She pulls away and her face brightens when she sees the pizza box on her coffee table.
“You got Romano’s?”
“And a bottle of your favorite red.”
She happily skips into the living room, plops down on the floor, opens the box and digs in. This is the way we usually do late dinners, no silverware or plates necessary. I bring the wine glasses and a few paper towels over and take a seat beside her.
I give her a minute to enjoy her slice before I start in on the reprimanding.
“You work too much, Ken.”
She sighs like she knew this was coming. “Please, we cannot fight near the pizza. I won’t allow it.”
“Not fighting, just observing. I know you and Jordan are busy, but please take care of yourself. You scare me a little when you’re like this; I worry that you’re going to fall asleep in a bowl of cereal and drown or something.”
“What a way to go,” she laughs. “If that does happen, please tell me you’ll make stupid jokes like, ‘Kendall really milked life for all it was worth.’”
“Turns out those charms weren’t so lucky after all.”
She crinkles her nose. “I would never die in a bowl of Lucky Charms. I hate marshmallows.”
I nod. “Good point.”
“This is an interesting conversation considering I’m working on a commercial for a cereal. Some low-carb thing that tastes a little bit like artificially sugared cardboard. Weirdly, I like it.”
“That should be the tagline,” I tease, biting off a piece of my pizza.
“So…what have you been up to?”
“I had a meeting with Claudia today. She set me up with a showmance.”
Kendall nearly chokes on her pizza. “A what?”
“A showmance. A fake—”
“I know what a showmance is, I just wasn’t expecting to ever see you in one.” She picks at a string of cheese. “Why, because of Cam?”
I sigh. “Yeah, she thinks it’s a bad look for him to be moving on and happy while the only social media play I get is when you and I go out for ice cream.”
“She better not be dissing ice cream.”
I pat Kendall’s leg to calm her down. “She’s not. She’s just dissing me eating it instead of making out with some hot guy for show.”
“Is he actually hot?”
I consider lying about it for a split second, but think better of it. Kendall knows my taste, she’ll know what’s up before the lie even fully forms on my lips. “Yeah, he’s hot.”
Her eyes widen and she turns her body toward mine. “Who is it?”
“River Holloway.”
She gasps. “Oh my god, he is hot. All I’ve seen him in the news for lately is getting into fights.”
“Yeah, that’s why she picked him. He needs a little love to clean up his rough edges. In the public eye, I mean.”
“Mmm-hmm,” she hums, totally onto me. “Was he nice?”
I smile and nod. “Yeah. Gigi ran after a dog while I was sitting at a coffee shop, and I ran after her. He grabbed my bag and my coffee, then managed to catch me when I nearly fell after I got tangled up in the leashes. Gigi loves him, she wouldn’t leave him alone the whole meeting.”
“Wait, so you guys met before Claudia propositioned you?”
I shoot her a look. “You don’t have to say it like that.”
“You know what I mean.”
I nod. “Yeah. We met before.” I conveniently leave out the part where I kind of wanted him to ask for my number.
She knocks her shoulder against mine. “Sounds like fate to me.”
“Don’t go getting any weird ideas about us ending up together.”
“Someone falling in love with you is definitely not a weird idea.”
I resist the urge to awww.
“So, what does this entail? Premiere dates, party dates, date dates?”
“Yeah, and a trip to the Caribbean in a few weeks to show people that we’re getting serious.”
“How long will you be getting serious for?” she asks.
“Until the beginning of March. His next movie comes out in February. After that we’ll have an amicable breakup and remain friends like a couple of fake exes.”
“Are you gonna have to kiss and stuff?”
I bite my lip. “Yeah, I think so. I guess it’s a good thing I’m used to faking it, although I don’t know how we’re going to do it. Rehearse? He’s coming over tomorrow, I don’t even want to think about how awkward it’s all gonna be.”
“Well,” Kendall reaches for another slice of pizza. “If you don’t want to practice with him, I’ll happily be a stand in.” She waggles her eyebrows, then breaks out laughing, probably a symptom of sleep deprivation.
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
After a few seconds, she looks at me thoughtfully. “You know, forced proximity to someone who looks like that AND having to pretend like you’re falling in love? That’s a danger zone for sure.”
Don’t I know it.
“Are you already in trouble?”
“Absolutely not. It’ll be fine,” I say, playing it off.
She looks at me out of the corner of her eye with a wry smile that makes me think she doesn’t believe me.
In a desperate move to change the subject, I grab the remote from the table and turn on the TV. “Feel like watching Sucker Punch Three?”
Chapter Four
In the hours before River comes by, I’m more nervous than I have any right to be. My housekeeper was just here the other day, but I clean everything again just to make sure everything is spotless. I don’t want River to think that his fake girlfriend is a slob. That takes up most of my morning, and Gigi’s asleep on her little bed after a noble attempt at battling the vacuum cleaner on my behalf.
I take a nice long bath to relax, and spend way more time than I should on making my hair and makeup look like I didn’t spend any time on it at all. After that, all there is to do is wait.
And I wait a while, finding little projects to occupy myself with. I send my parents an email, then text my brother
