by Parker Wren
I reluctantly called Dom on Sunday night. Manuel had said that Dom was only in D.C. for another couple of days or so, debriefing them on previous progress with Henry and catching up on paperwork.
“Yello,” a voice said after a few rings.
“Hey. Dom? This is Ariel. From… you know…”
“Oh, hey!” he replied. He sounded generally happy to hear from me. “So Manuel told you to call?”
“Sort of. He said you weren’t going to be in D.C. for much longer and that we should probably get together soon to talk things over.”
“Sounds good to me,” Dom replied. “Can I come meet you? I am bored out of my mind here. My flight back to Boston isn’t for a few days, and I am so over these idiots here and their stupid questions.”
It sounded like the frustration between Manuel and Dom was mutual.
“Sure,” I said, “that would be great.”
I gave Dom directions to my apartment. He said he would be there by afternoon the next day.
CHAPTER 8
On Monday afternoon around two p. m., Dom pulled up in front of my apartment building. I would be lying if I didn’t say he looked good—his messy hair a bit more tamed and no longer hidden under the baseball cap. He was wearing sunglasses, another polo shirt, and khakis.
“Hey, baby,” he said, a big grin on his face.
To avoid any awkwardness, I gave him a quick hug.
“Hey,” I said. “Want to go grab lunch somewhere?”
“Sounds great!” he said, the smile on his face widened. Dom seemed to always be happy. I couldn’t figure out if that was a good or bad thing.
As we walked, I passed a few of my former students and some other graduate students that I kind of knew, smiling and saying hello.
“Want me to put my arm around you? Or hold hands or something?” Dom asked.
I sighed. “No thanks,” I said. “I think I’m good.”
We went to one of my favorite restaurants set back from the Corner. After devouring our burgers, we moved on to the topic at hand: our pretend relationship.
“Okay,” Dom said, taking a big swig of his beer. “Let’s do this thang.”
“I’m kind of new to fake boyfriends,” I said. “How should we start?”
Dom rubbed his fingers over his day-old blonde stubble. “Well, like Manuel said, let’s make it as realistic as possible. Have we ever been in the same place at the same time?”
I shrugged. “Hard to say. I grew up in Boston, where you went to school, but apart from this week, I don’t know how else we could have overlapped.”
“Do you go to Philadelphia much? That’s where I went to undergrad and then worked for a few years. Before HBS.”
I shook my head. “A couple of times. But not recently. And I think it would be odd if we said we met many years ago.”
“Okay,” Dom said. “So have you been back to Boston sometime recently?”
I thought about it. “Yeah,” I said. “At Christmas, I went to visit my aunt Sarah, though she lives a bit far from the city. Oh! But I did have drinks with a few friends from high school before I drove out to her place. Would that work? Do you go out in the city much?”
“You know I do,” he said, grinning again. “Okay, so just tell me what bar you were at. We can say we briefly met, exchanged numbers, and have been in touch, but we only recently reconnected.”
“Sounds good,” I said. We went over the details: meeting each other at Carrie Nation in Boston, how we had emailed back and forth for a few months, but I had started dating Jason and Dom lived up in Boston, so nothing ever came of it. But after my recent breakup, he started pursuing me more actively, and after a whirlwind of visits between D.C. and Charlottesville, we decided to spend the summer together.
“There’s only one problem,” I said. “This doesn’t sound like me at all. Run off for the summer with you? Sorry, but that’s not my style.”
Dom shrugged, clearly not thinking it was a problem. “Hey, we all do things out of character sometimes. Especially when we’re in loooove. So, just make it convincing.”
I sighed. Make it convincing. That was going to be a challenge, but I would try.
We also sorted out other logistics. We friended each other on social media, and he took a picture of us on his phone, posting it and tagging me in it but offering no caption. We were the mysterious new couple.
“Did you send your paperwork off to Manuel? He said I could talk to you once you committed,” Dom said.
“Yeah,” I replied. “I emailed him the files of the essential ones this morning and put the original signatures in the mail. It shouldn’t be a problem.”
“Good,” Dom said. “I should really check with him to make sure, but I’ll take your word for it.” He winked at me.
Well, at least he was already trusting me. “So tell me about these... people.”
“Okay,” Dom started. “I’ll show you pictures. That’s what any new boyfriend would do, right? Tell you about my friends so you’re familiar with them before you meet them?”
I shrugged. “Sure.”
“Here is Henry,” he said, pulling up a picture of him and Henry, both holding large glasses of beer. Dom sure did like his beer. They looked a bit similar in how they were dressed. Unlike Dom, Henry’s brown hair was styled shorter. He was a bit taller, with soft, round features.
“His name is Henry Matheson. You might have heard of his father, the one they’re investigating—John Matheson, CEO of Matheson Investments. Anyway, Henry was raised pretty rich. He grew up in New York, obviously. Like I told you before, we both like to party and ran in similar circles. He’s a pretty cool guy.”
“Are you rich too?” I asked. I figured I should start to learn more about Dom if I was going to play his girlfriend convincingly.
“I guess,” Dom said, shrugging. “I never really think about it. You just know what you know. My parents are both lawyers, and—yeah—we’ve never hurt for money.”
Okay, so Dom and Henry were both rich.
Dom slid his finger over his phone screen to reveal another picture.
“This is Henry and his girlfriend, Britania,” he said. “Britania Williams.” Next to Henry was a petite blonde girl—her perfect, delicate features matching the style of her cute, form-fitting sundress.
“But don’t call her Britania,” Dom warned. “She goes by Brit. She and Henry started dating about a year ago. They are pretty serious. I’ve never seen Henry more smitten. They met at some fundraiser in Boston or something. She’s a bit younger than us, like early twenties.”
I nodded. “How old is Henry?”
“A couple of years older than me,” Dom said. “Twenty-nine, I think. He came to business school a bit later than a lot of the other students. He worked for his father for a few years. Wait—how old are you?”
“Twenty-eight,” I said.
“Okay,” Dom said. “Not the younger type of woman I normally date, but everyone I know will be pleased that I’ve seemed to have landed a mature girlfriend.”
I rolled my eyes. “Can I see these pictures?”
“Sure,” Dom said.
I scrolled through his phone, looking at various pictures of Dom, Henry, and Brit. There was another shot of Dom with a blonde girl. She looked like Brit: Stepford-wife perfect. There was one picture of the two of them smiling. Another one of them kissing.
I showed him the phone and raised my eyebrows. “Is this your ex?”
“Yeah,” he said, making an effort to have his voice sound nonchalant. “We broke up at the end of last summer.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Pretty girl. But I can see now why you say that I’m not your type.”
Dom looked up, worried.
I laughed. “It’s okay,” I said. “I’m not offended. You just have to pretend that you actually like tall, curvy brunettes for the summer.”
Dom’s face lifted. “Oh, I don’t have to pretend to like curvy anything!”
I laughed again. “I
don’t know what I’m going to do with you.”
I got another grin in return. Even though Dom was not someone I would typically date—and I didn’t see myself falling for him—I was starting to like him. We could be friends. We would just have to sell ourselves as a couple, but if two people genuinely get along, would that be so difficult to do?
I remembered that Manuel had mentioned another friend would be at the beach house. “What about Henry’s other friend?”
“Oh, yeah. Grayson,” Dom said. “Grayson—ah—Foster is his last name, I think. I don’t know him super well. He grew up in New York with Henry, and he would visit Boston occasionally. I don’t have any pictures of him. He’s a good guy—kind of quiet and intense—but he’s Henry’s best friend.”
“Gotcha,” I replied.
We spent the rest of the afternoon talking, enjoying the nice early May weather. We quizzed each other on all the basics: family, where we went to school, favorite colors, food preferences. Of course, we completely disagreed on matters of religion and politics, something that would normally be a dealbreaker for me, but that didn’t matter in fake-boyfriend land. If anyone asked, we could use the “opposites attract” argument. When we were finished, I felt much more relaxed about the idea of having to pass off to the world that Dom was my boyfriend.
“We should get back,” I said. “I know you have a long drive back to D.C.”
“Well, actually,” Dom said, a mischievous expression spreading over his face, “I was hoping maybe we could go out tonight? Like not on a date, but I hear UVA is a pretty fun school to party at. Do you have any friends I can meet? Get this ball rolling?”
I thought about it. I was tired, and a large part of me wanted to go home, curl up, and watch TV for the rest of the evening. But Dom had a point, and the more time that we spent together before the summer started, the better. If he was flying back to Boston in a couple of days, we likely wouldn’t see each other until meeting up in Massachusetts before the job started.
“Okay,” I said. “But on one condition: Do not get too drunk, because taking care of drunk people is not my idea of a good time. And when I say we leave, we leave.”
Dom put his hands up, indicating defeat. “Okay, Miss Party Pooper,” he said. “You’re in charge.”
I called up Monika, Jordan, and Amanda—my core group of friends at school. While Jordan and Amanda agreed, Monika had an upcoming deadline. She apologized profusely for missing the evening. I told her that I completely understood. She whispered to me at the end of the call: “But I want to hear all about this guy very soon!”
Dom definitely seemed to enjoy his time out. Jordan and Amanda, a very nice couple who had been together for as long as I could remember, found Dom to be amusing. We bar hopped until about one a. m. I took it pretty easy, just sipping on a few glasses of wine. Dom, however, went all out. He certainly had a high tolerance for multiple shots and glasses of beer.
When Jordan and Amanda left, Dom and I walked back to my apartment. Or—more accurately—I walked and Dom stumbled.
“I told you not to get too drunk,” I grumbled at him.
“Oh, baby, don’t be such a buzzkill,” Dom said in a slurred voice. He put his heavy arm around my shoulder, using me for balance.
“Whatever,” I mumbled. “Just don’t get sick in my apartment.”
Dom slept on my couch, passing out on his stomach the minute we arrived home. I found him there the next morning in the exact same position.
I laughed, waking him. He looked around, confused for a moment, before he saw me.
“Hey,” he said, smiling.
“Hey,” I replied. “Want some breakfast?”
“Oh my gosh, that would be wonderful.”
Dom didn’t seem as hung over as I expected. I guess he did have a high tolerance for his booze.
I’m normally not one to make breakfast, but I figured I could show Dom a little hospitality. I warned him as we sat at my kitchen table to not to get used to this over the summer since cooking wasn’t exactly my strong suit.
Dom took a big forkful of scrambled eggs and shook his head. “It’s okay, I have no expectations.”
Soon after we ate, we said our goodbyes and he got in his car to drive back to D.C. We agreed to talk on the phone over the next couple of weeks occasionally. He didn’t yet know the details of when and how we were getting to Martha’s Vineyard, but he suggested that we meet up in Boston beforehand and then make our way there. I agreed.
After Dom left, I called Monika and told her about Dom and our “whirlwind romance.” I let her fill in the blanks when I said he had spent the night. I still hated lying to her. I knew, though, that it was important for friends to believe our story. We couldn’t afford any loose ends. Just in case.
CHAPTER 9
The end of the semester went by in a blur. I told my advising professor I was going to be out of town for the whole summer. I could see the disappointment in her face, especially when she asked the reason why, and I had to say that it was because of a guy. We had become fairly close friends, and she was always very supportive of my research. I felt bad for letting her down.
I worked out further details with Manuel. I would receive an up-front payment, a generous amount of money each month, and if Dom and I were successful with getting the information on Henry and the accounts, another bonus lump sum. Once my students had taken their final exams, I tied up loose ends with my department and various papers I had been working on. I was then packed and ready to go.
I gave myself a few extra days before Dom and I had scheduled to meet in Boston. I wanted to visit my aunt Sarah, who had been something of a surrogate mother to me growing up and even more so after my father had died.
After my plane landed in Boston, I rented a car and drove about two hours out to Sarah’s house in New Hampshire, located in a picturesque rural town. Seeing the stone walls as I drove brought a peace over me. The intricate walls always reminded me of home.
It was late evening when I arrived, but Sarah was still awake, drinking tea and reading a book.
“Ariel!” she exclaimed upon seeing me at the door. Her eyes lit up and the lines around her eyes crinkled. I never knew a face that was warmer than Sarah’s.
She gave me a big hug. “It is so good to see you, my darling. Come, come!”
I put my things in the guest room and joined Sarah in the kitchen.
“Tea?” she asked. “Decaf, of course. We wouldn’t want your insomnia to play up.”
“Yes, please,” I said, relaxing into a kitchen chair.
“Hey, Booboo!” I said, laughing as Sarah’s big dog came over to me and gave me a big lick on the face. “Glad to see you too!”
“He’s missed you,” Sarah said. “So have I.”
“I know,” I replied, feeling guilty. “I wish I made it up here more often.”
Sarah dismissed me with a wave of her hand. “Don’t be silly,” she said. “You see me plenty. Relationships are two-way streets, and I should come down to Virginia more often.”
“If you say so,” I replied, even though I knew it was easier at this stage of my life to travel than it was for her. She was busy with her job as a therapist and had some recurring health problems that made travelling difficult.
I spent the next couple of days in a blissful relaxation at Sarah’s. We went shopping at the local farmer’s market, made delicious meals together, and read on her porch until dusk. In the evenings, we played cards and watched movies.
On my last night at her house, as we sat on the porch watching the sun set, an impulsive question came out of my mouth.
“Sarah,” I blurted out, “are you happy?”
Someone else might have been offended by my question, but not Sarah.
“Yes, of course I am,” she said. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
“I don’t know,” I answered. Why did we assume that people who were single for most of their lives couldn’t still be happy? Was I making this assumption about Sarah?
No, it was something else.
“Well,” I continued, “I guess I was just wondering. Because I hope to be like you when I’m your age.”
Sarah laughed. “Oh no, sweetie. Don’t wish that,” she said. “You are destined for great things. Me? I just want a simple life here. I only need my dogs. I have work, which I love, but it’s not everything. I have great friends and relationships, and sometimes I’m so busy that I don’t know what to do with myself. And I have you.” Sarah reached over and squeezed my hand as she smiled.
I returned her smile and put my hand over hers. “Of course you do,” I said. “I’m only sorry I don’t live closer.”
“Stop it,” Sarah said, giving me a narrow look. “You need to live your life. Besides, with our phone calls and emails, I never feel like you’re that far away.”
I nodded.
After a few moments of silence, I asked her something else. Something I hadn’t asked in a while.
“Do you miss him?” I said.
“Your father?” Sarah replied, even though she already knew the answer. “Yes, I do,” she said. “He was my little brother. I will always miss him.”
“Me too,” I said.
“I know,” Sarah said. “It’s different for you. He was your father. To lose him at such a vulnerable time—oh Ariel, you are so strong, and you don’t even know it. It makes my heart hurt to look at you sometimes.”
I didn’t know how to react to that, so I didn’t say anything.
“I’m only strong thanks to you,” I said.
It was true. My father had died when I was a senior in high school. Since my mother had passed away when I was young, he was my only guardian. I was eighteen when he died, so I didn’t need to go under the care of anyone else, but I was essentially useless for many months. Sarah came to live with me. She fed me and took me to school for what felt like years. She convinced me to attend UC Berkeley, where I had accepted a place as a student before my father had passed. She made all of the arrangements in California, helped me move in, and even stayed in San Francisco for the first month of college to make sure that I would be okay. I was indebted to her for keeping my life on track. Without her, I don’t know what I would have done.