A Model Fiancé

by Kaye, Nikky

  “How-how did you—?”

  “Serial number on the inside,” she said matter-of-factly as she clicked on the mouse.

  For the first time, I was eager to take the ring off. Engraved on the inside of the band was the designer’s name. I dropped it on the bed, my fingers burning as if the metal had just been forged. Shit, that wasn’t silver, was it? It was probably platinum or Kryptonite or something.

  My heart whooshed in my ears, speeding up like I was about to have a panic attack. I wriggled back on the bed, my back against the sofa cushions and my arms wrapped around my raised knees.

  Dev got me a real ring for our fake engagement. An authentic, designer, unbelievably extravagant diamond ring.

  I stared at it on the rumpled covers before me like I was watching the big shiny ball drop in Times Square on New Year’s Eve. It was close enough in size and sparkle, actually.

  If I’d thought the “I love you” exchange was dizzying… that was nothing, compared to now. It didn’t make sense. A chill went through me. Not trusting myself was bad enough, but now I didn’t even understand was Dev was thinking.

  I stood up suddenly, wanting to get away from the bed that we’d made love on, the ring, the computer, Shannon’s fading voice—

  “Damn, Audrey, you look like you’re going to—”

  Faint? Yes.

  23

  Dev

  I missed Audrey.

  Despite my prediction (promise?) of traveling around the world together, my exclusivity clause with Hessa had slowed down my schedule. Great, I thought. More time with my fiancée, right?

  But no, Audrey had found a passion—not me, incidentally—and had been burning through those gifted air miles to take pictures of the world. She was hopping around so much that I almost wondered if Brett had thrown her out of the house.

  I had to follow her on Instagram to keep up with her. Hashtag irony.

  Being with her at Thanksgiving was… amazing, but something had shifted. And it wasn’t just that I told her I loved her. If I didn’t know that she loved me back, I would have said she was... well, avoiding me.

  Before Christmas, Brett told me they were going on a delayed honeymoon. My parents had decided to goon a cruise, so I’d thought Audrey would come to LA and spend the holiday with me. Instead, she told me she was going to Vienna.

  “Vienna?” I held my phone out and stared at it, like maybe I’d misheard her and she was going to text me the right location. Like my location.

  “Yeah,” her voice came through the tiny speaker, “Like the little sausages.”

  I laughed, but if we’d been on FaceTime, she would have known at once it was fake.

  Thankfully, I was good at faking things.

  The excitement in her voice was obvious as she talked about mulled wine and Christmas markets. Every time I talked to her she was discovering a new place.

  Montreal. Mexico City. Malta.

  For someone who’d never traveled before, she sure was making up for it now. Audrey was clocking an impressive amount of time in the air, hotels, on trains—everywhere but by my side.

  So when I woke up in my apartment on Christmas Day, I felt lonely and wooden in more ways than the usual morning kind. Normally I was a pretty positive person, but now I was grumpy and damn close to feeling sorry for myself.

  Of course, I was happy that Audrey was discovering herself and enjoying this new freedom, but… damn it. The last text I sent her popped up in a different color, indicating that it hadn’t been “delivered.”

  When I called her, it went straight to voice mail. “Hi, baby. I just wanted to say Merry Christmas.” Pause. “It looks like you’re having a good time.” At least, according to her Instagram it seemed that way, but I’m not bitter at all. “Um, call me when you get this.”

  I spent the morning in bed, drinking coffee and reading, until the sunshine that spilled through the window disappeared behind clouds. My phone remained silent. So I drove to the beach, hoping that the cool wind would clear my head. Bad decision. Brooding in a leather jacket on a winter beach had drawn tourists to me like flies. I probably looked like a cologne commercial come to life.

  “Dev, where’s your girlfriend?” one woman asked slyly as I posed for a photo with her. My lips were tight in a fake smile as I tried not to roll my eyes. Seriously, who carries selfie sticks around with them?

  Fuck if I know. “She’s at home,” I lied, ‘smizing’ at the little group of fans. “She kicked me out, said she had a surprise for me.”

  “Awww.”

  I’d smiled and posed for a few more pictures before stalking back to my car, even more unreasonably frustrated than before.

  Bah humbug.

  I tapped my hands on the steering wheel, thinking. The beach was out. The mall was out. Wandering the 405 and risking road rage was probably a bad idea, too.

  So I made a worse decision—enjoying a little too much holiday spirit at a dive bar in Loz Feliz. I shouldn’t have stayed as long as I did, but… In my defense, I thought it was a farm-to-table restaurant. The sign outside advertised a “Wild Turkey Holiday Dinner” after all. On the plus side nobody recognized me. When I went to Uber myself home, though, I realized with horror that my phone was missing.

  “Fuuuuck.” My elbows soaked up a tiny puddle of whiskey on the bar as I dropped my head in my hands.

  The phone wasn’t in my car. No hidden pockets. Did I drop the damn thing on the beach? When I got home, I could probably use my laptop to find it, but in the meantime I had to ask the bartender to call me a cab. No way was I driving home. With my luck I’d hit a tree then jump off a bridge, only to be rescued by an angel named Clarence.

  Twenty-four hours later, I found myself sitting on the couch and sulking. Since the Pacific Ocean swallowed my phone, I spent half the day setting up a new one. I’d left Audrey a message letting her know that I’d had to get a new phone, but she still hadn’t called or texted me back.

  What the hell? Was she ghosting me?

  Part of me was angry. Most of me was getting worried. Audrey wasn’t the kind of girl to blow someone off like that, was she? Maybe she was sick or injured. Shit, maybe she’d been drugged and kidnapped. Sold and trafficked.

  And now here I sat—a man with no particular set of skills.

  “Fuck this,” I suddenly said out loud and stood up.

  * * *

  The impulsive decision to fly to Europe to find my fiancée was not the best one I ever made. The cost was ridiculous, for starters. For another, Vienna was colder than I’d thought and I didn’t even remember what I’d stuffed into my duffel bag. A leather jacket over a t-shirt obviously wasn’t enough layering.

  Worse still, I realized when I arrived that she hadn’t told me where she was staying. I stood in the airport, people swarming around me, feeling like an idiot. Green signs pointed me toward a train to the city center, but where to go after that? For someone who was supposed to be a veteran traveler, I’d gone about this half-cocked. With a deep sigh, I pulled out my phone and called Brett.

  “‘Lo.”

  “Hey, man.” Quickly I calculated the time difference in my head and realized he’d probably been asleep. “Sorry if I woke you.”

  “This better be an emergency, dude.”

  Uh oh. Now I didn’t know what to say. That I had no idea where his baby sister was could be considered an emergency, or at least worrisome, so I went with a version of the truth.

  “Well, I came to surprise Audrey, but I got a new phone and lost the text where she gave me the address of her hotel. Do you have it?” There, that sounded plausible. It was mostly true and completely realistic—if Audrey had actually texted me.

  There was silence, then a rustling noise and static. “Just a sec,” he grunted.

  Inside of an hour, I was walking into a hotel that was only one step up from being a youth hostel. Was it safe? Maybe she had been abducted. I rubbed my hand over my face, wiping away fatigue and paranoia. The place was shabby but clean
, at least on the surface. No bad reviews came up on Google. I crossed my fingers we wouldn’t be having our passionate reunion on a bunk bed.

  I sat in the tiny lobby, watching people come and go. Most of them were young, probably backpackers and digital nomads. Was that what Audrey had become in only a couple of months—a digital nomad?

  It was infuriating that I had to check her social media to see what she’d been up to. Why hadn’t she called me? My mood soured further as I skimmed through her quirky pictures of Vienna, Bratislava, Budapest… Was she flying between all these places?

  Frowning, I checked on the #MrsDevSharpe hashtag and got a shock.

  Some fan of mine had posted a picture of her on a train with another man. I couldn’t see the guy’s face because another seat was in the way, but Audrey was turned towards him with an animated expression and her hands in the air.

  “Where are you, @devsharpe?” read the caption.

  The comments were all over the map, from gossip about Audrey cheating to my attempt to throw myself in the ocean in despair. Oh, for fuck’s sake!

  My growl caught a few curious looks, including one from the redheaded girl at the front desk, but I slunk down in a vintage puke-colored armchair. Disbelief numbed me as I opened Twitter to see a similarly gossipy thread there. It was like a feeding frenzy in the shark tank.

  I groaned, tilting my head back against the chair. As I closed my eyes to sort out my thoughts, I saw the girl behind the desk watching me. Fuck. It would be just my luck to be recognized right now. Hopefully, with a beanie on my head and a few days of beard growth, nobody would know me.

  “Dev?”

  I looked up to see Audrey in front of me. She wore a pea coat and a shocked look, her cheeks pink from the cold wind outside. It was like I was made of stone, still as a statue while my brain processed.

  She’s here. I’m here. She was with another guy before? But I’m here. My brain hadn’t yet untangled all the crazy thoughts and emotions roiling inside me.

  When I didn’t respond, her eyebrows drew together in a frown. Her eyes looked even bluer under a woolen hat the color of oatmeal. She took one step back and shook her head slightly as though realizing she’d made a mistake.

  “Sorry.” She spun around, mumbling something that sounded like “going crazy” under her breath as she spun around.

  I opened my mouth.

  “Audrey!”

  It was not my voice that called her name. My photographer friend Dierks was striding towards her from the door to the street. What the—?

  “Audrey!” I sprang to my feet, banging my shins against the small coffee table. My new phone clattered to the tile floor.

  “Dev?”

  “Dev?”

  The three of us stood in the lobby like some kind of awkward Mexican standoff. And then the shooting began.

  “What’s going—?”

  “I thought it was you!”

  “What are you doing—?”

  “Would you mind lowering your voices?” The pointed request from the girl behind the desk broke in.

  We were on the verge of making a scene—one that wouldn’t play well in social media. It was only when a middle-aged couple walked through the Bermuda Triangle we’d created, that the tension cracked.

  I still wasn’t sure what was happening; was Audrey here with Dierks? He had his hands shoved in his pockets and a smug smile on his face, but then again the bastard always looked like that.

  Before I could say anything I found myself with an armful of Audrey.

  “Why didn’t you tell me you were coming?”

  The chunky wool of her hat brushed against my jaw as she hugged me. When she tipped her face up, her eyes shone like sapphires. A shiver ran down my spine at the sensation of her cool fingertips on the back of my neck. I held her tightly around the waist, pulling her closer to me and further away from—well, everyone else.

  I wanted to believe that she was genuinely thrilled to see me, but when I spotted a phone being raised I flinched. Had she seen it too? I’d encouraged Audrey to smile for the cameras even if she hated it. Had I taught her so well that I couldn’t tell the difference?

  That first night in Vegas flashed through my mind, and our conversation about smiling. By now I thought I knew all of her smiles, but the one on her face right now was… different. It was the expression you give someone when you’re waiting for a response and it turns into an awkward silen—oh.

  “Um, Dev?” The light in her eyes faded. “You okay?”

  With one hand I tugged the hat off her head. It fell to the floor as I smoothed my hand over her dark hair. Her bangs were flat and damp as I pressed my forehead against hers.

  “Jesus, I missed you,” I breathed out.

  How long had it been, maybe six weeks? It felt longer.

  With a finger under her chin, I tilted her face up. She tasted like sweet red wine, cinnamon and cloves, her lips cool and dry from being outside. Just holding her in my arms, kissing her breathless, made me feel lighter in my heart.

  But as soon as it buoyed, reality dragged it down again—like my phone being sucked into a watery grave by the Malibu surf. When I went to hold her tighter, she pulled away.

  “Wait,” she panted, placing her palm against my chest. “Just a sec.”

  Over her shoulder I saw Dierks twirling Audrey’s hat around his fingers. He stood a few feet away, but watched us intently.

  Right.

  Dropping my arms from her waist, I straightened and looked my fiancée straight in the eye. “What’s he doing here?”

  “What?”

  “What do you mean, what?” Was she still dazed from my kiss? Or just in shock at seeing me? Playing dumb?

  “He means me,” Dierks said.

  At the sound of his voice Audrey spun around as though she’d forgotten he was here. My hands curved possessively over her shoulders as her back met my chest.

  “What are you doing here?” I repeated.

  “In Vienna?” His German accent shaped the word in a way that in no way reminded me of canned sausages.

  “For a start.”

  At the sharp tone of my voice, Dierks stopped playing with the hat and raised an eyebrow at me. Yeah, he knew what I was thinking. “Visiting friends,” he said slowly.

  “Audrey?”

  She tilted her head. “Yes?”

  I squeezed her shoulders. “No, baby, I’m talking about you, not to you.”

  As soon as the words left my mouth, I wanted to shove them back in—but my size twelves were in the way. Dierks smothered a laugh as Audrey elbowed me in the gut and whirled around.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  24

  Audrey

  Sure, I’d made a fool of myself gaping at Dev before—he was beautiful, plain and simple. Until now, though, I’d never noticed that he could be so… ugly, too. Of all the thoughtless, patronizing—argh! That was the sort of thing I would have expected from my ex, Darren, but not from Dev.

  Dev held his hand up. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

  “You mean like a condescending Honk?” Dierks snorted.

  I flailed a hand at him. “You’re not helping.” And what the hell is a honk?

  He came up beside me and casually wrapped his arm around my shoulder. “He thinks I could steal you from him, Schätzen.”

  I glared at Dierks and ducked away from his arm. “Not helping!”

  “I’m correct, though.”

  I threw my hands up, my gaze bouncing between the two men. “Why would he be jealous? It’s not even a real rela—” I broke off at the stony expression on Dev’s face.

  Unbelievable. He was jealous. This was a new experience for me. I’d never provoked that kind of response in a man before, but that didn’t give him an excuse to be a territorial jerk. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to jab my fingers in his throat or press my mouth to it.

  “Were you on a train together?” he snapped.

  Fingers. Definitely fingers in the th
roat. “What? Are you stalking me?”

  His fists on his hips, he stepped toward me. “I have to find out where you are from fucking Instagram! Meanwhile, you’re cavorting across Europe with my friend when I haven’t seen you for two months?”

  Dierks laughed. “Cavorting?”

  “Wait a second.” I blinked, trying to wrap my head around this. He was mad that I was with Dierks. Because he honestly thought I was cheating on him, or because I was hanging out with his friend? “What are you talking about?”

  “Someone posted a picture of you two on a train.”

  “A train,” I repeated. This conversation had officially derailed.

  “Meanwhile, I can’t even get you on the phone!”

  “Outside, bitte!” hissed the girl at the desk. “Ja?”

  “Fine.” Dev stomped to the door.

  Dierks followed, leaving me standing in shock for a moment. Had I lost track of time so completely that I hadn’t called him in…? I wasn’t sure how many days. No wonder he was upset.

  When I got outside, the chilly evening air didn’t do much to pierce my brain fog. On the sidewalk people laughed and walked around us, leaving an acrid trail of cigarette smoke in their wake. Dev and Dierks stood a parked car’s length apart, silent and staring at each other.

  “The train, Audrey?”

  “He’s talking about Salzburg,” Dierks said. “You should tell him.”

  Oh, no.

  “Tell me what?” Dev growled. He viciously yanked off his beanie then ran his hand through his mess of hair. “I swear to fucking god, if someone doesn’t start fucking explaining right the fuck now…”

  One day in India, I’d joked with Dev that his fury could be measured on the F-scale. An F3 sentence was nearing the top. But this… I didn’t know how to explain it to him. What words to use? It was just so…

  “Here,” Dierks said, reaching into his pocket, “I’ll show you pictures.”