Foolish Games: A Brothers Best Friend Fake Dating Romance

twenty-four

#1 at the Box Office:Titanic

Sebastian Swift

“Can I drive the ‘Vette tomorrow?” I ask, rolling over on my narrow bed, the phone cord wrapping around my neck like it’s trying to strangle me. Like it’s another reed in the hidden tangle that I could get caught on while swimming, that could pull me under and drown me. But if I keep treading water, keep swimming, I always manage to keep my head above water somehow. If I stop, that’s when I’ll sink like Melody.

“Not a chance,” Vivienne says.

I close my eyes and groan in frustration. “You’re killing me, Smalls.”

“Why do you always say that?”

“It’s a line from a movie? Only the greatest movie of all time,” I say, sitting up on my narrow bed. My brother glances at me from his bed across the room. “You have seen it, right?”

“No,” Vivienne says, a scowl in her voice.

“I can’t believe I’m fake going out with a control freak who’s never seen Sandlot.”

“Hey,” she protests. “I’m not a control freak.”

“Then you’d let me drive.”

“My car is very special to me,” she says. “Besides, you said you liked me driving you around, remember? You said it made you feel fancy.”

I did say that, yet another lie to add to the giant forest of lies I’m making, the underwater jungle that can snag a swimmer and pull them to their death. Apparently, once you start lying, it takes over, more and more branches sprouting from the original lie.

I open my mouth to tell her that was a bullshit excuse, and it makes me feel pathetic as fuck to have her behind the wheel all the time, driving me around like a charity case, the same way her brother does. But we don’t go that deep, so I hesitate, trying to figure out how to say it in words that fit the tone of the play we’re performing.

“So, I’ll pick you up at nine?” Vivienne asks before I can figure out how to tell her something real to go along with all the lies. “Technically, it starts at eight, but we don’t want to be the first ones there.”

I swing my legs off the bed and cradle the phone between my ear and shoulder. “Yeah, maybe I’ll ride with Billy and them.”

She pauses. “They’re not invited to this, Sebastian.”

“Oh, right,” I say, leaning my elbow on my knee and combing my hand through my hair. “This is the exclusive circle jerk for founders and their progeny.”

She doesn’t answer.

“What?” I ask. “Did I use the wrong word?”

“No.”

“Stunned speechless that I knew that word to begin with?” I ask, watching Deane transform his new toy from a car into a robot with a few twists.

“You’re my date, Sebastian. It would look weird if we didn’t show up together. Why can’t I pick you up?”

“You don’t think it looks weird if we show up with you driving every time?”

“No,” she says. “Everyone knows my car. It’s the only red Corvette at FHS.”

I close my eyes and rest my forehead on the heel of my hand. She doesn’t get it.

“How about I come over earlier?” I ask, forcing my voice to sound cheerful. I’ve been doing a lot of that lately. Faking more than our relationship. Sometimes, I look at Melody, and I wonder how long she was faking it before she gave up, before even that became more effort than she had energy for.

But I won’t be like her.

Fake it ‘til you make it.

That’s become my motto this year.

“I can get ready with you and Rob,” I go on when Viv doesn’t answer. “It’ll be fun. Maybe we can even sneak in a quickie when he’s not looking.”

“Why are you so weird about me coming to your house?” she asks. “I’m starting to think you’re married or something. Do you have, like, a baby at home?”

I glance across the room at Deane, who’s lying on his back on his bed, crashing two knock-off Transformer toys together, making quiet noises with his mouth when they meet. Not a baby. Just a baby brother and two baby sisters, all of us crammed into two bedrooms with twin beds. I think about Viv’s spacious bedroom with the big windows that let in so much light, the huge king bed with the sheets soft as air and pillows that feel like some angel flew up and snipped off pieces of heaven to bring back to cradle Princess Vivienne’s pretty head.

“Why don’t you introduce me to your parents?” I challenge her.

“You’ve been to my house,” she says. “You’ve snuck into my room… What? Four or five times in the last month.”

“Right,” I say. “Snuck in. When I was visiting your brother. Because you don’t want anyone to think you’d lower your standards and date a guy like me.”

“We’re not dating,” she points out.

The same way she always points it out, no matter how many times I bring it up and wait for her to say otherwise. She must know that I’m fucked over her, that it means more to me than I care to admit. That’s why she’s constantly reminding me that it’s not real. So I’ll get it through my thick skull that it’s not that serious. She’s just playing with me, and I can’t even be mad about it. At least she had the decency to be up front with me. I’m the one who’s too dumb to figure it out.

I didn’t expect to develop real feelings in a relationship that was never real to begin with. It was supposed to be an arrangement with my best friend and his sister. I was doing her a favor. It was never supposed to lead to this.

“Sebastian?” she asks, and I realize we’ve been sitting there with the line silent for a few minutes. I was supposed to answer, but I can’t remember her question.

“Yeah, Princess.”

“See you tomorrow.”

“Yeah,” I say, straightening. “Or hey, maybe we can kick it with my friends before the party starts. Have a little pre-party of our own.”

“That seems a little rude,” she says. “Since they can’t come to the party afterwards.”

“It’s New Year’s Eve,” I remind her. “Trust me, they’ve got a party of their own to go to. Besides, what’s the big deal if they go to your fancy party? It’s just a couple guys from the team. It’s not like I’m bringing some loser like your ex.”

She doesn’t answer.

“Right,” I say flatly. “Your ex got an invite.”

Because somehow, in their Garden Party world, little Nerd Boy Chad is better than me. He’s from a ‘good family,’ which means he’s worthy of Vivienne. After all, she publicly dated him instead of hiding him like a dirty little secret. No matter how many orgasms I give her, I can’t change that. She’ll never see me as more than a meathead who gave her a good time. In her mind, I’ll never be anything but the gardener that rich women have affairs with.

I’m not the rich guy they marry.

But she’s wrong about me.

One day, I’ll be the rich guy. I’ll be the guy she wishes she’d married instead of being so caught up in making her parents happy that she walked out on the person who could have made her happy. One day, I’ll come back here, and when we run into each other in town, she’ll be with some short guy with watery eyes who can’t keep it up, and she’ll introduce him as her husband, Dr. Urkel Nerdington. And I’ll shake his soft little hand and say, “I’m Dr. Sebastian Swift.”

And then she’ll finally know that I’m not the only one who can fuck up.

“Bastian,” Deane says, dropping his toys and slipping off his bed. “I’m hungry.”

“I have to go,” I tell Viv, and I hang up and toss the phone down before pulling my little brother onto my knee.

“Tell you what,” I tell him. “I’ll make y’all some food, and then you’re going to go to bed, and I’m going to go see some friends. But Mel will be here if you wake up while I’m gone.”

“Okay,” he says brightly, like he doesn’t know he’s the fucking hallucination of an island keeping me going right now. For him, I can take a few more strokes. If I keep telling myself I’m almost there, maybe somehow, I’ll reach the shore.

“Okay, little man,” I say, standing and picking him up under my arm like a football. He lets out a burst of screaming giggles as I haul him out of our room, his arms and legs outstretched as I zoom into the living room and toss him onto the couch. Melody and Caitlyn are already sitting there under a blanket, the TV reflected in their eyes.

I slog into the kitchen, letting the smile slip from my face. I put on water for spaghetti and get out a jar of sauce. Keeping busy keeps me from sinking. Sure, I’d rather crawl into bed with my clothes still on and go to sleep, but Mom’s at work, and they need to eat.

So for them, I take a few more strokes.

And afterwards, I call Billy, because I’m afraid that one of these days, when I finally crawl in bed, I won’t be able to get back out.

“We picking up your girl tonight?” Lexi asks when I climb up into the cab of Billy’s truck an hour later.

“Not tonight,” I say. “She’s dragging me to some snooty masquerade thing tomorrow, so I figure I’ll have to do my real partying tonight.”

“You got an invite to the Darling New Year’s party?” Billy asks, giving a low whistle. “Damn.”

“It’s a ball,” I point out. “We served at one of those. You know what those people are like.”

“Nah, man,” he says. “It’s a real fucking party. I hear they got all the drugs you can take, and not the shitty kind that’s half baking soda, either. The good stuff.”

“Pure as freshly fallen snow,” Lexi says from where she’s squeezed into the middle seat.

“Damn,” I say. “So I’m being an ungrateful bastard by not licking Vivienne’s ass for giving me an invite?”

“Pretty much,” Billy says. “Hell, if you’re not down for it, I’ll take her.”

“Billy loves licking rich lady ass,” Lexi says.

“Bitch, I will make you walk.”

“No, you won’t,” she says. “You love me too much.”

“I’m gonna swing around Mill and see if any of the crew want to go cruising tonight,” Billy says.

“How do you know so much about this party?” I ask.

He shrugs. “Jake Darling told me when I was doing some work at his place the other day.”

“Oh, now he’s Jake?” I ask.

“Maybe it’s not just the rich ladies’ asses he licks,” Lexi says.

“Fuck off,” Billy says, reaching over to shove her head. “You’re just jealous that I nailed Mrs. Darling II, and you can’t even pick up daddies at the playground anymore.”

“Well, you have an unfair advantage,” she says, crossing her arms and pouting. “The rich ladies don’t hire pool girls. It’s sexist.”

Billy laughs. “Yeah, because they know you’d fuck their husbands.”

“You fuck their wives!” she says, throwing up her hands.

“Yeah, but the wives are the ones hiring,” he points out. “They want eye candy for themselves while they’re sitting home bored. They’re not going to dangle eye candy under their husbands’ noses and get cheated on in their own home. Those dudes are already all banging their secretaries and interns.”

“Hey, if the president can do it…” I say.

“It’s still a double standard,” Lexi grumbles.

“How do you deal with that shit, anyway?” I ask as we drive deeper into the gritty part of town.

“What shit?”

“Being used by women who treat you like dogshit in public.”

“Aww, did Vivienne not introduce you to the mayor at the latest gala?” Lexi teases.

“You don’t even know what a gala is.”

“Neither do you,” she points out.

Billy grins and turns onto Mill Street. “I know the kinky secrets of all Faulkner’s elite,” he says. “What do I care if they don’t say hi to me in Walmart?”

“Like they do their own shopping anyway,” Lexi says.

“Exactly,” Billy says. “Besides, I got ways of getting back at them if they turn into bitches.”

“You blackmail them?” I ask.

“He gets me nice things,” Lexi says, holding up her arm so her sleeve slides down, revealing a silver watch.

“You were supposed to pawn that,” Billy protests.

“I will,” she says. “But I thought I’d show it off a little first. Not every day you get to roll up at school in a Rolex.”

“Maybe you should roll up to ‘Jake’s’ party in that,” I say. “I bet that’d count as an invite.”

“Ugh, not Tony,” Lexi groans as we pull up in front of the North brother’s house and see a group of guys standing around smoking.

The Dolce brothers stand talking to three guys sitting in the bed of the El Camino—Maddox, his twin Lennox, and a gangster named Reggie. Like Billy, Mad hangs out with the jocks at school, so I know them through that. They’re football buddies to me, not gang members. But I’m not stupid. I’ve seen them strutting around the locker room enough to know they have gang tats.

“I got you,” Billy assures Lexi, opening the door and hopping out of the truck.

Lexi sighs and scoots across the seat to climb down. I reluctantly swing open my door, though some of these guys are notoriously violent. But I don’t have anything they want, and I’m not planning to offend anyone, so I climb down and join the group.

I watch Billy pull in Maddox, Lennox, and Reggie in turn, doing a gang handshake thing and slapping their backs. The Dolces nod to me, and I nod back, since none of us are affiliated with the Skull and Crossbones. Across the bald lawn, a pretty girl with dark hair pulled up in a scrunchie drags the trash can to the curb, studiously ignoring the group of gangsters next door.

“Quíubo?” Lennox asks Billy, his gaze following the brunette as she hurries back inside. Maddox drags on a cigarette and watches her with hooded eyes, not speaking.

Though he gave us a ride last month, I’ve barely ever talked to Mad’s brother Lennox, a straight-up gangster who got a reputation after a rumor went around that he was stabbed in a gang fight, pulled out the knife, and put it through the other guy’s eye. At least that’s the speculation behind the gnarly scar on his side, and since the other guy is most likely buried in a shallow grave somewhere, there’s no one to contradict the story.

“Just ridin’, looking for some shit to get into,” Billy says. “Teaching this asshole how to keep the bitches in line.”

“Like you ever kept a bitch in line,” Reggie says, dragging on his cigarette.

“It’s simple,” Billy says. “If they treat you like shit in public, you treat them like shit in private. If they like that and still act like bitches, you take away the D. They can’t live without for long.”

Maddox scoffs quietly, still staring at the house next door, even though the girl is gone. If I didn’t know better, I’d think he was sweet on her. But sweet is not a word that could ever describe Maddox North, and if he ever crushed on a girl, he’d most likely crush her to death. I feel sorry for the girl that catches his interest for more than a quick fuck. He may be my boy on the field, but the dude looks like a murder waiting to happen.

“What kind of shit you thinkin’?” Tony asks Billy. “We’re down.”

“We were just admiring my watch,” Lexi says, flashing her watch. “Know anywhere you could get a couple more to match?”

“Let me see that,” Lennox says, stepping over and turning her wrist to examine it.

“That’s fake,” Tony says, peering over his shoulder.

“Nope,” Lexi says. “Billy nicked it for me.”

“I could get you cash for it,” Lennox says.

“Y’all know the Darlings,” I say, nodding to Tony. “Think this’ll get her into the party tomorrow?”

The Dolces glance at each other, frowning. “You gotta have an invite,” Benny says.

“Says who?” I ask.

“Says the Darlings,” Tony answers, kicking at a clump of dead grass clinging to the dirt. “I’m doing an independent study with Justin, and he told me all about it. The bastard was acting all sorry, like he couldn’t pull an invite out of his ass if he wanted us there.”

“Who says the founding families get to make all the rules?” I ask. “They’re no better than the rest of us. It’s our town too.”

“Yeah,” Tony says, punching a fist into his palm. “We don’t have to follow their rules.”

“Exactly,” I say. “If they want a party, we can show them a party.”