I’d had to cancel on dinner with Alexis. I couldn’t explain to her why I was suddenly honor bound to be somewhere else tonight, so I just told her the
second truth. I had a date with a hot guy. She was more than happy to go home early on those grounds. Plus I think she missed Daniel.
I ran home after work and got ready. Alexis had done Benny’s dialysis for me before she left, which was perfect because I was on a tight turnaround. I picked a cute gray top with some jeans. Did my hair and makeup, and Jacob picked me up in a black F-150 at exactly eight o’clock.
I was going to do anything he needed to make this fake-girlfriend thing work. I was about to put on an Oscar-worthy performance the likes of which Hollywood has never seen. I was so committed I would tattoo his name across my boob. Pose for fake engagement photos if he wanted them. Hell, I’d fake a damn wedding.
I saw him arrive in the Ring Doorbell, so when Jacob came up the walkway to get me, I was already coming out. I didn’t want to invite him in to see the time capsule I currently lived in.
“Hey,” I said, squeezing out the crack in the door and closing the screen behind me.
“Hey. Ready to go?”
He was wearing jeans and a thin black V-neck sweater with the sleeves rolled up. Very handsome.
“I brought a bottle of wine,” I said, holding up a chardonnay.
“They’ll love that,” he said, slipping his hands in his pockets. He looked a little nervous. His jaw was tight.
I peered around him at his truck. Lieutenant Dan had his head out the open back window.
“You brought your dog!”
Jacob looked over his shoulder. “Yeah. I take him everywhere.”
I jogged down the walkway to pet him with Jacob following behind me. “He’s so cute,” I said, ruffling the dog’s head. He wagged his tail and
made an excited puppy noise. “I didn’t really take you for a truck guy,” I said, scratching Lieutenant Dan’s ear.
Jacob was smiling a little, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “I’m fixing up the cabin. I needed the bed.”
He looked at his watch. “We should get going. I think we’re going to be the last ones there.”
“Okay.”
He opened my door for me and then went around to the driver’s side and got in.
“So where’s your parents’ house?” I asked, getting buckled. “Edina,” he said, firing up the engine.
I nodded. “Hmmm. Fancy.” Probably a nice house. Not like where I
lived.
The outside of my house was just as ugly and dilapidated as the inside. The lawn was all crabgrass and cracked walkway and old paint. I was sort of glad Jacob didn’t say anything about it.
“Where do your parents live?” he asked, making a left out of my neighborhood.
“My mom lives in Arizona with her new husband, Gil. I don’t have a relationship with my dad. This is good,” I said. “Ask me more questions.
We should try to know as much about each other as we can before we get there.”
“Good idea.”
“So how did we meet?” I said. “They’ll probably ask us.”
“I told them I moved hospitals to be closer to my girlfriend. So that means we had to have met a few months ago and we couldn’t have met at Royaume.”
“Okay. Why don’t we say that Benny came into your ER at Memorial West and that’s how we met.”
He nodded. “I like that. But let’s not say which ER so technically it’s the real story. I think we should try and stick to the truth as much as we can. Keep things as simple as possible.”
“I agree. Do they know you’re donating a kidney?” I asked, looking over at him.
He shook his head. “I wasn’t going to tell them. But only because I didn’t want it to get back to you. My mom is friends with Jessica. And Zander. And Gibson.”
“Are you going to tell them now?”
He shrugged. “I guess I could,” he said, getting on the freeway. “No reason to hide it from them at this point. Hey, are you allergic to nuts?” he asked.
“No. How about you? Any food allergies? Stuff you don’t like?”
“I hate well-done eggs. Can’t stand the smell. And I don’t like dill. Other than that, there isn’t much I won’t try. What about you?”
“I think yogurt is gross. And cantaloupe makes my throat itch.”
“No yogurt, no cantaloupe.” He glanced at me. “So what time do I need to have you back? Are you doing Benny’s dialysis?”
“My best friend did it for me before she left.” I smiled. “Benny was gone before I got home. He’s out with friends celebrating. He shaved and everything. There was beard hair all over the sink. I didn’t think I’d ever be so excited to have to clean that shit up again.”
“He doesn’t clean up his own beard hair?” he asked, changing lanes.
“Does any man? I mean, you guys think you do. You do the wet-toilet- paper wipe-down thing and call it a day.”
“I actually do clean up my beard hair,” he said.
“Uh-huh. I’ll believe it when I see it. Which reminds me, what’s your house like? I should probably know.”
“Small. One-bedroom and a room for plants.” “For plants?”
“I like plants,” he said. “Do you like plants?”
“I mean, yeah. As long as it’s not me taking care of them. I’ve killed a cactus.”
“Did you overwater it?”
“I didn’t water it at all. I forgot it existed. My kitchen windowsill is more uninhabitable than a desert, apparently.”
He looked amused.
We drove for a few more minutes and pulled into a nice neighborhood. Lieutenant Dan got up and put his face between us to look out the windshield like he knew where he was.
“Do you come to your parents’ house a lot?” I asked, petting the dog. “We’re a close family. I go there, they come over.”
He rubbed his forehead and I eyed him. “Are you okay?”
He let out a breath. “Just getting a little headache. Grinding my teeth.”
Then he did a sudden double take out the windshield. He pulled the truck over immediately and put it in park.
“What’s up?” I asked.
“I have to get something.” He pulled some rubber gloves and a trash bag from the glove box.
“Uh…what do you have to get?” I asked, looking around the street he’d stopped on. It was residential. Nothing of note.
“I’ll be right back.”
He got out, and I turned to watch him come around the rear of the truck. I stared perplexed as he crouched and started looking at a raccoon carcass in the gutter. He was lifting the arms and turning it over. Then he put it into his trash bag.
I rolled down my window. “Uh, they have people who take care of that?” “It’s fresh, it’s a good one,” he called.
“Okay? And that’s important why?”
He tossed it in the bed of the truck and came back around to the driver’s side and got back in, peeling off his gloves. “Sorry. I needed to get that for my dad.”
I stared at him. “You needed to bring your dad an unalive raccoon,” I deadpanned.
He put on his seat belt. “My dad’s a taxidermist. He’s been looking for a good raccoon to mount.”
I blinked at him. “And you couldn’t have led with that so I wasn’t afraid I was on a drive with a serial killer?”
He glanced at me and just now seemed to notice the look on my face. “I’m sorry. That was weird.” He looked a little embarrassed. “I should have explained it before I got out. Sorry. I just…I’m nervous and when I’m nervous I…I sometimes miss steps.”
He had his hat-in-hand, puppy-dog look again. That vulnerable expression like he’d done something wrong.
I felt my face soften. “Don’t be nervous. We’ve got this. It’s going to be fine.”
He looked at me like he didn’t believe me.
“It will. And don’t worry about the raccoon thing. To be honest, this isn’t even the creepiest thing I’ve ever had happen on a date. You’re all good.”
He laughed despite himself. Then he went a little serious again and looked away from me. “I don’t want you to think that I do this often.”
“Roadkill?”
He came back to me. “No. Lie to my family.”
I pivoted in my seat to look at him straight on. “Jacob, you do not need to tell me what kind of person you are. I know.”
He gazed at me a long moment. That quiet, thoughtful look he gave me sometimes, and I realized that behind that expression was probably the wheels of his brain, working overtime. Trying to assess the situation, worrying, overthinking like I knew Benny always did. His anxiety pinging around. A clawing internal panic nobody else could see.
But I could see it. Because I’d seen it in my brother his whole life.
I think that’s why Benny’s diagnosis was so hard on my brother. He wasn’t just living what was happening. He was living what might happen. An infinite number of what-ifs, fueled by his anxiety, each one experienced like they were going on simultaneously, eating away at him, terrifying him, tormenting him. And once he started down that path, it was so hard to stop the progression. It was a self-perpetuating cycle of emotional destruction.
One that Jacob’s selfless gesture had knocked off its trajectory.
Jacob had given Benny a reason to stop the inside screaming and look at just one way forward instead of all the possible worst-case scenarios his brain could conjure. He’d given him hope. And in doing that, he gave his restless mind peace.
And I could see, in this one quiet moment in this truck, that the screaming was going on inside of Jacob. He didn’t have to say a word for me to know it. He was worried what was going to happen with his family today. He was worried what I thought of him. He was dealing with the fact that his ex was marrying his brother, and he was probably afraid we’d get caught in this lie.
I decided right then and there that my job was going to be to quiet it all down. I would be a buffer. An emotional support person. I would throw myself over him like a bulletproof vest. Wrap him up in my protection.
“Look, everything is going to be okay,” I said. “We’re ready. My cheekbones are contoured. We’ve got wine and the dead thing…”
The corner of his lip quirked up the tiniest bit.
“We’re going to smile, and eat, nobody is going to know what we’re doing, and it’s going to be fine. Trust me.”
He let out a long breath through his nose. “Okay.”
This time he seemed to believe it. Or at least he appeared to want to believe it.
He drove us another few blocks, and we pulled up in front of a nice two- story house with half a dozen cars parked in the driveway. He sat staring up at the home through the windshield.
“It’s going to be chaos in there,” he said almost to himself. “Okay. I’m good in chaos.”
“I’m not,” he mumbled.
I cocked my head at him. “Do you want to play a game?” He arched an eyebrow. “A game?”
“Yeah. I think you’ll like it. I used to play it with Benny when we’d go to stuff like this.”
“Okay…”
“I give you a catchphrase. And you have to work it into a conversation. The second you do, you’re allowed a time-out from peopling. We go sit on the stairs with the dog or something.”
He eyed me. “A catchphrase? Like what?”
I twisted my lips and looked sideways. “Liiiike, ‘Not on my watch,’” I said in a fake British accent.
He smiled a little.
“Benny liked it because it gave him a goal and it forced him to talk to people.”
He seemed thoughtful. “All right. I’ll try it.”
“Sweet!” I got unbuckled. “Any last-minute tips?”
“Yeah, don’t give Grandpa any cigarettes, no matter what he says. He’s very convincing. And do not under any circumstances bring up sex toys to my mom. You will never escape the conversation. No one will be able to save you.”
“Uh, I somehow don’t think sex toys are going to come up while I’m talking to your mom.”
“I think you’d be surprised how easily she works it in,” he muttered. He put his shoulder to the door and got out to get Lieutenant Dan.
I grabbed my purse and met him around the front of the truck. “Should we hold hands?” I asked, my voice low. “Like, coming up the walkway? In case someone’s looking out the window or there’s a Ring Doorbell or something?”
He shook his head. “I don’t think you should have to touch me as part of this deal. I think we can pull this off without it.”
“I don’t mind it.”
He shook his head. “I think we’ll be all right.”
When we got to the front door, he didn’t knock. It was unlocked and he let us in. It was like stepping into a Dave & Buster’s. Music, laughing, kids screaming, a video game turned up too loud, a blender running. The warm smell of cooking food.
A parrot flew through the vestibule and I ducked. “Whoa!”
It landed on top of the coatrack and squawked, “MOTHERFUCKER!” at the top of its lungs.
“Sorry,” Jacob said, already looking flustered. “That’s Jafar.”
Then two children darted to us from out of nowhere. “Uncle JJ!” they called in unison.
Jacob smiled and crouched to catch them in a bear hug and hoist them up. The kids wrapped their arms around Jacob’s neck. “What socks?”
Jacob smiled, his honey eyes creasing at the corners. “Frogs, like you said.”
“Yay!”
He turned so they could see me. “Carter, Katrina, this is Briana.” The little boy looked over at me. “Hello.”
I smiled. “Hi.”
The little girl peered at me curiously. “You’re pretty.” “Thank you,” I said. “I like your necklace.”
She didn’t reply. They wiggled out of Jacob’s arms like they’d exchanged some unspoken agreement to take off. They hit the floor and were gone, yelling like town criers that Uncle JJ was here with some girl with long hair.
Jacob looked at me. “Those are Jewel and Gwen’s twins. And that’s going to be the easiest introduction of the night.”
“The animal-socks thing is very cute,” I said.
“Sometimes they can’t agree, and I have to wear two different ones.”
I laughed.
Then adults started streaming into the vestibule. They came down the hallway in a wave of humanity and fanned out around me, all smiles and excited greetings.
I could practically feel Jacob’s body tense next to me, and I had a knee- jerk urge to reach over and squeeze his hand to let him know I was okay, but I didn’t get the chance because they edged him out to get close to me. I was completely surrounded. A cat started rubbing on my legs, the twins skipped around the throng, and Jafar squawked obscenities from the coatrack as people started shaking my hand, introducing themselves faster than I could keep up.
A young, pretty girl named Jane in a pink sundress. Jewel, who I’d already met; her wife, Gwen, a blue-haired Asian woman with a nose ring. Jill, a petite woman with Jacob’s auburn hair in capri pants and a conservative white blouse, and her burly husband, Walter, a Black man wearing a T-shirt for a pit-bull rescue. An old man on oxygen in an electric wheelchair rolled in and bumped into my leg and then sat there glaring up at me in silence. Someone introduced him as Grandpa. He ignored me when I said hello.
The man who I assumed was Jacob’s dad hovered behind the crowd like he was waiting for the chaos to settle before he said hi. And then an older woman in a flowing paisley top with dangling earrings and arms full of jingling bell bracelets parted the crowd and came right in for a hug.
I’d say that all of this would be overwhelming, except that when Mom took us back to El Salvador to visit, I did this exact thing times a hundred at every single family gathering. It took a full hour just to walk around and say hi to all my cousins and their families. This was nothing. And the rules were universal and simple: You smiled, acknowledged everyone, and asked
how you could help with whatever they were doing. I knew how to handle this and was completely relaxed. But a glance at Jacob told me he was on the verge of a panic attack on my behalf. I gave him a reassuring smile over his mom’s shoulder before she pulled away.
“I’m Joy,” the woman said, grinning warmly at me. She looked a little familiar, but I couldn’t place it. Maybe she just looked like Jacob? “It’s such a pleasure to meet you,” she said.
I smiled. “You too.”
The older man made his move as the rest of the crowd started to disperse back into the house. He came up next to his wife. “I’m Greg, Jacob’s dad. So pleased to have you.”
Jacob looked a lot like his dad. They sort of had the same mellow energy.
I nodded to Jacob, who had stepped in to stand next to me now that there was room. “We picked up a raccoon for you on the way over,” I said.
Greg lit up. “You did?”
“It’s in the truck,” Jacob said.
His dad rubbed his hands together. “Well, let’s get it.”
Greg edged past me and left out the front door with Jacob, leaving me with Grandpa, the dog, and Joy.
A timer went off somewhere.
Joy looked toward the sound. “Oh, I need to go pull that.” She gestured for me to follow. “Come on, we’ll get you a drink,” she said, already heading down the hall with Lieutenant Dan at her heels.
I snapped my fingers. “Shoot,” I said, remembering. “We left the wine in Jacob’s truck. Let me run and grab that real quick.”
“Okay. Kitchen’s down this hallway,” she called, still walking. Then she disappeared around a doorway and I was alone with the old man.
I smiled at him and he glared at me. “Give me a cigarette or I’ll tell Jacob you’re hittin’ on me. You got five minutes.”
I choked on a laugh. “What?”
“One cigarette and you roll me out to the gazebo and cover for me.” I shook my head at him. “Sir, you are on oxygen.”
“What the hell is it to you? I’m gonna kick the bucket anyway! I’m half dead already. One cigarette. If you get me a whole pack, I’ll give you my Purple Heart.”
I had to fight to keep my face straight. “I’m afraid I can’t do that for you.”
He narrowed his watery eyes.
Just then Jacob let himself back into the vestibule holding the wine from the truck. His dad wasn’t with him. Grandpa jabbed a finger at me. “She’s hittin’ on me!”
Jacob paused, looking back and forth between us.
“It’s true,” I said. “He’s handsome. I can’t help myself.”
The old man scowled. He made a little fake lunge at me with his chair. Then he turned, pinning me with an impressive nonblinking glare, and left the room.
I turned to my fake date and smiled. This was seriously so much fun. Jacob set the wine down on the bench by the door, looking exhausted.
“I’m sorry.”
I laughed. “For what?”
“That?” He nodded in the direction Grandpa had wheeled off in. “Who says he’s lying?”
He let out a snort.
“I told you it was going to be a lot,” he said.
“Jacob, I have twenty-two first cousins in El Salvador,” I said, taking off my shoes and setting them next to everyone else’s. “This is nothing. You should just relax.”
I nodded to the way he came. “You should go do stuff with your dad or something. Skin your dead raccoon. I’ll hang out with your mom in the kitchen.”
He shook his head. “No. I don’t want to leave you alone with them.” “What’s gonna happen?”
He slipped his hands into his pockets and peered at me wordlessly, and I imagined those wheels turning again, running through every scenario that could possibly end in disaster.
“Okay,” I said. “Then come with me. But chill out. I’m having a good time.”
He clearly didn’t believe me.
I sighed. I was glad I’d made tonight work because if this was too much, the next one with the brother and the ex would have been a disaster.
This place was an introvert’s nightmare for sure. Loud, overcrowded. Lots of social expectations crammed into a tiny window of time coupled with the stress of introducing a new person to his family. The worry that we wouldn’t pull off this charade.
The next time he wouldn’t have that pressure because we will have gotten it out of the way. He’d still have to deal with all the rest of it, but at least the two of us would have worked out the kinks of this arrangement by then.
I nodded to the house. “Come on. Give me a tour.”
I suggested this on purpose to give him a chance to decompress before we joined the group again. I could tell immediately it was the right thing. He let out a breath that sounded relieved and nodded for me to follow him.
The house was enormous. I got the feeling it was the family hub. It was built for entertaining. The basement had a full bar and so did the pool. There was a water slide and a pool house with a nice outdoor BBQ. They had a movie room and a very comfy, very large living room where the twins were playing on a PlayStation. A big dining room with a table that seated twenty and lots of guest rooms.
“Did you ever live here?” I asked as we strolled past the open door of a guest room strewn with the twins’ toys.
“I grew up here.”
“Ohhhh,” I said, turning to smile at him. “Show me your room.” “It’s not the same as when I was a kid. Dad uses it now,” he said. “I still want to see it.”
I stopped at a bookshelf off the hallway. There were framed photos tucked in with the books—a picture of Jacob in eighth grade. His hair stuck up every which way and he had braces and an overbite.
Damn. Puberty hit this man like a bus. The glow up was unreal.
“Oh, look at that,” I said, spotting a book I knew. “Love Shows Up. I read this.” I tapped the spine.
“Mom wrote that.” I froze. “What?”
“She’s a couples counselor and sex therapist. Bestselling author. She has a PhD in clinical sexology. She’s also a board-certified OB-GYN.”
I turned slowly to stare at him in horror. Then I hustled him into the nearest room and closed the door behind us.
“Please tell me you’re kidding,” I whispered. He blinked at me in confusion.
“Your mom is Dr. J. Maddox? A world-renowned relationship expert? Are you serious, Jacob? You didn’t feel like this was something you should
have mentioned?”
He looked positively baffled.
I shook my head at him. “It is literally her job to call bullshit on us.” “I told her we were new—”
“Jacob, I don’t even know what your penis looks like.” “Well, I’m not showing it to you—”
“I’m not asking! I’m making a point!”
I put a hand to my chest. “I thought I was gonna get here and your dad was going to call me Brenda or Bianca the whole time and they’d make small talk with me and then I’d go home and we’d have three more weeks before the engagement party to perfect our act. And instead we’re in a two- hour couples-counseling consultation with a bestselling sex expert. She’s going to take one look at me and know I’ve never seen you naked. She’s gonna see it all over my face!” I looked at him bleakly.
He seemed to mull this over. “Maybe we haven’t had sex yet. Maybe we’re taking it slow.”
I shook my head. “No. No way. We’ve definitely had sex. You supposedly moved to Royaume to be closer to me and we haven’t even slept together yet? How is that in any way believable? The whole point is to make them think we’re super into each other. How are you going to be over Amy if you’re not having hot, kinky sex with your new girlfriend?!”
He started smiling. “This isn’t funny!” “It’s a little funny.”
“No! And what is this room?!” I asked, throwing my arms out.
A thousand marble eyes stared out at me. It was full of taxidermy.
FULL. And it was weird.
A squirrel in a cowboy hat and chaps riding a turtle. A white mouse dressed in a wizard robe and glasses reading a book, a rabbit with antlers, a ferret in a little bathtub scrubbing his back with a loofa. A dead coyote dressed like Flo from the Progressive commercials. She had the bouffant haircut and red lipstick and everything. It was pretty hilarious, but still.
“This is my old room. This is Dad’s stuff,” Jacob said. “It’s where he keeps his novelty pieces.”
I bounced back to the problem at hand. “This is a catastrophe, Jacob,” I whispered. “What if your mom sends me a friend request on Instagram? There’s not one picture of us together. It literally looks like I didn’t exist until today.” I shook my head. “We just walked in here like renegades. I don’t know enough about you to pull this off. I don’t even know how old you are. Do you sleep with the fan on? How do you take your coffee? Do you snore?”
“I’m thirty-five. I sleep with the fan,” he said calmly. “Decaf when my anxiety is high, cream and sugar, and not that I am aware.”
I shook my head at the gorgeous, oblivious man standing in front of me, who was totally not getting the gravity of this situation. “You said your mom knows Jessica?” I asked.
“Yes. And Zander and Gibson.”
“We’re going to have to be together in front of everyone. We’re going to have to maintain that we’re dating at work. I’ll have to tell Benny. We’ll need to disclose the relationship to HR.”
His face fell.
“It’s fine, I’m okay with it,” I said. “It’s just bigger than I thought.” Hopefully Jessica didn’t talk to Joy too much and the jump from I Hate
Him to I’m in Love with Him didn’t come up.
“We’re going to have to step up our game, Jacob. Big time. In your mom’s book she said intimacy is in the small things,” I whispered. “It’s putting a hand on my lower back when we walk into a room or facing in my direction when we’re together. You’re going to have to touch me. You have to do it on purpose, but it has to look like you’re not even thinking about it, like touching me is just natural for you because you like it. And I’m going to have to do the same thing.”
He put his hands in his pockets. “Okay…”
“We’re going to need to spend a lot more time together,” I whispered. “If your mom doesn’t call bullshit by the end of the night, Amy will in three weeks if we don’t get good at this. I’m going to need to see your house. You’re going to need to see…mine.” I gulped on the last word. “You have to have lunch with me every day.”
I thought I saw the corner of his lip twitch.
“Maybe you should come up to the cabin,” he suggested. “YES. All the things.”
I let out a slow breath. “God. No wonder you warned me about sex toys.” Though I might actually want to talk to her about that…
I’d read Joy’s book. Twice. It was good. She knew her stuff. It was also the book that made me realize how little I’d been getting from Nick. How wrong things had been for so long. I’d thought it was me. I was trying to fix something when I didn’t know where the break was.
And then I’d found out.
“We should go back out there,” I said, chewing on my lip. Great. Now I was nervous. We both were. Perfect.
“I’m sorry. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it,” he said forlornly.
I waved him off, trying not to freak out over the fact that I was in Dr. J. Maddox’s house. Leave it to a man to completely miss the broad strokes.
He stood there for an awkward moment like he didn’t know what to do now. Then he put out a hand, offering it to me like he felt sorry that I had to take it.
I breathed a sigh through my nose at his apologetic expression. I didn’t want him to feel bad about this situation. I would have agreed to help him even if I’d known about his mom. Telling everyone I knew that I had a boyfriend was just an unexpected pivot. I hadn’t been ready for how far this performance needed to stretch. And I’d meant what I’d said outside: I didn’t mind the touching part, that wasn’t an issue for me at all.
I gave him a reassuring smile. “It’s going to be fine, Jacob. We’ll work it out.”
I slipped my hand into his waiting one and was surprised when I got the slightest flutter in my stomach at the contact.
It wasn’t the first time I’d touched him. I’d hugged him earlier in the supply closet, but this felt intimate, even though it was just for show. I felt a tiny blush creep up my neck.
I cleared my throat. “No kissing on the lips,” I whispered. “No kissing,” he agreed.
Then my “boyfriend” led me out.
