BS Boyfriend: A Standalone Fake Fiancée Romance

by JD Hawkins

  She frowns. “He didn’t call or text you?”

  “No. But I don’t think he’s the type,” I say, moving through the door and holding it open for Mia to catch up.

  As we walk side by side down the hall, nodding a few goodbyes to other nurses and doctors, she asks, “Are you excited?”

  “I’m scared.”

  “Of what?” Mia exclaims.

  “Of how excited I am,” I laugh back.

  Mia pats me affectionately on the back as we pass through a crowd outside surgery. When she’s beside me again she says, “Don’t forget you promised to let us meet him.”

  “I won’t forget,” I say. “I’m excited for that part, too.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. I’m sure you’ll all find many problems with him that I can’t. And to be honest, I need a good reason not to hate the fact that we can’t actually date.”

  Mia smiles, then frowns a little as we pass the front desk.

  “Wait, what do you mean?” she asks eventually. “Why couldn’t you date him?”

  Now I turn to frown at her.

  “How could we? He’s two thousand miles away, and has this—will have—this big, important job that demands so much from him. And my job probably takes up even more of my time. It just wouldn’t work.”

  “People have long-distance relationships all the time,” Mia points out.

  “Not me…I mean, I’m sure you could. You’re smart and intellectual and all of that. But I need to feel someone. To see them and smell them… I couldn’t handle it. I did it once a long time ago and it was just torture. And besides, it’s not like Nate and I even know each other well enough to do something like that. All we’ve done is spend a couple of very intense days together. If we were to date, we’d still be at the ‘mini-golf and pizza’ stage.”

  “Hazel, you’ve discovered the entirely new ‘pretending to be a couple’ stage; I think it’s a bit more than that.”

  I laugh as we cross the main lobby to the large hospital entrance, the waiting area only slightly less busy for the midnight hour.

  “Even if he wasn’t so far away, I’d be cautious,” I insist. “We’re both fresh out of terrible relationships; any connection we have is probably just a rebound. Once you remove all the weirdness and suddenness and fun of the situation…we’re too different. I’m a nurse with dyed hair who likes painting and spends too much money on candles. And he’s…he’s…”

  I freeze once we’re through the doors, Mia taking a few more steps into the parking lot before realizing I’ve planted myself on the curb. She steps back to my side.

  “He’s what?” she asks, looking at me like I’m a patient now.

  “He’s right over there,” I reply, nodding and then looking at Mia as she follows my gaze to the other side of the lot.

  He’s in jeans and a white dress shirt, sleeves rolled up, top button undone. The kind of loose, casual, and yet somehow tough look that allured me so much at the hotel. Back to the person he was before he transformed into the aloof stranger he was when he left.

  “Him?” Mia says, her voice quiet as if it’s a secret, awe in her voice.

  He hasn’t noticed us yet. He’s leaning back on a big car, scrolling on his phone, the light from the screen carving out the hard lines of his features in an almost cinematic way. Something about seeing him here, in a place I’m so familiar with, with a friend of mine beside me, makes him seem realer than before, and thus even more thrilling.

  “Yeah,” I say, awe in my own voice too, as if I’m just seeing him for the first time.

  “What’s he doing here?” Mia asks, still whispering.

  I look up at Mia and shrug, then laugh a little quietly before taking her arm and urging her toward him with me.

  “At least you’ll get to meet him like you wanted,” I say.

  As we draw near, he notices us and looks up with a smile, shoving his phone in his pocket and pushing himself off the car.

  “Hey,” I say, putting my surprise into my voice.

  “Hello,” he replies, putting his contentment into his.

  “This is Mia,” I say, so eager to introduce her that I forget to even worry about whether to greet Nate with a kiss or a hug or even a handshake. “She’s a doctor here.” I laugh as if that’s a silly thing to say, then add as if correcting myself, “She’s my friend.”

  “Nice to meet you, Mia. I’m Nate.”

  They shake hands, and I say a mental prayer. Please don’t say you’ve heard a lot about him… Please don’t say you’ve heard a lot about him…

  “My pleasure,” Mia beams. “Hazel’s told me so much about you.”

  I exhale deep and quietly, flicking my hair so it falls over my cheeks and hopefully hides any blushing.

  “What are you doing here?” I ask quickly.

  “I remember you mentioning the name of the hospital you work at. I finished a meeting early and thought I’d drop by to see if you were here.”

  “At midnight?” Mia asks incredulously.

  “No. I came by around seven, actually. I thought we could have dinner together. The girl at the front desk told me your shift ended around now.” He reaches in through the open passenger-side window of his car as he continues, pulling out an elegantly labeled paper bag. “I went and had dinner by myself, but I thought I’d bring you something anyway.” He hands me the bag. “I’m always starving after a late night.”

  “Oh! That’s so sweet!” Mia says, looking at me like I’m a kid who’s just been given a present and she’s watching for my reaction.

  “Thank you… It is,” I say.

  “When are you leaving?” Mia asks.

  “Sunday,” Nate answers.

  “Well, I’d love to have you and Hazel over,” she says. “What about tomorrow?”

  “We’re going shopping tomorrow, right?” I say, looking at Nate.

  “Yeah. Tomorrow’s gonna be a bit tight for me. I’ve got meetings and…like you said, shopping. Tomorrow morning? A breakfast thing, maybe?”

  “I’m working,” I sigh.

  “Okay,” Mia says, sounding like she’s taking control. “Saturday?”

  “That’s when the wedding is,” I point out.

  Mia frowns as if she’s almost angry. “You’re going to be there all day?”

  “Maybe, maybe not?” I say.

  Mia quickly pounces. “You’re leaving the next day, right? Come by my house whenever you’re done at the wedding. We’ll do a barbecue in the evening or something.”

  Nate narrows his eyes at her, which I know is what he does when he’s thinking, and which I know is him thinking that the last thing he wants to do is meet new people.

  “It’ll be fun,” I say, putting a hand on his forearm—a gesture which feels so natural for me even after I do it. “Really relaxed. You’ll enjoy it. Trust me.”

  Nate looks at me and I see the lasers in his eyes soften a little. I see how he’s doing what I asked him, trusting me, and I feel almost grateful for it.

  “Okay. Sure. Why not.” He shrugs.

  “Great,” Mia says, and her tone is conclusive.

  “Either of you need a lift home?” Nate says, standing aside as if for us to notice the car.

  “Thanks, but I have my car here,” Mia says.

  “Mine too,” I say, sounding more apologetic than her. “But I guess you could pick me up tomorrow from here? I’m working a half shift, so around two-thirty, three?”

  “I’ll be here,” Nate says, already rounding his car to get in. “See you then.”

  I wave goodbye, and he indulges himself in a brief little wave back before disappearing in the big black car. Mia and I step away, glancing back a few times as he pulls out, before Mia jabs me in the arm.

  “Hazel!” she hisses in a shocked whisper.

  “What?”

  Mia checks over her shoulder as if to make sure his car is really pulling out of the lot, then says to me, “What an upgrade from Theo! You didn’t tell me he l
ooked like that!”

  “I did!” I reply, laughing.

  “You didn’t emphasize it enough,” Mia jokes, laughing herself. “He seems nice, too. And the way he melted when you asked him to come on Saturday…”

  “What do you mean?”

  Mia stops walking to draw attention to what I just said, looking at me in confusion. She studies my blank expression for a few seconds with a frown, then breaks into a warm smile.

  “What?” I ask, almost laughing again at how weird Mia’s acting.

  “You don’t realize it, do you? I guess it’s easier to see from the outside…”

  “What is?”

  “He’s besotted with you,” Mia says with glee, walking again. “You’ve got him wrapped around your finger.”

  “I do not.”

  “Do too!”

  “Mia!”

  “Hazel!”

  And just like that, we’re giggling like teenagers again, but even as I laugh, I can’t help wondering if what she’s saying could possibly be true.

  The next day, Nate is waiting in the same spot, wearing pretty much the same clothes, only this time the shirt is a soft blue. He barely even says hello before he’s rounding the car and getting inside, as if too excited to take me shopping for small talk.

  I get in the passenger seat trying not to smile too much, but it’s pretty hard. I changed out of my scrubs before leaving, and even chose one of my nicer outfits—a yellow and blue summer dress with espadrilles, hair freshly dyed a sheening gray-blue. Any shop that needs an appointment is going to be an occasion fancier than most bars and restaurants I go to.

  “So how was your day?” I ask as he drives.

  “It was…interesting. The two meetings I had went well, but other than that I was just burning time, driving around the city, getting lost.”

  I laugh at the way he says “getting lost” like it’s the most fun thing a person can do.

  “Los Angeles is definitely a good place if you like getting lost,” I reply. “I guess any city is, really.”

  “Yeah…”

  “Did you grow up in the city?”

  “No,” Nate says without taking his eyes from the road. Then a few seconds later says, “Kind of. I grew up in a bunch of places.”

  “Your parents moved around for work?”

  He smiles at this, but it’s a painful one that looks almost like a grimace.

  “Sure…” he says, carelessly. “I guess that’s a nice way to put it.”

  “Sorry…I know you don’t like talking about your past much…”

  The pain is still there on his face for a few seconds, so I pretend I’m more interested in gazing out of the window.

  “People think about the past too much,” he says eventually, like he’s thinking out loud. “They get stuck in it, forget that time doesn’t stop… I prefer to live in the present, in what I know is happening right now.”

  I look at him for a moment. He turns to glance at me, as if to confirm it, to gauge my reaction.

  “Nate,” I say, with a smile to soften the blow, “I don’t think you do that at all. You don’t seem to be living in the present at all. You seem like you’re more ‘bogged down’ in the past than most.”

  It’s a provocative thing to say, especially in the first few minutes of a day that’s supposed to be spent together, and especially when Nate is clearly pained by something on his mind. But in my experience, when somebody’s opening up (as much as Nate ever opens up), honesty is always the best policy.

  He turns from the road for a second to look at me with surprise, a flash of defensiveness in his brow, and then he turns back to the road and lets out one of those low, deep laughs—the kind you could miss if you weren’t paying attention.

  “You’re right…” he says, turning the wheel to pull the car in. “You’re right… That’s what I want to do though, even if I don’t.”

  He parks the car but doesn’t seem in a rush to get out now, keeping his hand on the wheel and his eyes forward. When he finally does turn to me, there’s a glow in his eyes that I feel like I’ve unlocked somehow. “I think you live in the present, though. I think that’s what I…appreciate about you.”

  I let out a little laugh, hating that it feels a little ragged from the morning’s work. “Maybe I do. But trust me, it has its downsides.”

  I look back up and see him still gazing at me with a look that feels as intimate and tight as an embrace. Far too long passes before he says something, but however weird or intense it should feel, there’s something too nice about our silences to dislike.

  “Anyway,” he says, breaking that delicious silence, “let’s practice what we preach, huh? We’re here. Leave the past and the heavy talk in the car. We’ve got to get you looking even more sensational.”

  Once we’re out of the car and walking up to the imposingly sparse shop front, I weave my arm through his the way I did at the hotel, when we were pretending to be a couple. This time it’s less for his sake, and more for mine. Everything about the shop seems designed to intimidate the kind of people who balk at three-figure receipts, and feel guilty for buying items in more than one color—people like me. This time, I’m holding on to Nate because I’m the one who feels like she has to pretend.

  As soon as we enter, we’re greeted by a girl so beautiful and composed she could have been a cat in a past life.

  “Mr. and Mrs. Keaton?” she asks in a clipped, clear voice.

  “Yeah,” Nate says.

  “Follow me, please,” the girl says, turning to lead us up some stairs at the back.

  I look up at Nate and whisper low enough for her not to hear. “Mr. and Mrs.?”

  Nate shrugs and says, “Seemed easier to pretend.”

  Upstairs we’re led through numerous racks of clothing to the far corner, where several mirrors are place in a rounded wall, a couple of other mirrors on wheels to the side. The lighting is bright but warm, and even though the area is sparse and almost clinical, the few flourishes scream luxury.

  Velvet chairs to the side that would look ridiculous if they were anywhere else, a cream silk curtain that looks almost liquid, an antique table with some drinks on it that appears tastefully chosen so as not to clash with the modern look of the shop; even the chromed steel of the mirrors exudes an imposing refinement.

  “Well, hello there,” says a man so short I don’t notice him until he steps out from behind one of the clothing racks.

  He’s wearing a patterned sweater tied over his shoulders and glasses so thick-rimmed they look almost industrial. With his meticulously shaped gray hair and large eyes, he looks like the result of an illicit love affair between a dwarf and a pixie. He also exudes a combination of self-assuredness and friendliness that’s rare to see—most doctors are self-assured but cocky, and sometimes they’re downright dismissive. Not this guy.

  I decide I like him instantly. “Hi! I love your sweater,” I tell him.

  “Aren’t you delightful!” he exclaims as he leans in for a double-cheek air kiss that’s so quick I barely react. “I’m Paul. I’ll be your consultant.”

  “Hazel,” I tell him warmly. “I’m so glad to meet you. And this is Nate.”

  “Oh my,” he says, clasping hands and looking ravenously at both of us. “What a couple… Fabiana—you’ve put out some drinks?”

  “Yes, Mr. Magnelli,” the catlike woman says before turning to us. “What would you like?”

  “Just water,” Nate says, already moving to settle on one of the chairs to the side.

  “I’ll have the same, thanks,” I say.

  Paul lets out a humorously loud sigh, scrutinizes my figure intently, then says, “Ah, the pleasures you give up to look that good…tell me, what are you looking for today?”

  I glance back quickly at Nate but he offers no help, so I turn back to Paul and say, “We’re going to a wedding on Saturday.”

  “A friend or an acquaintance,” Paul asks, like this is a critical question.

  “An e
x-boyfriend,” I say with a meek smile.

  Paul leans in like he’s utterly enraptured suddenly. “Is that so? Are you on good terms?”

  I glance back at Nate again, but he’s got nothing except a smile to offer.

  “No?” I say.

  “Ah!” Paul says, his entire face lighting up. “So we’re looking to upstage a bride!” Paul turns to Fabiana. “I had a feeling today was going to be fun.”

  She returns a feline smile.

  “No, no,” I say quickly. “I don’t want to upstage anyone—I don’t even know the bride.”

  “I see…” Paul says, his animated face tightening in concentration. “But we’re surely looking to make the groom regret his decision a little, no? Show him what he’s missed out on?”

  I laugh and shrug, feeling too silly to offer an answer either way. Paul smiles, taking that as an answer in itself.

  “Enjoy your waters,” he says. “I’ll be back in a moment.”

  A minute later, Paul returns with a whole rack of bright, beautiful dresses, skirts, and tops. Fabiana pushes a trolley of incredible heeled shoes behind him. Any lingering worries I had that Paul, this strange shop, or the whole idea of “shopping by appointment” was a bit silly or ludicrous goes out the window as soon as I see the clothes. It feels like some kind of mind-reading trick that Paul’s pulled off, in choosing colors and cuts that immediately draw me to touch and look further.

  Soon I’m pulling clothes off and running into the dressing room to change multiple times, laughing with Paul as he flatters me and I prance in front of the mirrors and have the most fun since I last played dress-up in my mom’s clothes as a kid. Occasionally I catch Nate’s intense stare in the reflection—eyes undressing me no matter the outfit—as if this whole show was just for him. Each time it sends brief butterflies through my stomach, and makes my already excited skin shiver at whatever he seems to be imagining so vividly.

  “I like the blue,” I say, looking at myself doubtfully in a little red A-line dress.

  “And the blue likes you,” Paul says, looking at me with pursed lips. “I can tell you wear too much blue. No. The red. Trust me. There are two million women in this city and maybe five of them can wear red like you.”