Crazy, Stupid, Fauxmance (Creative HeARTS)

by Shellee Roberts

  “Okay, I’m in,” I say before I overthink it to death and scare myself. “For the next few weeks we’ll pretend we’re together and then after the dance we can get on with our post-Audrey and post-Jacen lives. Deal?” I hold out my hand, because it feels like we should shake on it to make it real. Cabot smiles all the way to his eyes, making them crinkle, and all of a sudden I feel infinitely lighter, as if the sun has come out after a month of dark, heavy clouds.

  “Deal.” When he reaches for my hand a tiny white spark jumps from the tip of my finger to his and shocks us. I yank back.

  “Ouch, sorry.” My whole hand tingles as if I’ve been electrocuted. For some reason this makes me remember Jacen telling me about wanting to feel electric and alive with someone. I don’t think he meant it quite so literally, though.

  Cabot offers me his phone. “Why don’t we exchange numbers instead?” I punch in my name and number, he does the same on mine, and it’s done.

  One (fake) hookup with a totally hot guy, no strings, all fun, here I come.

  Chapter Six

  After Cabot drives away, I go inside and change into my work shirt. The Alamo Drafthouse Cinema is like Disneyland for movie lovers. In addition to all the current releases, they also line up classics, cult favorites, and all sorts of movie marathons; basically they show anything ever set to film, all with a side of pub food and a full bar.

  I’m thirty minutes into my shift when my back pocket buzzes as I’m delivering an order of chips and queso with a side of fried pickles. The Drafthouse has a super-strict no-talking, no-texting policy for patrons and employees during a film so I ignore it. Two minutes later I ignore it again. And again five minutes after that. My butt pretty much vibrates nonstop with texts until my first break. When I’m finally able to step outside I have thirteen messages. All from Willa.

  Willa: heard crazy rumor bout u

  Willa: u and Cabot Wheeler <3

  Willa: going to dance

  Willa: LOL, right?

  Willa: Hello???

  Willa: r u @ work?

  Willa: don’t be @ work

  Willa: OMG, Audrey just showed @ my house!!

  Willa: 911

  Willa: call me ASAP

  Willa: Srsly! UR going to dance w Cabot?!?

  Willa: WTF CALL ME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  Willa: I hate your job

  I hit her number, and she answers before it barely has time to ring on my side.

  “Are you freaking kidding me with this crap, Mariely Hinojosa?” she yells into the phone.

  “Hello to you, too.”

  “Is it true? Did you ask Cabot Wheeler, Audrey Jakes’s boyfriend and my new down-the-street neighbor, to go to the dance with you?”

  “Yes, it’s true, except he’s not Audrey’s boyfriend anymore.”

  “They just broke up on Saturday! You just broke up on Saturday. What are you thinking? Wait…is this like some sort of post-traumatic breakup disorder?”

  “I don’t know, maybe. Mostly I was thinking that if I go to the dance with someone, you know, gorgeous and obviously into girls, people will stop laughing and feeling sorry for me.”

  Willa is silent. Then sighs before she says, “I’m sorry, I’m being unfair. You’ve been through a lot, and if having a date for the dance is going to make you feel better, or help you move on, then I will support you. And Cabot is definitely hot and hetero, as far as we know, so excellent choice. When did this happen? And how did Audrey know before me?”

  “Because she was there. Right after school, when I was walking to the bus stop to go to work. She had him cornered at his car, and I felt so sorry for him, and myself, so I walked over and did it.”

  “Wow. That’s the most badass thing I’ve ever heard. Now it’s starting to make sense why she showed up at my house: Cabot’s going with you to the dance, so she’s looking for her next victim, and Finn is a logical choice.”

  “What happened?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t stay to find out, but Mariely, you should have seen her. She was, like, flying monkeys pissed.”

  “Wait till she finds out that Cabot and I are hooking up.”

  There’s complete silence on the other end. “Wills, did you hear me?” I check my phone to make sure the call didn’t drop. Then I hear a giggle, and another, until Willa is snort-laughing in my ear.

  “Bwahahahahahahahahahaha. For a second I thought you said you and Cabot were hooking up—can you imagine?”

  “That’s what I told Cabot, that no one would believe us.”

  “Whoa…wait.” The laughing cuts off abruptly. “Are you being serious right now? You’re hooking up with Cabot? Like, hooking up, hooking up? That’s not even possible, I just saw you an hour ago.”

  “No, not for real. We’re going to pretend like we are till the dance. You know, a fauxmance. Cabot thought this would be the best way to set Audrey straight about the utter demise of their relationship, and make people forget about Jacen leaving me for Himesh.”

  “You agreed to this?”

  Somehow when Cabot said it the plan didn’t seem quite as off-the-rails ridiculous as it does now that I’m explaining it to Willa. “Yes,” I squeak, already anticipating the tongue-lashing my best friend is about to give me. The dead calm of her voice does not bode well.

  “Mariely, you know I love you, right? And I’ve always got your back?” she says. There’s only the briefest of pauses before Willa’s tsunami wave of exasperation breaks over me. My phone practically vibrates. “I don’t even know where to begin with the level of insanity you are at right now,” Willa huffs. “Fake hookup? I take it back about Cabot being a decent guy. What kind of weirdo comes up with an idea like that?”

  “Actually, it was something Dahlia said to me, about the best way to get over a breakup is with a hookup.”

  “So…that sounded like a sane, rational idea to both of you? Why stop with a fake hookup? Why not just go all the way?”

  “Stop it, Willa. Neither one of us wants to jump into anything right now. This way I still get to have a date to the dance and wear my costume, and afterward Cabot and I will go our separate ways, no fuss, no muss, no big deal.”

  “Well, this is one way to get over a breakup, I guess. And people think a musical Web series based on Lizzie Borden is crazy.”

  “You’re the only one who knows, Willa, besides me and Cabot, and you can’t say anything, not even to Damien.”

  Willa sighs, hard and heavy, resigned to her fate as my lifelong accomplice. “Don’t worry. I’ll stand by you even as they lock you both up in straitjackets and take you to your padded cells. Besides, you’re going to need my help for real if Audrey gets even a whiff that you and Cabot are playing her. I’m not kidding, Mariely. She will annihilate you. I have a feeling that she would make what happened at the party feel like a little night in paradise. Text me later,” she says before hanging up.

  I slip my phone back into my pocket. I know Willa is not wrong. Audrey is not the kind of girl to go down without a fight, and the look she gave me this afternoon says I may have fired the first shots in what could be a vicious blood-letting. My blood. If I’m going to pull this off, I need a battle plan, which in my case, means a solid script.

  Chapter Seven

  The next morning I’m waiting outside in the parking lot near Building A, otherwise known as A-Plus, watching the time on my phone inch closer to the first bell, and there’s zero sign of Cabot. I’ve been pacing up and down the sidewalk for the last ten minutes. Maybe he overslept, tossing and turning all night because every time he closed his eyes he saw another possible way this ludicrous plan of ours could end in Hindenburg-level disaster—oh, the humanity! Maybe after not sleeping at all last night he decided he wasn’t up for a fauxmance after all. Maybe it’s for the best. Maybe—never mind…his black Porsche turns into the lot and parks along the back row.

  Cabot steps out of the car and tosses his backpack onto his shoulder. Even from here I can see his hair is mussed, as if he j
ust rolled out of bed or rode top-down on the way into school. He drags his fingers through it, pulling the black waves from his face. He’s wearing dark jeans (not skinny, thank God!) and a matching dark plaid shirt, sleeves rolled to his forearms, natch. His blue/black eyes are hidden behind a pair of sunglasses that I’m guessing cost more than my entire thrifted wardrobe. All he’s missing is a cigarette dangling from his lips and a wash of sepia coloring and he’d be a 1950s heartthrob. If James Dean and Elvis Presley had a baby, he’d look like Cabot.

  Up until last weekend, I’ve never paid much attention to Cabot. He’s obviously supercute, as anyone over twelve and under dead can see, but at school he’s just another person I pass in the halls, because in the Venn diagram of NextGen social circles, Cabot’s and mine don’t overlap. That saying, “birds of a feather”? Well, my scholarship got me here, but didn’t come with the requisite gold-tipped plumage for Cabot’s flock. Jacen and I, we fit. Our being together was effortless, so much so that being with someone other than Jacen honestly never crossed my mind before last weekend.

  As Cabot saunters toward me it starts to sink in what we’re about to do, what we’re about to pretend to be, and I wonder if I have the acting chops to pull it off. I set my suddenly clammy hands on my hips and do my best to strike a cool, confident pose.

  “Hey,” he says.

  “Hey,” I reply. Awkward silence stretches between us for what feels like my entire life up to this point until I remember that I have notes to alleviate just these sorts of situations. I dig into my bag and pull them out. “Here, I jotted down some notes for us, things that will help this, us, run smoothly: my class schedule, directions to my locker, some scenes we might want to do in front of people to add to our hooking-up credibility.”

  “Scenes? Like acting scenes?”

  “Yeah. It’s not a complete script or anything, just some ideas, snippets of dialogue I thought might be good.” He takes the pages and thumbs through them. Okay, it’s more than a few pages; more like a packet, really.

  Cabot removes his sunglasses and hooks them onto the collar of his undershirt. “Um, wow…thanks. Are you always this—”

  “Anal retentive?” I finish for him because I know that’s what he’s thinking. The other theater nerds think it, too. Even Jacen. Because I’d rather rehearse than hang out sometimes. Because I’m always the first one off book, and I know not only my lines, but everyone else’s, too.

  He gives me an odd look. “No, I was going to say prepared.” There’s not a hint of sarcasm, derision, or condescension in his tone. His sincerity makes me relax and the butterflies go still.

  “‘By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.’ That’s my motto,” I say.

  Out loud.

  Like an idiot.

  Maybe I relaxed too soon?

  The corner of Cabot’s mouth crooks into a quizzical grin. “Do you always quote Benjamin Franklin so early in the morning?”

  “Nice. I’m impressed. I didn’t really have you pegged as the type of guy to be familiar with the literary quotations of our founding fathers.”

  He drops his gaze, starting with polka-dot saddle shoes, my cuffed skinny jeans, my navy-striped sailor top, and my fresh victory curls. I may have pushed the retro a teeny bit today—sort of a test to see how Cabot would handle it. His eyebrow barely raises. “And I didn’t have you pegged as the type of girl to quote them.”

  I laugh; I can’t help myself. “Touché.”

  He focuses back on my pages. “I was on the debate team at my other school.”

  I’d forgotten Cabot hadn’t started at Austin NextGen till junior year. “Where was that?” I ask.

  “Another life,” is all he offers before he stuffs my notes in his backpack. “This is good. I don’t have anything written down for you, though. I thought we were going to wing it. We’ve both been in relationships before…I think we know our way around this stuff.”

  Four days ago I would have agreed, but now I’m not sure I know anything about guys, relationships, love. Not that I’m about to reveal any of this to Cabot.

  “Oh, yeah, totally. We can wing it if you want. So, we should walk in together.”

  “Yeah, let’s do this.” He opens the door for me. “I need coffee. Can I get you one, too?” One of the many perks of being a very well-funded private institution is our own coffee bar and full-time barista.

  “Thanks, no. I don’t drink coffee; it gives me the jitters,” I say.

  “Then what were you doing in a coffee shop the other day?”

  “Hiding out. Isn’t that what you were doing?”

  “Yes, but I was hiding behind a large caffè americano.” I smile. Already we have banter. This is a good sign.

  “I like tea,” I offer.

  “One tea coming up,” Cabot says. Today, A-Plus is pretty packed even this close to the bell. We get in line and while Cabot orders a very large coffee concoction for himself and hot water and a tea bag for me, I notice that people are watching us. By people I mean Audrey, surrounded by a group of other lithe-bodied girls in dance track. And by watching, I mean shooting death rays from her eyes.

  All right, showtime.

  I cozy up to Cabot, angling my body toward him close enough that my arm presses against his. When he hands me my cup, I smile like he’s just given me an Oscar and, oh so deliberately, make sure our fingers touch and linger together. “Thank you, Cabot. You’re a sweetheart,” I say in my projecting theater voice.

  My over-the-top delivery throws Cabot off guard, his eyebrows disappearing into his hairline. I give him a pointed look, a reminder that we are now onstage. He gets the message, recovers quickly, and squares his shoulders.

  “Let me walk you to class, Mariely,” he says. Shifting his coffee into his other hand, he reaches for mine and entwines our fingers. I guess this is what he meant by winging it, and I am not prepared. I try to remind myself I’ve held hands with other boys before, Jacen namely, but my body is hyperaware this is not Jacen’s hand. Surges of adrenaline pour into my veins, my heart starts beating out a jig, and I’m pretty sure my palm is producing more sweat than Jane Russell in a tight sweater on a USO tour.

  I don’t dare peek over my shoulder to see Audrey, because I’m too busy trying to convey casual composure while we walk hand in hand down the hallway; however, I’m pretty sure if wishes could come true, I’d be dead on the floor.

  As soon as we hit the stairs, I pull my hand from his. “You don’t really have to walk me to class,” I tell him in a low voice. “I don’t want you to be late.”

  Cabot shakes his head. “Nah, if we’re going to do this, we have to be all in. One hundred percent commitment. So where to?”

  “Today it’s Brit Lit.” With Jacen. I wonder if my ex has heard about me and Cabot? And if he has, does he care? The super-pissed-off part of me says it doesn’t matter what he thinks or if he has an opinion on this subject, at all. Clearly, he’s moved on, and I’m doing the same. Buh-bye. The part of me that got dumped and humiliated less than a week ago by my first real boyfriend? That part of me hopes it stings for Jacen more than a bit.

  Cabot drops me at the door to Mrs. Laves’s room. “Should I meet you in the Café for lunch?”

  “Yes, we can sit with Willa at our table, if you don’t mind.” I stand on my tiptoes and get close so he’s the only one who can hear what I say next. “I had to tell Willa the truth—it’s a best friend law. I hope that’s okay?”

  “Sure, if you trust her, then I trust her,” he says.

  “Did you tell anyone?” Again I realize how little I know about Cabot. Other than he used to date Audrey, I don’t know who his friends are at school.

  He shakes his head. “There’s no one to tell really—at least no one I trust enough to tell.” I don’t know how to take that—I couldn’t imagine not having Willa to share things with. Maybe Audrey was that person for him, which must make their breakup even more painful.

  “Thanks again for the tea,” I say.


  “Any time.” Cabot grins, soft and sweet, maybe even a bit bashful, and I feel aflutter. This might be a fauxmance, but the butterflies in my stomach obviously can’t tell the difference. He heads off to class and I take my usual seat next to Willa, which also used to be next to Jacen. Except today I see that Keegan Matthews, our senior class president, is there instead and Jacen is across the room. Mrs. Laves launches into her lecture but I’m only half, really a quarter, listening, while I furiously text Willa about Audrey’s reaction to Cabot and me just now.

  “Mariely?” Mrs. Laves asks. “Did you hear me?” Totally caught not paying attention, I covertly drop my phone into my bag as I look up to see her staring at me expectantly with Jacen standing next to her at the front of the class. “Come up, Mariely, we’re waiting.”

  For the life of me, I have no idea what everyone is waiting for, but I get up and go forward. My heart begins to spasm. This is one of my worst nightmares—I don’t know what I’m doing and I don’t know my lines. I look at Jacen for a hint but he’s busy deliberately not looking at me, and…oh, crap. Now I totally remember what they’re waiting for. Last week Mrs. Laves asked everyone to pair up and pick a short piece of dialogue from Shakespeare to memorize and recite to the class. Jacen and I had paired up, naturally. We’d chosen a piece from Taming of the Shrew, since we’d done the play three semesters ago and already knew the lines. But after what’s happened, I wish we hadn’t picked a piece quite so—what’s the word they use to describe Shakespeare’s play all the time—bawdy?

  Damn, damn, and Doris Day! After yesterday’s less-than-stellar theater rehearsal, reciting sexually suggestive lines with my ex-boyfriend in front of our classmates is not how I wanted this morning to go. Luckily, this time Jacen seems as uncomfortable as I do by the whole situation, so at least there’s that. By some sort of unspoken agreement, we don’t face each other. I hear Jacen take a breath and he begins.

  “Come, come, you wasp; in faith, you are too angry,” Jacen says, playing the part of Petruchio.