That, at least, gave Jem pause; his mouth worked like a fish’s for a moment before he said, “Wow.”
“Yeah.”
“Wow,” Jem repeated, which River thought was unnecessary. “Okay, so you’re looking for, like…? How do I help you solve this problem?”
“Oh. That’s easy.” River shrugged. “I have shitty taste, but I don’t cheat. Not even on a fake relationship. So you tag along with me to places where I generally get suckered by bad boys with sticky fingers and wandering eyes, they see I’m with someone and leave me alone.”
Jem raised his eyebrows. “You think they’re gonna give up that easily?”
“If we put on a good enough show, sure.” Besides, the point was that River had someone to keep him in line. In the problem of River’s shitty taste in sex partners, River was the common denominator. It galled him a little to think he needed a babysitter more than good boyfriend, but whatever, the truth hurt.
Now Jem tilted his head to go along with the raised eyebrows. “A show?” he repeated. “That might be incompatible with my day job.”
“I meant you have to pretend to like me, not suck my dick for an audience,” River said wryly. “Or in private, for that matter.” Surely Amanda had gone over that. Then he pausedand flipped the question around in his head. Jem’s day job was incompatible with public sexuality. What if River’s day job was incompatible with being seen with Jem? “What else do you do for work, anyway?” He cringed; he sounded like a dick. “By which I mean is it going to cause a scandal in the tabloids if I’m seen with you at a party, because you’re a hit man by day?”
“I promise I have a normal nine-ish-to-five-ish. Pay my taxes and everything.” He held up his fingers like he was doing the Boy Scout salute. “Amanda said I shouldn’t tell you my job right away because it would be more fun to make you work for it.”
“That wench,” River said delightedly. Amanda knew how much he loved games. Games meant winning, or the potential to win. “All right, Jem, I’ll play. What are the rules?”
Jem tapped his fingers on the arm of his chair. “You get one guess about something in my life per day, per category, but you can’t fish for answers directly. Questions about important shit are allowed. Like—I’m allergic to shellfish. You should probably know that. I have an EpiPen on me pretty much all the time. You know how Angelenos are about seafood.”
River nodded and made it a point to remember to ask where he had it when they went out, because he would absolutely freak out if Jem suddenly stopped breathing. “I do.”
“And it’s fair to ask things like….” He leaned forward, quirking a lopsided grin, and lowered his voice to a parody of a come-on line. “Hey, Jem, do you have any psycho exes who might try to kill me?”
Absolutely no one was going to doubt that River was ass over tits for this guy. Hilarious. River leaned forward too. “Well, do you?”
He dropped the flirty attitude and rolled his eyes. “Nah. That would require them to have liked me that much in the first place. Should I be worried, though?”
“It hasn’t been a problem so far. Keep us posted. We can get you security if it happens.” River carefully didn’t offer an opinion on Jem’s exes. Apparently he suffered from the same brand of luck as River did.
“So those are the rules for me. That’s fair. But how do I earn the VIP passes, huh?”
“The old-fashioned way.” Jem smiled. “Conversation.”
Right away, River saw Amanda’s intention. “Oh, so I have to pay attention to you.”
“That was the hope, I think.”
Fuck it. The whole thing was kind of nuts, but River could work with crazy. He stuck out his hand. “All right, Jem. You’re hired.”
River left the room a moment later, shaking his head, and let himself into Amanda’s office. She looked up from her computer with a smug smile.
The gall of this woman. God, he loved her.
“Why couldn’t you have been a man?” River complained, foregoing the chair in front of her desk in favor of sitting on its surface. “If you were a man, I could’ve just married you and everything would’ve been fine.”
Amanda rolled her eyes. “Why couldn’t you have been straight? Why am I the one who has to change?”
River wrinkled his nose. “Ew.”
She spread her arms as though to saythere you go, then flipped her tablet facedown and propped her chin on her hands. “So… what do you think of your new man?”
The cheek! The ego! River huffed. “Amanda, that’s not a man. That’s a vanilla oat-milk latte. Nonfat.”
As per usual, she refused to rise to the bait and instead picked up a nail file from her desk and pretended to use it. As if she didn’t have the gnarliest hangnails this side of Appalachia. She only used the file when she wanted to be theatrical. “Dairy,” she said with barely a glance at him. “Full fat. I know you checked out his ass.”
“Pablum,” sputtered River, who had held the door for Jem so he could watch him walk out of it. “Pablum for the masses.”
