BS Boyfriend: A Standalone Fake Fiancée Romance

by JD Hawkins

  “There you are,” he says. “I was beginning to think you’d jumped overboard.”

  I laugh a little too goofily, and try to pull myself together by gazing out to the azure water awhile.

  “How come you’re not with the others?” he asks.

  “I had a phone call,” I say, waving my phone as proof.

  He stops close to me and leans over the railing in a way that tenses the muscles down his sides, the lines in his forearms, and even though this luxury yacht moves imperceptibly, I feel a little dizzy for the first time. I grab the railing beside him to steady myself.

  “How’s it all going?” he asks me in a lowered voice, conspiratorially.

  “Good.”

  “They didn’t ask you a bunch of questions?”

  “Nothing I couldn’t deflect. Mostly they talked about some kid named Adam, and why you have to go through this long and tough interview process.”

  Nate looks out to sea and nods slowly. After a few seconds, he sighs heavily, and I grip the rail even harder when I see how the muscles in his back rise and fall.

  “I’m getting a little worried,” he says.

  “Why?” I answer, leaning a little closer to him, so close that our elbows are touching now.

  “Sam and Eddy…they’re smart. Much smarter than they look. They figured out you weren’t from Chicago, so I told them you were from San Diego. Then they wondered how the hell we met since I’ve hardly even been to California.”

  “Well that’s easy enough to lie about,” I say with a smile. “We can just say I have an aunt or something in Illinois and we met there.”

  Nate sighs heavily again. “It’s not just that. It’s a lot of details they’re noticing, probably adding up. They’ve got memories like vices. I told them once that Nicole loved Givenchy—and they noticed you haven’t worn a single thing of theirs. Once, I mentioned to Sam that Nicole and I had been to a party on a yacht, and I could just see his brain ticking when he saw how impressed you were coming aboard it.”

  I frown quickly, trying to remember what I’d told Gabrielle about being on a yacht before, then shaking my head. I put a consoling hand on Nate’s tensed shoulder.

  “You’re just being paranoid, Nate. I’m sure they don’t suspect a thing. You’ve got to relax—if anything makes them suspicious, it’ll be you suddenly acting weird.”

  “No,” Nate says heavily, still staring at the sea below. “You don’t get it. They find needles in haystacks for a living. Sniff out bullshit from a mile away. They know something’s up, it’s just a matter of whether it’s important enough for them to…”

  As he talks, I’m distracted by movement coming from beyond his broad back. I squint a little and make out the figure approaching—Sam. He’s got his shirt off too, but to a much less striking degree.

  Tenderly, like a lover, I put my fingers on Nate’s hard chin and turn it toward me, then place a finger on his mouth.

  “Kiss me like you love me,” I say, while his dark eyes burn my thoughts away.

  I gesture with my eyes behind him, up the deck, and then smile. It takes him a long second before he gets it, but when he does, he goes for it without restraint.

  His hands reach around my sunbeaten body while his lips trace the lightest strokes over mine. Our brows brushing, his stubble bristling me, teasing out sensations until the goosebumps rise and my breath starts to slow.

  He soon has me pressed against the railing, back arching as if I might fall into the water, with nowhere to go but into him. Enveloped by his powerful arms, muscles in his neck tensing as he dives into me. When he finally presses his lips into mine again it feels like he’s giving me something. Pouring something into me that comes from somewhere in his soul.

  I keep my fingers on his face to explore his beauty as his kiss stuns me blind. His hands tease around the edges of my bikini bottom, tucking inside a little at the thigh, threatening to tear them off, reminding me of my own body and making me ache for him.

  I forget that I asked him to do this. I forget that we’re on somebody else’s yacht. I forget that somebody’s watching. I forget that this is all an act. Nate’s kiss is better than most men I’ve had, perhaps all of them. I’d fuck him right now if I could, hair dangling over the side of the boat as he squeezes me between the silver railings and his golden body.

  I twist my lips around his hungrily, sucking them, moving to bite them as he pulls back before diving into me again. Eventually I manage to angle myself so that I can open my eyes and look back up the deck. I catch a glimpse of Sam just as he’s turning and moving back to the others.

  Instead of stopping now that Sam has seen what we wanted him to, I wrap my fingers around Nate’s neck and pull him deeper into me, moving him to where he can’t check for himself whether Sam is still there. This is too good to stop.

  This fake is better than the real thing.

  8

  Nate

  “…And then the guy goes, ‘But you said let’s do it once and do it right,’ to which my buddy goes, ‘Why not do it twice and do it better?’”

  The seven guys around me laugh, and I allow myself a smile even though I wasn’t really following Eddy’s joke.

  We’re at the seating at the back of the yacht, cigars and port in our hands, a few fishing lines set up over the side. The boat’s anchored just a little way from a cove that looks like it was built by Disney, and we can see Hazel, Gabrielle, and Betty swimming and floating in the shallow entrance. Selena and Layla sit on a rocky outcropping, wiggling their toes in the water as they put the world to rights.

  The sun so clear, the water so peaceful. Surrounded by all kinds of beauty everywhere you look—natural, female, expensive. The smell of gourmet food emerging from inside the yacht’s restaurant-sized kitchen. No responsibility other than to simply be, to appreciate it.

  This is it. This is supposed to be it. So why do I feel like shit? Why am I so tense? Why does everything—even this—feel like work?

  I sip my drink and the warm heaviness only adds to the weight in my soul. Looking over the rim again to the ladies, I can hear Hazel’s laugh from here. She jumps on Gabrielle’s shoulders, dunking her under the crystal water, falling into it herself, then they both emerge seconds later with shrieks and laughs.

  Gabrielle’s the type of woman who would kill someone for brushing against her without apologizing, but around Hazel she’s like a college freshman on spring break. My fake fiancée’s playful joy so infectious and open that it can break even the coldest exterior.

  Anyone’s but mine, perhaps. Maybe because it’s not just an exterior for me.

  She’d laugh like that without the yacht, without the expensive vacation and waited drinks. She’d laugh like that if she had nothing at all. And it makes all of this—the wealth, the privilege, the status—seem pointless.

  In a way, I’ll be glad to get back to Chicago tomorrow, to never see her again, to never meet another girl like her again. If only because I can go back to pretending that this is all there is: work and money, power and ambition. Go back to pretending that my priorities are straight, that my choices were the right ones. That there’s nothing else worth fighting for.

  At least…I hope I can go back.

  “More?”

  I snap to and see Eddy beside me holding out the bottle, ready to pour. I nod and hold my glass out to him.

  “Yeah. Go ahead. And don’t shortchange me,” I say.

  It’s late evening by the time the yacht anchors back in the bay. And while the piers and walks around the hotel are busy with diners and drinkers, the lot of us are sozzled and satisfied enough to call it a night. Bodies drained from sun and swimming, minds fatigued from booze and banter. All of us still digesting the fancy seafood dinner we had on the boat.

  We step off the boat as a large group, a collective sense of satisfied, conclusive tiredness around us. Most of us already separating a little, walking with our wives—or pretend fiancées. By now, Hazel links arms with me more natu
rally and affectionately than some of the other couples.

  “You tired?” I say, turning to her to stroke her hair as we walk.

  “Mmm,” she affirms, leaning her head drowsily on my shoulder.

  “Ah, here’s my car,” Warren announces as we turn into the open front of the hotel. A large Mercedes there with a uniformed driver waiting beside it.

  “You’re not gonna stay the night?” Mickey asks as we gather around to say goodbye.

  “No, no. I’ve already fallen behind. I’ll shower on the plane.”

  Warren does the rounds, taking a little extra effort to say farewell to Hazel. “It was genuinely wonderful to meet you, my dear,” he says.

  He offers his hand, but Hazel throws a hug over him, her warmth trumping his sense of formality, though by his grin it only makes him even happier.

  “You too!” she beams.

  “I can’t wait to see you again in Chicago.”

  “Same.” Hazel smiles, and it’s so convincing I wonder if even she believes it right now.

  All done, he gets in the car and we wave him off quickly before heading inside as a group. As we cross the lobby I feel Hazel pull on my arm a little, as if she’s heading in the wrong direction.

  I look at her and she frowns at me, then I realize she thinks we’re heading off to her room, over in the cheaper part of the hotel. I nod my head from side to side, indicating all the others around us, hoping she’ll understand how weird it would look if we headed anywhere else but to my suite. It takes her half a second to understand and she nods.

  I start to wonder how the hell we can communicate this well with no words, when it took me days to try to make Nicole understand the simplest thing toward the end.

  We crowd into the elevator and go up to the suites, saying goodbye to each other as each couple splits off to head toward their rooms. The ladies are especially warm when saying goodbye to Hazel, hugs and drawn-out conversations about whether they’re having breakfast together tomorrow.

  Hazel and I make some mealy-mouthed excuses about not being sure whether we’ll head back to Chicago first thing or not, enough to stop them from begging too much, but not enough to promise anything. Eventually we reach the door of my own suite, say a couple more goodbyes, then go inside together.

  “Whoa!” Hazel says, sounding energized rather than tired now we’re inside and away from the others. “Your room is huge!”

  “It’s a double suite,” I say, watching her as she dumps her bags and scans the room hungrily.

  “It’s like…five times the size of mine. And I thought mine was big.”

  “And ten times the price, probably,” I say as I move over to the drinks cabinet and open a bottle of water.

  I watch her move about the room lightly, as if excitement carries most of her weight now. Trailing fingers delicately on the bedsheets, the desk lamp, a bronze sculpture by the balcony windows. Strangely, the way she smiles at them, touches them delicately, makes me notice them for the first time too.

  To me, this room was just a bed and a minibar, but to see her stop and study the telescope at the window makes me realize that it is sort of beautiful, kind of fascinating. But only when I see it from her eyes, only when I see her.

  “And I thought my view was incredible…” she murmurs, still amazed as she slides open the balcony doors and steps out onto the travertine tiles there.

  As she steps outside, a soft breeze catches her tunic dress, pressing it against her side, giving me a flickering, tantalizing glimpse at her curves once more. Her hair flows too, revealing the sunburned nape of her neck. The sudden urge to move toward her, to touch and kiss her, to bury myself in her, rises through me—so strong that it’s almost painful.

  Except there’s nobody around. Nobody to pretend for. No excuse for it other than my own impulses, nowhere to displace my guilt over losing control.

  I clench the water bottle tight and force myself to look away, to get a grip.

  “Um…” she says, and I look up to see she’s returned inside. “I guess the coast is clear now. I should get back to my room.”

  “No,” I say quickly, the word more of an instinct than a thought.

  She freezes on her way to pick up her bag and looks at me. I take a few seconds, forcing my rational mind to work and come up with something.

  “You should stay here tonight. Everyone…they all kept asking us about breakfast tomorrow. One of them might just come by and knock in the morning. Besides, why not enjoy the room? I owe you that, at least.”

  She smiles and pushes hair behind her ear, and I wonder how much of that she bought, how much she’s reading into it.

  “All my stuff is in my room though,” she says, apologetically. “I’ve got to take a shower.”

  I move toward the side table and pick up the phone, hitting the button for reception. When somebody answers I say, “Send a porter up to suite forty-two. I need some things brought from another room.”

  I look at Hazel as I speak, and she smiles softly, lowering her bag to the floor again.

  “Okay…” she says. “I guess that’s settled, then.”

  I nod, realizing that I’m smiling myself now, and kick off my shoes.

  Fifteen minutes later I’m stepping out of the shower in boxers and a bathrobe to see Hazel taking several hotel-branded bags from the porter.

  “Thank you so much,” she tells him sincerely.

  “Uh, honey, why don’t you go shower?” I tell her. “I’ll give the porter his tip.”

  She looks at me and says, “Sure,” before carrying the bags into the bathroom.

  I watch until she’s shut the door then quickly nod for the porter to come closer as I go to my wallet on the side table.

  “Listen,” I tell him in a low voice as I pull three hundred bucks out, “this is so you don’t tell anybody about bringing her stuff here, okay? As far as you know, she’s my fiancée and her stuff was always here, all right? If anyone saw you bringing something it was…I dunno…some souvenirs we forgot from the gift shop, you got that?”

  “Of course, sir. You can count on my discretion.” The porter nods and I hand him the money, but grip his wrist before he can take it away.

  “I’m gonna need something else though,” I tell him, checking the bathroom door over my shoulder again, the sound of running water reassuring me a little. “Condoms. And if you can bring them before she gets out of the shower—”

  “Sir,” the porter interrupts, leaning in and lowering his voice also, “the lady actually requested I bring some from the other room.”

  I look back at the bathroom door again, this time to smile at it.

  “Did she now…okay,” I say, releasing his arm and patting him on the back. “Thanks.”

  “Thank you very much, sir,” the porter says, bowing a little and leaving.

  I pour myself one of the hotel’s fancy-looking liqueurs and drink it while looking at the bathroom door, toying with the idea of pushing it open and joining her in the shower. I decide instead to grab a water, a bottle of wine, and a couple glasses, which I bring out onto the balcony. I figure I’ll wait for her on one of the chairs at the table there.

  The sun’s just set, but the sky hasn’t given up the dusty glow just yet. The mountains are losing their detail to become silhouettes, and the lights of the hotel grounds down below begin to shape into fuzzy circles.

  I sit and drink slowly, trying to relax, trying to look out at the view the way Hazel looked at the table lamp. This is the most peaceful I’ve felt in years, but that doesn’t mean much. There’s still a sense of wasting time in the back of my head, a tense compulsion to do something. If Hazel wasn’t here I’d probably crunch numbers or build screeners or check trades until I crashed with the laptop on me. If none of that appealed, I’d just drink myself to sleep.

  But she is here, so there’s only one thing I wanna do.

  I hear the shower stop and turn, waiting until she finally emerges from the bathroom, one towel scrubbing her hai
r, the other clutching one of the bags. She sets it down and sees me on the balcony.

  “Ahhh!” she announces through beautiful smiling lips. Half sigh, half exclamation. “I feel sooo light! I’m walking on air.”

  I gesture at the seat beside me, angled like an invitation, and she approaches, tossing her towel onto the back of the chair and then flicking her wet hair back with her hand. She’s wearing soft, blue cotton short shorts and the faded sleeveless T-shirt of a band I don’t know. I’d placed slippers outside the bathroom door, but she ignored them to go barefoot on the balcony.

  When she drops herself contentedly on the chair, I offer wine, but she waves it away and goes for the water instead. The sigh after she takes a long sip is like a kind of soothing music. We enjoy the silence a little while—though it’s hard for me to look at the mountains, resisting the urge to just look at her.

  “Today was really fun,” she says finally, making it clear she’s been thinking over it.

  “Yeah. It was,” I reply. “And I was dreading it, to tell you the truth. This whole trip. Not just because of the fiancée thing, but because I hate mixing work and…whatever this business trip was supposed to be.” I let a long pause go before adding, “But it’s the most fun I’ve had in years.”

  “Nate,” she says, the forced softness in her voice making me suddenly wary.

  “Yeah?”

  “Can I ask you something?”

  “Of course,” I answer, looking at her intently.

  “What if you don’t get the job?”

  I stare at her with my smile fixed now, the question stunning me so much I can’t even come up with a new expression. “What do you mean? Did you hear something on the boat?”

  “No, no,” she says quickly. “Nothing like that.”

  “You think they’ll figure it out when I get back?”

  “No,” she insists again, laughing a little now to release the tension I’m putting into the moment. “Not even the fiancée thing. Just…I dunno. If they don’t give you the job. Like, if the market crashes tomorrow, or Warren suddenly has a heart attack…I dunno. I suppose I’m just asking what would you do if you didn’t have this job to obsess over.”