He wasn’t wrong about that. I told him I had to think about it, but I already wanted to say yes. The concept of going to my brother’s wedding alone and having to tell my ex that my boyfriend and I were no longer together, even though there had never been a boyfriend, was depressing as fuck.
But could I pretend that someone was my boyfriend when they weren’t? Could we be convincing enough to avoid suspicion? The only thing worse than my imaginary boyfrienddumping me before the wedding would be being found out to have brought a fake one.
There wasn’t a hole deep enough to suit me if that happened.
Blue let the subject drop, and we finished dealing with the kittens, after which I saw another couple of patients before leaving for the night. The techs usually took care of the closing tasks. The final checks, the feeding, that kind of thing. If one of them needed to come in and check on a patient, they worked that out among themselves. If one of the patients was particularly critical, I sometimes would sleep on the couch in my office, getting up every couple of hours to check on them.
Thankfully there were currently no critical patients. I didn’t think I could get my head in the game enough to focus tonight, not with Blue’s offer on my mind.
A fake boyfriend was better than an imaginary boyfriend. A real boyfriend would’ve been ideal, but I wasn’t going to push my luck.
Getting home, I was greeted by my dog, a three-legged mutt named Danish, or Dan for short, who’d lost his back leg after being hit by a car. I bent over and gave him scratches behind the ears and asked him where his siblings were.
His siblings were Crash, after Crash Bandicoot, an orange cat who thought the world of Dan and barely tolerated anyone else. Including me. Every so often he’d let me pet him, but he was basically Dan’s cat.
Crash was in his usual hidey hole, a space on top of the bookshelves in the living room where he could see everything and feel like he was part of the family, even if he seldom interacted.
Then there was Cookie. Cookie was honestly so ugly he was almost cute. He’d lost the tips of his ears and half his tail to frostbite last winter and despite being chipped, the shelter was unable to reach the owners. When he was healed, he wasn’tthe kind of cat who would get adopted out. People didn’t want frostbitten cats with half their ears missing and no tail. They wanted cute, fluffy, snuggly kittens. So, clearly, Cookie had to come home with me.
Before I dared sit down, I fed all the animals and got them fresh water. Then I popped a frozen pizza in the oven and stared off into space while it cooked. I gave myself until the timer went off to make up my mind.
On one hand, it was kind of sad that I needed someone to stand in as my boyfriend, and that I couldn't even find a fake one on my own. On the other hand, it was a lot worse to say that my imaginary boyfriend and I broke up and that was why I had to go to my brother’s wedding alone.
When the timer went off, I took the pizza out of the oven and set it on the counter to cool while I sent Blue a text message.
Okay fine.
Talk to your friend for me.
A fake boyfriend is better than no boyfriend at all.
Blue’s reply came through almost instantly.
Blue
You won’t regret this.
God, I hoped that was true.
FOUR
PERRY
Every few weeks,I shed my porn star persona and I went downtown and played drums in a cover band called A Cover Band. I had nothing to do with the naming of it but thought it was clever regardless. We mostly did rock and alternative, ranging from classic rock to dad rock, to more modern songs. Our lead singer was a guy named Ben who had no dreams of making it big. The cover band was something he and his friends had been doing for fun.
I ended up joining the band by accident, mostly. Their drummer was a no-show one night when I was out drinking. I guess no one in their friend group had known the drums, so they’d enlisted people off Craigslist, and this was the third drummer to bail on them.
I walked right up to the band and offered to play drums for them. At this point, I hadn’t picked up a set of sticks in years, but it was like riding a bike. They had nothing to lose so they let me take the place of their missing drummer.
The first song was rusty as fuck as my muscle memory woke up, but by the second song, my body started to remember what to do. I’d learned to play in high school. The band room had been a refuge for me back then. I was skinny and awkward and smaller than the majority of my classmates. The band hall had practice rooms, and I spent my free time hiding out there.
The drums kept calling to me and eventually I’d started playing. I wish I could say I was a natural, but getting good on the drums took an obscene amount of work on my part. After a few years of solid practice, I was finally good enough to pass as a natural, however.
The band I played with had zero intention of ever getting famous. The lead singer had a successful laundromat in town. The lead guitarist was a dental hygienist, and the bassist managed a grocery store. Did they know what I did for a living? Absolutely, yes. I didn’t hide my profession from people very often. Besides not caring how I earned my living, they joked that my job was the most rock and roll thing about their band.
We finished off our first set of the night and called for a break. After I took a piss, I went up to the bar, intending to buy a drink, but Blue was there already and had bought one for me.
“You’re lucky you’re cute,” I told him. “I don’t often let men buy my drinks. They always expect too much.”
