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3
Baxter
Idiot, dumbass, fool are all words that scream through my mind. No way this would work. Heather would rat me out. Maybe not on purpose, but I had no doubt she’d make a mistake, revealing my deception. This hadn’t started as a sham. I’d had a fiancée. Had being the keyword. I was fucked.
The bathroom door opens and Heather steps out. Speechless, I stare at her in awe. Her dress has a pattern I like. Not at all like what my mother would approve of, but it was oddly appealing. My parents would hate this dress. No question, Heather still lives by her own rules. It was one of the things I’d admired about her in college.
“Do you have wine?” Heather asks.
“Red, I think that was your poison back in school. Am I right?”
Her lips curve up, and her eyes sparkle. Time slows as I'm reminded of a much simpler phase in my life. Heather had made me laugh back then. She almost got me to break away from the preconceived notions my family had drilled into me. She'd come close to getting me to live a little more freely. But I'd returned to New York and fell into my family's way. Freedom wasn’t a theory I could entertain while living close to my dad. He didn’t like freedom of expression. Strict guidelines made the world work according to my family.
“You’ve got my number.” Heather winks as she comes over.
I heat and have to glance away before I pour her a glass and she takes a sip, her eyes staying on me as she drinks. I should tell her to go home. My dad isn’t ever going to give me the company. This fake engagement was just another hoop I would jump through that would be followed by another hoop and then another. I pick up my beer, wishing I’d ordered one at the bar. I was slightly tipsy, which I didn’t like this early in the evening.
“Tell me, Baxter, why am I pretending to be your fiancée?”
"It's a very long story, and we only have about twenty minutes before we have to head to the restaurant."
Her brows lift and her lips thin. Back in school, I liked it when she'd chastise me.
“Then you’d better start talking.”
How could I have messed up so much? No doubt, getting engaged to a woman I didn’t know well had been a mistake. We hadn’t been friends, just acquaintances.
“I had a real fiancée. Like, we really were engaged. I hadn’t bought a ring yet, thank God.”
She blinks at me, looking like she thinks I’m stupid. “What happened?”
Heather knew too much about me. Back in school, she’d known my secrets. I’d made the mistake of telling her everything. California had been so far away from this reality where my dad judged everything I did, from the drinks I consumed to the women I dated. When I’d met Sandra, I’d kept her existence hush-hush, until I decided I needed to get my father’s approval so I could take the company. I was ready for the challenge at work, and in my personal life, or so I’d thought.
Heather steps close and puts her hand on my shoulder. I meet her gaze and shiver. “I’m having a hard time remembering to call you Baxter, but I’ll get used to it because now that I’ve met your dad, I can’t call you Andrew. And that nickname your mom calls you, um, no.”
A bubble bursts in my chest and all the anguish and rage, the pain and inadequacies come out in a laugh. “Yeah, don’t call me Andrew.”
“So, your girlfriend or fiancée or whatever she was, what happened?”
I take another drink of beer and turn away from Heather, pain filling me. I can’t face her and let her see how bad it is.
“She called me about five minutes before I called you. I’m sorry. Yes, I’m using you, but I’ll pay you. I’ll give you money, anything you need if you just pretend to be my girlfriend—well, fiancée for another few days, maybe a week.”
She doesn’t say anything so I turn to see her taking a long swig of wine. She sets down the nearly empty glass and shakes her head. Doomed, that’s what I am. Without her help, my dad would figure it all out.
“Please,” I beg. I hadn’t begged anyone for anything in a long time.
“I wasn’t saying no. It’s just, Baxter, when are you going to be yourself? When will you actually decide to be you and not your father’s puppet?”
She understood more than I’d ever given her credit for and that knowledge hits me so hard it almost takes my breath away. If this were some crazy stupid movie where the guy got the girl or the girl got the guy, I'd say we were destined to be together. But real life isn't that way. I can't abandon all I've worked so hard for. My parents held the purse strings and decided what and when and where I would do things for so long I didn't know how to rebel. Maybe, I had gotten an inkling in California, but I'd come back east, and life here was too complicated.
“I can’t, not yet.”
“Just tell them she left.”
If I were sane, that’s what I would do, but my dad already didn’t like me. If I failed at being engaged, he would never allow me to live it down.
“Heather, how many stories did I tell you about my parents?”
