Pretend Boyfriend (Be My Boyfriend Book 4) Read online

  “Wait right here,” he smiled, heading out into the lounge of the physical therapist’s office, retrieving a green leather wheelchair and helping me into it. I groaned as he picked me up again like I was nothing, lightly setting me into the low hanging seat. As he wheeled me out to the parking lot and next to his Mercedes, he made a call quickly to someone, presumably his secretary. “Yes, Ingrid? Cancel my five o’clock- it’s a family emergency.” He looked to me and gave a quick smile and went back to a straight face as he assured Ingrid that everything would be okay, and that his father had just had one too many at the course again, tumbling over. I snickered under my breath. In a way it was gratifying to hear the lie, it gave a little insight to the fact that his wicked parents were still drunken idiots of no value.

  Hey, if I couldn’t have healthy or happiness, I could at least gleefully cling to spite.He hung up and pulled me back a bit from the front door of the sedan, lifting me into the passenger side and gently shutting the door. I could tell he was nervous now, away from the safety of the hospital. A trickle of sweat dripping from his brow as he hopped in the driver’s seat and started the engine. The car was so quiet after the initial rev, I could have heard a pin drop.

  “So,” He wrung his hands on the steering wheel, looking forward as best he could. “Where to?”

  I slumped against the side of the door, head pressed against the cool window, and rattled off the address. As I closed my eyes, letting the cold glass work its magic on my hot face, I felt him pull my seatbelt across me and delicately fasten it in place. He inputted the address into the GPS, its merry little voice greeting him and directing him as we made our way out of the hospital parking lot, towards the rundown hotel I had called home the past year or so. I half expected him to recognize where we were going and make a fuss, but instead he turned the radio on low. My mood perked up as a radio station slogan played that was straight out of our childhood. Frannie and I had listened to it earlier, during our big Cher karaoke session. The station still played the same hits we loved from the 80’s, 90’s and early 2000’s, ones we sang to with hairbrush microphones, jumping gleefully on my twin sized bed. I smiled a little as the harmonies of a familiar boy band lulled me to sleep, easing my anxieties, and I drifted off like it was just another normal day.

  4

  Gwen

  “A-Are we at the right place, Gwen?” Link stuttered, shaking me lightly with this hand and disrupting my peaceful slumber. I was once again flooded with emotions- embarrassment, anxiety and anger- as we sat in the car, facing the dilapidated mess of a place that I called home. It was a weathered, leaky mess. A strip hotel, much like the one in Psycho, the once vibrant blue paint chipping off and fluttering into the breeze. The owner was an old widow named Olivia, much too old to clean or repair the building on her own, and far too poor to afford it either way. She had confessed to me that the mortgage on the place alone made it a necessity to keep open, her husband had left quite the pretty penny when he died, but that had all gone to the remodeling in the late 80s. He had crashed in a motorcycle accident on a slippery day, throwing him over the handlebars and down into a ravine. She had shown me a picture, and he had been handsome, his hair and outfit reminding me of James Dean. Although it was a shack of a place, there were no rodent or bug issues- she made sure of that. The rules were simple- you kept your room nice and tidy and you’d get a discount on the room. Otherwise, what you did was your business, not hers and she liked to keep it that way for the most part. Knowing I was disabled and unwell, she let me slide though, coming in once a week special to talk with me and help change the bedsheets. For an almost 80-year-old woman, she was quite the firecracker.

  Like my mom.

  “Yeah, this is me!” I shrugged, giving a weak ta-da like motion towards the place. Link was obviously unimpressed despite my best hand jazzing. He groaned and leaned his head against the steering wheel, thudding his forehead against it lightly. He sighed to himself and shook his head. “What?” I mumbled, “Is this not good enough for the pedigree pup?” He glared at me for a moment and shook it off. “What happened to the house?” He questioned, looking back up at the building that should have been condemned probably long ago. “I-” My voice cracked, trying to hold back tears as I spoke, “I lost it when my mom died. I wasn’t able to work for months and there was still quite a bit left on the mortgage…”“So, they took the house?” He looked at me, eyes wide, almost in tears himself by the looks of it. That wasn’t fair. He didn’t get to cry over her when he had all but jet-packed out of my life like I was a bomb waiting to happen. He didn’t get to mourn her.

  “Yeah…” I flubbed my lips, looking down at my feet. He put a hand up to his mouth, his eyes growing redder and moisture gathering along the lower rim. Ugh. Okay, maybe he was allowed to mourn a little.

  Sure, he had been an asshole, but my house had been his home too until we had our falling out. My past anger fleeted for a moment and I set a hand on his shoulder, rubbing it gently. “It’s okay, these things happen.” I sniffled. He nodded quietly, wiping his eyes with his lab coat.

  “I’m sorry, Gwen.” He mumbled, looking back at me, trying to force a smile. I went to say something and stopped dead in my tracks, a familiar southern drawl wafted into my ear. I shifted in my seat and looked out, only to find to my horror that my grandparents had decided to stop in. I felt like I was going to vomit, my secret exposed not only to my childhood demon, but to the grandparents who I had just met. What the hell were they even doing here? Sure, I had given them my address, but I hadn’t expected them to show up- at least not today after I had just seen them. I hadn’t even had a chance to properly rehearse a story to give them about why I was at the run-down motel! The look on my grandmothers’ face was telling, her eyes wide as saucers as she made her way to my room’s door, almost tripping on a wayward floorboard.

  “Aw, for fucksake!” I muttered, looking to Link and then back at them. I was like a mouse caught in a maze with two cats at each end, both hungry and ready to eat me up. Link might have acted in kindness today, but after everything we had been through, I expected it to be just a passing coincidence, not a common occurrence. I opened the door slowly, trying to gain my bearings, but almost falling out the passenger door. “Whoa, whoa, whoa! Gwen!” he yelled, flying out of the driver’s side seat like a bat out of hell and helping me sit back in the seat. “What is going on here?” he whispered. “Those people over there…they’re my mom’s parents…” I whispered back, my voice trembling, ready to burst into tears at any moment. It had already been an emotional and horrible day for me, and them showing up and Link seeing the disarray my life was in was the whipped cream and cherry on top of the day’s shit sundae. He looked back quickly, then looked back to me before retrieving the wheelchair from the backseat. “The racist assholes that your mom used to talk about?” Link gasped quietly, clearly confused as all hell as to what they would be doing here in the first place, especially after the stories my mom had told. “Well, it’s my grandfather really,” I explained as he helped me into the chair. “My grandmother is a spitfire like my mother and I.” I gave a grin at the thought of her voice raising at my grandfather and his stupidity earlier. “And I am taking it they didn’t know you lived in a shithole in the slums?” He stretched before pushing me towards the hotel.I looked up at him in confusion, and he returned the glance with a smile. Oh Christ, was now the time he would pounce? The cat playing with its prey, ready to let me go to chase it off into the next predators’ jowls? My heart pounded in my chest as we got closer and closer. Panic rose in me as we were almost there and I opened my mouth to argue, but he put a finger to his lips and smiled. “Don’t worry, I got you.”As we reached them, the pair turned to us, a worried look on my grandmothers face as she saw me sitting in the wheelchair. “Oh my God! Are you okay, darlin’?” She asked, bending down from the waist to meet my face, brushing a stray piece of hair out of the way of my glasses. I was stunned, not sure what to say, my grandfather eyeing the buildi
ng as if it were dog shit on the bottom of his shoe. My words caught in my throat, but without skipping a beat, Link spoke without skipping a beat. “She’s okay, just sore and tired from today’s physical therapy session.” He grinned at them, full teeth and everything, the classic Loki like deceptiveness he used against his parents growing up. I smiled and nodded, unsure of what would come next. I hardly knew my grandparents, and the boy I knew from high school was much less than a friend. I gulped, feeling like a drama movie patron, waiting on bated breath for the scene to play out. “Oh,” My grandmother nodded, looking back at the shack of a hotel and pointing to it. “Gwennie…this is where you live, sweetie?”“I-Uh…” I was blowing it, totally and utterly bombing. What could I even say? It was where I was living and had been, but how could I admit that to my rich grandparents? What if they took back their stipend? I needed that money, even if it couldn’t get me a place right now, I could stay here and pay my two hundred a week and stash the rest for a down payment on a place…“My apologies, Mister and Misses?” Link spoke up, smoothing over my psychobabble. “DuBois.” My grandfather looked him over, stepping forward from my doorway. “Alfred and Loretta DuBois.”

  “Well, Mister DuBois, you have a lovely granddaughter here.” Link beamed, his eyes crinkling as he smiled his fake ‘little dress to impress’ smile. “Awww! Well aren’t you just the sweetest thing?” My grandmother tittered, seemingly pleased as punch as she looked over Link and me. It wouldn’t take a neurologist to guess what words were going to come out of her mouth next, and for the first time during this whole debacle, I was ready to roll. “So, are you two dating?”“Yes!” I squeaked out immediately, almost interrupting her, Link looked down at me surprised as I took his hand in mine, squeezing it tightly. He squeezed back lightly. “Oh, sweetie that’s wonderful!” My grandmother seemed to breathe a sigh of relief; the sight of the hotel had apparently shaken her a bit. It was then her face dropped, looking back at the hotel and then to us. “Well if she is with you…why is she here?” Her voice went from sweet little belle to sassy in seconds. “Ma’am,” Link cleared his throat, “we are both staying here while our apartment is remodeled. Unfortunately, this was the closest place to where we both work.”“Well, why didn’t you tell me about him? He is so cute!” My grandmother seemed to marvel over him, almost skipping over in her calf high heeled boots to get a closer look. “You see Misses DuBois, we have known each other since we were kids,” Link started, I could tell a tale had already been weaved quickly in that brain of his. “And when Gwen had her accident, I became her neurologist.”“Oh! I see! So, you felt like you couldn’t tell me yet because you aren’t sure how it would look at the hospital being doctor and patient, and also working at the same place and dating?” She gave a wink. “I get it. I met your grandfather while working for the Country Club his family owned. We had to keep it very hush hush for years, otherwise it would have looked horrible for Alfred and his family.” The development in my grandmother’s backstory was an interesting one, explaining why she had quite the contrast in character to my grandfather. She had apparently grown up a normal girl in a good family, my grandfather rich and snooty like Link’s. I smiled at her and nodded quickly, agreeing right along with Link’s apparent plan- though I still was on edge, waiting to find out where the ending would lead.“Correct! I don’t want to jeopardize my position as a resident neurologist at the hospital. Especially since I’m hoping to land a fellowship next year. I managed to graduate early because of all the college courses I took in high school, but you know how it is when you have to prove yourself as the young one.” Link smiled, kissing me lightly on the forehead. “But you also can’t stop love, right honey?” It took me a moment to gather my bearings, the kiss to my forehead leaving me a little breathless.

  “Mmmmhmm!” I nodded as he leaned down close to my face. Oh god he is going to kiss me, I thought to myself. I was so not ready for that, even if it was just for show.

  The last time I had kissed him, had been that fateful morning, right before he had dumped me. The memory of his lips passionately pressing against mine as I readied to tell him of my father plight, knowing he was about to toss me to the side like garbage, set my blood to a boil. I quickly moved my face to the side, and he planted another kiss lightly on my cheek. My face felt super-hot, the feeling of his lips on my body replacing the anger with lusty feelings, sending me to the moon in embarrassment. He might have been an asshole, but he was quite the attractive one.

  “Oh my! A neurologist! Alfred! Did you hear that? Our little Gwennie is dating a doctor!” My grandmother looked so happy she might just jump in the air and take flight. “This is wonderful! How long have you been together?” “Quite a while!” Link interjected before I could get a word out, grinning and hugging on to me before he pushed me towards the door. “I’m sorry to just meet and rush like this, but Gwennie has had a long day, and in a lot of pain. She needs to lay down.” My grandmother nodded, a worried look on her face. She bent down and met me face to face, and gave a half smile, planting a kiss from her ruby red lips on my cheek.“You’re more than welcome to come in if you’d like?” I beamed, laying the fake love for Link on thick as I looked up at him with puppy dog eyes. Upon looking back her, it was plain as day that she had no intentions on accepting my offer. Her nose crinkled in disgust. “O-oh! No no it’s fine! You had a rough day, you’re tired! You should definitely rest!” She rattled off, obviously uncomfortable with stepping foot inside my hovel of a room. “Just call if you guys need anything, okay?”“We will be in touch!” Link waved to them with his fingers, the way a homecoming queen waves as she is crowned and given her sash. My grandfather smiled and nodded at him and they piled back into their antique truck, perfectly preserved in each original robin’s egg blue, and putted off.

  We had done it! Once they were out of sight, I fist pumped and did a little dance in my wheelchair, until Link bent down to eye level and flashed a mischievous smile. “Why, exactly, are we quote unquote, dating?” He made air quotes as he asked, obviously confused, but also satisfied with himself that the con had worked. “W-Well…” I stammered, fumbling through my purse for the key to my room, “T-there’s a dowry…in question…” I found the key and shakily put it in the lock, turning it until the old lock clanked, and pushed the door open.“A dowry?!” He gasped in surprised and then chuckled loudly, “What the fuck is this? The 20’s?” He seemed pretty amused by the fact, which just frustrated me.

  “Well they are rich, old and southern. I don’t know why you’d expect them to anything less than extra and antiquated.” I groaned as he pushed me towards the bed and helped me into it, covering me up with the ratty comforter that Olivia had left. It was laundry day, and she was washing mine from home. While it was an awesome gesture of friendship, it made my situation and room seem more dire that it was. “Is this all you have for a blanket?” He asked, gesturing towards the ratty, blue blanket that would probably melt if you washed it due to its age.“No, Olivia is washing mine.” “This hotel is not an acceptable place to live, Gwen! Especially not for someone in your condition,” he said as he surveyed his surroundings, “Like,” he went into the bathroom, to find all the porcelain stained with age. “Everything is old and falling apart and…well, gross…”“Well, Link,” I gritted my teeth, my anger starting to crop back up into my throat, “Not all of us were born into a good life, okay?” I could feel the anger spilling over into my tear ducts, hot little beads of salty misery welling in my eyes. I tried to blink them away, but couldn’t, once again finding myself vulnerable in front of my enemy. But, was he such an enemy? Had he done all this because he felt guilty about before and this was just a pity ride and con? What the hell was his angle?