Fake It For Me, page 13
I took a sip of whiskey. It was a ‘62 Dalmore, one of the finest in the world, and if you wanted to procure one, it would run you around a quarter of a million bucks. Being a ‘62 Dalmore, it was as “smooth” as they came, which is pretty much the word that whiskey-drinkers use when they mean “rough as hell.” The whiskey burned my throat on the way down, almost making me retch, but it warmed my stomach, and I felt it take a tiny bit of the edge off.
“Don’t drink too much of that stuff,” said a voice from behind me.
I didn’t have to turn around to see who it was - Oliver Thompson. A British exchange student who I’d gone to elementary school with. I didn’t have much in the way of friends, but Oliver was the closest thing I had to a best friend, and logically, he was the only choice for best man.
I rolled my eyes at this and drained my whiskey tumbler. “Oliver. Seriously, I’m fine. I’m not the same lightweight I was back in school, you know.”
Okay, so I’d had alcohol once or twice while I was in elementary school, so what? Everybody did it! Blame Dad for not putting a lock on his scotch cabinet!
“I don’t think you’re a lightweight,” Oliver said slowly. “But as the best man, it’s my job to get you up the aisle without passing out from alcohol poisoning. Or anything else, for that matter. How many of those have you had?”
“Two,” I lied. I’d actually had four, but I wasn’t lying when I said that I was no lightweight. I was an experienced whiskey-drinker. For that matter, I was pretty much an experienced-anything drinker.
“Well let’s not have any more, then,” Oliver said. “We’ve got more pressing matters to attend to. For example, you still haven’t decided what you’re going to wear.”
I groaned as my mind went back to the task at hand. “You’re going to have to choose for me.”
“You know I can’t do that,” it was Oliver’s turn to roll his eyes.
He was wearing a customized “groom’s men” suit, black blazer, and pants, with a vivid orange vest. Unorthodox, but I liked it.
“Should I go grey, then?” I asked.
Oliver weighed up his answers before giving them. “I personally like the blue,” he admitted.
I scoffed. “Blue is almost certainly out of the running, Oliver.”
“What’s wrong with blue suits?” Oliver protested.
“What’s right with them?” I made a face. “Blue is just…really, not my color. That’d be like wearing a blue shirt! What am I, an accountant?”
“I wish,” said a familiar voice from the other side of the door. The door swung open, and Dad stepped into the room, wearing his signature grey suit. “If you were an accountant, you might have a better head for numbers, and then you’d be able to tell the time.”
At this, he held up his pocket watch. “You know what the time is, right?”
“Dad!” I exclaimed. “I’m not dressed!”
It was true, I was dressed only in my socks and boxer briefs.
Dad scoffed at this. “Nicholas, I was there when you were born. I dressed you when you were…how do I put this…a little shit. Trust me, I’ve seen all there is to see.”
“I’m not comfortable with this conversation,” I grumbled.
“More to the point, why aren’t you dressed?” Dad arched his eyebrow. “This show is going to be on the road very soon.”
“I can’t decide what to wear,” I admitted.
Dad snorted. “You sound like a little girl before prom. I see a lot of suits around here, just put on one and go!”
“I can’t just put one on and go,” I gave Dad the privilege of air quotes as I re-filled my tumbler.
“Are you drunk?”
I sighed. “I’m glad you two are so concerned for the state of my inebriation or lack thereof, but you really needn’t bother.”
Dad was satisfied that I had my wits about me. “He’s fine. It’s impossible to be drunk and correctly say the word inebriation on the first try, ironically enough. I’ve tried it.”
“That sounds like a good story,” Oliver piped up.
“A good story for another time,” Dad agreed. “Here. Put this one on.”
He grabbed a suit carrier from the rack and thrust it at me. “Pot luck,” he said by way of explanation. “Whatever it is, go with it.”
I unzipped the carrier and peeked inside. Classic black. I winced. “This one? Are you sure? It’s a bit…plain.”
“Well, put this on it,” Oliver suggested. He went to the table and picked up a boutonnière shaped like a white Dendrobium orchid. “Splash of color, eh?”
“That might work!” I looked up at this.
A few moments later, I’d suited up, arranged my skinny tie (I don’t do fat ties) in my preferred Half-Windsor knot, and slipped the boutonnière onto my left lapel. Surprisingly, it did the trick, and the splash of color was all I needed to eradicate the “Plain Jane” look I’d been sporting in just a boring old suit.
“Looking good, Nicky,” Oliver winked at me, using the nickname from school that I had a love/hate relationship with. He squeezed my shoulders. “You’re gonna kill it out there. Now. Go get married.”
“Has there been any word from the girl’s parents?” Dad asked.
“No, Dad, they’re not coming, I told you,” I said.
“Hmm,” Dad, ‘hmmed.’ “It’s just…I find it weird that a father isn’t coming to his own daughter’s wedding.”
“Well, they couldn’t be here,” I said, eager to change the subject before Dad could take it any further. “Anyway. Let’s go. Like you said, we don’t want to be late.”
I drained my whiskey glass for the last time, set the tumbler back down next to the decanter, and took a deep breath. Time to go into the Lion’s Den.
The ceremony was over before I knew it, and as far as I could tell, nobody was any the wiser about why Sandy and I were “getting married.” I’d had my vows prepared, of course, mostly heavily laden with some spiel about how Sandy and I had bonded souls, and she was my soul mate and stuff.
I hadn’t spent any time to think about what was the truth, I just knew that that was the kind of thing that people expected to hear at a wedding. And they just ate it up.
Now that it was over, I couldn’t help but feel an overwhelming sense of relief. And I wasn’t the only one, either. Sandy was relieved too. So much so that the second she’d thrown the bouquet, we’d run from the chapel, got into my car and went straight to one of several hotels that my Dad owns. We checked in, and it wasn’t long before we were kicking back on our sofa, the endless channels of Sky Network in front of us on the TV.
“All these channels, and we still can’t decide what to watch,” Sandy was saying.
She looked quite absurd, slouched across a sofa wearing an elegant wedding dress.
“So,” I was saying casually.
“Hey, look what’s on,” Sandy said, apparently not listening. “Look, what’s on! The Princess Bride! I love that movie.”
“It’s traditional for a husband and wife to,” I went on. “You know on their wedding night. If you know what I mean.”
Sandy turned her head and gave me a look that was somewhere between amusement and suspicion. Her eyes were narrowed, her lips pursed. And in that second, she looked so unbelievably sexy. I couldn’t stop myself, and before I knew what was happening, my lips were on hers, and I could feel her breath, smell her scent.
Sandy grabbed me and kissed me back, and before I knew it, she was clawing at my clothes. I began tearing at hers in the same way, and soon, she straddled me. And the entire time, I couldn’t help but wonder if this counted. If this counted as the first time that Sandy and I had made love as husband and wife.
Chapter Seventeen
Sandy
When I awoke, I felt so warm and safe, and I couldn’t explain why. And then I remembered, and it all came flooding back. I’d gotten married yesterday. To Nick of all people! Okay, so it’d been a staged wedding. But the more I thought that the more I started entertaining the notion that perhaps it hadn’t been entirely faked!
True, we’d gotten married for business purposes. However, it had been a real ceremony, a real pastor, a real chapel. Didn’t that make it a real wedding?
I decided not to dwell too much on the in’s, outs, and mechanics of it all. We were married; I know this much because I was there, and that was all that mattered.
Phase One of my *cough-cough* master plan *cough-cough* was well underway. So that was the easy bit over, and now it was time for the hard bit to begin, so to speak. The next step would be to actually apply for the competition, but that in itself would have to wait, I realized, as I checked the time. I had just over an hour until I was officially late for work. If I’d been at home, this wouldn’t have been a problem, but I was at Nick’s Dad’s fancy hotel on the Upper East Side in Manhattan.
And that meant that time was a luxury I couldn’t afford. I swore under my breath as I remembered I didn’t have any clothes with me apart from my wedding dress, and I sure wasn’t going to walk down the street in that. I put on one of the plush bathrobes left in the en suite bathroom, just so that I wasn’t walking around naked, then borrowed Nick’s cellphone (I didn’t have mine, no pockets on a wedding dress) and called Abby on instinct.
While the phone rang, I checked up on Nick. He was still in bed, naked as the day he was born and completely out of it. He snored gently. I snickered at the thought of getting a recording of him on the phone if he was still asleep by the time I’d wrapped up my call.
When Abby answered the phone, she sounded as though she’d never heard a phone ring before.
“Hello?”
“Abby, it’s me,” I said clearly.
“Oh!” Abby exclaimed, surprised. “Why are you calling me from Nick’s phone?”
“You have mine, remember?” I prompted. “No pockets on a-”
“On a wedding dress, right, gotcha,” Abby finished. “You should have called from your phone. Then I would have pretty much known it was you. Because why would Nick be calling me if he was with you?”
That’s actually a pretty good idea, I thought inwardly. Why didn’t I think of that? “Never mind that!” I blurted. “Why do you have Nick’s number?”
“Huh?”
“You heard me,” I said. “You’ve got Nick’s number. How come?”
“He’s married to my best friend, is that not an enough reason?” Abby asked, somewhat coyly. “Anyway, what’s up? Why’d you call me?”
“Oh yeah,” I remembered. “I need you to bring me some clothes.”
“I beg your pardon?” Abby exclaimed indignantly.
“Like I said, I’ve only got my wedding dress!” I explained. “And I need to get to work, I can’t very well turn up in my dress, now, can I? So, I need you to run around to my apartment and pick me up some clothes.”
“No problem, I’m near there right now, actually,” Abby reported. “What should I bring?”
“Doesn’t matter, as long as it’s office attire.”
“So, no thongs, then?” Abby checked.
“Definitely no thongs,” I agreed. “I would have thought that that was implied, but well done for asking the question, though.”
“I’m not talking about the underwear thongs,” Abby clarified. “Obviously. You can’t wear those to an office. I mean you can, if you want, you just have to wear office clothes over them. When I say “thongs,” I was talking about flip-flops.”
“Say what now?”
“That’s what they say in Australia. You didn’t know that? Australians call them thongs, instead of flip-flops,” Abby said. “Wild, right?”
“Okay, Abby, but in the nicest way possible I don’t really give a shit what they call flip-flops in Australia,” I yawned. Then I frowned. “Wait. Since they’re in the land down under, wouldn’t that be flop-flips?”
So much for me not giving a shit. And so much for my not getting involved in petty arguments as well. That’s my fatal flaw, Abby’s always roping me into elaborate ways to waste time.
“No,” Abby challenged. “How do you say “thongs” backward?”
I thought about this for a moment. “Gnoht. So, the plural would be, what, Gnohts? That doesn’t sound too bad, actually.”
“I know, right?” Abby giggled. “You think Steve Irwin wore any Gnohts?”
I used to love Steve Irwin. Australians were internationally recognized at the hottest people on the planet anyway. Many would disagree with me on that frontier, in favor of probably the English. But what many Americans consider an “Englishman” is actually much more specifically an Englishman from London. But, speaking as someone who’s spent more than one cold, wet night in Birmingham, I can comfortably say that there’s more to the UK than the London Eye, Big Ben and the other scenes of Central London from Skyfall or whatever the latest Bond movie is.
And it’s for that reason that Australians are hotter - you can find hot Australian guys everywhere in Australia. You can probably tell I’ve put a lot of thought into this. I, however, was among those who were sad and in tears when Steve Irwin died. Seriously, I was thinking, how can you even kill an Australian zookeeper who tames crocodiles and stuff for a living?
“You remember when Steve Irwin died?” Abby was saying.
Suddenly I remembered why I was calling her. “Oh my God, Abby, stop wasting my time. You’ve got me out here talking about Australian thongs when I just need to get to work. So, hurry up and bring the clothes. Please.”
“Okay, bridezilla,” Abby murmured.
“I heard that!”
“You were supposed to!” she exclaimed. “Is the key still in the same place?”
“The same place that it’s been for the past four years,” I agreed.
“Alright,” Abby said. “Sit tight, I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
An hour and a half later, I was half-running, half-walking into work, whispering hushed apologies to all those who were owed them. I knew full-well, however, that once I got to my office, I wasn’t going to be doing any work until I could get the competition from my mind. And, of course, the only way to do that was to apply for it.
I dug out the old Lifestyle Magazine, which I’d kept in my desk, copied and pasted the details into the search engine and began the application process. I added both mine and Nick’s names, and it wasn’t long before a response email was pinging into my inbox. I double-clicked on the email and read it all the way through at top speed.
From: info@lifestylemagazine.com
To: Sandypit113@outlook.com
Subject: Screening Process
To whom it may concern,
Hi, Sandy!
My name is Elizabeth Twain, I head up Lifestyle Magazine’s PR department. I’m pleased to announce that your application has been successful and you’ve been passed onto the next round of our couples’ competition. After you’ve been vetoed by our secure screening process, you’ll be forwarded the details of the competition, such as time, place, date, etc.
Thanks for your application, and good luck in the coming days!
Kind regards,
Elizabeth Twain
PR Director
Lifestyle Magazine
I read through the email a few more times, ensuring that I hadn’t misread anything.
Okay. This…could be a problem.
So, the e-mail was notifying me that my application was successful and that Nick and I had now moved onto “the screening process.” I hadn’t realized there would be any screening process. It was…a red flag, but not necessarily alarming. At least not yet. After all, Nick and I had actually got married.
To be honest, as legitimate as our marriage may have appeared on paper, I doubted that the powers-that-be would see it that way if they were ever to discover or learn of the scheme that Nick and I had hatched here. Would we just be thrown out of the contest, or would they report us to some higher-up authorities? Now that I thought about it, this could snowball into a scandal that had the very real potential of ruining not just my career, but Nick’s too. He didn’t really have a career, mostly he just kind of hung around sponging off of his Dad, but if Nick pushed his Dad too far by sullying the reputation of High Risers (which association with someone who got fake-married for money would do), Nick’s Dad could very easily just cut him off and leave him to fend for himself to teach him a lesson.
Once again, I was getting the feeling that this whole thing was spinning rapidly out of control, and yet, it was past the time for doubts or notions of backing out. Long past.
I had a sudden brainwave - why not just do what I seemed to be always doing these days, and call Nick? His Dad was bound to have some contacts who could ensure we passed the screening process.
I took out my phone, which Abby had dropped off for me, and banged out a quick text to Nick outlining the situation. A few minutes later, maybe ten or fifteen, the reply came in.
Nick: Leave it to me.
I had to smile at this. I was almost certain that Nick loved being asked to handle situations that he could just throw money at to make them disappear, or just….not be situations any more. It was kind of like our own personal revamp of the traditional “wife asks the husband to use his big, manly man arms to open a pickle jar.”
With Nick handling the “screening process,” whatever that meant, it left me free to sit and reminisce to my heart’s content, about the night before. Before long, however, the reminiscence turned quickly into anticipation for the upcoming contest, and what might be expected of us.
It was supposedly to be revolving around interior decorating, so I considered to have an extremely big leg-up there. Because, for all intents and purposes, Elegance Refined was the best decorating firm in the city, and I worked for them. So, it may be statistically accurate to say that I was the best decorator at that competition, depending on who turned up. I doubted that it would be any big names, I would’ve heard about it already.
So, what would we be doing? If the contest really was going to be involved in and around interior decorating, then it was almost 100% certain that we would be doing some actual decorating, or maybe just the planning stages. But, for me, the planning is the best part. It’s the part that I really get to harness my creativity. I get to play around with space, with colors, with textures. With tiles, marble-flecked surfaces, metals, and different types of woods. And it’s here where my inspiration for interior decorating really comes out.
