by Ana Sparks
While she knew we were going to Paris, then backpacking across Europe, she had no idea what was in store for her at the end of that trip. I knew it was a bit soon, but I planned to ask her to marry me once I got Martha’s permission. I had a feeling the old lady would be hard to convince, especially at the thought of giving up her girl in such a big way, but I was also sure that I’d be able to win her over.
If there had ever been a story of true love, the time Ella and I had spent together would certainly qualify. Hell, it’d been love at first sight, and while I knew she would be surprised as hell when I popped the question, I knew she’d say yes. It would be the perfect punctuation mark to the end of our trip.
We’d plan our wedding with her ma, I’d take her to meet my parents, and it would be like one of those fairy tale endings. I wasn’t usually one to be such a sap, but since I’d met my little bird, I’d been a changed man. Though I could never take back the cons I’d already worked, I knew the road ahead of me was on the straight and narrow.
Ella jolted beside me in her seat, clutching her stomach with a vaguely nauseous expression.
“Just a bit of turbulence, baby,” I murmured.
She smiled, lifting up the armrest between us and resting against my side.
“I could just do with eating something. I hope they bring a snack cart or something around,” she said, eyes widening as she spotted a flight attendant making her way towards us.
“Excuse me! Miss! Do you have pickles? I would kill for some pickles,” she asked urgently, leaning across me.
The flight attendant considered her request with a quirked brow, and while I thought it rather odd myself, I was going to see to it that my baby had all she wanted.
“You heard the lady, bring us all the pickles you got!” I commanded.
The flight attendant rolled her eyes, and Ella buried her face against my shoulder, laughing melodically. I brushed a hand through her hair, noticing that my girl seemed particularly radiant that afternoon. I attributed it to the excitement brewing in her gut. I mean, it wasn’t to say that Ella wasn’t always radiant, but she seemed to almost be glowing.
I was drawn from my thoughts when the flight attendant brought a tray full of dill pickle spears. Ella was obviously delighted, grabbing the tray and pulling it into her lap. She balanced it there precariously, gobbling down the sour spears as quick as you please.
If I’d expected her to eat like a little bird, I’d been dead wrong. She was eating like she hadn’t seen food in a good year or so. I smirked to myself, and though the way she was going at the goods was something short of ladylike, I certainly wasn’t about to point it out.
We had the rest of our lives to be prim and proper, if we so chose. I sure wasn’t about to choose that lifestyle, and at this rate, it looked like my princess would feel the same. I made a mental note of just how much she seemed to like those damn pickles, wondering if they made all-you-can-eat pickle buffets. Sure, it wouldn’t be your typical wedding catering, but we were anything but your typical couple.
As soon as she finished the last pickle, Ella burped loudly, patting herself on the stomach. In that moment, all I could think was just how much I loved that crazy woman. I couldn’t wait to spend the rest of my life with her, and I certainly couldn’t wait to see her surprised expression when I popped the question.
This was gonna be the trip of a lifetime.
ELLA
I hoped I wasn’t being horribly obvious, but from the looks of things, Joey didn’t have a clue. I only hoped I could keep it that way until the end of the trip. Of course, he didn’t know the little things that my mom would have picked up on immediately. For example, how I hadn’t touched a pickle since third grade, or how under normal circumstances, I would be begging for a drink by now.
I couldn’t help the subtle touches to my stomach, a sense of wonder washing over me every time I pressed my fingertips to the flat plane of my abdomen. It wouldn’t be flat much longer; that much was for sure.
Before you come to any conclusions, no, I hadn’t been sleeping around with anyone besides the man at my side. I had no doubt that the life growing inside of me was his. While I knew it was soon, and I would have to tell him before long, I wanted to at least make the trip to London before I made my confession.
We’d not been as careful as we should have been, and I’d forgotten to bring my birth control on the cruise. You couldn’t really blame me; I never would have expected to fall in love while on a company trip to Rio.
I also never expected to get pregnant at such a young age, but…well, here we were.
I knew if I told Joey now, he’d be waiting on me hand and food for the duration of the trip. He already did that well enough, but I didn’t want him to think I needed to be completely bedridden before we even got to Paris. After all, I wasn’t very far along.
I was unsure if my mom would be thrilled or furious when she found out, or perhaps a mix of both. I planned to tell both her and Joey about the pregnancy once we had made it to London, if I hadn’t cracked and told Joey before then. I knew my mom would be upset that I’d kept it from her, but as it stood, I liked having this secret bit of knowledge, something that was truly mine, to share only when I was ready.
The plane gave another little quake, and I felt a rush of queasiness wash over me. I bolted out of my seat, lunging past Joey and the other passengers to rush to the bathroom. Fortunately, there wasn’t a line, though I could have done without the smell inside the confined area. It only served to heighten my nausea until suddenly I was spilling my guts out. I heard a knock on the door and tried to quiet myself down.
“Birdie, are you okay? Those pickles go down the wrong way? I can see how, the way you were scarfing them down,” Joey asked through the door.
“Yeah, baby. I’m fine. I’ll be out in a minute,” I called out, another wave of nausea washing over me.
It seemed like an eternity before I escaped the hell that was the airplane bathroom, but Joey was waiting for me with a concerned expression as I emerged. There was something different about him, as of recently. He seemed more concerned than ever, protecting me even more than he had when we had first met on the cruise. If I had ever questioned his adoration for me, that sensation fell away with just how much he worried himself over me.
“My sweet little birdie,” he murmured, drawing me into his arms and kissing me on the forehead.
He guided me back to our seats, and I shifted back into my place beside the window. He watched me carefully, obvious concern in his gaze. It only further cemented my decision to wait to tell him the news; if he doted on me this much in normal circumstances, I knew he’d drive himself crazy if he knew that his future son or daughter was growing inside of me.
It was nice to have the attention, but this trip wasn’t just about me. It was about our future together. I didn’t want to go from zero to fifty by telling him he’d knocked me up, though it seemed I would have little choice before long. I knew he would be thrilled, as family meant so much to him, and I was certain that we would be the best parents any baby could ask for. I’d be the kind of cool mom who let them invite their friends over on a school night, or paid their tuition to art school.
Okay, maybe I was projecting a bit. All the same, I knew the little life inside of me would be showered with love from all directions. While I knew my mother would be more difficult to win over, she was the last thing on my mind in that moment.
All I knew was that Joey would be the best father a kid could ask for, and the best husband a woman could want, if he someday decided to pop the question. Until then, we had our whole lives ahead of us, as well as a new life to complete our family.
This was going to be the trip of a lifetime.
The End
Fake It For Me
Layla Valentine & Ana Sparks
Ready for a story that’s naughty and nice?
Last but not least is our previous book, Fake It For Me, in full!
Copyright 2017 by Layla Val
entine and Ana Sparks
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part by any means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the explicit written permission of the author. All characters depicted in this fictional work are consenting adults, of at least eighteen years of age. Any resemblance to persons living or deceased, particular businesses, events, or exact locations are entirely coincidental.
This book was previously published under another pen name, Evelyn Troy.
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Chapter One
Eva tilted her head back against the ergonomic support at the top of her chair, stretching against the tightness she could feel in her neck and shoulders. A glance at the clock on her desk phone told her that she only had two more hours left in her shift; the rush had soon tapered off into the mid-afternoon slump. By the time she clocked out, there would be another rush—people calling in right after work to take care of their business with the bank—and Eva wanted to make sure that she clocked out exactly on time to avoid being roped into staying “on the floor” as they called it.
She closed her eyes, imagining fleeting memories of better days: the Louis Vuitton handbag she’d had to give up, along with the Louboutin shoes, and the vacation she’d taken to Cancun. How the mighty have fallen, she thought bitterly, opening her eyes once more.
Eva blinked a few times, scrubbing at her face with her hands. Just two more hours and I’ll be out of here, she reminded herself, glancing at the time once more. She could hear Jana, one cubicle down, patiently explaining something to a customer. Eva gritted her teeth and took a slow breath.
She had known it would be a bad day as soon as she’d arrived on the floor, stepping off of the elevator and into the cacophony of a rush. Eva had quickly learned the apparent cause of the influx of calls: there had been a system issue the night before, which had made twenty-five thousand accounts reflect “past due” status. The tech team didn’t have an ETA on when the issue would be resolved, but had simply told everyone to flag the accounts in question.
Same as always, Eva had thought bitterly. She had been through two similar incidents with the company within about six months after training; and generally speaking, unless there was an issue that the higher-ups thought really merited a “mea culpa” from the company, any and all customer satisfaction surveys that came in during those incidents still counted against the metrics that all the call center employees had to meet. “We trust that you have the resources and intelligence to turn a negative moment into a positive branding opportunity,” they always said.
Eva was certain that her surveys—if any went out for that day—would all come back with solid negatives. No matter how she explained the issue, using the script provided in the update in her own words, none of the callers had sounded satisfied at the end of the conversation. They had—almost to a one—wanted a statement credit to compensate them for the inconvenience of having to see a big, red, Account Overdue on their homepage online. Of course, Eva—as a first-tier representative—didn’t have the clearance to do that, and even if she had, she knew she probably wouldn’t have done it for more than maybe three of the thirty calls she had taken that day.
Beset by mind-numbing boredom, she reached out for the water bottle she kept on her desk, pushing her chair back enough to look down the line of cubicles that extended across the entire floor of the office. There were easily a hundred people just in her section, though at night there would be less than fifty. Eva sipped her water and debated putting herself in Aux to run to the bathroom; she didn’t really have to go, but even the threat of being reprimanded for “aux overage” wasn’t quite enough to remove the temptation of getting away from the desk for five minutes. Her last break had been an hour before, and even if there were fewer than two hours left in Eva’s shift, that seemed like entirely too long a time.
“How you hanging in there, Johansen?” Eva turned her head and saw one of the other team leads, Rebecka, walking up the aisle.
“Glad we finally slowed down a bit,” Eva admitted. “That was a brutal first half.”
“Well, at least it wasn’t boring,” Rebecka said, beaming with the kind of fake brightness that Eva immediately recognized. She wouldn’t last ten minutes in a real game, she thought, returning the woman’s smile with her own best fake grin.
“I’m glad of a little boredom right now,” Eva quipped.
“See? There you go: the bright side to that rush this morning.”
Eva simpered at the team leader as Rebecka walked past, heading over to another section of the immense cubicle farm. Eva pushed her chair back into place, wiggling her mouse to keep the screensaver from coming up. A bleep in her headset announced an incoming instant message, and Eva opened up the application, glancing at the screen to see who was messaging her.
When do you think they’re going to learn not to mess with things outside of their understanding?
Eva snorted at the message; it had come from Clarence, a member of her team who had recently moved up to Online Services Specialty. It wasn’t a real promotion—he only earned about a dollar fifty an hour more than she did—but it had given him at least a little prestige, and a little bit of clout in the cubicle farm.
Right about the time the asteroid hits the planet and wipes us all out, Eva wrote back.
The running joke in the call center was that tech were all people who had come in with fake resumes, who managed to screw up more than they actually fixed. It wasn’t entirely true; Eva assumed that they made plenty of repairs to the system without incident. But the issues with the system—ranging from the payment system going down, to the website itself going offline—were legion, and they always seemed to happen at the worst possible time.
You doing anything after? came the reply.
Eva considered that, pressing her lips together.
Clarence wasn’t a bad guy, but he wasn’t her type at all; if he were asking her out personally, she would have to think of a way to decline him without ruffling feathers. It was harder than she would have assumed—especially in the cramped and confined environment of the call center.
She’d been asked out by three men in her short time at the company, and the first two had come completely unhinged as soon as she’d said no; the third, Eva was convinced, had gone to her supervisor about something that most of the other employees generally agreed to look the other way on, whenever it happened; certainly, she’d gotten a “random call monitoring” session within days of turning Richard down; she hadn’t been slated for one for another week or two. The “random” in the call monitoring sessions was less accurate than the assertion her employee packet had made that the company valued its employees even more than its customers.
The sound of a call coming in—two steady beeps in her headset—cut through Eva’s thoughts. She took a deep breath and tapped the “unmute” button on her phone base.
“Good afternoon, and thank you for calling DigiFinancial. My name is Eva. How may I help you today?” She heard the roar of wind over the other line and rolled her eyes to herself, waiting for the caller to speak.
“This is DigiFinancial?”
Eva pressed her lips together to resist the retort that rose up on her tongue.
“Yes, sir, it is. How can I help you today?”
“You can help me by telling your company to stop illegally charging me fees!”
Eva closed her eyes. The man’s account—or so she assumed—had come up on her screen.
“I’m afraid I don’t understand what you mean, sir,” Eva said, as calmly and as coolly as she could.
“Your stupid company keeps charging me an ‘account maintenance fee’ which is totally illegal and I want the fees for the last six months credited to my account right now.”
Eva counted to three mentally.
“Let’s look at your account and see what we have going on, shall we?”
The man made a noise that sounded weirdly like a growl on the other end of the line.
“Fine. Do you have my account up?”
“I believe so—but in order to access your information I’m going to need for you to confirm the answers to a few security questions,” Eva explained, sitting up straighter in her chair.
“Those goddam questions…why do you even ask them? I’m clearly the account holder.”
“Unfortunately sir, since I do not know you personally, there’s no way for me to know who you are. You have not even provided me with your name—much less verified that you are that person,” Eva pointed out. She pressed her lips together to prevent herself from speaking further; she counted to five in her mind, slowly. Don’t let the rude ass get to you.
“My name is Steve Jersik,” the man said, exaggerating each syllable.
“Thank you very much, Mr. Jersik,” Eva replied, as levelly as she could. “In order to access your account, would you please tell me the month and day of your mother’s birthday?”
“January third,” Jersik said, once more with exaggerated slowness.
“Thank you again,” Eva said. She typed the answer into the field and the next question popped up. “For our second verification question: what are the last four digits of your account number with us?”
“Oh my God!” Jersik sounded as though he were on the point of throwing his phone. “Four-five-six-three,” he said after a moment.
“Thank you, I’ll put that in now,” Eva said, feeling the beginning trickle of a rush of irritation. The man had to have accessed his account over the phone before; the fact that he had security questions set up for phone access proved that. How he could be surprised at the fact that he was being asked to verify his ID was beyond Eva’s understanding.
