My Fake Fobidden Boyfriend
Rin
“ W ant me to cut his dick off?” Aria generously offers. Her eyes are shining even bluer now. They’re so intense that I nearly laugh. “Dickless Brad has a nice ring to it, don’t you think?”
“Want me to pepper spray him?” Cassie’s plans for revenge are generally far less evil. “Or tase him, maybe?”
“Or,” Aria chimed in, “have my contacts with the tabloids make up some heinous story about how he actually has an inverse penis?”
“No!” I choke back a laugh. I broke up with Brad three months ago and just found out last night that he had since shacked up with said model. In all fairness, I don’t think it was to humiliate me. He’s an agent. She’s got a very amazing career ahead of her. He’s also a using, scheming bastard with enough classic good looks to fool anyone into thinking he’s a decent guy.
“You need to get back at him,” Aria declares. “One up him. Cut his dick off, metaphorically speaking.”
“I don’t want to think about Brad’s dick in any way now, thank you. And uh- it’s kind of hard to up the humiliation he dealt me. She’s prettier. Way prettier. Frick, she’s hot. She’s seven years younger. She’s…she’s like eight sizes smaller.”
“No way,” Aria snorts. “She just probably puts out strange positions with him and sucks a mean-”
“Stop!” I plead. “Please, god, just stop. It’s not helping!” I slap both hands over my face and rub them down like I can scrub away those images.
“This is the big league,” Aria goes on. Her tone changes, shifting from less evil to full-on evil mode. “Dickless Brad thinks he can play in our arena? Dude. We’re the ones who have money. You need to think bigger here. You have resources. You have power. You’re the freaking owner of an entire empire.”
“Technically, my mother handed that over to me. I never actually wanted it.”
“Whatever.” Aria looks so much prettier when she rolls her eyes than I know I do. “That’s beside the point. Do you think I wanted to spend my life being involved with hotels? No freaking thanks. It doesn’t matter that you wanted to be a writer and wanted to make a difference in the world. You were also really good at art and drawing, and you tried to gain your mother’s love by designing shit like she did in a desperate bid for affection, and yeah. She might have critiqued you and been a total bitch and told you that you’d never be skinny enough to be a wicked witch like her and retire to the Cayman’s with her twenty-year-old boyfriend and her yacht, but fuck it. You’re here now. You’re at the top. You’re talented. Smart. Amazing. You took the reins she handed you, and you freaking ran with it. You’ve been doing this for five years! Five! Years! You have a multi-billion-dollar company at your disposal. It doesn’t matter that your mom still owns shares and even your dad too. You’re calling the shots. You need to use that power to your advantage.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I groan.
I know for a fact that I’m not going to like where this is going. Having money is nice even though I did really want to be a journalist at one point. And even though Aria is right about my mom, including the witchy stuff, and unfortunately, the twenty-year-old boyfriend stuff as well, I would never act like an entitled brat and throw my money or my position around. I know I’m fortunate. I do what I can to try and better the world. I believe in charity for real. In trying to make a difference. My mom once said I couldn’t save them all, so why even try, but I always thought that was stupid. Over the years, I’ve invested in start-up businesses and designers in other countries that have no resources at their disposal. I’ve taken chances on people with no name for themselves, and all the raw talent in the world. I’ve hired models that never would have made it anywhere else. I have scholarships set up for people who want to get into fashion and unrelated art scholarships.
That aside, I’m a big believer in trying to make my own city a better place. Miami is big, and I’m fully aware that a lot of people fall through the cracks. Homelessness, overcrowded animal shelters, hungry kids. Yeah. I try and make a difference where I can. I know Sabrina, my mother, would scoff at how much money I’ve given away over the years, but my mom can just shove her complaints up the tight ass she always bragged about. She hasn’t bothered calling me in just over a year, and I can honestly say I’m okay with that at the moment.
“You need to beat him at his own game!” Aria continues. Her eyes light up a little more, clueing me in that she’s about to reveal her evil plot in all its glory. “Find someone. Think big, but not too big. You have good contacts. Think…models.”
“Oh my god.” I barely resist the urge to facepalm myself. “Right. One up him by doing the same shit. You’re missing one major point here that’s pretty glaringly obvious. I can’t do the same thing he did. Besides, who would believe that? That someone like me who—well—most guys in the industry are—well—I’m—they don’t date women like me.”
“Women like you?” Cassie growls.
“Women like you?” Aria shrieks right after. “What the hell does that mean? You’re gorgeous. Smart! The best artist that I know! You handle a multi-billion-dollar empire, day in and day out. You’re a successful woman! You’re generous beyond generous. You actually care about the people you work with. You care about people you don’t even know! You never used to say things about yourself like that before Dickless Brad.”
“He threw that box of chocolates that the lady from Paris gave you… those ones—he threw them in the trash,” Cassie points out gently. “You should have dumped him on the spot. Those were a gift.”
“You should have swapped his toothpaste out for hemorrhoid cream. Put hair remover in his shampoo, since he was so vain about his stupid blonde hair. Like just because he had blonde hair and blue eyes and a square jaw, he thought he was hot shit. I never liked him. I always thought he was a class A asshole.”
“We were together for three years,” I point out in a flat, dead voice.
“I’m just saying that you had all the confidence in the world before you met him, and now look at what you’re sitting here saying. If I had known that you were thinking this shit all along, I would have staged an intervention by now.” Aria thumped her hand on the table again for emphasis. “You’re perfect!”
“Clearly not, or I wouldn’t have been dumped for a nineteen-year-old model.”
“No, no, no, no,” Cassie moans. “Don’t say things like that! If you say shit like that, people like Dickless Brad and your mom win.”
Great. Now she’s getting on board with Aria. I know I should thank them for being amazing friends, but it’s hard when I feel like I’ve been kicked in the lady bits. Which I assume would hurt just as much as taking a kick to the nuts.
“I’m taking you to that waxing appointment, and we are going out!” Aria announces.
“That is not going to help.”
“Think Aiden Builder. That might help.”
“What?” I shriek and jump out of my chair so fast that another one of the damn invisible porcupines pierces my butt cheek all the way up.
“I know you’ve been trying to entice him over to your side for a while. Make him an offer he can’t refuse. Make yourself part of the deal.”
“That’s crazy!” Cassie doesn’t jump up, but at least she’s on my side.
“Bribe him. Make him fake date you. Give him a contract that will blow his mind. Then, freaking get on the runway, your own runway, and beat that skinny little gold digger, and I mean Brad, not the nineteen-year-old hussy, at his own game.”
“She’s really not that bad,” I mutter. “I swear. She’s actually kind of nice. If anything, I feel sorry for her. I’d warn her off if I didn’t come across like a crazy ex.”
“See!” Aria insists. “You’re way too nice! Only the nicest person on earth would say something like that!”
Cassie clears her throat when I look to her for help. “Maybe you do need to show them who’s boss.” Great. Now she’s back on Aria’s side.
“Model?” I scoff. “You’ve lost your freaking mind. Do I need to remind you that my own mother bemoaned the fact that I would never be a size four, let alone a two or a zero for my entire life? She tried to make me eat salad for breakfast when I was four. When I was six, she literally gave me a membership to one of those diet clubs that send pre-packaged meals in the mail. When I was eight, she told me to juice everything. When I was ten, she told me never to drink juice.”
“Bitch.”
“Double bitch,” Aria mutters. “She was wrong about everything; especially the whole nothing tastes as good as skinny feels. Revenge. Revenge tastes better. And chocolate.”
“Please just kill me now,” I mutter. Since it’s just us, I’ve opted for canvas flats, jeans, and a light long-sleeved shirt. An outfit my mother wouldn’t be caught dead in. She thought jeans were the greatest crime against humanity, which is part of the reason I wear them whenever I can. “If I walked the runway, I’d probably trip and fall flat on my own face. I don’t even wear heels. And, oh, right. I can’t walk the runway, because I’m a size ten, and my own label doesn’t even make that size.”
Cassie blinks at me.
Aria stares at me, open-mouthed. “That’s it!”
“What’s it?” I’m almost afraid to ask.
“What tastes better than normal revenge? Extra double, spicy revenge! You can stick it to your mom and Brad at the same time!” She goes on, picking up steam, getting more animated. Her hands start flying all over the place, emphasizing her words. “You can start a new line. Make clothes for real women. Make affordable, ethical stuff. Take things in a new direction. Just because your mom had this vision of what fashion is doesn’t mean you have to. Your mom didn’t even design you one single dress. Ever.”
“Don’t remind me.”
I was pretty much forced, and by forced, I mean guilted into taking over my mom’s company. I did the best I could, but I did that best with my mom’s idea of how clothes should look and feel and be worn. The one thing that never occurred to me, not in five years, was to change things up.
“Shit’s about to get real!” Aria leaps up and actually fist pumps the air, which looks hilarious, given that she’s wearing a tight pink mini dress. Aria is Aria, and she makes no apology for what she likes. On her, a pink mini dress is like a power suit on a businesswoman.
“Can you please just get a personal trainer and not go out jogging alone?” Cassie pleads, bringing us right back around to the start of the conversation when I announced my intentions to take up jogging because I thought I needed to make some changes.
“You could always come with me.”
“And risk getting knifed? I love you, but not that much,” Cassie laughs, and it dispels some of the tension from Aria’s crazy plotting.
“I’d get knifed for you,” Aria admits.
“I actually would too,” Cassie agrees.
Aria digs her phone out of some hidden crevice. I have no idea where she keeps a phone that size in a dress that small. I’m almost scared to ask. “I’m going to send you the number for the waxing place again. Please. Use it. Then, we’re taking a little trip to LA, and we’re not coming up empty-handed.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I say with a shudder.
I thought I’d deterred Aria from her wild schemes. Apparently not. LA is where Aiden Builder is currently based. He’s made no secret about wanting to change it up and make the transition to Miami. We’ve been trying to get him on board with our company for a long time. He’s only the hottest male model in the freaking industry at the moment. I don’t know why he keeps refusing. He always had a reason not to want to work with us, and I wasn’t the one doing the negotiating. There are other models out there who want less money, and I was always more about launching people’s careers than I was about furthering an already successful, likely egotistical one anyway, so I’d continuously let it go until the matter was inevitably brought up again in some meeting or other before the whole process of failed negotiations started and ended again.
“Why am I supposed to wax if it’s supposed to be fake?” I can’t believe I just asked that. Was it seriously me who put that question out there?
Aria winks at me. A scary wink. She’s somehow mastered the art of making a wink look evil. “Because, honey, you never know.”