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The two of us moved into the convention hall, with its elegantly recessed lighting fixtures and ornately designed carpets. The place was packed. I took a moment to soak it all in, while she remained pressed to my side.
“Come on,” she said. “Don’t just stand there. You’re paying good money to have a fake girlfriend on your arm. Don’t you want to mingle?”
“Right.” I spotted Jon and Amelia standing over by the punch bowl, talking to some of the other guests. I made my way over to them.
“Man, they’ll let anyone in here,” I said by way of greeting.
“Stan the Man,” Jonathon said, turning toward me. When he saw I had a woman on my arm, he wasn’t surprised. I mean, it’s not the first time I’ve shown up with a strange woman on my arm. “Glad you could make it.”
“You’re still putting up with this clown?” I asked his wife.
“Yes, he hasn’t managed to get rid of me yet.” She put her hand on his shoulder and squeezed gently. Her eyes focused on Ivy. “Who’s your friend?”
“Oh, this is my date, Ivy,” I said.
“So nice to meet you,” Ivy said. “Jonathon, I believe we’ve run into each other at the office.”
“We have, but I confess I didn’t recognize you at first.” Jonathon looked confused. You see, Ivy was hanging on me like we were real, real familiar with each other. She laughed at all the right times, gave me flirtatious looks, and kept taking every opportunity to touch me she could.
It reminded me of the way my parents had been before things got bad. Always lovey-dovey, hanging on each other. That bothered me more than a little.
But I had to admit, it felt good to have her being so casually affectionate. Damn good.
It felt so good, in fact, that somewhere in the back of my brain a thought started bouncing around like a bullet fired at lightspeed. What if—crazy as it sounded—Ivy was more than just a pretend girlfriend? What would that be like?
I found myself thinking about it just a little bit too long, and a little bit too hard.
Chapter Ten
Ivy
The baby shower felt surreal, a mythical fairyland where I could pretend to be something I wasn’t. Two somethings, really. Affectionate, and Stan’s girlfriend.
Some of the men I dated before I started my fake relationship complained that I was somewhat cold or distant. I do recall walking ahead of them in public and fending off their PDAs. I figured maybe I was a person who was only affectionate on rare, intimate times.
Yet, there I was, clinging to Stan like he was a life preserver and I was in a stormy sea. And I made it look good, too. There’s no way he could have said I didn’t earn my money on that night.
Yet I felt like I wore a suit of inverted spikes. Every hug, every cheek pinch, every playful bounce of a lock of hair tortured me on the inside. A little voice kept yelling at meLiar. Liar. Liar.
Halfway through the night, I found a way to shut that voice up. I started to enjoy myself. Or maybe, I just finally admitted to enjoying myself. It felt good to have people think I was Stan’s girlfriend. It felt good to pretend like I was. I liked hanging off him. I liked it when he snaked his arm around my waist and pulled me into him.
The voice stopped calling me a liar. Instead, it started warning me I was going to get hurt, and bad, when this whole fake relationship thing ended. I tried to shut it up by insisting that Stan was an overgrown frat boy, a man child who was great between the sheets but not my type in the streets.
It didn’t work. Mostly because Stan wasn’t acting like the party animal I’d heard so many stories about before I even met him. He played his part too, I supposed. I had to keep reminding myself that the things he said, the adoring looks, and his light touches were nothing but a ruse. It was important that I not get carried away.
That was what I told myself about halfway through the night. By the end, I’d stopped reminding myself it was fake and just sort of leaned into the performance by pretending it wasn’t a performance at all.
It really made my head swim that I was an actor pretending to be Stan’s girlfriend who pretended to be Stan’s girlfriend in her own head to make the performance better. Or maybe to comfort myself. Or both.
At one point, Stan asked me to dance, and of course I said yes. I was his ‘girlfriend,’ after all, and what girlfriend doesn’t want to dance with her boyfriend?
The slow dance came with lower lightning, which lent an air of intimacy. It got real uncomfortable, staring into Stan’s intense gaze. There was a moment I thought he was going to blurt out he loved me for real. There was a moment when I really wanted him to.
I had to ground myself again, so I shook it off and verbally reminded both of us that this wasn’t a real thing.
“Do you think they’re buying it?” I asked with a smile for performance’s sake.
“What?” He blinked several times and didn’t seem to comprehend what I’d asked.