All For Show: A Fake Boyfriend Gay Romance

by Rachel Kane

  I looked down at myself. The sharp stones had ripped my shirt. My hands and chest were a mess. I touched my cheek and winced at the pain. “Mr. Thurgood, I might need a doctor.”

  18

  Nat: Reveal Day

  On what should have been the best day of my life, I woke up in an extravagant hotel suite a little while before I had to go on television to watch the culmination of my grand plan, with a splitting headache, my mouth tasting like the dust underneath somebody’s old couch, and Rhody curled up protectively around an empty tub of ice cream on the other side of the vast bed.

  “What are you doing here?” I groaned.

  She slowly sat up and rubbed her temples. “You don’t remember? You called me. Crying and demanding I come over.”

  “I did?”

  “We ordered room service and then you kept insisting I make you martinis. So many martinis. Then we ran out of vermouth and had nothing but vodka and olive juice. Ow. I think my brain broke.”

  I looked around and clumsily patted the blankets around me, until I found my phone.

  “Oh, and you tried calling Owen about five hundred times,” she added.

  “Did he...did he call back?” I squinted at my phone’s display. No calls.

  “I’m sorry, Nat.”

  I sighed. My memories of last night were patchy, but I certainly remembered him leaving. Remembered that look on his face, like he was mustering up all his dignity and self-worth.

  “I blew it, Rhody. I absolutely blew it.” I flopped back onto the pillows.

  “Don’t be so hard on yourself. It sounds like a nightmare. What was Dr. Doom doing busting in here anyway?”

  “I should have punched him in the nose. He just kept standing there spouting this awful stuff about poor Owen, and Owen’s heart was breaking more and more with every word.”

  “You know, it’s not too late to get him back.”

  “Are you sure?” I pointed at the phone. “He’s not answering.”

  “Maybe he just needs time to cool off. It had to have been humiliating to go through that.”

  When the phone rang, we both jumped. My face stretched out into a grin as I grabbed it...then fell as I looked at the screen.

  “Hi Joan,” I said.

  “Where have you been?” she yelled. “The hotel was supposed to give you a wake-up call two hours ago so you could get here!”

  I blinked. Had I missed the call? I had been pretty dead to the world. “I’m sorry, I’m still in bed, but give me a minute--”

  “Nat, seriously, this production has already gone over by a day. At this point you are costing us serious money, every minute we can’t get you in front of the camera! You two boys quit whatever you’re up to, and get down here!”

  You two. I glanced at Rhody. Owen wasn’t here. “Okay,” I said then hung up.

  Rhody had heard. “You’re supposed to be there right now?”

  “I’m doomed. Not only do I not have a real relationship anymore, but I don’t even have the fake one I needed for the show.”

  “They already fixed your kitchen...it’s not like they’re going to take your new sink away because you sort of broke up.”

  “Yeah, it’s just I have to be all alone on national television now, with everybody asking me where my boyfriend went. There will probably be some note at the end of the show: Nat was abandoned by Owen because he was too shy and withdrawn to defend his boyfriend.”

  “I’m sure a lot of reality shows end like that.”

  “You don’t think he went to see Harris last night, do you?” I got out of bed. I was wearing the same clothes from last night, completely rumpled.

  “Oh, Nat, don’t go down that road.”

  I looked in the mirror. No way was I going to be able to look put-together enough for the cameras. “But what if he did? What if he went to Harris, and they...I don’t know.”

  “Slept together?”

  “Gross, no, I was going to say, what if they had some kind of reconciliation.” But of course, I’d been thinking about it. Harris, just oozing manipulation, pulling Owen back into his orbit. “Maybe that’s why he hasn’t called me back.”

  She walked into the enormous bathroom and washed her face. “Does it matter? He’s not here. And you don’t need to be torturing yourself. It’s going to be torture enough facing the cameras. Come on, I’ll walk home with you. No reason for you to face the shame alone.”

  “Thanks. I’m glad someone will be there.”

  “I mean technically I’m just hoping I get one last shot at talking to Joan again. But if you feel supported by it, that’s a bonus.”

  Joan raised an eyebrow when she saw us. “You do know you’re going on television, don’t you?” she said to me.

  I shoved my shirttails into my pants. “I think there’s a brush in my bag, give me a couple minutes--”

  “Where is Owen?”

  “He...he...things got complicated,” I said finally.

  She scowled. “We can’t do this without him.”

  “Maybe you could film me, and then later on if he shows up--”

  “If?”

  “Like, you could edit him in?”

  From the way her eyes rolled, I knew it had been a stupid suggestion. Hell, I’d known it was stupid the second it came to mind.

  “First,” she said, “we are not a big-budget show. We’re not going to insert a CGI boyfriend just because you were too irresponsible to get Owen to show up.”

  “I’m sorry, I--”

  “Second, you knew from the very start that this show focuses on couples, and you assured me that you would be in a couple for it! Fake relationships don’t get complicated, Nat, they’re actually very easy, because there are no emotions involved! Now, get Owen on the phone and get him down here, before I have to call the studio and let them know we’ve wasted a ton of money on an episode we can’t air! And I can guarantee you one thing, if I can’t get this episode aired, I will have Arnold go in and rip out every bit of plumbing, every appliance, every molecule of granite!”

  I gasped, and Rhody had to reach out and steady me. So that was it. It was all over. Not only had I somehow lost Owen as a boyfriend, which hurt badly enough, I was actually going to be right back where I started: Alone, lonely, in a condo I hated.

  I don’t know how to describe how hopeless I felt then. It wasn’t just moping over the loss of a kitchen. It was more symbolic than that. Like it was a metaphor for the bad choices in my life. My fear of taking risks. The way I let myself be hemmed in by shyness.

  I should have punched Harris out. I should have kicked his ass, then taken Owen in my arms and let him know everything was going to be okay. I should have been brave.

  My phone was in my pocket. With everyone staring at me, I pulled it out to try Owen one last time. I dialed, and there was no answer.

  “I don’t know where he is,” I said to Joan.

  “All right boys, let’s wrap it up,” she told the crew.

  “You’re telling me I’ve got to dismantle everything?” asked Arnold.

  “Unless you want to give Nat here the invoice,” she said.

  Mr. Thurgood was licking my hand, and I brushed him away. “Not right now,” I told him. I asked Joan, “Can’t you give me, I don’t know, an hour, two?”

  She didn’t answer, just stared at me with a look of shock.

  Mr. Thurgood whimpered at me.

  I said, “I told you, not right now!” Then I looked down. “Wait. What are you doing here?”

  He sat and wagged his stub of a tail, his tongue lolling happily. I looked back at Joan. She wasn’t staring at me. “What the hell happened to you?” she asked someone behind me. “Quick, get those cameras on.”

  As the cameras were lifted and trained on me, I turned around. “Oh...my...god.”

  Owen was hobbling up the sidewalk. If I thought I was a mess this morning, it was nothing compared to how he looked. There was a bandage on his cheek, another on the bridge of his nose. One of his ha
nds was wrapped in gauze, and he had a hospital bracelet around his wrist.

  “Are you okay?” I asked, and rushed forward. I grabbed him into my arms.

  “Lighter! Lighter! You’re killing me!” he said, somewhere between a groan and a laugh.

  I held him out at some distance to look at him. “But what happened? I don’t understand, you didn’t answer your phone, you--”

  “Oh, yeah. My phone is at the bottom of the ocean. It speaks to the fishes now.”

  I scowled. “Did Harris do something to you?”

  He laughed even harder, then suddenly had a look of pain and put his good hand to his chest. “Ow. Jeez. Bruised rib. Gotta remember not to be happy.”

  I barely noticed the cameraman moving around us to get a better angle.

  “Are you going to tell me what happened, or do I need to assume the worst and go take a crowbar to your ex?”

  “No, it wasn’t Harris! I could totally take him in a fight. He’d be afraid of messing up his fancy neurosurgeon hands. No, I was so stupid, Nat! I went out to Rocky Ridge to think, and I lost my balance...it was pretty bad. Luckily I made it back to the street as a police car was going by, and they got me to the hospital. And I was going to call you from there, I really was, but they gave me this stuff for pain...I kind of lost track of time.”

  “Nat did the same thing, only with martinis,” said Rhody.

  “I am so glad you’re okay,” I said, almost hugging him again then remembering his sore rib. “I was such an idiot! I should have kicked Harris out. It was stupid that I let him build any tension between us--”

  “Are you kidding? You were totally right. So, here is a weird thing. As I’m lying there in the ER, getting all floaty on whatever they’d injected me with, guess who came to visit?”

  “Harris?”

  “Close! Sergio. See, the reason my phone landed in the ocean was that I took it out when he was calling me. He heard all the ruckus--you know how loud Rocky Ridge is--and thought I was in a car accident, so he was in a panic, calling all the hospitals. That’s how he found me. And he told me that Harris was obsessed with me. At first, Sergio had been mad at me, for coming between them. But then he realized Harris was being a big spooky control freak and had never quit wanting me back, and it had destroyed their relationship. He said he wasn’t surprised at all when I described the big scene in the hotel room. So see, you’re vindicated!”

  “Um...hooray? Does that mean we’re okay?” I looked at him hopefully.

  “Dude, I hobbled twenty blocks over from St. Mary’s to get here. We’d better be okay.”

  “I’m so sorry things got weird. I’m sorry I let all my worries about Harris come between us, and that--”

  “It’s not your fault. It’s mine. I should’ve cut the strings ages ago. And I should’ve told you upfront how complicated things were. But I didn’t want you to think I needed taking care of.”

  “I mean, you’re covered in cuts and bruises. You clearly need taking care of.”

  “The stuff Harris said, about me lying in my apartment never doing anything, I really am trying to get better--”

  “Owen! I don’t care about that! Be sad if you want to be sad! Just...you know, be sad with me!”

  “You’re sad?”

  “No, I mean--”

  “I know what you mean, Nat. See, that was a joke.”

  Joan cleared her throat. “We really do have to wrap it up here, boys.”

  “Oh my god, my kitchen!” I gasped.

  “Your kitchen!” said Owen.

  The camera crew followed us upstairs, and I opened the door.

  It was like a dream. The kitchen was so bright. I didn’t even recognize it. My footsteps were quiet as I walked in, like I was scared to disturb anything.

  It was like something out of a magazine...out of a spring issue, all whites and chrome and yellows and happiness. The awful fluorescent bars in the ceiling were gone, replaced by a gleaming white fixture that poured out clean, gorgeous light. My gross counters had been replaced by granite, so shiny, and I loved the sound they made when I tapped my fingernail against them.

  “Did you know real granite countertops release radon?” Owen whispered into my ear.

  “Then bury me in this massive refrigerator,” I whispered back, touching the smooth stainless steel doors.

  “Speak up, guys,” said Joan. “The mics can’t really hear you whispering.”

  “I said it’s beautiful.” I opened a cabinet door. Can you listen to silence? Those hinges made no sound whatsoever, but when I closed the cabinet it gave me a satisfying click. Then I went to the sink, the cause of so many ills. “It’s so deep.”

  “That’s what he said,” offered Owen, and I popped him on the arm.

  The sink had a beautiful swan neck faucet, and I turned it on.

  “Look at that strong, mighty stream,” said Owen. “It’s like a firehose. Just splashing all around.”

  The smile on my face was getting a little more tense, but then we got busy exploring the drawers and the new dishwasher and the small pantry they’d somehow managed to fit in.

  “It’s just amazing,” I said. My eyes were actually wet. “You don’t understand, it was so bad before.”

  “Yeah, I understand,” said Owen. “It’s beautiful.” He put his arms around me, and we hugged. Not too tight.

  It was a long moment, punctuated by a few small, camera-safe kisses, and then Joan said, “Okay boys, I think we got enough.”

  Owen’s arms slid off my shoulders, and we watched as the crew began to quickly pack their equipment. It was all happening so fast. With practiced ease, lights and cameras and racks and cables and computers found their way into hard cases, snapped shut, run downstairs, until my place was empty of everything that didn’t belong.

  Joan thanked us. “There’s going to be a pile of stuff to sign. I’ll email it over.”

  “No problem,” I said. “Thank you for fixing my kitchen. It’s amazing.”

  She turned to Owen. “Thank you for showing up. Hopefully, we have some shots where you don’t look like a house fell on you.” Then to Rhody, she said, “And thank you for getting Nat here.”

  “It was quite a struggle,” Rhody said. “I’ll tell you about it while I walk you downstairs.”

  And just like that, Owen and I were alone, in my shiny new kitchen.

  “It’s like a dream,” I said...then suddenly remembered the dream I’d had when this all first began, begging Owen to take me on the countertop. I knocked on the counter with my knuckles. Guess I wouldn’t be doing that anytime soon. Not my nice new clean perfect innocent counter.

  “I guess it’s time for me to go, too,” said Owen. “My time here as your fake boyfriend is done. I shall fly off to where all the fake boyfriends live, in that mystic land beyond the mountains.”

  “Are you sure you didn’t crack your skull on the rocks? I think you may have a concussion.”

  “What? You got your kitchen. You don’t need crazy old me anymore.”

  I grabbed him, regardless of that sore rib, and heard him give a little oof as I pulled him in tight. “You’re never getting away from me again,” I said. “No matter how many evil ex-boyfriends come out of the woodwork. Sinister lawyers, gangsters, mixed martial art guys--”

  “I once dated that guy Steve who owns the candy store.”

  “--vile candy-makers, I’ll take them all on.”

  He shook his head and laughed softly. “I can’t believe I almost died over all this.”

  “Harris was right about one thing. You evidently need some protecting!”

  “And you’re just the shy, withdrawn man for the job.”

  I smiled at him. “Hey, my pretty face is about to be watched by ten million people. How shy can I possibly be?”

  19

  Epilogue: Nat And Owen’s New Kitchen

  Well, Owen couldn’t stay at his old place anymore. Harris’ name was on the lease, and Owen was cutting all those ties, in no uncertai
n terms. So he’d packed up his belongings, and Mr. Thurgood’s bowls and toys, and brought them to the condo.

  Ever since they put the kitchen in, my place has taken on a new life. I really like it here now. I keep my curtains open, and in the afternoon, light pours in, across the living room, into the kitchen, where everything gleams and sparkles.

  We were getting ready for a big dinner to celebrate, because tonight was the night Kitchen Miracles was finally showing our episode! So Owen was at the kitchen island, chopping vegetables on the cutting board, while I roasted potatoes in the oven.

  We were having some friends over to celebrate. Marcus from downstairs, whose attitude towards me had changed dramatically for the better, now that my sink wasn’t dripping through his ceiling anymore. Sergio, who had come over a lot now that he and Harris had broken up, and who turned out to be far more fun and light-hearted than his choice of boyfriends would’ve led me to believe. Rhody, of course; I could hardly pry her out of our place now.

  But for right now, the only people in the condo were me, Owen, and Mr. Thurgood, who was attentively watching Owen chop, although he’d been bitterly disappointed at the bits of pepper and onion that Owen had let slip to the floor.

  “I think we ought to announce it tonight,” I said, moving the potatoes around the pan so they didn’t stick.

  “Oh, I don’t know. Are you sure?”

  “It’ll be perfect timing. They’ll see our big love affair on the screen, and then we announce our engagement...what could be more fitting?”

  “Well, I mean, they’ll see me announce that you have lupus. It’s not exactly romantic.”

  “Oh god, I’d forgotten about that. But how were you thinking of announcing our upcoming nuptials?”

  He speared a bit of broccoli on the tip of his knife and flicked it over to Mr. Thurgood, who sniffed at it with disapproval. “I figured we’d do things the old-fashioned way, run down to the county courthouse and then tell everyone after the fact.”