My (Mostly) Fake Wedding

by Bloom, Penelope

  Chris just smiled faintly. “I’d started to think women like you didn’t exist, or that I scared them off.”

  “You do scare me.”

  “You scare me too. Because I’m starting to think I’d fuck up my life to have you, if that’s what it takes.”

  “You’re just saying things,” I breathed. “You just…” I looked down, failing to find the words. “It’s just what you do. This is, I mean. You make girls feel special so they’ll sleep with you. Then they are left feeling like idiots when you move on and they’re left realizing it was all just syrup with no pancakes.”

  Chris burst out with a surprised chuckle. “Syrup with no pancakes? Belle. I promise you, there are two firm cakes behind all this syrup, and they’re all yours if you want them.”

  I found myself smiling, even though, like always, I wished I wouldn’t. “Keep your cakes away from me, Chris Rose.”

  “Not a chance. You’re my wifey, remember?”

  Those words weren’t supposed to send golden blasts of gooey warmth rushing through my body, but they did. I wasn’t supposed to let him kiss me, either, but I did.

  On the first day of our trip. Less than twenty-four hours since I resolved to be smart and keep this trip professional.

  He slid his hand up my shirt, cupping my breast. “I knew you weren’t wearing a bra,” he said between kisses.

  I stared up at the interwoven vines and speckling of bright color from flowers above us.

  Just this one more time.

  Oh, who was I kidding? I needed to move past thinking I was going to fight my feelings for Chris. It was in the open now, whether I’d voiced it or not.

  His tongue was circling mine and his hands were squeezing my ass. I could feel his arousal digging into my stomach, and my entire body ached to have it inside me.

  Chris knew how I felt. I knew how he felt.

  Avoiding it was off the table, and now the only thing I could do was try to protect my heart. I’d let him get his hands on it—among other things—and now all I could do was brace myself for the ride.

  I let him pull me to the grass, where he rolled me on my back. His thigh rested between my legs, and as much as I wanted to be reserved and pretend I was only reluctantly allowing this to happen, I found myself pushing my hips up to seek his friction.

  Chris hung over me, his messy tangles of hair falling toward me as he watched me with an unknowable expression. “There’s a word I need to get off my chest. I don’t want you to freak out either, but it starts with an ‘L.’”

  “Chris…” I said.

  “Lackadaisical. It means exactly the same thing as lazy. Why does a word like that even exist, I mean-”

  “Shut up and kiss me before I change my mind.”

  28

  Chris

  It was an early morning in the French countryside. I leaned out over the balcony of our bread and breakfast as buttery light seeped from the horizon and backlit the funny little French trees lining the road. I briefly wondered if trees could think, and if they could, whether the trees in France would have accents. Then I decided there were certain thoughts you probably should never tell anybody you seriously considered, so I added that particular musing to the overflowing box of others just like it in my head.

  Belle was still in bed, which I figured was a natural biological response to being so thoroughly, completely, and expertly fucked last night. Ever since our romp in the vine-filled flower enclosure, one thing had changed between us. She’d stopped fighting the obvious sexual tension.

  The only problem was I found myself still wanting more. I imagined I’d get bored once she stopped playing chase, but it only made me feel greedier. Would I take her pussy? Yes, thank you. I’d take second and third helpings, even. But as we came nearer to the end of our trip, I was increasingly aware that I wanted more. I wanted all of her. I didn’t just want the sex. I wanted the shared, secretive smiles as we joked about something inappropriate during one of our venue tours. I wanted the way she rolled her eyes at me when I did something dumb—like she couldn’t believe I was so immature but that she didn’t want me to stop because it made her laugh. I wanted to know things about her like Lance had taunted me with—the small secrets that made a person who they were. What smells made her explode with nostalgia? What was that one crazily irresponsible thing she did as a kid she still thinks about on long, nighttime drives? Who was her first kiss, and why shouldn’t I hunt him down and execute him tomorrow?

  I wanted more. Every time she gave me an inch, I craved miles and miles of her.

  I sat down and propped my feet on the balcony with my phone in hand. I was composing an email to my brother when Belle stretched and yawned her way out to the patio to sit across from me. As usual, she had her laptop handy, which I’d come to see as a kind of shield she put up between us over the last couple days. Since the big bang in the garden, Belle was either “working,” which meant so focused on looking things up that she couldn’t talk, or we were sleeping together.

  Improvement? Yes. But there was still work to do. And if she thought her little laptop could protect her, I was happy to prove otherwise.

  “Question,” I said, pausing mid-sentence in my email.

  Belle went a little more still, which I took as a response.

  “If I were to say ‘for fuck’s sake’ in an email, would that be with an apostrophe or without? Like, is that a possession of the fuck in question, or is it more like a statement of purpose?”

  My question earned me a direct glare from Belle. “Why does it even matter?”

  “I’m sending an email and I want it to look professional.”

  “Who are you even emailing?”

  “Damon. Why, want to read it?”

  “No. Definitely not.”

  “Question.”

  “No more questions,” Belle snapped. She closed her laptop with a click and stared toward the sunrise with a troubled expression. I liked that her hair was still a mess from last night. If I used my imagination, I could still picture my hand gripping that thick blonde hair into a ponytail while I took her from behind, or the sound of how wet she was for me as I drove into her.

  “Statement,” I said. “You’re trying to keep me at arm’s length, but my cock, while impressive, is shorter than my arm. It’s an awkward position to try to maintain.”

  “I’m sorry, am I supposed to know what that means?”

  “I mean you can’t keep someone at arm’s length while riding their cock.”

  Belle gave me one of her reluctant smiles I’d come to enjoy so much more than the easy ones. With her, I had to steal smiles, laughs, and affection. Just like candy as a kid, stolen things were always twice as sweet. Maybe that was my problem. Belle made me steal and connive every little droplet of emotion out of her, which only made me crave it more.

  “You were right, okay?” she said. “I am attracted to you. Obviously. But I still think we can be somewhat professional, and both agree we have important jobs to do here. I mean, after the wedding and then the divorce, I still have a business to run. You still have to play football. Our lives are going to go on after this, so I don’t see why we should get too attached.”

  “What if you could be my wife slash girlfriend after the wedding? Who says we have to get divorced right away, anyway?”

  She folded her arms. “Are you asking me to marry you?”

  “No. I already did that. I’m just saying we could ride it out for a little while. Give it a test drive.”

  “Marriage? You want to give marriage a test drive?”

  “We’re already going to be in the car. I’m saying we don’t have to drive it off a cliff on the first day. That’s all.”

  “Can you stop speaking in metaphor, Chris? Just tell me what you really mean for once. And if you try to turn it into a joke, I swear I’m going to jump off this balcony, walk to the nearest airport, and we won’t see each other again until the wedding.”

  “You want the full truth? If I had
to trade being fuck buddies for you actually talking to me again, I’d take you talking to me again. This is like torture. You’ve spent the last week avoiding speaking more than a sentence or two to me at a time, then you get into bed with me at night. And in between tours. And in that Uber—”

  “Chris,” she said, cutting me off. Belle let out a long breath, then fixed me with a pained expression. “I don’t want to get hurt again. Lance was the guy for me for years. When I watched movies I always inserted myself and him into the story. He was my happily ever after, and I built it up to be something it could never be. Then he let some woman he’d only known for a year convince everyone I was some sort of conniving, man stealing wedding bomber. He didn’t say a word to protect me or explain that she was lying. He just let it happen, and it hurt so much more because I was dumb enough to dump all my feelings onto a guy who didn’t like me back. So, I’m sorry, but I guess I’m just not exactly jumping at the chance to go through that again.”

  “First of all, I’m not Lance. I’d never wear a turtleneck, and I’d never have left the optometrist with those pervy librarian glasses he wears. But more importantly, I see you. You’re real. You don’t give a shit about who I am or what I’m worth. I’m just another guy to you. Do you know how long it has been since someone looked at me like I’m an idiot the way you do?”

  A crooked smile found its way onto her mouth, dimpling her cheek. “I don’t know, the last time you spent time around your brother?”

  “I mean a woman. All most of them care about when they see me is what their friends will think. How fun it’d be to post a selfie of us on their social media. They just want clout, and they don’t really give a shit what I do or say.”

  “So you like me because I look at you like an idiot when you do stupid things?”

  “Yes. Among other things.”

  I couldn’t read her expression, but her eyes had shifted back to the sunrise. “I don’t want to promise anything. I’ll… I’ll try, though.”

  “That’s a start. Also, I have a surprise planned for you when we get back to New York.”

  “Do I even want to know? And if you put a bow on your penis again and say, ‘a package is about to come for you’ again, I’m not going to be happy.”

  29

  Belle

  Val rode with me in an Uber toward the stadium on a chilly Monday evening. Fancy credentialed lanyards had been delivered to my apartment the day Chris and I got back from Europe, along with a vibrator wrapped in a ribbon. He’d left a note in his childish handwriting that read: “Batteries included. Got practice and meetings today, see you seeing me on Monday.” Chris also included a crude drawing of what I think was supposed to be me flashing my breasts at him while he threw a football on a field.

  “Why are you smiling?” Val asked. “Some joke I’m not in on?”

  “No. I was just thinking about something.” I straightened in my seat, then turned to face her. “Well, are you excited?”

  Val checked out her lanyard, which we’d been told would give us access to the locker rooms as well as giving us the ability to walk around down on the field. “Uh, sure. I’m not really a huge fan of football, but I do like the uniforms.”

  We arrived at the stadium, which was absolutely packed with cars and waves of human traffic circling the building. Our driver was let in through a special entrance at the back, guided right up to the building, and allowed to park.

  A man in a suit with a lanyard of his own greeted us and let us follow him past the crowds, through winding hallways and down a set of stairs. Eventually, we reached a door where we could hear dozens of deep, masculine voices seeping through.

  We stepped in, and quickly learned it was a locker room when we saw towering athletes in various states of undress all around us.

  “Is this heaven?” Val mused. “So many abs. So many.”

  “Are we supposed to be here?” I asked the man leading us around.

  “Mr. Rose asked to have you brought to him when you arrived.”

  We found Chris sitting in his locker, which was a fancy little leather-padded cubby in the wall. He had his football pants on and shoulder pads but wasn’t completely in uniform yet. He looked freshly showered and impossibly good, with his mop of wild hair and tattoos peeking out from beneath his sleeves and collar.

  He hopped up when he saw me and crushed me in a hug, then squeezed my ass. I swatted his hand away, but he just kissed me on the neck, smiling lop-sided as he pulled back. “This is Val?” he asked, nodding to my side.

  Val gave a sheepish wave. She apparently didn’t feel the same compulsion to keep her eyes from wandering the room that I felt. It looked like she was shamelessly gawking at every muscle-clad football player who walked by.

  “I’m glad you came,” Chris said.

  “Don’t get used to it. I just heard we’d get free concessions with these passes.”

  “As usual, you are just after the hot dogs.”

  Val choked, then covered her mouth.

  I rolled my eyes. “Excuse him, Val. He looks like an adult, but on the inside, he’s just a child.”

  “What does that say about you for being so infatuated with me?” Chris asked.

  Val and I were eventually—and thankfully—asked to head to our position on the field to watch the game. We met up with Chelsea, Damon, Luna, and Grant—Chelsea’s brother—on the field.

  I wasn’t personally much of a football fan, but I found myself joining in with the excitement during the game. Everything was so loud and explosive that I couldn’t help clapping and jumping around to cheer when Chris’ team did something good.

  Watching Chris play was bizarre. I knew the goofy, carefree guy who seemed to have a maximum speed of casual. On the field, he shouted out plays, dodged giant men who looked like they wanted to take his head off, and hurled the football further than it seemed like it should’ve been possible.

  It was a little embarrassing to admit it, but I couldn’t help taking in the tens of thousands of screaming fans and thinking how many of them probably would’ve killed to be in my position. It made me think about how much I’d been fighting my feelings for him, and why? Because I was scared.

  I was scared he’d take what I gave him and discard it when it didn’t suit him anymore.

  Chelsea bumped my shoulder during a time out when the crowd noise wasn’t quite as deafening. “So?” she asked. “Damon tells me you and Chris might not be pretending anymore.”

  I shot Damon a look, who had taken a sudden interest in a piece of lint on his suit. Bastard.

  “It’s complicated.”

  Chelsea smiled, almost in a nostalgic way. “Complicated isn’t always a bad thing, you know.”

  “Simple would be better, though.”

  “Would it? When was the last time something simple was right? Isn’t it always the complicated, convoluted things that end up working out for the best?”

  “I don’t know, but I wish I knew what the right decision was.”

  “I think all the guys I was with before Damon seemed like easy decisions. We had similar interests, or we shared friends. So of course, it made sense to try a relationship. And all of those failed. And then I finally ran into the most complicated, infuriating man I’d ever met.”

  Damon was now almost in a meditative state as he tried to remove a piece of fiber that had become lodged in his suit sleeve.

  The game resumed, and it was apparently an important play because the crowd immediately started roaring and stomping their feet until all I could do was smile and nod at Chelsea.

  Complicating and infuriating equals love? Was that the message she was trying to sell?

  I stared out at the field while Chris crouched with his hands halfway shoved up a large, sweaty man’s ass. He shouted something, turning his head to either side, then stomped his foot for the ball.

  I grinned. If Chelsea was right, then I could consider myself madly in love with Chris Rose.

  With the ball in his han
ds, he backpedaled, scanned the field, and then the next thing I saw were two extremely fast men tackle him at the same time from opposite directions. Chris crumpled to the ground clutching his shoulder.

  30

  Chris

  Medical machines beeped, doctor’s talked in hushed tones, and I was lying on a cozy hospital bed. I was also loaded up with enough sedatives and painkillers that I felt a little bit like I was floating a few feet above it all.

  I glanced down at the thin blanket covering me, which was tented up from the impressive, inexplicable erection I had. “Why am I so erect?” I mused aloud.

  I rolled my head to the side, spotting Belle. “Oh. That’s why.”

  Belle was shielding her eyes in embarrassment. I couldn’t figure out why until I noticed the nurse beside her. And the intern who looked fresh out of college. And the doctor. And the tall, fancy looking guy at her side I didn’t recognize.

  She approached my bed and tried to position a pillow to cover me. In the end, it took a few seconds and two pillows to fully shield my aggressively erect cock. If I hadn’t been pumped full of enough drugs to get an elephant high, even I might’ve been slightly embarrassed by the ordeal. As it was, all I could do was watch with light-headed amusement.

  She leaned down to whisper something in my ear, but I thought she was coming for a kiss so I tried to plant one on her. She flinched back, then seemed to think better of it and gave me a light peck on the lips. “Chris,” she said softly. “My brother, Asher, is here. Please try not to mortify me any more than you already have.”

  I shot upright. “You have a brother?”

  The fancy guy I’d noticed approached. He was tall, well-groomed, and had a little edge of “I’ll shoot your knees out if you cross me” about him. I decided I liked him, so I stuck my hand out. “I’m erect,” I declared. I blinked. That wasn’t right. “I’m Chris,” I said, trying again.