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Lydia
“Try these on, too, Hunter,” I say, slinging a pair of dress pants and a shirt over the top of the dressing room door. I feel his grip take hold on the pieces of clothing and I let go. It’s been a little over twenty-four hours since Hunter suggested being my fake date and we’re at the mall shopping for wedding clothes for him.
“And show me when you’ve got something on, okay?” I call through the door.
Hunter grunts in response and I hear the rustle of clothes and hangers in his dressing room. I sit down against the wall and drum my fingers on my jeans while I wait. I’m still pretty amused that Hunter offered to go to my sister’s wedding with me—and not only that but pretend to be my boyfriend. I never expected him to offer that.
But I'm grateful he did. The whole time I was flipping through all those profiles on the dating app, I had this knot of dread in my gut. It’s not like I wanted to bring a stranger to my sister’s wedding. But the idea of showing up alone and facing the unavoidable questioning about my persistent status as a single woman was enough to make me consider doing it.
I know my family means well. It’s not like they bug me to make me feel bad. And for a long time, I was able to just laugh it off. But I’ve gotten tired of it. And whenever I spend time around my family, I always end up leaving the get-togethers feeling bad about myself. I really don’t believe that you need to be with a guy in order to have a fulfilling life, but that’s what my family’s comments always end up making me feel.
The door to Hunter’s dressing room opens and he steps into the doorway wearing some of the clothes he picked out himself.
“What do you think?” he asks.
“I think the shirt and the pants are slightly too close in color,” I say. “Do you have a darker shirt you can try on?”
“Yep,” says Hunter, stepping back into his dressing room and shutting the door.
A woman and a man walk in just then, the man heading into the furthest dressing room and the woman following him in. She’s talking to him about some dinner party or something and he’s saying uh huh every few seconds. The door closes behind them and locks.
Leaning my head against the wall behind me, I wonder what my family will think when they see me show up with Hunter. My extended family hasn’t ever met him, but my parents and my sister know Hunter, of course. Will they be suspicious of our new status as boyfriend and girlfriend? I guess we’ll have to make sure our relationship is convincing. I don’t think that will be too hard to do. A little hand holding, some loving gazes at each other…yeah, Hunter and I can totally pull it off.
There’s only been one time in my life when I thought of Hunter as more than a friend. Our senior year of high school, Hunter went to prom with one of the most popular girls in our class. I teased him about it, of course, saying all this stuff about how he was totally going to get laid that night, and with Miss Popular no less, teasing that he received with eye rolls.
But on the night of prom, halfway through the night, I looked over and saw Hunter and Miss Popular kissing in the corner of the room, and a wave of jealousy hit me like a tidal wave. I found myself wishing that I was in that corner with him, that I was the one he was kissing.
As soon as the night ended, though, my feelings for him were gone. And they never surfaced again. I shrugged off the prom night incident as silly jealousy over Hunter showing another girl attention.
And we went on with the friendship we’d always had.
Hunter’s dressing room door opens up again and he steps out wearing a darker shirt. I nod when I see him.
“Yeah,” I say. “That one looks better with those pants.”
“I like it better, too,” Hunter says.
“You’re still going to try on the stuff I brought for you, though, right?”
“Yeah,” he says, sighing a little. Poor Hunter. He hates shopping.
I screw around on my phone while I wait for Hunter to change again. But then something catches my attention in the corner of my eye and I look over to the dressing room that the couple went into earlier. I can see both pairs of their feet, but they’re both standing in the corner of the dressing room. The woman is sitting down on the little built-in bench in the corner, and the man is standing. But the way their feet are positioned—
I think she’s giving him a blow job.
No, I’m almost certain she’s giving him a blow job.
I choke back a laugh. I’ve always heard about people doing stuff like that in public places, but I’ve just assumed a lot of it was made up. So to see it happening before my very eyes—
I hear a muffled groan from the guy and it takes everything in me not to burst out laughing.
Hunter’s dressing room door opens, drawing my attention back to him. First, my eyes move to the shirt he’s wearing, a dark gray button-up. It fits him really well. God, it almost looks like it was tailor-made for him. The chest is fitted but not too tight, the sleeves hit his wrists at just the right place, and the back doesn’t puff out at all.
“Not bad,” Hunter says, studying himself in the mirror. “Actually...I think I like this one more than the one I thought I was going to get.”
“Yeah, it’s good,” I say. Out of the corner of my eye, I see the couple step away from each other and then hear the sound of pants being rezipped, clothes being adjusted.
“What do you think about the pants?” asks Hunter.
