Fake it Baby

by Tia Siren

  “He always told me I would never amount to anything. I guess I just let my sore ego get the best of me.”

  She wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him close to her. “I’m sorry he made you feel that way. People can be so fake, such hypocrites.”

  Her touch hurt him, deep inside. He didn’t know what she did to him, but he could no longer stand himself for lying to her. He wanted to tell her everything. Was he in too deep? There were so many variables and it was complicating his relationship with her.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t say anything to you in the park that day.” Her voice was soft and her breath warmed him.

  “It was sort of an awkward situation.” He pulled away from her, no longer able to bear his dishonesty toward her. “I’m just glad I didn’t hurt Andy.”

  “How do you know him?”

  “What?”

  “You keep saying his name. How do you know him?”

  “He is one of my students in my class.”

  “Ah,” she said, nodding her head.

  “I tried talking to him but he didn’t want to do too much talking with me.”

  “He is a bit of a rebel,” she said, defending him. “He means well, but he has a hard time dealing with authority. He tries too hard to get what he wants.” She touched his arm with her hand the way she did in Paris when she carried on casual conversation.

  He kept his eyes on her hand, enjoying the sensation of her touch. “What do you mean, he tries too hard? Is he your boyfriend?”

  “Oh, God no. He only wants to nail me.”

  Her rough choice of words and obvious analogy of the boy made him laugh out loud. When she joined in on the laughter, he felt a huge weight lift from his shoulders.

  “Have dinner with me,” he said with a new sense of hope.

  She hesitated, but couldn’t think of a reason to say no. “Okay,” she simply said.

  “What time would you like to…?”

  “How about now?” she interrupted. “It’s almost four thirty. Unless you have prior plans.”

  “No!” he blurted. “No plans. Now is as good a time as any.” He felt a cloud lift him off the hardened ground he had been treading on.

  “We should probably go out of town though.”

  “Out of town?”

  “There are policies against professors dating students.”

  His smile broadened at the thought of their dinner as a date. “Anywhere you would like to go is okay with me.”

  She leaned toward him, her lips brushing against his. “I’ve missed you,” she whispered.

  He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her into him, deepening their kiss and enjoying her in his arms again.

  Chapter 20

  “I’ve missed you,” he admitted.

  A heavy knock on the door interrupted their moment and they quickly broke away from each other. Edward glanced toward the door as he quickly sat down at his desk, opening the first book on the pile in front of him. The door was slightly open, causing him to feel uneasy at what the intruder might have seen or heard. The last thing he wanted was to cause trouble for Eva. He didn’t know the consequences for dating a professor but he was sure it wasn’t good. The last thing he wanted was to get Eva into trouble.

  He pointed at a paragraph in the book and took a deep breath. “Come in,” he called out.

  When Gracie pushed the door open and walked inside, he forced a smile.

  “So, this is the part you should be concentrating on for the quiz coming up,” he said, looking at Eva. She quickly looked at the page, catching on to his act.

  “Okay, thank you Professor. I will work on that. Hopefully it will help my grade.”

  She quickly stood up and scooted out of his office, leaving him wondering if she was going to wait for him or if she was cancelling their date before it even got set in stone.

  “Gracie. Hello. I was just helping out a student in my class.” He kept his eyes on her face. Did she see them kiss? Did she hear them talking?

  “I’m surprised a student is doing poorly so soon. It has only been a couple of weeks and she already needs help?”

  “She is just having a little trouble catching on. She is trying to avoid falling behind I guess. If only all my students felt that way, huh?”

  She eyed him suspiciously, making him feel uneasy.

  “What can I do for you?” He was antsy and wanted to get her out of there as soon as he could.

  “I haven’t seen you all week and I wanted to stop by.” She walked closer to him then behind him, dragging her finger along the collar of his shirt. “I was hoping you would have called me. I was hoping we could have gone out for drinks or dinner or… something.”

  “Yeah, I have been swamped all week. Trying to get used to everything, learning the ropes and helping my students. I’m sure you know how it is.”

  “I guess I do,” She said in passing. She ran her hands down his chest, still standing behind him. “Let’s make it tonight,” she whispered in his ear. “We have the weekend, Eddie. I want you.” She kissed his neck hard and started breathing heavily. She tried turning him around but the chair wasn’t cooperating, so she gave up and stepped back in hopes that he would push himself away from his desk.

  He did, but he got up on the other side of the chair, keeping it between them. “Gracie, what are you doing?”

  “Do I have to hit you over the head with a brick? Are men really that naïve about what a woman wants?” She walked up close to him and pressed her chest against his. Her arms dangled to her sides as if she was trying to push him into the wall with her breasts. Everything she did was awkward and a bit creepy. “I’m trying to wine you,” she said, pushing into him. “I’d love to dine you.” She stretched her body upwards, her lips closer to his. “Maybe even sixty….”

  “Okay,” he said, urgently. He stepped back and turned away from her, moving so his desk was between them. “I really can’t do this.”

  “Oh, I understand. Your office isn’t the appropriate place for you. You are traditional, aren’t you Eddie? You a little old school?” She walked around the desk toward him with a devious grin. “You like to fuck in the bedroom?”

  He stayed away from her and tried reasoning with her, but knew it was futile.

  “Gracie!” he snapped. He held the palm of his hand out toward her and looked her directly into her eyes. “Stop this.”

  “Wow, I’ve heard of hard to get, but this is ridiculous. A good looking guy like yourself shouldn’t have a hard time with women.” She looked genuinely concerned. She shook her head like a mother would do looking down at a small child who tripped and fell over his rocking horse and skinned his knee until the blood trickled down his tiny little leg. “Let me take care of you.” She moved closer to him as he stared at her, concerned that something was mentally wrong with the woman. “Let me show you how to love.” She slid her arms around him and pressed her cheek against his chest. Her hands cascaded up and down his back, humming vibrating through him from her mouth.

  He looked down at her, wondering just how unstable she really was. He knew he had to put an end to whatever she had conjured up in her head about the two of them.

  “Gracie. We need to have a talk.”

  She looked up at him, her finger snapping up toward his mouth. “Shhh. Don’t talk.” She pushed him gently backwards until he sat on the edge of his desk and straddled his leg. “Just feel,” she whispered.

  Before he could stop it, she had her mouth on his while her hands groped and grabbed at his chest, arms and groin. She moaned as if they had been connected this way for longer than the few seconds it took for him to come to his senses. She pressed her crotch into his upper thigh and moved back and forth as if he was actually fucking her.

  He tried moving back but each time he did she would lean into him, groping him and sucking on his lip. “Gracie!” He turned his head to the side and pushed her off him with more force than he should have used.

  With a thud, she hit th
e floor and looked up at him with hurt filled eyes. “Eddie?”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to….” He fed his fingers through his hair, frustrated that the situation turned so quickly. He held his hand out to her to help her up, but she remained where she landed. “Let me help you up. Please.”

  She reluctantly took his hand and he hoisted her up onto her feet.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  She looked up at him and a smile formed on her face. She launched herself toward him again, wrapping her arms around his neck and kissing him wildly.

  “Gracie,” he mumbled. “Please.”

  “Mmm, I know,” she cooed. “We can lock the door. It’s okay to be spontaneous.”

  “No!” He snapped. “Stop this, now!” He grabbed both her arms and shoved her backwards, holding on to her tightly.

  “You’re hurting me,” she said quietly. Her voice trembled.

  “Listen to me.” He didn’t back off. “You have to stop coming on to me this way. The only relationship I want with you is colleague to colleague. We are co-workers, nothing more.”

  “But, I can make you feel so good.” She tried to move into him again, but he held her where she stood.

  “I don’t want to have any sort of intimate relationship with you. Do you understand that?” He talked to her as if he was scolding a small child.

  She rounded her back and cowered her shoulders forward, lowering her head and wincing through her tightly closed mouth.

  Edward didn’t know how to take it. She was acting like a rotten spoiled teenager who wasn’t getting what she wanted. He would have taken her over his knee if he didn’t think it would turn her on.

  “Are you… breaking up with me?”

  “Gracie, we were never dating.”

  She looked up at him and her sadness faded into anger. She slowly stood up tall and straightened her shoulders.

  “You men are all alike,” she said in a gruff voice. “How dare you think you can lead me on then turn me away when my heart falls into your hands.”

  “Um, excuse me? We had one date, and it wasn’t even really a date.”

  “So what’s the quota? Two dates? Five? Fifteen!” She got in his face and started screaming at him. “How many dates have to happen before I am allowed to fall for a guy!”

  “I think you are being a little unreasonable.” He went back through his memories to make sure he never came on to her or gave her any reason to think they had something between them, but he couldn’t think of any. “Gracie, let’s just sit down and talk about this.”

  “No! You had your chance. You’re just a big asshole.” She turned away from him and walked toward the door.

  He kept this mouth shut, hoping she would leave, but when she turned back toward him he knew it wasn’t over.

  “Don’t forget how much I helped you! If it wasn’t for me, you wouldn’t have gotten your precious file for your precious research. I risked my job for you. I didn’t have to do that ya know.”

  He nodded. “I know, and I am grateful to you for that.”

  “If it wasn’t for me you would be in jail right now for breaking and entering. I gave that disgusting fat fuck of a security guard a god damned blow job to get you out of that mess!”

  “Yes,” he said, simply, disgusted at the memory flooding back to him.

  “You’re lucky I was there. You’re lucky I was keeping my eye on you. I could have just let Ronnie take you to the cops.”

  Something turned inside Edward’s stomach. She was stalking him. What kind of woman was this? He began to wonder if she was psychotic, or dangerous. He tried going along with whatever she said to wrap this little soirée up and get the hell away from her before something happened.

  “And I thank you for that, as a friend.”

  “Of course, it’s always as a friend.” Her tone was sarcastic as she walked around the room flailing her arms in the air.

  “Listen, Gracie. It’s nothing against you. You’re a beautiful woman. It’s just that…. I just got out of a bad relationship and it still hurts. I guess I just need time to myself.”

  And like a light switch, her anger turned off. “Awe,” she pouted. “You poor, poor baby.” She quickly walked to him and put her arms around him, comforting him and petting him. “Did she hurt you bad?”

  “Yes,” he pouted, playing into her sympathy.

  “Did she cheat on you?”

  “Um, she did. Yes.”

  “Did you catch her? Was she in bed with another man? Naked and fucking him hard when you walked in on them?”

  He leaned back to look at her face. Was she serious?

  “Did you beat the hell out of him like he deserved?”

  “Uh, no. I didn’t catch them. I found out through a friend. Hey, listen. I have to get out of here. I have to meet some of the guys.” He pulled away from her and quickly walked to the other side of his desk, gathered his things and shoved them in to his bag.

  The whole time he did this, she watched him with sympathetic eyes.

  “If you ever need a shoulder to cry on, you can call me,” she said.

  “Thank you,” he said, picking up his case. He walked through the open door and left Gracie there by herself.

  Chapter 21

  Edward lay in his bed that night, thinking about Gracie and how quickly she changed emotions. First she acted love-sick for him which quickly changed to anger then to a sympathetic motherly figure wanting to cuddle his pain away.

  “There’s a word for people like her,” he said racking his brain as he tried to think of what it was. He grabbed his phone, knowing it was going to eat at him until he figured it out.

  “Hey, my man! How’s college life?”

  “Hi, Joseph. Definitely different. How’s the new business taking off?”

  “Amazing. We already broke profit.”

  “No way. Are you serious? It has only been a few weeks.”

  “I guess our advertising strategy worked. You out on the college town? Hooking up with some young honeys?”

  “Naw. I had plans, but they fell through.” He thought about Eva and the connection they reestablished in his office before being interrupted by the evil harlot.

  “So, where you at?”

  “I’m home, at my flat, chilling.”

  “Alone? Are you sick?” he teased. “Since when did either of us see home this early on a Friday night unless it was with our arm or arms around a few of the ladies?”

  “I didn’t feel like going out. Is that a crime?”

  “Ah, yes. You are now a one woman man, aren’t you? How is plan Eva going anyway? Get her laid yet?”

  “Come on.”

  Joseph laughed. “Don’t tell me you’re getting soft on me.”

  “No, just looking at things in a different light. You wouldn’t understand. You’re still in player-mode.”

  “And there’s no crime in that either.”

  “Listen, I have a question.”

  “Shoot.”

  “Remember a while back, when you got involved with that woman who went nuts on you?”

  “Awe, yeahhhh.” Joseph drew his words out as he remembered the night he ended up in the hospital. “Tracie. She was psychotic, dude!”

  “What did she have?”

  “A case of fucking crazy-itis!”

  “But what was the clinical term they used?”

  “Oh.” Joseph went silent for a moment. “Bipolar Psychosis, I think.”

  “That’s it.”

  “There a problem, bro?”

  “Potentially.”

  “Eva a whack job?”

  “No. It isn’t Eva.”

  “So you are still on the love train. Very nice, my friend.”

  “Joseph. Will you please? No, this woman befriended me as soon as I got on campus. More than helpful, sweet, beautiful. She is a professor and now that I have gotten to know her, she is starting to freak me out a little.”<
br />
  “What happened?”

  “She has this idea we have something going on between us and when she came onto me tonight in my office I didn’t reciprocate.”

  “And why not?”

  “Because she acted like a sex craved maniac. When I turned her down she completely went off on me and threatened me.”

  “Sounds like you missed out on a fabulous night of crazy monkey love.”

  “Okay, Joseph. Think Tracie, the night she attacked you.”

  “Awe, man.”

  “Yeah, it started out as a sexual attack but didn’t end up that way, did it?”

  “No, man. No.”

  “This was turning into the same thing.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I made up a story that I was still getting over a relationship.”

  “Did it work?”

  “Yeah,” he said, chuckling. “She turned into Mother Theresa and tried coddling me. I got the hell out of there. I know it isn’t the end of it though. I just have to figure out what I’m dealing with before I actually deal with it.”

  “Gotchu. Hey, listen. I do have to go. Got some plans later on. But listen, if you need me, if you need anything at all just let me know. I’ll have the posse up there ready to pounce.”

  “Will do. Thanks, Joseph.”

  “See ya round.”

  “Have fun tonight.”

  “Always do, my man. Always do.”

  Edward shook his head and chuckled as he set his phone down.

  The dining hall was large and open like a synagogue with several benches and tables large enough to seat ten people. Once Edward got his lunch, he found a table of adults with a few faces he recognized as fellow professors. He took a seat at the end but didn’t offer an introduction. He felt the less they knew about him the better.

  “I’m telling you, the itinerary this year is almost unbearable,” said one round faced man in a short sleeved white shirt buttoned as far as it could go. His fat, red cheeks jiggled as he stuffed a fork full of beans into his mouth. Each time he did this, he would nudge his thick black rimmed glasses back up on the bridge of his nose with the knuckle of his finger that held the fork.