7. Anthony
CHAPTER 7
anthony
I was so fucking happy I was even humming, which I never did. I caught myself doing that as I put extra care into making Shoua’s iced coffee. I was so grateful last night when I came home from the brewery that I made a special vanilla syrup for her coffee. I’m still not sure what the hell it was.
Shoua agreed to be my fake girlfriend .
She didn’t know this, but I found some real vanilla pods at the farmers market we went to Thursday night. I had been wanting to try out different things to make her usual vanilla hazelnut lattes better, so I figured the vanilla pods might do the trick. I wasn’t much of a cook, but when it came to making homemade specialty coffee syrups, I was the man, and I made one just for her.
“Good morning!” I grinned as I spotted her in her kitchen.
I came through the back door this morning instead of the front. I typically wouldn’t walk over to Shoua’s place this early in the morning over the weekend, but we needed to map out the details and boundaries of this fake relationship. Although I was fine with verbal agreement, Shoua was insistent on a written one. It was Saturday, and we needed to get our shit together before Evelyn and Kelvin got here in the afternoon.
“Morning,” she grumbled, blinking sleepily at me.
Just as I was about to hand her the coffee, I immediately noticed something different. I set my drink down and reached out to take her hand in mine.
“When did you get your nails done?” I asked.
I glanced at her shimmery, long, baby pink manicured nails and then at her matching pedicured toes. I was certain she didn’t have these last night when we went out to the brewery.
“You noticed the nails?” she asked, surprised. She quickly swiped her drink out of my hand and took a long blissful sip.
I grinned. “I notice everything about you, Shoua. And I’m sure these nails weren’t on your fingers last night.”
“I woke up early and did it myself,” she answered casually. “Like it?”
I’ve had enough girlfriends to know that it could easily take hours to get nails done. I laughed as I drew over the butterfly she put on her middle finger nail. It’d honestly be cute as fuck cute if she flipped Evelyn and Kelvin off with her pink nails and little butterfly. But she wouldn’t. Shoua was always too kind and forgiving.
“I love it,” I said, letting go of her hand.
“Thanks.” She flashed me a small smile and then walked over to her dining table where a legal pad and pen sat. She was all set and ready.
“Hurry up, Anthony. We don’t have all day,” Shoua said, sipping her drink away. “By the way, the coffee’s better than usual today. Did you do something different to it?”
“Yeah! I did! I made you a special vanilla syrup,” I said, taking the seat across from her. I noticed the way she quickly uncapped her pen. “Someone sure is excited to get the ball rolling.”
She shot me a pointed look. “Evelyn and her cousin are arriving later today. If we don’t get it together, then all of this will unravel and hit the fan.”
“You sound so pessimistic about this,” I scoffed. “Are you that worried that we’re not going to convince them? We’ll be fine.”
“I’m not worried. I just want to make sure we both know what the rules are and what we’re in for.”
“Fine.” I grabbed the pen out of her hand and the legal pad from her side and started writing. “Number one, we can’t tell anyone that our relationship is fake besides Julie, Andy, and Jonathan. If anyone would call us out on our shit, it’d be them anyways.”
“You have to add Jackie and Alicia to it too.”
I gave her an unconvinced look. “I don’t trust them.”
“Anthony, they’ll be fine. The last person you should worry about is probably yourself. The chances of you slipping and telling everyone this is all a lie is significantly higher than them.”
Feeling flustered about how accurate she was, I muttered, “Fine. Moving on to two. If anyone asks, say that we gradually fell in love with one another after . . .” I started to trail off, unsure.
“After we bought this duplex together.” She sounded slightly irritated. “See? We need to get this down if we want it to work because you don’t even remember what we discussed last night in the rideshare home.”
I shook my head at her as she sipped her coffee. “We talked about so much that I simply forgot. Besides, it would add a touch of authenticity if I can’t pinpoint how we fall in love, right? We’ve been friends forever, so I’m sure people would still believe me even if I say I can’t remember.”
Her lips pursed a bit into a little pout. “I think we should still have a story about how we supposedly fell in love with one another.”
“Fine, we can say that we fell in love last year—after your accident. If we go with that, I’ll remember it easier.” I noticed the way Shoua blinked after an unreadable emotion flashed across her eyes. “That’s fine, right? Or?—”
“It’s perfect.”
I smiled. “Great. Three, touch or peck one another only when necessary. If we have to kiss on the lips, then go for the corner.”
“Fine by me. For four,” Shoua continued. Although her voice was serious, her face said otherwise. A bright blush had quickly crept up her neck as I noted down our number three. “We can’t tell my family that we’re together, even if it’s fake.”
“Why not?” I frowned. “That defeats the purpose of this whole ordeal, Shoua. I doubt Aunt Sue and Evelyn are going to believe us if your family doesn’t even know.”
“They’ll just find out when everyone else finds out,” she said as she shrugged, almost too casually. “Look—I just don’t want my mom going around and saying things, all right? You know how much she loves to gossip.”
True. Shoua’s mom was a huge gossiper. Although my mom and Auntie Yee—Jonathan and Julie’s mom—loved to talk, they only talked about family drama with their siblings. Shoua’s mom, on the other hand, was a talker . She knew all the ins and outs about practically everyone in the Hmong community.
“That’s the last thing we need,” I said, writing it down. “Five?”
“No dating other people in the duration of this.”
“Is sex added into that?”
“For the love of god, Anthony, can’t you keep your dick in your pants for at least a month?—”
“No, it’s not that. All I’m saying is that if we’re not allowed to date other people, then we shouldn’t be having sex with other people either,” I countered. “It’ll be suspicious if you or me leave the bar with other people if we go out.”
“Sure, if you’re all right with that. No dating or sex with other people.” Shoua nodded.
“Six, this will all end the moment Aunt Sue, Evelyn, and Kelvin leave,” I said with certainty. I quickly jotted it down and passed Shoua the legal pad.
“Perfect.” She quickly looked everything over and then up at me. “Looks like we have a plan.”
I stuck my hand out to hers and we shook on it. Shoua was right. We needed to talk about all this to outline the rules of this fake relationship was.
“I’ll see you later,” I said, getting up from my chair. “Evelyn and Kelvin are arriving right at noon, so we need to head out around eleven-ish to go get Aunt Sue at my parents’ place.”
Shoua sipped on her coffee, looking bored. “Yay, I’m so excited.” Her voice was flat with indifference.
“Woo-hoo,” I grumbled on my way out the back door. I waved her goodbye before leaving entirely.
“So, you and Shoua are really going to do this whole fake dating thing, huh?” Andy asked. I could practically hear the smug smirk sitting on his lips, and if he was here, I’d probably try to smack it off of his annoying face.
My brother and me always made time to talk over the phone with one another. Even when we were in college, we would always chat despite living completely separate lives in different cities. Some people thought that we were inseparable because it’s a twin thing.
But I think one reason is the fact that we grew up sharing our lives for so long. We slept in the same crib and even shared a bed for several years. We had the same friends and loved similar hobbies. College was the first time we’d ever lived apart, and it felt weird for both of us at first. Now that we’re adults and still living in different cities, I still miss living close to him. I don’t miss the part when we had to share everything though.
“Well, yeah ,” I retorted. “I don’t really have a choice, do I?”
Andy snickered.
“What the hell are you even laughing at?”
“At the fact that I’m not surprised it’d be you who’d be roped into something like this by Mom and Dad.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
My brother laughed out loud as my cheeks burned. “You’re too gullible and trusting sometimes.”
I let out a long groan of frustration. “It’s not about being gullible or too trusting. You weren’t there! You didn’t see the way Mom looked at me! She’d look at you like she’d break your neck too if you didn’t say yes!”
“That’s because I’m not you. She knows I’d say no.”
“Oh, so you’d be fine with being stuck with Evelyn for all of June?” When Andy didn’t respond to my question, I bit back with, “Yeah, I thought so.”
He chuckled. “At least I’d have the decency to say no to their lies, even if that does cost me my life.”
“Decency, my fucking ass! You would’ve fallen for it too, and guess what? You’d also ask Julie to be your fake girlfriend if you two weren’t already dating.”
“Nah, you have too much faith in me to fall for Mom’s scheme like that.”
I rolled my eyes at his comment. Out of the two of us, he had always been more of a mama’s boy. “Sure, keep telling yourself that. You just got lucky you’re off the hook because you and Julie are together now.”
Andy laughed out loud. “I’m a lucky bastard, I know. But seriously, if you fuck up and this fake dating thing blows up in your face, I’m going to milk this for all it’s worth.”
It was true. He was the luckiest motherfucking bastard. For one, he was already in a relationship and, for two, he lived out of town. He didn’t have to deal with all this shit for another three weeks.
“No.” My voice was firm. “That won’t happen.”
“We’ll see about that.”
We continued to banter until I glanced at the clock. Fuck. It was already the afternoon.
One of the things I loved to do the most during the summer was spend all weekend long out in my garage, refurbishing old furniture and bringing it back to life. Furniture flipping was the term the internet coined, but it’s just plain old furniture restoration to me.
I had a new project with an old coffee table I was trying to restore but seemed to have gotten carried away with it. I ended my call with Andy with a quick goodbye. I had to let him know that the fake dating summer scheme was going to go on full throttle. The one person I could always trust to scheme with me was always him.
After cleaning up the garage, I let out a long, exasperated sigh before heading over to Shoua’s place. As always, I knocked on her door and let myself in. I immediately knew she wasn’t downstairs just from the sounds of it. The music she usually played around her home was coming from upstairs.
“Shoua!” I shouted, sitting down on her sofa. “I’m here! It’s almost time to head out!”
“Good thing I woke up early for this,” I heard her say as the music stopped. Her footsteps soon padded down the stairs.
I was busy scrolling on social media when I heard high heels clicking toward me in the living room. It occurred to me that she only wore heels when she dolled up. As she got closer, her mouth-watering, delicious-smelling coconut perfume eased its way to my nose.
“Did you dress up? We’re just going to the airport so?—”
Oh, shit.
My mouth was ajar when I looked up to see Shoua standing in front of me. She was in a casual, form-fitting, off-the-shoulders dress and looked amazing . With her hair and makeup done, she was showstopping. Some may say she was overdressed just to go to the airport, but I knew she was pulling out all her guns because of our fake relationship.
“You look hot,” I muttered dumbly.
Shoua shrugged nonchalantly. “Well, someone has to be the hot one in this fake relationship.”
I laughed as I opened my hand out to her; she slipped her smaller one into mine.
“Joke’s on you because I’m certain we’re both hot,” I said as she playfully rolled her eyes at me. I got up on my feet and eyed her from head to toe, letting out a low whistle. “Damn, Shoua.”
She wore a tiny smile as her hand ran through her beautiful, long locks. “I know. I look good.”
“Damn right you do. Now let’s head out.” I quickly ducked down to practice giving her a quick kiss on the temple when she suddenly jerked away—panicked.
“What are you doing?” she said in a hiss. She quickly stepped back. “No kissing unless it’s necessary.”
I let out a long breath. “How do you expect people to believe we’re a real couple if you recoil like that? Besides, I was only going to kiss your temple. Not on your lips. Even then, you know we have to kiss on the lips at some point if we go out with Evelyn and Kelvin, right? We also clearly need to practice if you’re reacting like this.”
“Fine, practice away, then.” She waved her hand in the air dismissively.
“You better not retract and be awkward. It’s just a quick peck. You’re my girlfriend, remember?”
Shoua didn’t say anything as I stepped in close to her and leaned down to place a quick awkward kiss against the smooth skin of her temple. My body was just as stiff as hers.
“See?” I asked, pulling away from her. “All done. Easy, right?”
“Yeah,” she said, rigidly. “Easy.”
I frowned. “Aw, c’mon, Shoua. You need to loosen up. No one’s going to believe you if you’re this stiff from a simple kiss. You can’t be like this when I kiss your cheek or the corner of your lips.”
She let out a shaky breath. “Kiss me again, then.”
“Your wish is my command.” I smiled, and she rolled her eyes.
I grabbed her face and leaned in. My movements were still tense, but I wasn’t as awkward as I was before. My lips brushed against her temple again and she let out a soft sigh this time. Her breath lightly tickled my sternum as I pulled away.
“There,” I breathed. “That’s exactly how a girlfriend should react to her boyfriend kissing her on the temple.”
She swallowed down hard and nodded as she licked her pink lips. My gaze traveled to them for a split second before looking back up to her dark, unreadable eyes.
“Yeah, that was easy,” she said stiffly.