Best Fake Fiancé: A Loveless Brothers Novel

by Noir, Roxie

  Charlie

  I’m in the cereal aisle again, trying to decide which anthropomorphized cartoon animal has the sort of sugar that I want right now.

  Which cereal will quell the hollow, gnawing feeling in my chest?

  Will Froot Loops make me feel better about tanking the most significant relationship of my life with one bad decision?

  Will Cookie Crisp let me go back in time and take Rusty to the playground instead?

  Perhaps Tony the Tiger, who seems very charismatic, can give Daniel the give her one more chance talk.

  It’s six in the morning. I didn’t sleep for shit last night, even though I was up late with Elizabeth, drinking Slurpees in the 7-11 parking lot because we’re classy like that. She still thinks I should go to the hearing. I disagree, and since it’s my life, I get to decide.

  Fuck it. I want Lucky Charms, because those marshmallows are delicious. My arms are already full, because yet again I underestimated the amount of stuff I’d be buying this morning, so I put my phone on the shelf by the Cheerios, grab the Lucky Charms, shove the box under one arm, and promptly knock several boxes of Grape-Nuts and Raisin Bran off the shelf with the huge bags of tortilla chips I’m holding in my other hand.

  “Dammit,” I whisper under my breath.

  I put everything on the floor. I pick up the cereal, put it back. I put the Lucky Charms back, remember why I’m there, grab it again, shove it under my arm, pick up the tortilla chips and the salsa and the queso dip and then finally maneuver myself to the checkout, where I take a plastic bag because obviously I forgot the reusable ones.

  Then I put my pity food into my car and drive off.

  * * *

  It’s close to noon when I realize I left my phone in front of the Cheerios. I’m at work, shaping a dovetail joint on a side table, when I suddenly have a vision of it, sitting there in front of the yellow box where I put it down for just a second.

  I don’t know why I didn’t put it in my pocket. I just didn’t.

  I borrow the phone in the office and call the grocery store. While I’m on hold I sit back in the uncomfortable upholstered chair from 1970, a spring sticking straight into my butt, and look at the knickknacks that Donna, who runs the office, keeps on her desk. One is a small ceramic dog peeing on a ceramic fire hydrant, and I wonder why on earth anyone would want such a thing.

  “Hi. Miss?” the voice on the other end of the phone says. “No one’s turned it in and there’s no phone in the cereal aisle.”

  For a moment, I just look at the peeing dog.

  “It’s not there?” I echo. Somehow, that hadn’t occurred to me — Sprucevale is a small, safe town, so I assumed I’d just waltz back to the store after work and grab my phone.

  “Sorry,” he says. “But I’ll put a bulletin out for it if anyone’s seen it.”

  I lean back in the uncomfortable chair and do my goddamn best not to cry, because of course I did something dumb and lost my phone. I mean, I’m constantly misplacing it — I found it in my medicine cabinet a few weeks ago with no memory of putting it there — but this is the first time it’s actually gone missing missing.

  Shit. Now, on top of everything else, I probably need a new phone.

  “Thanks,” I say, give him the office number, and we hang up.

  Then I go to the bathroom, and for the first time ever, I cry at work.

  * * *

  I’m watching stupid TV that night when Elizabeth knocks on my door. I’ve still got my coveralls on, and I’m probably coating my whole apartment in sawdust right now, but I just can’t be bothered to care.

  “What?” I shout.

  The door opens, because it wasn’t locked.

  “You stopped answering your phone again,” she says.

  “It got stolen,” I say, still slumped on the couch.

  Elizabeth frowns in alarm and comes inside. She has dry cleaning in one hand, and it swishes inside, the light plastic rustling.

  “What happened? Was it stolen at work? Did your car get broken into? Did you—”

  “I left it in the cereal aisle for six hours and someone took it,” I say.

  I see her eyes flick to my coffee table, which has an empty cereal bowl, a giant bag of tortilla chips haphazardly opened, and the jar of queso dip on it.

  “Oh,” she says. “Well, I hope they find it. That sucks.”

  “I called. They didn’t,” I say.

  “Did you go check yourself?”

  “Yes,” I say, feeling a little exasperated. “It wasn’t where I put it, because either someone stole it or it fell through a very small wormhole that doesn’t seem to have affected the rest of the fabric of our reality, just my phone.”

  She just sighs again, then comes over to me, the dry cleaning in the garment bag swishing, and drops a kiss on top of my head.

  “I’m sorry,” she says. “But I brought you a suit.”

  At last, I actually look at the garment bag. All day I’ve felt like I was watching the world through a haze, like something was separating me from everyone and everything. A fancy shower door or something.

  “Thanks,” I say automatically.

  I pause for a moment, looking at the suit.

  “…why?” I ask.

  “For Daniel’s hearing tomorrow,” she says, as if we’ve discussed it, decided that I’m going, and I had any idea that she was letting me borrow a suit for the occasion.

  Finally, I stand from the couch and turn off the trashy reality TV show I was watching, grab my empty cereal bowl, take it to the kitchen.

  “I’m not going,” I call, putting it in the sink and balancing it carefully on several other bowls. “I promise you that if I go, I’ll make everything worse, because that’s what I do, and Daniel has made it pretty clear that I should stop making everything worse for him—”

  “Daniel said what he said standing the hallway of the emergency room,” Elizabeth says. I turn back to my living room, and she’s still standing there, freshly dry-cleaned suit hanging off of one finger. “No one is their best self in an emergency room. Except maybe the doctors and nurses, or at least I would hope—”

  “I’m not gonna be the reason he loses his daughter,” I say.

  “Charlie.”

  “Elizabeth.”

  “You should go,” she says. “If nothing else, prove that Daniel wasn’t lying.”

  “He was,” I point out, but she just waves one hand in the air.

  “Only technically,” she says.

  “That’s lying! Technically lying is still lying!”

  Elizabeth turns, walks to the door to my room, and hangs the suit from the top of the door.

  “You should go,” she says, simply. “You said you would, and right now you need to be the bigger person and go to the hearing, even if Daniel never speaks to you again afterward.”

  I look at the suit, hanging on the door. Of course Elizabeth would both try to push me down a hill inside a tractor tire and be responsible enough to dry-clean her suit before lending it to me. Even though I know I’m lucky to have her, right now I’m annoyed at her for being so much better at life than I am.

  “I’ll think about it,” I lie. I’m not going to think about it, because I’m not going.

  I’m not going, and I’m never going to feel better, and I’m just going to wallow in my sadness and self-pity and eat Lucky Charms and queso until my butt literally fuses with my couch, and I’d like to see my stupid, responsible sister try to stop me.

  “Thank you,” she says.

  Then she walks over and wraps me in a hug.

  I’m surprised. It takes me a minute before I hug her back. Her hair smells like flowers, of course, and mine probably smells like sawdust, but she squeezes me a little tighter and then releases me.

  “Call me when it’s over, I want to hear how it goes,” she says, giving my hair a light ruffle.

  “I’m not going, and I don’t have a phone,” I remind her.

  “Use Daniel’s,” she says, headi
ng for my door. “Bye, Chuck. Good luck. Love you.”

  “Love you too,” I call out, ignoring the part about using Daniel’s phone, and then the door closes behind her.

  I take the suit and put it in my closet, and then I go back to dumb television and queso dip.

  I’m not going.

  I’m never going to feel better.

  I will become one with this couch, and that’s what I deserve.

  * * *

  That night, I sleep like the dead, and I wake up late because my alarm was on my phone. I shower as fast as I can. I eat cereal. I run out the door, hop into my car, start on my way to work.

  I’m halfway there when a rabbit runs across the road, right in front of me, and I slam on the brakes. I lurch forward into my seatbelt, bracing my whole body for the sickening thump of flesh under my tires, but it doesn’t come.

  A second later, the bunny disappears into the grass on the side of the road, safe and sound, probably with no idea that it nearly met a gruesome death just now.

  I feel it like a fist right to the chest, like my ribcage is being squeezed, my organs shaken, and I start sobbing. Right there, still stopped in the middle of the road, I start crying hysterically about the bunny who didn’t die and about the sister who’s too nice to me and about Rusty who was so brave about getting her arm broken and mostly, I cry because I’m sorry and because I already miss my best friend.

  I pull into someone’s driveway so I’m not in the road anymore, and I stay there for at least ten minutes, crying. I wonder if Elizabeth is right and I wonder if she’s always right, if maybe I should listen to my sister who can remember her reusable bags and who responds promptly to emails.

  Finally, I reach for my phone, but it’s not there. I cry a little more, but then I turn around and head back to Sprucevale, where I have to find a pay phone — a pay phone — before I can call my boss and tell him that I have horrible food poisoning and won’t be coming to work today.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Daniel

  “She knows it’s today, doesn’t she?” Lucinda asks, glancing down the long hallway of the Burnley County courthouse.

  “I reminded her,” I say.

  That’s a slight understatement. Besides the reminders I put in her phone a few weeks ago, I called her yesterday after waking up on Levi’s couch feeling less-than-stellar.

  He was right. I’m never going to like anyone else half as much as I like her, fuckups and all.

  Charlie didn’t answer. She didn’t answer two hours later, or around lunch, or any of the other three times that I called her and apologized and rambled into her voicemail, telling her that I was sorry, that I needed her, that I fucked up just as much as she did and we were both imperfect and that’s what made us beautiful together.

  She didn’t pick up once. She hasn’t called. She hasn’t texted. Not even a smoke signal, and I’m starting to panic. I’m wondering how badly I fucked up on Saturday.

  Lucinda checks her watch just as the doors to the courtroom open, and she looks at me.

  “She knows where to go, doesn’t she?” she asks.

  I just nod. I told her in the voicemails.

  We go in. We sit. We’re five minutes early, and I pull out the same things as always: report cards and teacher statements, testimony from her ballet teacher and her piano teacher, the schedule of every visit over the past five years, and finally, her drawing.

  Shit.

  I packed all this last week. The drawing has Charlie in it, next to me, her hair a cacophony of squiggles. We’re both smiling and standing next to a castle surrounded by palm trees.

  Looking at it feels like a trap door just opened under my heart, and I nearly put it back, but I don’t. I keep it out because if Charlie doesn’t come, I’m prepared to lie my damn face off and say that she had a work emergency or her dog died or her grandma is sick or whatever bullshit used to work when I was a kid in school.

  “Cute,” Lucinda says. “No wombat?”

  “Not in this one,” I say. “She’s still on that kick, though.”

  The door opens again. I turn towards it too fast, but it’s not Charlie. It’s Crystal, coming belly-first, her lawyer and husband behind her, and she doesn’t so much as look in my direction as they sit, talking amongst themselves, her husband helping her into her chair like she’s got two broken legs or something.

  “Do you want to try texting her?” Lucinda murmurs.

  I think she’s getting antsy, and that knowledge makes the hairs on the back of my neck prickle, my palms start sweating because Lucinda is rarely antsy. She’s cool and calm and collected and a legal badass, but she’s not antsy.

  “I’ll try,” I say, pull out my phone, text Charlie: Where are you?

  I wait thirty seconds, a minute. There’s no answer.

  I want to throw up.

  The bailiff — Pete Bresley, officially Sprucevale’s biggest gossip — pulls the huge wooden doors closed, folds his hands in front of himself, stands by them.

  “All rise,” he intones, and we do. Lucinda throws me a look. The judge walks in from chambers, casts a glance around the assembled parties, sits. I’m sweating, anxious, and I feel like someone’s put chains around my heart and thrown it into the ocean.

  She didn’t come. She ignored all my voicemails and texts and apologies and pleas and even if she doesn’t want to forgive me, she couldn’t get over it and come for Rusty’s sake.

  “Be seated,” the judge calls. “I hereby call into session the matter of Thornhill vs. Love—”

  The giant wooden door creaks open again, and everyone turns, but we can’t see anything. It’s open about three inches and there’s nothing on the other side but the sunlight in the hallway.

  I don’t hope. I don’t let myself. It’s probably someone looking for another courtroom, someone who got lost on their way to a bail hearing or something.

  “Bailiff,” the judge calls, and Pete steps over, pushes the door open, and even though I’m not hoping, my heart is beating on my ribcage like it’s trying to break down a door.

  “Thanks Pete,” says Charlie. “That thing’s heavier than it looks, huh?”

  She steps in. She’s wearing a suit and her face is bright red. Her hair’s wild. She’s breathing like she’s just run a marathon but trying to pretend she’s breathing normally as she looks around, uncertain until her eyes land on me.

  Relief douses me like a summer rainstorm, leaves me shivering. Pete points in my direction and Charlie walks over, careful in heels, drops neatly into the chair to my right.

  Up close I can see tiny rivulets of sweat on her temples, and without being told I can see it: Charlie knowing she’s late again, knuckles white on the steering wheel, Charlie taking off her shoes and running barefoot through the courthouse, ignoring the weird looks and mutters that followed her.

  I love her for it. She’ll probably never change, and she’ll probably never be on time, but I love her for the flaws, the cracks, for the fuckups and mistakes.

  She scoots her chair in, still trying to catch her breath, and glances over at me.

  “Sorry I’m late,” she whispers.

  I reach over and take her hand. She’s got the ring on, and I lace our fingers together, raise it to my hand, kiss it.

  “You’re fine,” I whisper back.

  * * *

  It feels endless. Crystal’s lawyer talks about schools and gated communities and college acceptance rates and opportunities unavailable to the child in her current situation. He suggests that Charlie and I aren’t actually a couple. He goes on and on about the fact that she’s going to have a sibling, that a child needs her mother, that it’s a shame to raise a child in any situation that isn’t a picture-perfect nuclear family.

  We hear about the knife, about the broken arm, and I look over at Charlie. She’s staring dead ahead, glassy-eyed, jaw clenched.

  I can’t say anything, so I just squeeze her hand.

  Then it’s Lucinda’s turn.
r />   The report cards. The teacher statements. We hear about how Rusty is in second grade and reading at a seventh-grade level; how she’s ahead of the rest of her class in math; how she has an interest in abyssal fish and Little House on the Prairie and brain teasers.

  Lucinda reminds us it’s a miracle, given how delayed Rusty’s development was when I got custody. She details every single time in the past five years that Crystal has cancelled visitation. She points at Charlie and reminds the room that I’m in a long-term, stable relationship with a suitable woman.

  Then there are the questions: about my intentions with Charlie and with schooling and with the brewery, to Crystal about the move to Colorado and the new baby. I tell him what I know, and what I don’t know I make up and state confidently.

  Finally, the judge stops asking questions. He looks down at his notes. He adjusts his glasses. He frowns. My heart is a kick drum in a punk band, thrashing away. It’s a wave in a hurricane, pounding against the rocks and dissolving.

  “Let’s take a ten-minute recess,” he says, stands, and leaves the room.

  My fingertips go cold as I watch him go. I can feel the blood draining, coming back to my heart, my brain, my lungs, my body’s stress reaction. There’s a hand on my shoulder.

  “It’s a big decision,” Lucinda reminds me calmly. “It doesn’t mean you’re losing her. It means he wants to get it right.”

  I nod. Charlie squeezes my hand so tight the band on her engagement ring cuts into the webbing between my fingers, her hand strong and firm in mine. I’m not normally a weak man, but I am right now.

  If I go straight from here and get her from school, we could be across state lines by this afternoon, I think. We’d use cash. Go to cheap motels, stay under the radar, and we’d live like that and I’d never have to be without her…

  “Tell me something,” I say to Charlie, leaning my forehead on my fist, trying not to think.

  “Tell you what?”