Chapter 3
THREE
REX
“Try to keep him calm and quiet for a few days so his sutures can heal.”
Tom, the owner of a beautiful but crazy Boxer puppy rolled his eyes. “Are you going to provide the tranquilizers? I don’t think Brutus knows what calm means.”
“He’ll be okay. He’s a good boy, aren’t you, Brutus?
” I took Brutus’s head in my hands and gave him a good scratch.
He had been in for a routine neutering, but Tom had a lot of anxiety about the health of his dog, and he’d insisted on speaking to me when he picked Brutus up, even though that was normally handled by the techs.
I didn’t mind, though. Brutus was a good boy.
“If he licks his sutures, you’ll have to put the collar on him, but he should heal up just fine and be back to his normal self in a week or so. If you have any concerns, feel free to call.”
“I will, thank you, Rex.”
After shaking Tom’s hand, I made my excuses and left the room.
It was nearing the end of the day, and I still had a few more patients to see before I would be able to go home to my own pets.
Except for Donut, an older, slightly fatter orange cat who lived at the office.
He was unflappable. Calm in every situation, unbothered by dogs or other cats.
He didn’t care about birds or other pets people would bring in.
And when he wasn’t following me from room to room, he was up front sitting on the reception desk, overlooking his kingdom.
Blue popped his head around the corner and got my attention. “Rex, your brother is here? He insisted on speaking with you.”
I tried not to sigh, but Blue saw right through me. “I can tell him you’re busy.”
“It’s fine. Nigel is stubborn, and he’ll just wait around.” Pasting on my best fake smile, I stepped out into the front. Nigel turned when I entered, and I looked around him for any sign of my ex.
“I’ve told you a thousand times, Nigel, I’m a vet. If you have a weird rash, go see a people doctor.”
“Oh, fuck you.” Nigel grinned at me and thrust an envelope into my hand. “I wanted to hand deliver the invitation to my wedding, in front of witnesses, at your office so they know that you’re going to need to actually take a weekend off.”
“I’m not that bad.” I took the envelope and popped the seal. The wedding was taking place in a couple of months at a small lake town a few hours northwest of here. “This explains why you said weekend.”
“It’s going to be a small wedding, but it’s going to be amazing.”
“You could always elope. Just you and the fiance and a couple of witnesses?” I had to try, even though I knew from the look on his face that elopement wasn’t on the agenda.
“I know you, Rex. If I eloped, I wouldn’t get to meet your boyfriend.
” Nigel looked like he wanted to say something else but his phone rang and he glanced at the screen.
He was a real estate agent and was nearly always glued to his phone.
“It’s one of my clients. I have to take this, but I’ll talk to you soon.
” Nigel answered the call and stepped outside, and I retreated to the back.
When I rounded the corner, I nearly slammed into Blue, who took the invitation from me and looked at the date.
“I’ll make sure to touch base with one of the other clinics so they’ll have their emergency lines open that weekend instead of relying on you to cover everything all the time.” He handed the invitation back to me. “I didn’t know you had a boyfriend.”
I let out a groan and stuffed the envelope into my back pocket. “I don’t. It’s a whole fucking mess.”
“Tell me about it while we have a look at those stray kittens the shelter brought in for evaluation.” Blue led me into an exam room where a crate of kittens sat on the table, waiting to be seen.
He put gloves on, then opened the crate and took the first kitten out. He cradled it to his chest and closed the door to keep the other kittens from escaping.
“My brother is getting married,” I began, slipping into some gloves so I could take a closer look at the kittens.
“I gathered that.”
“To one of my exes.”
“Oh, shit.”
“But he doesn’t know his fiancé is one of my exes.
We don’t really have that kind of relationship where we tell each other things.
And I didn’t know his fiancé was my ex until they walked into the diner and he pretended not to know me.
So, of course, I did what all normal, well-adjusted adults do.
I lied. I said I had a boyfriend and then Nigel was all you have to bring him to the wedding. ”
“I mean… you could tell him that you broke up.”
Blue offered me the kitten and I took him. He was a sweet little tuxedo cat with an eye infection, a terrible case of ear mites, and fleas. He’d need to be cleaned up and treated, but I had a feeling he’d be okay.
The same could not be said for me. “Do you know how pathetic that makes me feel? That my imaginary boyfriend would break up with me before my brother’s wedding?”
“Maybe you break up with him?”
“That’s also depressing.”
“I could be your boyfriend. We could totally break up right after the wedding.”
“Don’t you already have two boyfriends? Are you collecting them like Pokémon now?”
Blue tipped his head back and laughed, then helped me clean up the kitten’s eyes and ears.
“If you were in the market, I could probably find you a date for the wedding.”
“A date that could pretend to be my boyfriend? That’s a tall order.”
“Yeah, but you’re forgetting what I do on the side.
My friends are all capable of being whatever you need.
Plumbers. Pizza boys. Pool boys. Big, stern step-daddies.
In fact, a friend of mine has been through a bit of a rough patch with his situationship ending, and he could use a distraction. I can talk to him if you want?”
God, was I actually considering this? Was I officially desperate enough to let one of my employees set me up with a porn star to pretend to be my boyfriend?
“Unless you have a problem fake dating a porn star. I know it’s not cool with everyone.”
“I honestly don’t care about that.” Blue had been honest with me about his other source of income from the beginning, and it had never mattered to me.
I was of the opinion that people cared too much about things other people did that had no effect on them and not enough about things they could do to improve the world around them.
“Then why not say yes?”
“It seems like a lot to ask.”
Blue traded one of the kittens we’d treated for a different one. This one was a little black female. She was the smallest of the bunch and the most unwell.
“Honestly, Rex, Perry could use a distraction. It’s a win-win. You literally have nothing to lose.”
“Perry?” I shouldn’t have asked, because Blue’s eyes lit up like the sun.
“I’ve worked with him before, and we’ve been friends for years now. He’s one of the sweetest guys you’ll ever meet. He’s a drummer in a band. They just play for fun. Mostly they do cover songs at bars about once a month. Sometimes more, depending. He has a cat named Gumball.”
Blue had to go and add the bit about the cat. He knew that I was more likely to trust a person if they had a pet.
“Gumball?” I raised an eyebrow but Blue just shot me a look right back.
“You named the office cat Donut.”
“Can I think about it? What if I say yes, but he says no?”
“Oh, he won’t say no. Who can say no to me?”
He wasn’t wrong about that. I told him I had to think about it, but I already wanted to say yes. The concept of going to my brother’s wedding alone and having to tell my ex that my boyfriend and I were no longer together, even though there had never been a boyfriend, was depressing as fuck.
But could I pretend that someone was my boyfriend when they weren’t? Could we be convincing enough to avoid suspicion? The only thing worse than my imaginary boyfriend dumping me before the wedding would be being found out to have brought a fake one.
There wasn’t a hole deep enough to suit me if that happened.
Blue let the subject drop, and we finished dealing with the kittens, after which I saw another couple of patients before leaving for the night.
The techs usually took care of the closing tasks.
The final checks, the feeding, that kind of thing.
If one of them needed to come in and check on a patient, they worked that out among themselves.
If one of the patients was particularly critical, I sometimes would sleep on the couch in my office, getting up every couple of hours to check on them.
Thankfully there were currently no critical patients. I didn’t think I could get my head in the game enough to focus tonight, not with Blue’s offer on my mind.
A fake boyfriend was better than an imaginary boyfriend. A real boyfriend would’ve been ideal, but I wasn’t going to push my luck.
Getting home, I was greeted by my dog, a three-legged mutt named Danish, or Dan for short, who’d lost his back leg after being hit by a car. I bent over and gave him scratches behind the ears and asked him where his siblings were.
His siblings were Crash, after Crash Bandicoot, an orange cat who thought the world of Dan and barely tolerated anyone else. Including me. Every so often he’d let me pet him, but he was basically Dan’s cat.
Crash was in his usual hidey hole, a space on top of the bookshelves in the living room where he could see everything and feel like he was part of the family, even if he seldom interacted.
Then there was Cookie. Cookie was honestly so ugly he was almost cute.
He’d lost the tips of his ears and half his tail to frostbite last winter and despite being chipped, the shelter was unable to reach the owners.
When he was healed, he wasn’t the kind of cat who would get adopted out.
People didn’t want frostbitten cats with half their ears missing and no tail.
They wanted cute, fluffy, snuggly kittens.
So, clearly, Cookie had to come home with me.
Before I dared sit down, I fed all the animals and got them fresh water. Then I popped a frozen pizza in the oven and stared off into space while it cooked. I gave myself until the timer went off to make up my mind.
On one hand, it was kind of sad that I needed someone to stand in as my boyfriend, and that I couldn't even find a fake one on my own. On the other hand, it was a lot worse to say that my imaginary boyfriend and I broke up and that was why I had to go to my brother’s wedding alone.
When the timer went off, I took the pizza out of the oven and set it on the counter to cool while I sent Blue a text message.
Okay fine.
Talk to your friend for me.
A fake boyfriend is better than no boyfriend at all.
Blue’s reply came through almost instantly.
Blue
You won’t regret this.
God, I hoped that was true.