7. Klein
What the helldid I agree to?
From every angle, no matter how I examine it, the idea screams likely to fail. Just how exactly are Paisley and I supposed to pull off a charade of this magnitude?
I’ve been unable to think about much else since leaving Obstinate Daughter and driving to my nephew’s soccer game. So much so that I’m distracted from the game playing out in front of me. Shoving aside the vague feeling that I was conned into agreement (thank you, Halston), I force myself to focus on the game.
Oliver charges down the soccer field, toe-poking the soccer ball away the first time his teammate passes it to him.
“Take a touch, Ollie,” the coach yells from the sideline.
“Why is the coach yelling at my nephew?” I grumble, even though he’s correct in his instruction.
A grin stretches across my sister, Eden’s, face. “That coach is Oliver’s future stepdad.”
I shake my head at her. “Be real.”
After Eden’s douche canoe of an ex-husband, she deserves the best. Oliver’s soccer coach is probably not that. Don’t ask me how I know. It’s a feeling.
“Check this out,” Eden says in a low voice. She pulls out her phone, taps and swipes, then holds it out to me.
On the screen, a young guy performs bicep curls in a tight shirt while his muscles pop and flex. I frown at the atrocity. “Why the hell are you showing me that?”
She points across the field. “That’s Oliver’s coach.”
I look at the dude standing next to the team bench, clapping his hands and yelling instructions at the kids, then back to the guy on the screen. “Seriously? Why is he doing that?”
“He’s working on becoming a fitness influencer.”
Loud laughter bursts from me. Eden smacks my arm. “Shut up,” she hisses.
“You knew what my response would be before you showed it to me.”
She makes a show of rolling her eyes before tucking her phone into her back pocket. “Dom called me this morning. He said you’re dead in the water without social media,” she pauses to drill a pointed finger into my chest, “so I’m trying to show you there are other people, other guys like you putting themselves out there.”
“Let me guess. Dom asked you to talk some sense into me.” It would be just like our cousin to do that. Always telling my big sister when I dug my heels in about something. It’s been that way my whole life.
She nods once. “Precisely.”
“Eden, I have a negative percent chance of posting a video of me lifting weights.”
“Well, duh. You’d do something related to your field. Like, reading a passage of your book, or?—”
“Never gonna happen,” I interrupt.
She does the sad eyes thing, where she feels sorry for me.
“Quit doing that.” I wave a hand in front of her face. “I’m a perfectly capable reader now.” As a child I’d had dyslexia so severe I eventually found myself in a school specifically designed to meet the needs of children with the diagnosis, and teach ways to overcome the learning disability. But not before being teased relentlessly in my first school, where I’d clam up and stutter when it was my turn to read out loud. “It should please you to know I’m going to start an account.”
Eden’s eyes widen, excitement dancing in the light brown.
“But I won’t be running it,” I add.
Her eyebrows pinch in confusion.
“A marketing firm will do it all for me.” I think. Right? A tingle of trepidation trips down my spine. I don’t fully know what I’ve gotten myself into. I’ll learn more on Monday at the meeting Paisley invited me to attend with her team.
“With what money?” Eden asks. Paisley’s mother hit the nail on the head when she called me a starving artist.
“Well, here’s the thing—” I cut off, every muscle in my body stiffening as Oliver gets the ball.
He takes one touch. Then two. Fakes out a defender with a step-over I taught him last season.
He winds up, kicks the ball, and it sails into the net, just out of reach of the goalie.
Eden and I jump up and down, arms pumping the air as we shout. Oliver looks at us and beams. He points at me and recreates the step-over.
Cupping my hands around my mouth, I shout, “Way to go, bud!”
The game resets in the center of the field, and Eden says, “You were saying?”
“No money is exchanged,” I answer, my heart still battering my chest bones as the excitement fades. “The owner of the marketing firm is someone I know from college. We bartered.”
Eden’s eyebrows shoot up her forehead. “Bartered? What did you have to offer? I highly doubt anybody wants your collection of pewter Lord of the Rings figurines.”
“Ha ha,” I deadpan.
Eden stares at me. “Spit it out. What did you offer this person?”
“My...” My brain scrambles for a word. “...services.” I wince. That was a poor word choice.
Eden’s face twists in horror. “Like a stud?”
Rolling my eyes at my sister, I shake my head. “No. I?—”
She holds up a hand. “Never mind, I do not want to know.”
“Paisley’s ex-boyfriend is marrying her little sister, and a joke went sideways, and now her family thinks I’m her boyfriend, so I’m going to be her pretend boyfriend for a week while she handles my book marketing.” I explain to her the logistics and location.
Eden stares at me. “That’s either really smart, or really stupid. I’m not sure which.”
“I’m aware.”
Eden punches me lightly in my arm. “What’s Paisley like? Maybe you should try real dating her, instead of fake dating.”
Crossing my arms, I say, “She kind of dislikes me.”
Eden shakes her head as if she’s heard me incorrectly. “You’re going to spend one week on an island pretending to be attracted to somebody who kind of dislikes you?” She throws her arms in the air. “What could possibly go wrong?” Sarcasm oozes from every word. “It sounds more like a bad idea than a good one, Klein.”
I shrug, feigning indifference. Bad idea or not, I made a deal. Also, there’s no way I’m touching social media. “It’s low risk, high reward. I want to make my dreams of becoming an author a reality. All I have to do is fly across the country and spend a week on an island watching the wedding shenanigans of the wealthy. There will likely be loads of top-shelf alcohol and good food.”
Eden taps her chin, considering my words. “And cake,” she adds, getting on board. “You do love a good cake.”
I nod. “Precisely.” It’s a running joke in our family that as a kid, I was the first in line for every birthday cake, even if it wasn’t mine.
“And the girl you’re doing this for? Paisley?”
Something in my chest flexes at the mention of her name. “I’m doing this for me,” I remind Eden. “For my future. For my dreams of becoming a published author.” Am I though? The thought of Paisley suffering through the wedding all alone ate at me after I left her last night. If Halston hadn’t been the brilliant brain behind this scheme, I might have volunteered to go with Paisley without recompense.
Eden waves away my reminder. “Right, right. But Paisley benefits, too.”
Not as much as me, in my opinion, but what do I know? Maybe showing up with a boyfriend weighs as much to Paisley as my career weighs to me.
“Sure, yes. Paisley benefits.”
“Are you positive there isn’t something there? Between you two? You say she dislikes you, but she wouldn’t be hauling you across the country and introducing you to her family if you were truly the bane of her existence.”
I’m already shaking my head before she finishes her sentence. “No way.”
“So, there’s no chance you’re going to get swept up in the sultry island vibes and happily ever afters and fall in love?”
“Zero percent likelihood.”
“Why do you say that with such certainty?”
“She was in my first creative writing class in college. We were assigned to anonymously critique a classmate’s story, and I got Paisley’s. I didn’t know it was hers, and I tore it to shreds.”
My sister gives me a look that has you are such adumbass written all over it.
“It was awful. She figured out it was me. I figured out it was hers. She cried. And she still hates me for it.”
Eden crosses her arms. “There’s more to the story.”
I frown. “How so?”
“Unless she’s the world’s best grudge holder, there’s something more. A reason it hurt her that deeply.”
“Or maybe it’s exactly what it sounds like.”
Eden rolls her eyes. “Don’t be such a dude, Klein.” She taps my head. “Use your noggin.”
Huh. Could it be? Does it go deeper than embarrassment? The thought toys with my imagination, pushing me to consider. When I develop characters I layer their emotions, starting with the surface and working deeper. Anger is never simply anger, but a reaction to the emotion underneath.
Maybe Paisley wasn’t only embarrassed.
Oh man.
Across the field, Oliver’s coach calls the water break. With the boys gathered around him, he talks and stretches his hamstrings at the same time.
“Coach Kissy Face is getting limber for his next photo shoot.”
Eden grins. “You mean Oliver’s future stepdad.”
I shake my head at her.
Eden drops the subject of Paisley, and we focus on the remainder of the game. Despite Oliver’s goal, his team loses by two.
He trudges off the field, dejected. When he gets to me, I muss the mop of brown hair on his head. “Next time,” I say, trying to make him feel better when I know very little will in this moment.
“Sure, Uncle Klein. Thanks for coming out to watch me. Sorry it was for nothing.”
He shifts his black and white soccer club backpack, and I take it off him, slinging it over my shoulder. “I didn’t come to watch you win, Oliver. I came to watch you play.”
Oliver looks up at me, gratitude shining in his eyes.
“Also,” I add, not bothering to look at my sister because she’ll try and tell me no, “I need somebody to share one of those ridiculous milkshakes with me.”
Oliver smiles. “The kind they top with whole candy bars?”
“And chocolate straws.”
Eden blows out an annoyed breath, but I pretend I can’t hear her. She complains I load Oliver with sugar, and then leave just in time for the sugar high to really get going. But hey, what are uncles for?
Oliver rides with me to Sugar Shoppe, and Eden meets us there. She eats one single scoop of strawberry, while Oliver and I polish off a large Mud Worms milkshake topped with marshmallow fluff, cookie crust, and gummy worms.
History repeats itself when I take off soon after. Oliver is kicking his chair as I back out of the store, and Eden mouths Screw you.
Ten minutes later my phone dings with a text from Eden.
I told Mom about you fake dating. Expect her call.
I’m at a red light, so I let my head hit the steering wheel. Shit. My mom.
This plan Paisley and I have hatched is going to delight her. She loves romance. She loves love. She inhales romance novels, and owns a T-shirt that says ‘Book boyfriends do it better’.
She has even?—
Ring!
And there goes my phone. One guess as to who it is.
I press the button and answer the call on speaker. “Hi, Mom.”
“Eden told me.”
What is the word for what she’s doing with her voice? Oh, right. Trilling. The sound fills my car.
“That was kind of my big sister to tell you all about my fake date before I got a chance to.”
“Pfft. You weren’t going to tell me.”
“Sure I would have.”
She ignores my lie. “Don’t be so reductionist, Klein. It’s not a fake date. It’s a weeklong fake-out on an island.”
Oh, man. The way her voice grew in excitement the longer she spoke her last sentence tells me I’m in for it.
“I want to meet her,” she announces.
“No, Mom.”
“Yes, Klein.”
“There’s no point.”
“You’re going to fly across the country to a little island off the coast of North Carolina and stay with people I’ve never met. What if they’re serial killers and this was all an elaborate trap?”
“Do you really believe that?”
“Not for a second. Did you know they don’t allow cars on the island? Just maintenance vehicles and things like that. Everybody drives golf carts.”
“Mom, how?—”
“And there are alligators!”
How fast are my mother’s search fingers? I’m picturing her hunched over her keyboard, smoke rising from her rapid internet queries.
“Klein, I want you to have dinner here Wednesday evening. Check with your lady friend and make sure that works with her schedule. Eden told me she’s a big shot marketer, so you need to make sure she’s not busy marketing something.”
I stare at the phone, offended. “You forgot to ask if I’m free.”
“Are you free?”
I blow out an irritated breath. “Yes.”
“Lovely. Ask your lady friend and?—”
“Paisley.”
“Paisley,” my mother repeats. “Like the pattern. I like it.”
“I’ll make sure to tell her you like her name.”
“Don’t be caustic, Klein. It’s unbecoming.”
I laugh. My love of words came from my mother. She’s the reason for my large vocabulary as a child, even when I couldn’t read.
“Wednesday,” my mom echoes. “Ask Paisley and let me know.”
“I will.”
“Love you, Klein.”
“Love you, Mom.”
The connection ends.
I spend the rest of the afternoon reading about Bald Head Island and online shopping.I have nothing to wear to a wedding, and next to nothing for a week on a beach.
I quickly tire of online shopping, because, well, I hate it. I make a brief run to the grocery store, then get ready for the craziness that is a Saturday night behind the bar.