3. Seb
3
T hat was weird, right?
Yeah, that was definitely weird.
I kept thinking about it all day: a guy I hooked up with months ago coming out of the woodwork and asking me to be his pretend boyfriend. It was only a few minutes of my life, but it was awkward as hell. I couldn’t stop thinking about it.
Which was kind of ridiculous, given the fact that I hadn’t thought about Christopher Singh and our one night stand since a few weeks after it happened.
And now, the memories kept surfacing.
Two days later, I was still thinking about that run in at the coffee shop. I was still thinking about that night after Goliath. I’d woken up with massive morning wood after dreaming about it. I’d gotten off with his name on my lips every morning since I ran into him.
It all came to one logical conclusion.
I should call him .
Okay, text him. I should text him.
I pulled out my phone and found his contact number. I typed out a text, deleted it, wrote it again, repeated that process three times, and then I closed the message screen. I was overthinking this. And if I was overthinking it, maybe that was a sign that I shouldn’t text him.
I wasn’t this neurotic person, and I wasn’t going to let some guy I’d slept with once turn me into that.
I called Matt.
“I’m not going to be late this week,” Matt said as he answered the phone.
“Bullshit,” I retorted, “but also not why I’m calling.”
“Oh.” Matt laughed. I could imagine the flush of red to his cheeks. “Then why did you call?”
“To talk to my best friend?”
“Bullshit.”
It was my turn to laugh at the easy way he mimicked my tone, matching it almost perfectly. “I really did call to talk to you!” I inhaled, trying to calm the anxiety that was building inside me. Was this how Jonas felt all the time? God, that had to be hell. “I need you to tell me to stop being neurotic.”
“And you asked me for this?”
Fair point. Matt had a tendency of spinning out, of letting his thoughts spiral completely out of control, and overthinking every little thing. It was why he was perfect for talking me down, because he knew how to talk himself down. At least, I assumed he knew how to talk himself down. Otherwise, there was no way he would be able to be the fully functional person that I knew him to be.
“Yes.”
“Maybe start by telling me what you’re being neurotic about?” Matt suggested.
I heard him plop down onto something. His bed, probably. I closed my eyes and imagined him laying on his bed, serious expression on his face, dark hair falling into his eyes. He probably had a rubber duck on his nightstand. He probably had several rubber ducks on his nightstand.
Maybe I should have just asked to borrow a few of his ducks, but I doubted they’d do anything to make me feel less unnerved.
“Okay, so a few months ago, I met this guy. We hooked up after Goliath.” That was a pretty standard thing. It wasn’t anything to get worked up over. I’d hooked up with more than my fair share of guys that I’d met at Goliath. “I ran into him the other day.”
“You don’t usually get bothered by running into your hookups,” Matt pointed out.
“I’m not. Usually.”
“Is this about the whole wanting to find a soulmate and fall in love thing?”
I forgot that I’d talked to him about that. He was going to read more into this than there was. I ran my hand through my hair and sighed. “No. Can I finish? ”
“Sorry. Pretending to zip my lips.”
I gave him a moment. “Now throw away the key.” Another beat, and I could picture Matt miming throwing away an invisible key. “So like I said, I ran into him the other day, except it was weird. He wanted me to pretend to be his boyfriend.”
“I’m sorry what?”
“I think your lock is broken,” I teased, but I couldn’t really blame him. My reaction had been about the same. “He wanted me to pretend to be his boyfriend. Just for a few minutes, in front of his friend. I guess he was catching hell for not dating or something.”
“You think?”
“I was with him for about three minutes, Matt. We didn’t go into role motivations or what made him think that asking some guy he slept with months ago to be his fake boyfriend was a good idea. He just told me his friend was giving him shit.”
Maybe I should have asked more questions.
“Okay, and then what happened?”
“He bought my coffee and I left.” I stopped, because that wasn’t the full story. “He followed me outside. I got his number again, made sure he had mine.”
“Aww, you had a re-meet cute!”
“That’s not a thing.”
“That’s totally a thing. You just had one. ”
“Your brain has been warped by rom-coms, Matthew. We exchanged numbers post hook-up, but then my phone met the puddle, remember?”
“And now you’ve been texting for days and you want to know how to ask him on a real date?”
“No.” I should have called literally anyone else. Matt was an amazing listener. He always had some of the best advice, but he was also a hopeless romantic. He was the kind of guy that believed in true love and believed that every love he’d ever had was his true love.
“So you typed up twenty different conversation starters, deleted them all, chickened out, and then called me?”
That was why I called Matt. Because as annoying as he could be with the whole hopeless romantic thing, he knew me. He knew me better than most people did. Almost as well as Jonas did, and he would know the next step.
“Yup.”
“Send the text.”
“What if he only gave me his number because he felt weird about the whole asking me to pretend we were seeing each other thing?”
“Then he’ll leave you on read.”
Great. So helpful.
“Matt,” I whined.
“Seb, if he doesn’t want to talk to you, he won’t talk to you. Chances are, since he gave you his number and he remembered you from your hookup, he wants to talk to you.”
I heaved a heavy sigh. Matt heaved one right back at me, causing me to roll my eyes. I really should have called someone else, but Matt was the best person for the job.
Even if he was feeling really spicy that day. He was far more sarcastic than usual.
“Fine. I’ll text him.” Matt didn’t say anything. “I will.” Still, absolute silence on the other end of the line. “Wait, Matt, are you still there?”
“I am.”
“Then why aren’t you saying anything?”
“Because I’m waiting for you to text him. Listening to hear if I can hear when you actually hit the buttons.”
“I hate you.”
“You love me.”
“I do love you.”
Matt laughed. “Text him.”
“I’m going to!” I should have done it right then, with Matt on the phone, but knowing he was listening felt oddly intrusive. “I’ll text him when we get off the phone.” Which meant I kind of wanted to keep Matt on the line as long as I could. It would give me more time to craft the perfect opening line.
Except the line went dead.
That asshole had hung up on me.
A moment later, my phone lit up with two words:
Matt
text him.
Seb
fine. I’m texting him.
Matt
no, you’re texting me. text fake boyfriend.
i expect to hear a full report tonight. And i want to see the messages.
I sent him a middle finger emoji, pulled up Chris’s contact again, and started thinking of the perfect opening line. The phone rang before I could construct it.
I expected it to be Matt, asking if I’d texted him yet.
Instead, Chris’s name flashed across the screen. I smiled to myself as I fumbled to press the accept button, my finger slipping and hitting the reject call button instead. I groaned and immediately called him back.
“Did you send me to voicemail?” his deep voice asked.
“Not on purpose,” I admitted. “I hit the wrong button. ”
His laugh echoed in my ear. At least he wasn’t offended. At least I hoped he wasn’t offended. It would be just my luck to piss him off, but did people really laugh when they were pissed off? More importantly did he laugh when he was pissed off?
“Well I’m glad it was an accident.”
“I was actually about to text you.”
“Were you?”
“Yeah.”
A beat of silence passed between us. This was why I preferred text messages. There was time to think about what I wanted to say, no pressure to fill the awkward gaps in conversation.
“So how have—” I started.
“I wanted to ask you—” He started at the same time.
“You first.” Our voices came out in unison.
I laughed first, then his deep laugh joined in. I decided I really liked the sound of his laugh. It made me feel warm, like I’d just curled up under my favorite fleece blanket, the one with the lemons on it that my mother had bought me for Christmas years ago. It was a comforting sound, and I wanted to hear it again.
“Seriously, you first,” I told him after our laughter died down. I figured whatever he wanted to ask me was more interesting than my riveting ice breaker of how he was doing. His question might lead to actual conversation, not just boring small talk.
“Would you be willing to reprise the role of boyfriend?” he asked. There was a nervous tremor to his voice that was both adorable and intimidating. “One night only. I promise, I’m not going to keep calling and asking you to save my ass.”
“I thought the coffee shop was a one time thing?”
“It was supposed to be,” he said, “but then Mason told the rest of my friends that he’d met my boyfriend… who none of them knew existed. Obviously.” His words were coming out in a rushed jumble. I wondered if he looked flustered. I bet he looked really cute when he got flustered. “Now they want to meet you, and Lucille is having a birthday party this weekend, and they’re insisting I invite you. If you can’t come, that’s fine. I mean I can just tell them that you had other plans or that we broke up or—”
“Send me the details,” I cut him off. I couldn’t let him keep rambling, as cute as he sounded. Was it the ideal way to see him again? No. It was deceptive, and it would probably come back to bite us in the ass in a not-sexy way.
On the other hand, it meant I’d get to see him again. I’d get to find out if that spark I’d felt that night after Goliath was real or if it had been a glitch in the matrix. Or worse, if it had all been in my head.
Besides, it had been so long since I’d been on a date that I didn’t care that this was going to be fake. At least I could tell my friends that I had plans that wasn’t with one of them or my mother.
“Wait, really?”
“Did you think it’d be a harder sell?”
“A little, yeah.”
“I mean I could fake it. Really make you work to convince me,” I teased.
“No, it wouldn’t be the same,” he joked back. “I’d know you were faking, and it’d make me feel dirty.”
It was my turn to laugh. Unfortunately, my laugh wasn’t as warm as his and it included a snort. I felt my face burn in embarrassment. Maybe that was the reason that the only dates I could get were fake and most of my hookups lasted one night only.
“But seriously, send me the information. I’ll be there.”
Then, I had the best idea I think I’ve ever had. If we were going to fake this for his friends, I should know more about him. It also meant that I’d get to spend a little more time with him, get to know the real him.
“We should meet up before the party,” I suggested. “I mean if we’ve been dating, we should know things about each other, right? We should know how long we’ve been seeing each other and get our facts straight.”
“We should probably also go over rules. I mean, I don’t want to do something that makes you uncomfortable. ”
He’d already seen me naked. It wasn’t like we were really starting at square one here, but I understood his point. A one night stand was different than playing pretend with his friends.
“Good idea,” I agreed.
“Are you free tomorrow?”
I already knew the answer, but I paused like I needed to consider. Like I needed to check my all too empty calendar. “I get off work at five.”
“Perfect,” he declared.
I promised to send him my address, and then we talked for another fifteen minutes. The conversation wasn’t exactly natural. There were uncomfortable pauses and ebbs as we grappled for another topic. It was small talk, and a stone was forming in the pit of my stomach.
If we couldn’t even make small talk on the phone, how were we going to pull this off?
This was probably a really bad idea.
As we hung up the phone and I laid back in my bed, I realized that there was no probably to it. This was a really bad idea.
But at least I’d get a date out of it.