by Jackie Lau
I still don’t say anything.
“Come on.” He sounds exasperated. “Just answer a question. I don’t care which one.”
“Fine. One vanilla dip donut with sprinkles. I’ll scrape them onto your seat.”
He smiles and slides his hand through my hair.
“Don’t touch me,” I snap.
When he turned me down at the beach house, I tried to brush it off like it was no big deal. I can’t manage to be cheerful now, though. It’s too difficult when the end is so close. His touch is almost painful, reminding me of what I can’t have.
He holds up his hands. “I’ll get your donut.”
Note to self: If you want to ask your fake boyfriend to be your real boyfriend, do it after the three-hour drive, not before. I could do without the awkwardness.
Will comes back a few minutes later with my donut, as well as an iced cappuccino. A peace offering, I guess.
I don’t drink the iced cappuccino, but I eat the donut.
And I do get sprinkles in his car. Lots of them.
* * *
“Need help with your suitcase?” he asks as he pulls up in front of my building.
I shake my head, then say the words I’ve been reciting in my head for the past ten minutes. “Thank you for coming to Grand Bend with me. I had a great time this weekend, and you were a great fake boyfriend.”
Before he has a chance to respond, I leave the car and hurry up to my apartment.
When I collapse on my bed, all alone, I finally allow myself to cry.
Chapter 22
Naomi
I look at the bullseye and pretend it’s Will’s face. Then I position the ax behind my head and whip it toward the wall.
The blade of the ax hits the bullseye and falls to the ground.
I don’t get any points. The ax has to actually stick in the wood to be worth something.
I sigh. I’ve been doing terribly at ax-throwing tonight.
I look over at Ridhi, who’s my opponent in this match. She asked to come with me today. She’s not doing any better than I am; however, she’s not doing too badly considering she’s never done this before.
We throw our axes one last time, and I finally manage to get three points. Thank God. It was getting kind of embarrassing.
Ridhi and I step back and let the next pair take their turn. She grabs her bottle of water and has a gulp. “This is so much fun! I think I’m going to join after we get back from our honeymoon. I’ve got too much to do before then, but I really needed this night off. You want to grab dinner afterward?”
I usually go out with my ax-throwing friends, but I’m not in the mood for that.
“Sure,” I say. “There’s a sushi restaurant near the Distillery District that’s pretty good.”
I play one last match, picturing Will’s head the whole time. Unfortunately, I’m just as unsuccessful as before. For some reason, picturing Jordan’s head always worked better than this. I don’t know why.
Maybe because I have too much rage to be able to control it.
Most of the time, it’s sadness, not anger. It’s Friday, so it’s been four days since he dropped me off at home. Four terrible days. I feel like I’m just going through the motions; I feel empty inside.
But as soon as I got to the ax-throwing league, I was overcome with rage. How dare he turn me down like that? I’m smoking hot! I’m lots of fun! I’m good in bed, and I like having sex all the time! How could he say no?
I haven’t talked to anyone about it. Tonight, however, I’m going to tell Ridhi the truth. I want to talk to someone who was there on the weekend. Someone who saw me and Will together.
An hour later, we’re at the sushi restaurant, waiting for our food. We’ve ordered a ton of things to share. Throwing axes can really work up an appetite.
“What’s up?” Ridhi asks. “You seemed happy last weekend, but you’re a little off today.”
Okay. Here it goes.
“Will and I were never actually together. He was just my fake boyfriend for the trip to Grand Bend.”
“A fake boyfriend. Are you serious?”
I nod.
Ridhi’s mouth falls open. “But why?”
“I didn’t want to be the odd one out, the only one who wasn’t part of a couple, especially with Jordan around. I wanted to prove I’d moved on, even though that wasn’t exactly true at the time. For whatever reason, Will was the one I wanted as my pretend boyfriend. I had a crush on him when I was younger...”
I tell her how I know Will and asked him to play the part for me. I tell her how we had sex for the first time after we ate banana boats and sung campfire songs. How it was more than just sex.
I tell her how he turned me down.
“I had no idea,” she says. “Dammit, Naomi, I was really happy for you! Happy you’d found someone after Jordan. Happy you didn’t need to shove it in our faces by making out all the time and having really loud sex all night.”
I chuckle. “We had lots of sex. We were just quiet about it.”
“You seemed like a better couple than Jordan and Krista. I mean it. The way they agreed on everything in the shoe game was kind of unnatural.”
“When I looked back on my relationship with Jordan, I realized I was kind of like that with him, too. Though perhaps we shouldn’t read too much into the responses people give in the shoe game.”
“That’s true. Honestly, I don’t want to think about that game right now.” She shudders. “I can’t believe that was what set me off.”
“You and Ian are okay?”
She nods. “We’re good. Still, I can’t wait until this wedding stuff is over.”
“It’ll be a great day. You’ll look back and think it was all worth it.”
“I don’t know if I’ll go that far, but I hope so.”
The vegetable tempura arrives. I’m about to reach for a slice of sweet potato, then realize it’s probably too hot. I put down my chopsticks.
“So, what are you going to do?” Ridhi asks.
“I don’t think there’s anything I can do. I asked him out, he shot me down. I’m not going to beg him to change his mind. If he doesn’t want me, he doesn’t want me.” A tear rolls down my cheek, and I blot it with a napkin.
“Oh, honey.”
“It’s okay,” I say, trying to convince myself. “At least now I know what I want out of a relationship, and it’s not what I had with Jordan. That’s good, isn’t it?”
Actually, now that I think of it, some of my previous relationships were like my relationship with Jordan, too. Whenever I had a romantic interest in a guy, I would act the way I thought he wanted me to act and end up losing a bit of myself.
It was different with Will, probably in part because I didn’t see him romantically at the start of the weekend...although I think some of it was just because it was him. Rather than making me a lesser version of myself, he made me better. I know I wouldn’t have figured this out and stood up to Jordan without him.
“It’s just...I thought Will was the right guy,” I say. “Even though we only had one weekend together, I thought it was something special.”
“He’s missing out. You’re amazeballs.”
“You’re right. I am amazeballs.”
I say this just as the waitress comes by with our spicy tuna roll, and I reach for a piece as soon as she sets the plate down, feeling a touch embarrassed.
“Perhaps you’ll meet someone at my wedding,” Ridhi says. “I have a bunch of single cousins, and their mothers are desperate to marry them off.”
“Maybe I will,” I say with an enthusiasm I don’t feel.
I can’t stop thinking about Will.
I do feel a bit better after a night of ax-throwing and sushi. It was good to be out with a friend and tell someone the truth. But when I get home, I spoon taro ice cream into my mouth and watch old Friends episodes, and I wonder what he’s up to.
Later I try to distract myself by looking at pictures of cute animals online,
but pandas and pudus just remind me of him. Dammit, the man has ruined miniature deer for me.
How unfair.
And yet, I don’t wish the weekend had never happened. I am better off for it, even if I don’t feel all that great now.
Besides, if it hadn’t been for Will, I wouldn’t know about the existence of pudus anyway.
* * *
My phone chirps the next morning. I eagerly grab it off my night table in case it’s Will.
It’s not.
Is it normal for my abs to hurt from ax-throwing? Ridhi asks.
Yeah, I reply. Happens to me sometimes, too. The first time, they hurt for two days.
It’s nine o’clock. I’ve been awake for an hour, but I can’t motivate myself to get up. I just want to lie in bed all day.
If only I could lie in bed all day with Will.
It’s surprising how much he’s affected me, given we didn’t know each other all that long. And yet, I’d read his books and heard Jeremy talk about him for years. I follow him on social media. Part of me feels like I’ve known him for much longer.
Like I’ve always known him. Because he is the one for me.
I know that sounds lame, but I can’t help the way I feel.
What is it about Will? There are many things I like about him. He’s smart and funny and creative...and lots of things that weren’t discussed in the shoe game.
But there’s that something extra. Some kind of magic that happens when we’re together. When we were in bed, it felt like there was a part of me that recognized this was where I belonged. Although I’ve had a fair amount of sex, it’s unusual for me to feel such a strong emotional connection during it.
At ten o’clock I force myself out of bed, make some coffee, and pour a bowl of Cheerios.
Hmm. Reminds me of the morning I took breakfast up to Will at the beach house.
We could be so happy together. He could spend all day writing alone at home and at the coffee shop, and then I’d come home from work, and he’d greet me with a searing kiss against the door...
We’re opposites in many ways, but we complement each other.
There’s a knock at the door.
Shit. I’m supposed to have dim sum with my siblings today. I’d forgotten all about it.
I open the door and let in my brother, sister, and sister-in-law. The plan was for them to pick me up on the way to the restaurant in Mississauga.
“Just give me a couple minutes,” I say. “I’m still drinking my coffee.”
“We have to get there by eleven,” Jeremy says. “This place is really busy on the weekend. They won’t hold your table if you’re more than five minutes late.”
I roll my eyes. “I’m aware of that. We’ll still be on time, don’t you worry.”
“I want to hear about your Canada Day weekend!” Lydia says, her eyes bright.
Lydia and Jeremy have been married for three years, and she’s almost eight months pregnant. She’s Chinese, but unlike us, she’s a mainlander, and her family speaks Mandarin.
I gesture them into the kitchen. “Last weekend was fine.”
“Just fine?” Lydia says, grinning. “Nothing more?”
“No,” I say. “Nothing more.”
I have no intention of telling my brother that I slept with his best friend. Courtney, of course, knows the truth, but she promised not to say anything.
“Aw,” Lydia says. “I thought you two would make the perfect couple. I’ve wanted to set you up for ages, but Jeremy said Will wouldn’t agree to be set up with anyone. When I heard you wanted a date for a weekend at the beach, I told Jeremy he had to ask Will.”
I choke on my coffee. “Really? You want us to be together?”
I remember saying, on the first night in Grand Bend, that my brother’s wife thought we’d be a great couple. I was making it all up, but apparently it was true.
Lydia claps her hands. “Yes! I thought it was a brilliant idea. Too bad it didn’t work out.”
Indeed.
Something must have shown on my face, because she says, “What are you not telling me, Naomi?”
“We have to go,” Jeremy says. “I need my har gow.”
“Shut up,” Lydia says. “I want to know what happened with Naomi and Will.”
“Nothing happened. You heard her.”
“I know that was a lie.” She turns to me. “What is it?”
Well. I know Lydia. She is nothing if not stubborn. She’ll drag this out of me eventually.
“Only if Jeremy leaves the room,” I say.
“Oh my gosh!” She puts her hands to her mouth. “You slept together, didn’t you?”
Jeremy’s gaze snaps toward me. “What?”
“Um, yes,” I mumble.
“Was he any good?” Lydia asks, and Courtney stifles a laugh. I remember telling her that Will was the best I’d ever had.
I’m not going to say that now.
Jeremy shakes his head. “Please don’t answer that question.”
“I won’t.”
Lydia tilts her head to the side. “Did it end badly? You seem quiet.”
“No, I’m fine. Just got up late, that’s all.”
“You’re not fine.” Nothing gets past her.
“What did he do?” Jeremy thunders, no longer concerned about his shrimp dumplings.
“It’s fine.” I’ve been repeating that word a lot. “You don’t need to confront him. He did nothing wrong. He just...didn’t want anything more.” There’s a tremor in my voice. “Can we go now?”
“I trusted him. I made him promise nothing would happen. And he...he...”
“You can stop with the big brother routine,” Courtney says.
“You knew about this?”
“I did. We might be your little sisters, but we’re adults. We can take care of ourselves.”
Alas, her words don’t seem to sink in.
My brother clenches his fists. “That bastard.”
Oh, boy. What’s he going to do now?
Chapter 23
Will
“This is shit,” says Paulina Fuentes, fantasy writer extraordinaire.
“Thank you for speaking your mind,” I mutter.
It’s Saturday afternoon, and we’re talking on Skype. Since I’ve been completely blocked when it comes to book seven, yesterday I wrote the opening chapter for the science fiction comedy I’ve been thinking about.
Apparently it’s shit.
“It’s not funny,” Paulina continues, “and the voice, it’s not you.”
Okay, so this entire week has been a bust work-wise. I have lost my ability to write, which is problematic seeing as I’m a writer.
I sigh. “I’ll scrap it.”
“Don’t scrap the idea. Just take a break. Go away for a few days.”
“I went away last weekend, remember?”
“With your fake girlfriend. How did I forget?” Paulina adjusts her glasses. “How was it?”
I don’t answer.
“Will,” she says, “you don’t sound like yourself. Was pretending to be someone’s boyfriend a traumatic experience for you?”
“It was traumatic being around seven other people for three days straight,” I reply, pretending to be my usual anti-social self.
“I feel your pain.”
But to be honest, the weekend was actually pretty great, even if there was a little too much socializing for my taste. The past several days have been terrible, however, even though I’ve gotten my peace and quiet. I haven’t been able to write, and I can barely concentrate enough to read. I keep thinking about Naomi Kwan. The way she moaned as I applied sunscreen, throwing her in the lake afterward...
All those little moments that don’t sound special...they feel like everything now. How did it happen? How did listening to Naomi sing stupid campfire songs become one of the best times of my life?
“What is it?” Paulina asks gently.
I swallow. “I fell in love with her. My fake girlfriend.”
/> That’s the first time I’ve admitted—even to myself—the extent of what I feel for Naomi. We didn’t have very long together, but I know. I just know.
“Did you tell her?” Paulina asks.
“No.”
“Did you kiss her?”
“I did a hell of a lot more than that.”
She laughs. “I know talking about your feelings isn’t your strength, but you can ask her out.”
“She asked me out, actually. I turned her down.”
Paulina frowns. “Men say women make no sense, but usually I find the reverse is true.”
I scrub a hand over my face. “She’s the opposite of me. She likes—”
“People? Parties? Leaving the house?”
“Something like that. She’s just...” I smile as I think of her. “Wonderful. She’s perfect, except she hates the way I drive. But I know she’ll try to turn me into someone I’m not. Someone appropriate for a woman like her. That’s what everyone wants. My parents, my sister—”
“I don’t,” Paulina says.
“Thank you.”
“I can’t tell if you’re being sarcastic.”
“I’m not.”
“Not everyone wants to change you, Will. But I know what you mean. My mother was like that, too. I wasn’t the kind of daughter she wanted, and she told me no man would ever want me, either.”
That pisses me off.
“And then,” I say, “you married the boy you started dating when you were sixteen.”
“Shit!” Paulina starts furiously looking through the papers on her desk. “I knew I was forgetting something. It’s our thirty-year anniversary today, and I got Luis a card.”
Paulina and I are similar in some ways, but her office is a pigsty and mine is neat. And she’s been in a relationship for all of her adult life, and I’m thirty-six and single.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “Please continue. I’ll find it later.”
“No. You’ll be distracted.”
“This is true.” She disappears from the screen. A minute later, she shouts, “Found it!” and holds up a yellow envelope.
“It would be easier if you were more organized.”
“I know, I know. But I don’t work like that, and that’s okay. It’s just the way I am. And like you, sometimes I need a break from everyone.” Paulina pauses. “Has she given any indication she wants to change you, or are you just assuming that because of your family, and because she’s so different from you?”