“Yeah. It feels like déjà vu. Or more like an upgrade, really.” I go on to tell her about Vivienne’s invitation to dinner, which brings me back to the big question: What am I going to do?
“Well, you know there’s always the option of fake dating,” Karo shares offhandedly.
“There’s what? Fake data?”
“No, don’t worry.” She laughs. “Nothing as bad as that. I saidfake dating. It’s a thing in romance novels. Or romantic comedies, for those of us who don’t pick up books for fun.”
I roll my eyes. Karo is a social media manager at a publishing company and likes to nag me to read more, but honestly, after spending my days with words likehemodynamicorbootstrapping, ormultivariate pattern analysis, my concept of free time doesn’t involvemorewords.
“I’m not following.”
“Fake dating is something people do, for mutual benefits. So… famous people may do it for some media buzz, other people to get meddling relatives off their back, others to win back their exes—”
“I don’t want to win him back,” I interject.
“You don’t?”
“I don’t.”
“Well thank god.” She sighs. “I already thought Lennart and I would have to skip the road trip and stage an intervention. The guy was a dickhead.”
“He was,” I concur. “So. False dating.”
“Fakedating. Yeah. It’s a popular concept, though I’ve never met anybody who has fake dated in real life.”
Outside, an ambulance drives by, and I wait until the howling siren fades into the distance. “But how do people do it?”
“It’s as simple as it sounds. You make others believe you’re in a relationship.” The line crackles, like she’s switching the phone from one ear to the other. “It has to be a mutual thing—you can’t just tell people that you are in a relationship. The other person has to be in on it and you’d have to be seen together enough for people to believe it’s true. We’ve established that he’s cute, but how likely is it that he’d help you out?”
Not very. Lewis regularly makes it onto the list of people I want to throw my desk at. As kind as he seemed when he soothed me on the flight and again in front of Vivienne’s office, I still don’t trust him after the stunt he pulled four years ago. But he does owe me.
Did I think I’d use his favor for more academic purposes when I agreed to help him with his abstract? Sure. But I also thought I’d be on the tenure track by now, have a publication in a prestigious journal, and the luxury of planning more than one year ahead.
What has grad school trained me for, if not finding creative solutions to tricky problems?
“I think I can find a way,” I say. “What do people do when they fake date?”
“They behave like, well… like they’re in love. Some fake couples set an end date, some make a sort of contract, like an agreement to establish how you’re allowed to interact and touch each other in public, fake nicknames for each other, which social engagements you accompany each other to. All sorts of things, really.”
“Like a social transaction?”
“Sort of.”
I don’t like the idea of having to rely on Lewis to help me out, but so far, it sounds like the best option to get me out of the dilemma I created for myself. It would allow me to reclaim some of the control I so wildly lost in that meeting with Vivienne.
And how hard can it be, really? It can’t be more complicated than doing a PhD. Something that probably wouldn’t require much acting, given that a fight with Lewis tipped Vivienne off. I might not even have to pretend I like him. We could just carry on being our hateful selves, and she’d interpret it as chemistry.
Before I can get too far ahead of myself my scientifically trained brain kicks in. Maybe I should do a little more research.
“And people do this in books?”
“Books, movies, series. As I said, it’s a popular concept.”
“Can you send me some titles of books that include false dating?”
“Fake—never mind. I’ll send you a title I think you’ll enjoy. You can download it on that audiobook app I gave you a voucher for last Christmas.”
“How do you know I haven’t already used it?”
