The next several days are weird. Giovanna and her entourage are gone when I finally get up Tuesday morning after all the drama in the middle of the night. Hayes moves into the guest bedroom and informs his security team that no one beyond the two of us and my mutant dog are allowed on the property, and that I’m to be accompanied at a respectful distance for any trips I’d like to make into town or the surrounding areas.
Though we basically don’t see each other while we’re at the house, and he ends up having to work through the whole weekend—or so he says—rather than taking that impromptu trip to Paris, he still makes a point of taking me to lunch at the lobster shack in town or the soup and sandwich shop so that I can make him confirm for me that yes, curried chicken salad is the best.
And honestly?
I prefer that to Paris.
And I also don’t.
Paris would’ve been showy and blingy and uncomfortable, overly-romantic for the cameras, whereas this feels almost real when we’re together.
And the real part is what bothers me.
I don’t love Hayes Rutherford, but I could get addicted to our conversations, to his attention when I’m talking, to that soft near-smile that overtakes his lips when he’s watching me doing things that Chad would’ve grimaced over and asked me to never do again.
Like stopping in a small tourist shop on our way to dinner to have ourselves drawn as cartoon heads.
Or shrieking in joy at finding my first clam during a dig after talking him into taking two hours out of his workday for stress relief.
Or shuddering every time we walk past a boat.
I feel seen. But it’s still not real.
We have a romantic dinner in the garden one night, where he points out the boat sitting offshore taking pictures of us and tells me to act normal and like we’re in love.
Saturday night, I convince Hayes we need to spend the evening in the crowded bar, listening to mostly terrible karaoke, some of it provided by yours truly, of course.
I do love singing.
Singing does not love me back.
When we’re on our dates-for-show, he tells me about the job responsibilities of being CFO for Razzle Dazzle, which is way more boring than being a movie star. Or an art teacher. I tell him about my favorite parts of my dad’s summer camp, about Hyacinth and me agreeing to only get each other terrible things that make us both laugh until we pee our pants every Christmas, and about things my students have said, done, and arted. On our last night on the island, when I drop my favorite student story on him during dinner at the bistro overlooking the sea—it involves a clay giraffe, parent night, and the word fuckerella—he snorts clam chowder through his nose.
If we were in a real relationship, I’d offer him a blowjob to apologize for the pain, but we’re not, so when we get back to the house, he retreats to his bedroom, and I retreat to shower in the shower to end all showers. I don’t know what kind of showerhead there will be in New York tomorrow, and just in case it’s not the rain shower kind, I want to enjoy it one last time.
But when I sneak down to the kitchen for a cup of tea, he’s at the high counter, freshly showered himself, his dark hair that perfect amount of damp to make me want to picture him naked, his chest covered with a gray T-shirt, those adorable dancing hamster pajama pants hugging his hips again, and he’s fiddling with my phone.
“You keep saying you don’t have cell signal here,” he says.
“That was kind of the point of looking at this part of the country for vacation.” I wince, because I don’t usually avoid people since it’s not kind, but— “My mom can’t call.”
“But you miss talking to your sister.” He hands it back to me. “You’re on the wifi now. It’ll carry a call.”
And this is precisely why Hayes Rutherford would make the best real boyfriend. He pays attention to the little things, fixes what he can, and understands what I need before I realize I need it.
And I want to kiss him senseless for being so kind and thoughtful.
But he’s not my real boyfriend. He’s a man that I’ve agreed to pretend to date who just happens to occasionally do nice things, especially when he’s had enough sleep and enough time away from his office.
“Don’t listen to the messages from your mother,” he orders. “I would’ve deleted them myself but your dog wouldn’t let me. Her emails too. Why the fuck is she still asking if you want to get back together with your ex-husband when she clearly knows you’re dating me?”
I glance at the list of voicemails. The dozens of voicemails. Four from Mom for every one from Hyacinth, who definitely knows, because she still reads the tabloids.
Hayes has a legitimate question. Mom has to be thrilled I’ve upgraded to a billionaire.
Maybe he heard her wrong. She couldn’t possibly be saying I should get back together with Chad now.
I could listen to one. Just to test the theory.
“If you hit that button, I will throw that thing into the ocean, your dog’s opinion be damned. She doesn’t believe you can keep me, and she thinks you need to cut your losses before you piss him off more.” Hayes has his head buried in the fridge, rooting around for cheesecake, I’d bet, not looking at me, but still seeing right through me.
And that’s the most maddening thing.
He’s so normal. And attentive. And a strangely good cook, and also very polite about telling me my own cooking skills suck without telling me my cooking skills suck, but the note taped to the fridge yesterday—Begonia, there’s chicken salad in here. I forbid you to spend your vacation time trying to top it when you’d enjoy making sand castles so much more—very clearly implied he likes edible food and is willing to make it himself to provide for both of us so I don’t have to cook something we’ll both regret, and he respects that I’m here to have fun at the same time.
Chad never cooked, and he always expected me to find something edible, so we ate out a lot, and then he complained about the credit card bill.
You’re shocked.
I know.
“I’m calling my sister and I’m telling her you still have a few things to learn in bed,” I tell Hayes as I drift toward the back door.
“I’d expect nothing less.”
I smile.
He knows I’m lying. I couldn’t insult him if my life depended on it.
Other than the whole be my fake girlfriend or I’ll financially ruin you thing, and his perpetual case of the grumps, and the two of us pretending neither of us keep thinking about me asking him to have sex with me, he’s a decent guy. We’re in a weird situation, and he’s dealing the best way he knows how, especially considering he’s balancing his privacy and desire to not be the world’s current most famous bachelor with keeping his family’s name untarnished.
He can’t exactly tell the tabloids and his family and probably more than a small handful of women to go fuck off, not when he’s a Rutherford.
Well, he could.
But he cares about his family and their reputation too much to do it, and that says more about his character than his note that I found taped to the inside of my door yesterday morning informing me that if I attempted to cook eggs one more time, he’d personally murder all of the chickens on the island so that there were no more eggs for me to abuse.
He’s such a liar.
He’d re-home them before he’d murder them.
Although, that would take interfacing with the locals, and while most of the locals are kind and respectful of his boundaries—yes, even the ones I heard plotting to set him up with themselves or their personal favorite single women before they realized he was involved with someone—you can spot the tourists, and he’s definitely an object of lust among certain demographics in the tourist crowd.
I don’t usually notice until he starts touching my hand or my knee, or leaning in closer and making bedroom eyes at me when we’re out in public, but then, I don’t understand why people would chase a man just for his money.
So I get why he wants a fake girlfriend, and I get why he has trust issues, even if maybe I don’t understand all the nuances.
I probably won’t be sharing with him that his threat of bankrupting me wasn’t actually as terrifying as he thinks it is either.
Convenient? No.
But survivable? Yes.
My dad did it. I could do it too. And I took so very little in the divorce that the only thing I’d miss is if I had to sell off my great-grandma Eileen’s old dildo collection.
She painted them and sold them at traveling art fairs. The leftovers aren’t used.
Probably.
Before I can dial Hyacinth, my phone rings in my hand, and her face lights the screen. I head for the back door, check that the house alarm isn’t set, and then sneak out into the rapidly fading evening sunset.
“Hey,” I start as I answer the video call, but she barrels over me, her face a mirror of mine, but hers is brimming with the thrill of impending gossip.
“Oh my god, Begonia, you are a fucking ROCK STAR!” She glances away from the screen. “No, Jerry, I won’t watch my language in front of the kids when my sister is dating a fucking billionaire. This is appropriate usage of the word fuck, okay?”
“Hey, Jerry,” I say to Hyacinth.
“B says hey,” she calls. Then she’s back facing me. “Talk. Now. Fast. Before Mom figures out we’re talking and tries to beep in. She is losing her mind.”
“So this thing just kinda happened.” I have to be careful. She’ll know when I’m lying, and my face is very bad at lying, especially to Hyacinth. But there’s so much else to talk about. “And I met his mom. And we’re going to New York tomorrow. And you can’t tell the news that if they call, okay? It’s actually possibly scandalous that we’re dating so soon after my divorce? I don’t know that part for sure, but it’s like, the Rutherford family. Frowning wrong at a camera is scandalous, right? And apparently there are security considerations with travel plans, blah blah blah.”
“Gossip Minute just posted a picture of you from dinner tonight and it looks like you’re giving him the Heimlich. All I can say is, what?”
“I told him the clay giraffe story while he was eating clam chowder.”
Her face twists like she’s both horrified and amused, which is fair. The clay giraffe story is legendary. “Begonia. You can’t keep the world’s last billionaire bachelor interested if you’re trying to kill him!”
“Hy. He survived. And you can’t tell me any of his other options for dinner companions would’ve been nearly as entertaining. He’s never dated a commoner before. Wait. No, he has, but none quite like me. He thinks the fact that I use drug store shampoo is adorable. Confounding, but adorable. Also, oh my god, he has this hundred-dollar-an-ounce hand cream from this spa called Silver Crocus, which is just the best name ever—wait, excuse me, it’s Silver Crocus hand crème, spelled with that funky symbol over the first e, and I keep calling it cremm-aye just to watch him stare at me like I’m one of those poison frogs that supposedly just went extinct, and yet he found me in the wild. Like, shocked and worried but still enthralled and like he can’t believe the very last poison frog in the world is his?”
“Only you, Begonia. Only you.”
“I don’t have any expectations that this is forever—I mean, who marries their first boyfriend post-divorce? Other than Mom, who loves being married?—so I’m going to enjoy the thrill of the ride while I’m on it, you know?”
“Is it…thrilling… in all the ways?” she asks.
If I tell her we’re sleeping together, she’ll know I’m lying. If I tell her we’re not, she’ll figure out this is a ruse. Hello, pickle.
I need to pick my truth carefully, so I lean into something that’s so true it hurts. “The first time he kissed me, it was like, oh my god, is this what I’ve been missing?”
Her eyes light up and she squeals, shaking the phone like she’s making excited happy hands and forgot she’s holding it.
“Shh! I don’t want to talk about it.” I’m flapping my hand too, which is making Marshmallow think it’s time to play. He leaps, then bows down on his front paws, back end waving in the air. I pull a jerky stick out of my pocket and toss it out into the night. “It’s like…sometimes you just want to enjoy something without analyzing it too much, you know?”
“Analyzing is most of the fun.”
“Do I need to talk to Jerry about that?”
She laughs.
I try to.
But honestly? Sometimes I worry about Hyacinth. She married a guy who doesn’t hit her, who provides for her, and who doesn’t cheat. Mom’s definition of perfect husband material. He also gets on her nerves sometimes, and they have lovely children together, but I just feel like…
I feel like she settled.
And I don’t want to settle anymore, so I don’t want her to either.
And I can’t tell her that, because I have to let her live her life, even when I don’t like it.
“Enough about Jerry,” she says. She knows. She knows where my brain goes, even when I feel disloyal and I don’t want her to. We’re both trying to respect each other’s life choices, and I know she was on Team Mom for a while over my divorce, even though she never said as much. “Have you met Jonas yet? Oh my god, I’d probably ask if I could lick him if I ever met him. Yes, Jerry, you knew that when you married me. Hush. He’s on my freebie list, not that it matters, because he’s a Rutherford, and he’s married now, which means he won’t let fans lick him anymore. Not that he ever did. But you can rest assured you’re the last man I’ll ever lick, okay?” She drops her voice and pulls the phone closer to her face so all I can see are her eyes and nose. “Do you think he’d let me lick him if we were in a dark room with no witnesses?”
“You’re ridiculous.”
“Is Hayes as weird as the news says he is?”
“No. They just like to have something salacious to report, and he doesn’t fit the mold is as juicy as it gets, which makes him an easier target than the rest of the family. He’s such a nice guy, Hy. And—cone of silence?”
“I won’t say a word, unless it’s to Mom, and only under extreme duress if it’ll improve the situation.”
“His mom doesn’t like me, but he told her off for me.”
My sister gasps. “What the fuck’s wrong with his mom?”
“Oh, don’t be like that. I’m a suburban art teacher who’s recently divorced, can’t cook, and doesn’t know which fork to use during a seven-course meal, and he’s the world’s last eligible male billionaire. Of course she’s concerned. I would be if I were her. And did you see my hair?” I lift the phone to highlight the disaster that’s my short glowing hair.
It’s a disaster that I love, for the record, but I can still acknowledge that it’s a disaster.
Hyacinth growls at me. “His mother needs to know you’re a fucking catch. Shut up, Jerry! If you don’t like my language, take the kids outside and play a damn game with them! Sorry, B. He’s taking the kids out now. As I was saying. His mother’s had an awful lapse in judgment, and I’m sure she’ll see the error of her ways soon. So long as you don’t cook for her.”
I wince.
“Begonia. Tell me you didn’t.”
“I didn’t know I was meeting her and I got nervous and stayed nervous for the entire time she was here! But it won’t happen again. At least Marshmallow didn’t do anything crazy like find a vibrator in her luggage and deliver it to my room. That would’ve been awkward.”
There’s a beat of silence on the phone, coupled with a strangled noise from the balcony above me, confirming my suspicions that Hayes is listening in to make sure I don’t say anything he’ll regret, which I have clearly done, since I didn’t mean to mention that thing that I’m pretending didn’t happen.
Then there’s another beat of silence, both on the other end of the phone and also above me on the balcony, while neither Hyacinth nor Hayes asks how I know it was his mother’s vibrator, and yes, I know it was hers, and no, I’m not saying anything more about it.
I wince again. “You should see this estate, Hy. It’s on the southern tip of the island, so we can see both the sunrise and the sunset from the gardens, and Hayes rowed himself out here in a rowboat to get to me the day after Jonas’s wedding, because he didn’t want to wait for a ferry, and that’s hot. Here. Let me remember how to flip my camera, and I’ll show you the sky here. The sunset is so gorgeous tonight. Pinks and blues and purples…” I trail off while I try to remember the right combination of buttons to press to flip the phone around while not hanging up on my sister.
“Tell me you don’t have Giovanna Rutherford’s vibrator in your possession.”
“No. It’s back in the nightstand drawer in the guest bedroom, and you are not welcome here until it’s reunited with its owner, and do you know what else? Good for her. Now, can we please discuss how my boyfriend has the most delicious chest known to man? You think Jonas is hot. You should see Hayes without his shirt on.”
“Hair or no?”
“Yes. And it’s like, not just a token amount of hair, but it’s also not like a rug. It’s just right.”
“Are his nipples even?”
“Will you never quit mocking my poor high school boyfriend and his crooked nipples? That’s how his body was made, Hy. Knock it off.”
She wiggles her brows. “And his…?”
“Sorry, I actually had to sign a non-disclosure agreement about that part. It comes with dating a billionaire from the country’s most famous family, apparently.”
“You didn’t.”
“I did. And if I had a little more money in my vacation fund, I might’ve hired my own attorney and asked him to sign one in return, agreeing to never mock my art or my cooking in the event that we break up.”
“Oh my god, Begonia. Only you. Fine. Tell me he’s at least treating you to the rarest oysters and albino lobster and gold-crusted chocolates that will make your poop glitter.”
I laugh. “No, but I think he would if I asked. But I don’t want the fancy stuff. I like just having lunch or dinner with him out at the cute little local places with all the funny people who tell stories about the times they’ve spotted him out here, or what they do in winter, or that time that a carton of lobsters spilled at the grocery store and they kept finding them in random places under the shelves.”
She smiles. “And once again, only you. Are you really just hiding out in Maine with him for the next forever?”
“No, he’s taking me to Paris next weekend to see Monet’s water lilies.”
She frowns. “But you were saving up for that.”
I wave a hand again. “I’ll find another dream to save up for.”
“Another dream as big as seeing Monet in Paris? It doesn’t get bigger than that. And you were so excited about anticipating it for the next four years.”
“Two.”
“Begonia. You spent every dime in your first rainy day fund for Paris when you heard about Marshmallow and hopped a plane to fly halfway across the country to rescue him. You can lie to yourself about how long it takes you to save up for something, but you can’t lie to me. I’m your sister.”
“Quite obviously so,” Hayes says behind me, startling me so badly that I drop the phone. When I recover it, all I can see is Hyacinth’s textured ceiling, suggesting that she, too, has dropped her phone.
Her face pops back into view, eyes wide, mouth gaping open. “Oh my god, it’s you.”
“Your tea, darling.” He sets a steaming mug on a small picnic table tucked in amongst the wildflowers, then drapes an arm around my shoulders and kisses my temple. “Hyacinth, I presume. Lovely to meet you. From a safe distance. I’m off to bed, darling. Don’t be long, and don’t let your tea get cold.”
He lifts a hand and waves to my sister, then disappears behind me again.
“You should see your face,” Hyacinth whispers.
“You should see yours,” I whisper back.
“Make sure to tell him I’ll kill him if he hurts you. And then go jump his bones, okay?”
I nod, even though there will be no bone-jumping.
Him moving into the other bedroom made that very clear.
I manage to get off the phone without Hyacinth catching on that this is all just for show.
But I’m starting to wish my heart would remember that part.
He made me tea.
Chad never made me tea.
And Hayes Rutherford isn’t my soulmate.
But he’s doing a damn good job of resetting my standards in the meantime.
