All For Show: A Fake Boyfriend Gay Romance Page 6

  “Nat? Can you look at me instead of the camera?” she asked.

  I blinked. “Really?”

  “It makes the show feel like more of a conversation. Viewers feel challenged when they’re being stared at.”

  “So much to learn!” I said. “Do I just start over?”

  “Maybe leave out the place you were born.”

  I tried again. “I’m Nat Jackson, and I’m here in Oceanside. I’ve got a really bad kitchen.”

  “He really does,” said Owen.

  The camera turned slightly. “Your turn,” said Joan.

  He was a natural. “I’m Owen Potter, and our kitchen is a nightmare!”

  “Excellent,” said Joan. “How long have you two known one another?”

  I froze. My eyes were gazing right into the camera, where I knew they shouldn’t be, but I couldn’t look at Joan. When had we met? Did we decide on a date? I knew we had. I was trying to remember. But I hadn’t gotten much sleep last night, and hadn’t had any breakfast, and that coffee was burning inside me, and I couldn’t think! My mouth was open, and I must have looked so dumb sitting there.

  Suddenly Owen saved me. “Nat and I met about three years ago, and we’ve been together just under a year. The condo was going to be our big project together.”

  I nodded stiffly. My eyes turned towards Joan, who was gesturing to get me to look at her rather than the camera. My mouth was so dry I couldn’t speak.

  Joan clearly saw who was the more charismatic and brave of us, and turned her attention to Owen. “So tell me a little bit about how you met.”

  “Nat was in a really bad place when we met,” he began.

  I blinked and sat even more stiffly. What?

  “His partner had passed away just a few months prior, from cancer. Nat had been so strong, for so long, trying to nurse him through chemo, but in the end, there was nothing that could be done. When I met him, he was really down, and I said to myself, he needs someone to take care of him.”

  The camera was zooming in on him. I whispered, “What are you doing?”

  “That’s so brave of you,” said Joan. “So after a while, you decided to move in together?”

  “I thought it was for the best. Nat needed some stability in his life, because he was plunging into a deep depression. I’d never seen anyone that far gone, but I knew what I had to do. We settled in and started making big plans. There was so much we wanted to do with the condo! But then Nat had a flare of his lupus--”

  “Now wait just one minute!” I said. I turned away from the camera crew. “Seriously, Owen, what are you doing? You can’t say things like this!”

  “Guys, we’re losing the light,” said one of the crew. “Can we finish up?”

  “No, you don’t understand, he’s lying!” I said.

  Joan’s brow scrunched. “I thought this was an...artificial relationship?”

  “Well, yeah.”

  “So anything he says is going to be--”

  “I know, I know, but lupus? A dead partner?”

  “Come on, Nat, the audience is going to eat this up!” she said.

  “Everybody’s going to think I’m sick!”

  Now she gave me a stern look. “You’re getting a free kitchen out of this. If Owen can come up with a good story, I think you ought to let him.”

  I slumped back onto the bench. I don’t even know what else Owen said about me. I couldn’t listen. He talked for a few more minutes, and then the camera was shut off and everyone made plans to get back together at the condo to check on the kitchen progress.

  I stayed behind with Owen. “I can’t believe you,” I told him.

  “Oh my god,” he said with a dismayed look on his face, “I know. Wasn’t it amazing? It was like that improv class I took a few years ago finally paid off! I just got in the part, and all these things started to come to me!”

  “But the things! They were all about how broken and neurotic I am!”

  “Yeah, I am sorry about that, but I’m sure they’ll edit out the worst of it. But it was so good! You heard Joan! They’re going to eat it up!”

  “But everybody knows I didn’t have a partner die on me!”

  “The whole country?”

  “No! Oceanside! My friends! They’re going to know you were lying!”

  “But this whole thing is a lie!”

  “God, Owen, don’t you get it?” I stood up from the bench and began to pace. Mr. Thurgood jumped up on the bench and watched me. “I look like a fool!”

  “Dude, nobody’s going to think any less of you. Everybody knows you’re just doing this for the renovation. Who wouldn’t fib a little if it got them a few thousand dollars’ worth of work done?”

  That easy confidence that had begun to attract me, now seemed like a trap. Who knew how much trouble Owen could get me into? Why didn’t he see that this was a problem? I knew then that I had made a horrible, horrible mistake. What good was a new kitchen if my reputation in town were destroyed?

  I started to walk off.

  “Hey! It’s going to be okay!” he said.

  I didn’t answer, though. I had to get my mind clear. As I left the park, I dialed Rhody and asked if I could come over to talk.

  9

  Owen: Mea Culpas All Around

  I began to think I might have made a mistake. Nat looked so glum, stalking out of the park. Mr. Thurgood whimpered to see him go.

  “I don’t think I did anything wrong, did I?” I asked the pup.

  The truth was, I had gotten so nervous with the camera going, that I wasn’t even sure what I had said. We had talked and talked so much about what we were going to say, but the minute I saw the camera staring at me, and Joan with that expectant look on her face, my mind went blank, and I let myself improvise.

  It usually works out okay when that happens. If you sound confident enough, nobody has to know that you’re nervous. If you say something ridiculous, as long as you’ve said it bravely, everyone will think it’s a joke and forgive you.

  But was Nat going to forgive me? I wasn’t sure.

  Mr. Thurgood and I made our way the few blocks down to the newspaper. He got into the dog bed under my desk, and I started checking my email. Now that it was tourist season in Oceanside, ad space in the paper was at a premium, and local businesses were coming to me, instead of me having to cold-call them all day.

  But as I started calling people back and jotting down orders, my mind wandered back to Nat. That look of mortification on his face. Why couldn’t he just roll with it? He was in on the joke--hell, he’d started it! All of this was fake, so why did this bother him?

  It did bother him, though. Even though I hadn’t meant to hurt him, I’d crossed a line I didn’t even realize existed. We were stuck together for the rest of the week, and it was going to be really tense if I didn’t do something to smooth things over.

  The phone rang before I could give much more thought to that. I picked up. “Ad desk, Owen speaking.”

  “Oh, good, I hoped you’d be there,” said Harris.

  “What an unexpected delight,” I said. “I thought there might be two days in a row that my ex wasn’t checking up on me, and I began to despair.”

  “I’m not checking up on you,” he said.

  “And yet, you keep calling.”

  “I’m actually calling about Sergio. Did you talk to him yesterday?”

  What was strange was that I found the question really irritating. I needed to think about Nat, and how to make things right with him. I didn’t need my mind cluttered with my ex’s relationship.

  “I did talk to him,” I said.

  “How did he seem?”

  “Oh god, Harris, that’s such a vague question. How did he seem? He seemed wealthy and tanned and intelligent and beautiful, without a care in the world.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t go on about him like that. It makes me think you’re feeling insecure.”

  “What makes me feel insecure is that you’re asking weird questions
while I’m supposed to be working. Did you two have a fight?”

  “No, nothing like that. But he’s acting so oddly lately. Distant.”

  He said the same thing about you, I almost said. Luckily I caught myself. Good thing I wasn’t on camera, who knows what I would’ve blurted. Maybe even told him about Sergio’s worries that Harris and I might get back together. Oh, that would be awful. Suddenly I worried I might accidentally hint at that conversation.

  “Sorry I can’t help,” I said.

  “It’s funny, but I miss the way you and I used to fight,” he said. There was something in his voice, a tone I couldn’t quite make out, but which worried me. “It was so direct and open. Everything was right there on the surface, no hiding. With Sergio, it’s different. I keep trying to get inside his head--”

  “Well, if anyone could, it would be a neurosurgeon like yourself.”

  “--but he’s blocking me out. I don’t know what he’s thinking. Or planning. Maybe that sounds too paranoid. Can you tell me what you talked about?”

  I sighed, and Mr. Thurgood looked up at me. “Oh, honestly Harris, it was chit-chat. He wanted to know about this project I’m doing with Nat, that was all.”

  “That’s it?”

  “No deep insights, sorry.”

  “Let me ask you flat-out: Do you think Sergio is cheating on me?”

  “What?” I laughed. “Seriously? You’re the golden couple. Who is he going to find in town as superior as you?”

  “The way you say that, it doesn’t actually sound like a compliment.”

  “Have you finally picked up on that? You should definitely listen out for a note of irony when I sing your praises. What have you gotten yourself into, Harris, that you’re having to ask me of all people whether Sergio is sleeping around?”

  Everybody’s got an evil side. It comes out in different ways, depending on the person. Some people steal more sugar packets and napkins from the coffee shop than they need. Some people lie on their tax forms. My evil side apparently delighted in causing chaos: I saw immediately that with a few well-placed fibs, I could wreak havoc in Harris and Sergio’s relationship. All I’d have to do is say that Sergio hadn’t explicitly confessed to having an affair--which would be technically true, but would hint at its opposite. Harris would go nuts. For all his careful, thoughtful exterior, I knew what he was like under stress. That attention to detail so necessary for his surgeries would turn into near-obsession. He’d become a detective, asking probing questions, seeing evidence of infidelity everywhere. Ask me how I know that.

  But I couldn’t do it. It was the thought of Nat that stopped me, of all things. I had never in my life used What would Nat think? as an ethical guideline, yet here I was, thinking of how his feelings had gotten hurt during the interview. Oh, that’s tricky, that passive voice, his feelings had gotten hurt. No, I had hurt his feelings. I had to be crystal-clear on that point. My fault. And Nat wouldn’t approve of my fibbing to Harris, either. Nat didn’t know all the twists and turns of the history Harris and I shared, but even so, he would know that it was wrong to get some kind of delayed revenge gratification for the way Harris had broken up with me.

  “Just to be clear,” I said, “I doubt Sergio is seeing anyone on the side.”

  “He didn’t say--”

  “Trust me, okay? There was no hint of that in the conversation. But Harris, it’s tough having this kind of conversation with you. It’s not really fair to bring your ex into a talk about the problems you’re having with your current boyfriend. You’ve got plenty of friends who support you, and who want to see your relationship succeed. Talk to them. And talk to Sergio, for god’s sake. Sit him down.”

  A little pause on the line, then a quiet laugh. “I never thought I’d be getting relationship advice from you, Owen.”

  “Now who is sliding in the ironic little insults?”

  “I know, I know. But thank you. I feel better. I will definitely talk to him. Probably this is all nothing. We’ve both been working hard, the hours have been weird, maybe we need to get away for the weekend or something.”

  “I happen to know that Oceanside Travel is running a deal on cruises to Ilha de Sao Marcos; they’ve ordered a big ad for next week’s paper.”

  “Maybe that would be just the thing. Get away from tourists and surgery and everything for a while. Damn, Owen. Thank you. This feels like a weight off my shoulders...and I didn’t even realize how heavy that weight was.”

  “I feel very grown-up having given you good advice.”

  “You really need to come over to dinner sometime. Once Sergio and I have worked all this out.”

  “Oh, Harris, I can’t, seriously. I’ve got this thing with Nat, and I’m already blowing him--blowing it, I mean, jeez--and it’s going to occupy all my free time for a while.”

  Harris laughed at my slip-up, for longer than was strictly necessary. I began to feel a little uncomfortable. Then he said, “What was that project, anyway? I never did hear anything about it.”

  “It’s hard to explain. I’m pretending to be his boyfriend for a week.”

  Oh, I could’ve kicked myself. Part of my whole motivation for this was to appear like I was in a relationship so Harris would feel bad about always butting in with his concern. But now I’d ruined that. I wasn’t thinking straight.

  “Pretending?”

  “Doing a pretty bad job of it, too. It turns out I blab too much under pressure.” As I had just demonstrated.

  “Too honest?”

  “Well, the opposite.” I found myself not wanting to share all the details with him. Why was that? Had my big plan to lie my way onto national TV made me secretive?

  I realized I didn’t want to talk to Harris about Nat. Talking to him about the show would be bad enough; Harris wouldn’t get that, wouldn’t understand the motivation, since he would never have gotten involved with a bad kitchen to begin with, and if he did, he’d just write a check and hire some contractors. He didn’t know what it was like to be mostly broke. More than that, though, was the fact that this thing between me and Nat was...not a secret, exactly, but something I felt like holding close. Especially the way I’d hurt him. I am so bad at emotions, understanding my own or reading other peoples’, and it felt like I’d broken some little circle of trust that had bound us.

  It was hard enough to explain to myself, let alone anyone else. Worse, it would make me look sentimental and emotional, and I hated stuff like that. Let me be the shallow, superficial joker, and I’m happy. Nobody needs to see deep inside me. Nobody.

  Harris finally let me go, after extracting a promise that I’d tell him more about the deal with Nat at some point in the future, and reiterating his invitation to dinner with him and Sergio. By the time I hung up, I felt exhausted. Well, it had been an early start to the day, with some emotional twists and turns, hadn’t it? Maybe I had a right to be tired. I groaned when I looked at the clock and saw it was only ten in the morning. So much of the day left to go!

  I grabbed Mr. Thurgood’s leash. “Do you want to get out of here for a few minutes?”

  10

  Nat: So Much Apologizing

  “Maybe just break up with him on TV. That would be appropriately dramatic.”

  Even with the fans going, Rhody’s store had that petrochemical smell that made me a little bit lightheaded. She was staining an old picture frame, a huge thing that must have held an ancient portrait originally. She’d told me she couldn’t open the windows because the humidity would wreck her work, so I was sitting there getting woozy, which made her advice seem extra sensible.

  “He’d eat that up,” I said. “He’s got a flair for drama.”

  “Let me clarify: I’m joking. You may not break up with him. As long as you’re on this show, I have an excuse to stop by and talk to Joan. No show, no Joan.”

  “Yeah, I’ll sacrifice my sanity so you can go out with a TV producer. That seems fair.”

  “The alternative being that you don’t get your kitche
n fixed?”

  “Ugh. I’d still have to get it fixed. It’d just be so expensive I’d live in ruin.” I glanced at her. “Of course, if I leave the show, you won’t be seeing Joan, so you’ll be all alone--”

  “Oh no.”

  “--and you can help me remodel the kitchen!”

  “No.”

  “But you’re a genius with wood!” I glanced around at the custom frames she kept on display in the shop, everything from oddly severe, angular things, to cozy elaborate floral frames that looked appropriate to grandmother pictures.

  “Frames,” she said. “Not cabinetry. And not plumbing. And not floors. Besides, they’re already there, fixing your stuff.”

  “So you’re telling me I can’t fake-break up with my fake boyfriend until my real kitchen is really fixed.”

  “What I find odd is that even though you spent the night with a guy as cute as Owen, you’re coming in here dragging your tail behind you. Nat, you’ve been griping about being lonely for a long time. But look, here’s a guy!”

  “But he’s not--we’re not--”

  “I know. I’m not saying you have to marry him. But he’s good-looking, he seems pretty funny and engaging, maybe he’d be dating material?”

  “He just told the world I have lupus!”

  “Again, I’m not saying you have to get all serious! He obviously wants to have fun...why don’t you have fun too?”

  I found the look of concern on her face almost embarrassing. “Am I so far gone that I have to try for a guy like Owen? A guy who doesn’t even read books or have sensible opinions about music or--”

  “Do you know what he reads or listens to? Have you asked? Talked about it at all? More to the point, isn’t that just an excuse not to ask him out?”

  “But I can’t ask him out. We’ve got this fake thing going--”

  “Which sounds like the perfect context to ask someone out.”

  I sputtered. She just didn’t understand. Guys like Owen... I mean, guys like me, with guys like Owen... How could I make her see that it just wasn’t possible? I was still so mad at him, anyway, and so confused by the dream I’d had, and now I just felt tense. I leaned back in the chair and sighed.