Total pages in book: 31
Estimated words: 29423 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 147(@200wpm)___ 118(@250wpm)___ 98(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 29423 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 147(@200wpm)___ 118(@250wpm)___ 98(@300wpm)
I’d forgotten. “Yes, the blue tie.” Just like the man staring at his phone three tables over that she passed by. I need to donate to a church or something to thank whatever deity guided my hand.
“Rick, right?”
“Calix,” I correct without thinking. “But friends call me Cal.”
“Oh? But in our messages you said you were Rick.”
“I never use my real name online,” I answer. This must be a blind date. Her last one and my first. How fortuitous.
“I see. That makes sense. You can’t be too careful.”
She rummages in her purse and then draws out a wad of papers, folded in thirds. “I brought the contract.”
“Yes.” My mind races frantically to guess what the contract is about. A blind date wouldn’t need a contract. Would it? I’ve never been on one before. Have spent my whole life actively avoiding them.
“I put down that you’re a writer.”
“That’s wrong.” If it’s a real contract, my identification will have to be real or it will be invalid. Whatever the contract is for, it’s important to her. This meeting is agonizing for her. Something is forcing her to be here.
“But that’s what you told me—"
“I lied. About everything. Well, not everything. I do agree with this—” I tip my head toward the contract. “But my job, my name, all of that, I made it up. It’s the internet. I’m trying to be careful.”
She sits back and tries to take it all in, but in the end she’s desperate. “Beggars can’t be choosers. If you’re still in agreement, I’ll take you despite our—” She waves her hands.
“Misunderstanding?” I offer.
“Yeah, that.” She smiles a little wryly. “I must seem very foolish to agree to live with you especially after you admitted that you lied, but I am serious when I say I have run out of options. This is my grandma’s apartment, and it’s the only tie I have with her. The co-op board said they only accept couples, so I just need you to act like my fiancé for the meeting, and once the title transfer is signed, I’ll say we broke up. It’s only one meeting.”
The contract is simple, probably a basic agreement she found on the internet. The requirement is for more than one meeting. I glance up at her. She flushes.
“One meeting and a year of living together but we can finesse that.”
I’m all for the living together. I reach for my pen. “Done.”
Chapter Two
HARLOW
My grandmother taught me stranger danger when I was five or six. My dad was never around enough to give me much advice other than “don’t give away the milk for free,” and my mom was busy trying to contort herself into the woman she thought my dad wanted her to be to have time to parent me. Mom always wanted to be a woman taken care of.
If it weren’t for Grams, I probably would be a feral child on the streets. Or I guess a feral adult on the streets since I’m twenty now. A whole two-zero. I’m an adult, according to everyone, and by that, I mean my still-distracted mom, the government, and the debt collectors.
The last set is the scariest. They’re always blowing up my phone. They’re more dedicated than the weird stalker guy from high school who thought we were a couple because I happened to give him my milk one day, and he then decided to climb through my bedroom window the night of winter formal.
This is just a long way of saying I know better. When Mr. I Lied About Everything on My Dating Profile said that his name wasn’t even Rick, I should have gotten up and left. Instead, I’m smiling and nodding and handing over the contract that I wrote up last night after a shit ton of internetting. I’m not certain it would hold up in a court of law since I basically copied and pasted from a bunch of different things, but the final product read decent. A lot of what I read on the internet is that it’s the intent that matters. My intent is to get this guy to pretend to be my fiancé so I can take control of my gram’s apartment, and presumably his intent is to be paid the $1000. It’s all the cash I have in the world right now.
Grams once said I had more feelings than sense. She’s not wrong. I’d be a Pinocchio myself if I didn’t admit that the man sitting on the opposite side of the booth is so attractive I have a hard time keeping my jaw from falling onto the table. I think that’s why I’m not as scared as I should be. This guy’s hot! He’s more than hot. He’s like the kind of guy that you cross the street to meet, the kind that you accidentally on purpose trip in front of hoping he catches you, the kind that you watch covertly from across the bar hoping against hope that he looks your way, falls in love, and you live happily ever after. He’s the kind that has never, not even once, given me the time of day. In other words, he’s too good-looking to drag me into a back alley and make a skin suit out of me. He could have any woman he wants.