

  And so they continued to date, without ever using titles like ‘girlfriend’ or ‘relationship’. Until four months later, when Amy couldn’t bare it any more. She was used to putting up a wall and Charlie had tapped every brick gently out of it. While she respected Charlie’s wish to take it slow, which was Amy’s usual way of doing things anyway, she thought that four months was long enough to put off having ‘The Talk’. She knew full well she was in love for the second time, with the same girl. She found herself proposing relationship status in the most inappropriate of circumstances.

  They’d been to see a horror movie. The heroine was running screaming from the immortal killer and just as he was about to stick an axe in her head, Amy leaned into Charlie and said ‘I want us to be girlfriends. What do you think? Oh, and I love you.’ The rest of the cinema heard an oddly-timed burst of laughter as the poor girl was murdered on screen. Once Charlie had gotten over the amusement of the declaration, she replied that yes, she would very much like to be Amy’s girlfriend. And then she said the thing she’d been holding in for over a decade. She told Amy Sinclair that she loved her. And it was with the wonderful knowledge that Amy felt the same.

  A week later, Amy went to Sunday dinner with Charlie’s family. They both expected the situation to be awkward, but enough time had elapsed that everyone seemed to have adjusted to the situation. And Dawn had talked to Charlie several times on the topic of Amy in the intervening months. She knew this one was different. She could tell because of how cagey Charlie was on the subject. She was being careful. Her daughter had never been careful. It was significant.

  And when Amy finally came to dinner, Dawn was ready to try to curb her own critical tendencies, for her daughter’s sake. The meal went better than any of them could have hoped, with all parties coming away feeling like something good had just happened.

  A few weeks after that, Charlie met Amy’s parents. Her Mum liked Charlie immediately. Her Dad thought that Charlie seemed like a bit of a slacker, but he couldn’t help but note the easy smile his daughter seemed to have these days. He had to think that there must be something more to Charlie than he could see. He told Amy he thought Charlie seemed like ‘A good egg.’ For Amy, that was more than she expected.

  And with parental approval out of the way and girlfriend status established, Charlie and Amy were solid.

  And things had been good in the time since then, although not perfect. They had their issues. Charlie was a little flaky and Amy was a little rigid. That difference sometimes kept them on their toes. But they muddled through. And now they’d gotten past the year mark.

  Charlie considered asking Amy to move in, but she wasn’t sure if the time was right yet. She understood that despite the history and the drama of how they’d reconnected, and the time they’d spent dating since, there was still things to learn about each other. Amy was a complex creature. But Charlie was content to take her time trying to understand her and to be understood by her.

  Amy had a drawer in Charlie’s flat and that was as far as commitment had gone so far. But Charlie wasn’t worried. She knew Amy loved her and that she wasn’t going anywhere. She wasn’t trying to hold onto her because for once, she didn’t need to. Amy was really with her.

  After the fun in the shower, Charlie was on her way to Maddie’s, driven by Amy. She had insisted on tagging along, the allure of Jake’s baby head smell being too strong.

  ‘Are you sure you’ve got time for this? When do rehearsals start?’

  ‘Not till three, I’ve got plenty of time.’

  Amy’s career had altered since Maddie’s wedding day. She’d decided to go back to acting a few months ago. She’d been continuing with Rent-A-Date since the wedding, and still considered it a worthy job. But after she’d met Charlie and things had blossomed between them, A
my had felt a renewed hope for other areas of her life. She wanted to give acting another go. And the years of fake dating had been great theatre training, as it turned out. It was a nightly performance with the proviso that you never break character. She found a small part in a big play after only a few months of auditioning. Charlie was thrilled for her. She knew Amy was going to be huge.

  And she was happy that at least one of them was bound for success. Because Charlie knew that was never going to be important to her personally. Charlie was happy to keep training the rich and lazy. Maybe one day she’d want to do something else, but for now, it paid the bills and gave her time to spend with Amy.

  ‘I’m starving. Is there time to stop for breakfast?’ Amy asked.

  ‘I don’t know, Maddie sounded pretty frantic. Hey, don’t you usually have some sort of breakfast bar knocking around in here?’ said Charlie, already routing around in the glove compartment.

  Amy looked over in sudden alarm.

  ‘Wait a second, don’t-’

  But Charlie was suddenly holding a small wooden, ornate box in her hand.

  ‘What’s this?’

  Amy sighed.

  ‘I was waiting for the right moment. I didn’t think you were going to start looting the glove compartment.’

  Charlie’s eyes went as round as saucers.

  ‘Is this what I think it is?’

  Amy flicked her eyes from the road to Charlie. The moment was happening now, whether she liked it or not. But if being with Charlie had taught her anything, it was how to going with the flow. She smiled and said ‘Open it.’

  Charlie cracked the box open and stared at the contents. It was a beautiful diamond engagement ring. Amy waited to hear what she was going to say. But Charlie simply gaped at the ring until Amy couldn’t take it anymore.

  ‘Well, doofus, will you marry me?’

  Charlie’s head swivelled to Amy. In her head, it had been all yeses. She couldn’t believe she hadn’t actually said it yet.

  ‘Yes, yes, of course I will!’ Charlie said, thrusting the ring onto her finger.