The Pretend Boyfriend novel Chapter 1

THE PRETEND BOYFRIEND BOOK 1:

Samantha Fox takes two steps at a time up the stairs of the nineteenth century Gothic building that hosts Dan's Café. She is late. She doesn't like being late because she equates lateness with rudeness. My time is precious, and so is yours.

She flies into the seating area with its cozy tables and chairs, her shoes clacking noisily upon the black-and-white checkered linoleum. Spotting Cassie, her best friend sitting alone at a table, she almost trips over a pair of shopping bags by a chair at another table. She manages to rescue herself by grabbing onto the back of the chair.

"Hey, watch it, will you?" says the woman with the pixie hairdo seated there, clearly annoyed.

"Sorry, so sorry." Sam picks herself up and half-clambers, half-limps to the amused Cassie. "Oh," she groans, "I'm such a klutz."

"You always were a klutz. It's part of your charm." Cassie pulls her coffee mug away discreetly from Sam as the latter sits, juddering the table and sploshing coffee over the rim.

"Yeah, it's charming when I was fourteen. And even then, not really." Sam shudders. "Remember how we were when we were in middle school? I wore braces and I kept getting my lunch stuck in my buck teeth."

"I remember that awful Brian Morton. He was such a bully. Remember how he used to draw funny caricatures of you with your braces all over the lockers? He called you 'Jaws'."

"I'm going to expunge that dirty memory forever from my temporal lobes." Sam runs a careless hand through her mess of hair. "I'm sorry I'm late anyway. My boss wanted me to go over the Killeney account for the seventeenth time. She's such an anal retentive like you wouldn't believe."

"All work and no play makes Sammy a tight ass like she never wants to be. You're on track for it, you know." Cassie signals a passing waiter. "Can we have the menu, please, like yesterday?"

"I have to. I've got no one else but me. If I want to live the American dream and get that American dream apartment in Soho, I'm going to have to put my nose on the grindstone for it."

"Or you could marry someone rich and get the American dream handed to you on a china plate, which is probably made in Taiwan." Cassie arches her eyebrows meaningfully.

"I'm never getting married."

"You know it's not true."

"It's true. I'm twenty-seven and I've been in three failed relationships. I've gotten majorly dumped three times, and the third is by a man who decided he was gay after dating me for two months. That's got to be a record. Anyway, it isn't PC to want a man to get those things for you. The only person you can rely upon - "

" - is you," they chorus together.

"Hey, you're finishing my sentences," Sam complains.

"Only because you've said it like a gazillion times."

"I have not."

"You have too."

"I'm not a nag." At that moment, the strains of Usher stream from Sam's monogrammed Coach purse. She groans. "If it's the office, I'm going to scream."

"Then don't get it."

Cassie makes a blowing sound.

Sam mouths: Shut up.

"No, for the last time, I'm not going through menopause, Lori. Why do you always have to exaggerate everything to put me down? Well, yeah, Mom always did love you best but that doesn't give you a right ... no, no, don't even go there. I do too have boyfriends!"

Cassie bares her teeth.

"Well, I do have a boyfriend. We are practically getting married. Oh yes." Sam nods to convince herself. "Bring him to your engagement party this weekend? Well, no, he can't. He's going to Tokyo. He's a high-powered executive and he jet-sets to places like Tokyo every other week."

Cassie mock-palms her own face.

"What do you mean I'm lying? I do so not lie. I don't have to prove anything to you. So what if I come to your party alone? It doesn't mean I'm a frigid old maid. Puh-leez. OK, OK, OK, I'm coming this weekend. Yes, alone because my rich boyfriend is in Tokyo. Yeah, text me the details and spare me the snark. Goodbye."

Sam clicks off.

"Oooh, can you believe that witch? She's been such a putz to me since the day she was born and dropped her dirty diaper on my head. Now all I have to do is find some hunky guy photos to put on my cellphone display by this weekend, and that'll fend her off for another week. Or two."

"Sam, you told Lori the guy is your fucking boyfriend. That's huge."

"So what if I told her that? We'll be breaking up by next Monday. That'll be an angle in line with my life story, seeing the way I seem to be fucking up all my relationships. Hey, where's my coffee?"