Best Fake Fiancé: A Loveless Brothers Novel

by Noir, Roxie

  What if he decides he just wants to talk after all?

  We texted some this morning, but they were totally normal texts: hey, how’s your day, come to dinner at my parents’ house on Wednesday, Rusty says she likes the mermaid book better than the wilderness survival book.

  There’s a part of me that’s afraid Daniel’s going to back out. That, after having a chance to think about it, he’ll realize that this friendship is too much to risk, and he’ll want to go back.

  There’s a part of me that’s afraid he’d be right. There’s a part of me — a small, quiet part, but a part nonetheless — telling me that this friendship is the best thing that’s ever happened to me, and if I lose it, my life will have a hole that’ll take me years to fix.

  I’m not listening to that voice. I don’t like that it has some good points.

  “Charlotte? A tie?”

  “A tie,” I repeat, coming to a stop sign and trying to sound like I’ve been paying attention. “I think he really only wears those to court.”

  “Oh,” my mom says, sounding disappointed. “What about—”

  My phone beeps. It’s stuck in its holder on my dashboard, and Daniel’s name flashes on the screen.

  Please don’t let him be early.

  Please don’t let him be canceling. And please don’t let him want to talk about us right now, while I’m driving home too fast and wildly horny.

  Oh, God, I just realized I’m horny while I’m on the phone with my mom, which has to be pretty weird. In my defense, I was thinking about other stuff, not listening to her.

  “Mom, can I call you back tomorrow?” I say, shoving all those thoughts aside.

  “All right,” she says. “You’ll remember, right?”

  My phone beeps again, and my heartbeat speeds up.

  “Yep!” I say, finger hovering over the button. “Love you!”

  “Love you,” she says, and I switch lines.

  “Hey,” I say.

  “Hey, Charlie,” says Daniel.

  Instantly, I know he’s not coming over. I don’t know how I know, I just know that he doesn’t sound like he’s coming over.

  “What’s up?” I ask, hands gripping the steering wheel too hard.

  “Rusty’s got a fever and a pretty nasty stomach bug,” he says. “I had to pick her up early from school. No ballet tonight.”

  I bite my lips together to fight the wave of disappointment that’s washing over me. I want to say get your mom to take care of her and come over anyway, but I don’t. I know when I’m being selfish.

  “Poor kid,” I say instead. “Tell her I hope she gets better fast.”

  “Hi Charlie,” I hear Rusty’s small voice say. “Tell Charlie hi.”

  “Rusty wants to say hi,” Daniel says.

  There’s some rustling on the other end. I take a deep breath, letting disappointment filter through me, willing myself to let it go because this isn’t the end of the world.

  It’s not like he’ll never come over. He just won’t come over tonight.

  Shit happens.

  Goddammit, though.

  “I’ll be okay by Saturday and we can still go eat cake,” Rusty says in my ear, with a level of absolute certainty achievable only by children.

  “If you’re not, we’ll reschedule, sweetie,” I hear Daniel say, his voice distant.

  “I’ll be better,” she says, matter-of-factly. “Bye, Charlie!”

  Even through my considerable disappointment, I can’t help but smile. I guess she just wanted to make extra sure that I wouldn’t cancel cake tasting.

  “Bye, Rusty,” I say, even as there’s more rustling on the other end.

  “I’m back,” Daniel says, then pauses, briefly.

  “Sorry about tonight,” he goes on. “I’ll see you another time.”

  Even though it’s totally G-rated, it sends a tingle down my spine. Never in my life has the phrase I’ll see you held such promise.

  “Oh?” is all I manage to say.

  “Of course,” he says, and I can hear the smile, the rasp in his voice. “I’ll let you know when the munchkin is better and we’ll make plans.”

  “I’m not a munchkin,” I hear Rusty’s small, quiet voice say.

  “Sorry, kiddo,” he says, and she sighs very dramatically. I laugh despite my disappointment because I just imagine it: Rusty pale, pink-cheeked, probably under a blanket and hugging Astrid, her stuffed wombat, still protesting being called a munchkin. I swear, nothing gets past that kid.

  “And Charlie, I’d much rather be taking her to ballet right now than being on puke watch,” he says, and his voice is quieter, hushed, low. “Promise.”

  “Aren’t most things better than puke watch?” I tease, keeping my voice low so Rusty can’t hear.

  “Sure, but there’s better and there’s better,” he says. “And I owe you the latter.”

  I bite my lip in the car. I’m pretty sure my whole torso, from bellybutton to scalp, is currently pink. Daniel hasn’t said a single thing even remotely inappropriate for a seven-year-old, yet I’m absolutely certain he’s talking dirty to me.

  Oh my God.

  “Go take care of Rusty,” I say. “And call me.”

  “I will,” he says, and when we hang up I’m still blushing, still smiling, and still horny, though I feel much less weird about it this time.

  I sit in my driver’s seat for a moment. I pull the utterly useless post-it from my pocket, give it a quick glance just in case I also wrote down anything important on it, and toss it into the passenger seat.

  Then I go upstairs to my apartment, get out of vibrator, and put it to good use. Again.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Daniel

  Rusty falls asleep at six-thirty that night after I manage to get half a cup of chicken broth into her. It’s literally the earliest I’ve ever seen her fall asleep, but the poor kid is really down for the count. She’s got a fever of 102. She’s thrown up twice since I got her home. If she’s not on the mend tomorrow, we’re going to the doctor.

  My mom gets home after Rusty’s already asleep, but she comes in the door with her arms full of shopping bags: chicken soup, crackers, soda, and the biggest piece of ginger root I’ve seen in my entire life.

  “Feed a fever, starve a cold,” she says knowingly as she puts the bags on the table.

  “That doesn’t sound very scientific,” I tease her, grabbing a bag and putting cans of chicken soup away in the pantry. My mom laughs.

  “Double-blind studies have got nothing on folk remedies,” she says. “I’ve told you the story about my father, right? When he was seven, he got—”

  “Mumps, measles, and scarlet fever all at once, and the doctors told his mother he was going to die, but she gave him willow bark and chicken soup and he made it through?”

  “I guess I have,” she says.

  “Thanks for the remedies,” I say.

  * * *

  Rusty’s feeling better the next morning. Not all the way, but her fever drops to 100. She only pukes once, and then I take the day off work and we spend it snuggling on the couch, watching animated Disney movies: 101 Dalmatians, The Jungle Book, Robin Hood, Mulan. She’s never had much use for princesses who don’t save themselves. I respect that.

  I make her chicken soup with crackers and keep her water cup filled. My mom is in and out, packing to leave tomorrow for her conference. She’s leading a panel on the various ways to measure gravitational forces of neutron stars, or something. I’m pretty sure I have that wrong.

  And I spend the day texting Charlie: updates on Rusty, updates on the plot of whatever movie we’re watching at the moment. At one point, she confesses that she had a crush on the animated Robin Hood, even though he’s a fox. I remind her of that fact. She just says yeah, he is, and I laugh.

  I’m disappointed about yesterday. She was all I thought about, all day long, at least until I got the call from Rusty’s school nurse.

  The kiss in the attic. The make out session in t
he driveway, pushed up against Caleb’s truck, like we were teenagers.

  Hell, I feel like a teenager right now, like I’m the first person to ever discover kissing.

  I text Charlie again: I think Rusty’s on the mend.

  That night, I start to feel nauseous.

  * * *

  The first thing I do Wednesday morning is vomit. It’s 4 a.m. when I wake up, because Levi’s there to pick my mom up and take her to the airport in Roanoke. I barely make it to the bathroom, and then I kneel on the tile floor in my pajamas, lean against the bathtub, and catch my breath.

  Fuck.

  Suitcases go down the hallway. Low voices. I stand, splash my face off, brush my teeth quickly even though that makes me nauseous, then head downstairs to grab a glass of water.

  “Oh, no,” my mom says when she sees me. Levi nods once but takes a step back.

  I grab water. Levi takes my mom’s suitcases and puts them in his truck. I try a couple of sips, and they seem to stay down. Jesus, it’s cold in here.

  “Don’t hug me,” my mom says. “Feel better. Get lots of rest, there’s plenty of chicken soup in the pantry and don’t forget to stay hydrated. Call Charlie or your brothers if you need anything, and you should really give the ginger a try, it always helps me…”

  I nod along. Mom reaches out and squeezes my arm once, then feels my forehead and nods.

  “Go,” I tell her. “Before I get you sick too.”

  She blows me a kiss, and then she’s out. I get back in bed.

  * * *

  Rusty, of course, is fine. Somehow, I get myself out of bed, take her temperature, pour her some cereal. I’m deeply grateful that she’s old enough to get ready for school on her own with little more than supervision, and I watch from the front window as she gets on the school bus.

  Then I text Seth that I’m not coming in today and get straight back into bed.

  * * *

  There’s someone outside the front door.

  No. Something. The house is dead quiet around me, the windows dimmed, like there’s a storm outside. Everything is exactly where I left it yesterday except, for some reason, the old couches are back in the living room, two ugly plaid monstrosities that don’t even match each other, let alone anything else in the room.

  And the shoes. My father’s shoes are by the door, and something is outside, and it should be daylight right now but it’s not.

  I have to push a couch against the door. The thing outside moves, rustles, and suddenly I know it’s some kind of enormous bird, feathers and talons and a beak so I bend down in front of one of the ugly couches and start pushing, fear spiking through my heart because I’m the last one here and I don’t know what happened but I cannot let this thing into the house.

  I get the couch in front of the door and now it’s beating against the wood, scraping, clawing. I’m soaked through with sweat, ready to push the second couch, trying to see this thing through the tiny window on the front door.

  Then it calls to me, and its voice is human.

  “Daniel,” it says. “Daniel?”

  And the door opens like the couch isn’t even there.

  “Daniel!”

  I wake up thrashing, shoving blankets away from my face, half sit up on one elbow.

  “Jesus, dude,” says Seth’s voice. He’s standing in my bedroom doorway, one hand still on the knob, and I flop back down onto my bed.

  It’s cold. Wet. I touch my chest and my shirt is soaked. My whole body tingles. Moving feels like a Herculean effort.

  “Hey,” I croak out as he crosses the room. “What’s… is it Wednesday?”

  “Wednesday morning,” he confirms. “About ninety minutes ago, you texted me ‘I’m dying’ and then didn’t answer my calls or texts, so I came over.”

  I make myself sit up in my bed. My stomach doesn’t like it, but I take a deep breath and maintain control. I grab my phone from my nightstand and look at it.

  After I’m dying, there’s a text to Seth that I apparently fell asleep before I could send: I got whatever Rusty had, I’m staying home today.

  I show Seth. He nods.

  “That would have helped,” he says, then sighs, pushing one hand through his hair, exactly the way Eli does. I swear, sometimes I think they’re twins.

  “Sorry,” I say.

  “Come on,” he says. “You need to go shower while I at least change your sheets. You think you can keep anything down?”

  I shake my head.

  “I’ll bring you some ginger ale,” he says, and points at my bedroom door. “Go.”

  * * *

  The shower is terrible. Standing takes too much effort, so halfway through it I sit down in the bathtub for a few minutes and just let the water run over me. It feels like needles against my skin, but it also feels sort of good, so I deal with it.

  Afterwards, I put on a fresh t-shirt and pajama pants. Seth has re-made my bed, and I think I hear the washing machine going downstairs. On my nightstand is my phone charger, which I normally keep on my desk.

  Seth is an okay nurse. Who knew?

  “Figured you’d need it if you wanted to watch movies in bed,” he says, poking his head back through the door. “That shit’ll drain your battery with the quickness.”

  “Thanks,” I say.

  “You look terrible,” he says, sympathetically, from the doorway. “Get some rest.”

  I just nod and crawl back into bed.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Charlie

  Me: He’s definitely alive, right?

  Seth: Yep. False alarm.

  Seth: Looks like shit, but he’s alive and I do believe he’ll stay that way.

  I thank Seth, then toss my phone onto my workstation and take a deep breath.

  For the record, I wasn’t actually worried, like worried worried. But he did text Seth that he was dying, and when he didn’t answer Seth’s texts or calls, Seth called me to see if I knew what was up.

  And, obviously, you read stories about people who are perfectly fine one day, then somehow ingest the wrong amoeba and next thing you know, they’re dead.

  But this isn’t that, this is a stomach bug that he got from his kid, so I shake my head, put my goggles back on, and get back to the band saw.

  * * *

  That afternoon, Seth picks Rusty up from school, and when I get out of work I swing by his place and grab her since Seth has a prior commitment. I don’t ask what — or who — his prior commitment is, because chances are, I’ll hear about it sooner or later.

  Rusty and I have Charlie’s Special Pasta — spaghetti with jarred black olives and broccoli — for dinner, and then we head to my workshop, in a garage I’m renting from one of my mom’s church friends.

  Right now, I’m refinishing a two-hundred-year-old table for the Monteverte Historical Society, because they’re reopening Monteverte House as a historical attraction next year. They found this table in one of the junky antique stores that line the rural roads out here, and in the 70s, someone glued comic book pages all over the top.

  Getting them off has been a several-step nightmare, but it’s nearly done.

  Someday, I’d love to work for myself. I’d love to own all my own stuff, work on my own schedule, be my own boss. For now, it’s just a side gig, though.

  I set Rusty up with her homework at a table in the corner and start sanding the comic book pages off the two-hundred-year-old table. Even though she’s well away from the particulates, I make her wear a mask anyway.

  I’m finally making some progress on the stuff when she calls my name.

  “Charlie!”

  “Yeah?”

  “Is this a cat?” she calls.

  I perch my goggles on my head and walk over to where she’s standing on her tiptoes, looking at a bunch of small carved animals I’ve haphazardly arranged on a shelf.

  “It’s a bear,” I say, trying not to laugh. “See, it’s got a super stubby tail.”

  “It looks like it could be a cat with no
tail,” she says.

  She puts it back in its place and picks up another one, frowning at it for a moment.

  “What’s this?” she asks.

  Very diplomatic of her.

  “That’s a raccoon,” I say. “See, it’s got the stripes on its tail?”

  “Raccoons have masks.”

  “It’s hard to carve a mask, though,” I point out.

  “You carved stripes.”

  What are you, kid, an art critic?

  “That was easier,” I say.

  She puts it back with that exaggerated caution kids have when they’re being extra-careful. I’m relieved that I tossed the voodoo doll I carved of her mom, not that she’d be able to tell what it was.

  Whatever I may think of Crystal — namely, that she’s half demon and half swampthing — I’ve never said anything negative about her in front of Rusty, and I’ve never heard Daniel say anything bad, either. Despite her many, many, many faults, the woman is still Rusty’s mom, and the kid loves her to death.

  There’s going to come a day when she doesn’t. Rusty’s a sharp, perceptive kid. Sooner or later she’s going to see Crystal’s bullshit for what it is, and just like everything else, the damage control is going to fall to Daniel.

  “This is an elephant,” she says confidently, pulling another one down.

  Inwardly, I sigh.

  “Anteater,” I confess.

  “Why’d you make an anteater instead of an elephant?” she asks. “Elephants are cooler.”

  “But anteaters eat ants,” I point out. “Giant anteaters can eat thirty thousand ants in one day.”

  I don’t remember where I learned that. I can only hope it’s right, or Rusty’s going to correct me next time I see her.

  “Gross,” she says. “Can I make one?”

  I open my mouth to say no, but then I close it without making a sound, because I was around her age when my Granddad first taught me woodworking. Somewhere, I’ve still got the snake I made under his supervision, even though he’s been gone for years now.