“Pretend Boyfriend” (Story 11, Excerpt 1)

The following excerpt is the first part of “Pretend Boyfriend”. You can read the second part here.

Pretend Boyfriend was very handsome, and I felt proud and happy to be with him in public. He was tall, the way I would want a real boyfriend to be. He had dark hair and dark eyes, and he possessed an athletic build. He looked great in a button-down shirt and blazer, and I admired his body.

Pretend Boyfriend and I first met when he arrived as a guest to my 22nd birthday party. Madsy invited him because she thought I might like him. She was right.

The best kind of Pretend Boyfriend shows up to a birthday party, with flowers, even though he barely knows me. At my party, Pretend Boyfriend and I danced the whole night, and I felt like such a lucky girl. We even danced through Theo’s text messages regarding something unrelated to my birthday, signaling to me that Theo had forgotten my special day.

I let myself be sad for just a moment. But how could I be upset when I had Pretend Boyfriend pressed up against my body?

Both of us had been drinking rum and Cokes, and we danced ourselves into something like love. When Pretend Boyfriend touched me, when he brought me to find water after I told him I was thirsty and too drunk, I decided that I wanted Pretend Boyfriend for the rest of the summer, at least.

“I want to see you again soon, okay?” Said Pretend Boyfriend, when the night was over.

Seeing him soon would be easy. I found out that Pretend Boyfriend worked at the Starbucks in Hoboken. I would come to the store after work, when his shift was just beginning, and he always seemed impressed that I went out of my way to spend time with him.

Why should he be impressed? He always made me laugh, and we would make fun of the customers.

Our favorite regular was a teenager who always brought his plastic cup, asking for an iced coffee refill but without the ice. Whenever the teenager entered the store, Pretend Boyfriend would walk away from the counter and let another employee deal with it. The other employee would always wear a puzzled face.

But the teenager always got his way, always had his cup filled with cold coffee, minus the ice. Then, the teenage would dump half of his coffee into the trash and refill the cup with milk from the silver canister on the serving tray. Neither of us understood the appeal.

“Iced coffee without ice. It’s kind of like us, right? A relationship without the relationship,” I said. “The elemental part is missing.”

Pretend Boyfriend just laughed. He knew that I referred to him as Pretend Boyfriend. We kind of knew that we couldn’t have a relationship because he was looking for a “real job” out of state and was bound to leave as soon as he found one.

One day, I felt bolder than the coffee blend of the day and asked the teenager why he always ordered coffee that way.

“Because ice means less coffee. I feel like they’re ripping me off,” he said. “Try it some time. The coffee might not be as cold, but you’ll get more of it.”

I tried to apply his reasoning to the thing I had with Pretend Boyfriend. I wondered if the admiration and affection we had for one another was more pure because we weren’t in a real relationship. We were just friends who really liked each other, friends who had not yet had sex.

I really wanted to have sex with Pretend Boyfriend, even though the opportunity had never presented itself. We had never been alone.

“I’ve never been to Atlantic City,” he told me, one afternoon at the coffee shop. “We should go.”

“I’d love to go to Atlantic City with you,” I said.

I was excited to do with Pretend Boyfriend what real boyfriends and girlfriends might do together.

While we were planning our trip and reserving our hotel, Pretend Boyfriend came down with a really bad cough, but I liked kissing him so much that I ignored the risk of getting sick. Pretend Boyfriend told me we shouldn’t be kissing until he got better, but I wrote it off as one of the risks of having a Pretend Boyfriend. Eventually, I started coughing too.

We went to Atlantic City despite the fact that neither of us was feeling completely healthy. We had reserved one hotel room, but the room had two beds so I wasn’t really sure what was going to happen. Would we finally have sex? I hoped so and brought my sexiest panties.

Pretend Boyfriend was looking especially handsome that day. After waiting an hour in line for the elevator in the budget hotel and laughing about it, we went to the room and got ready for dinner. He had brought a travel-sized radio, and we listened to music while moving efficiently around the room.

While I was in the bathroom, fixing my makeup, Pretend Boyfriend ordered a bottle of champagne from room service. By the time I finished putting on my little black dress and curling my hair, Pretend Boyfriend was popping a cork and spilling champagne all over the carpet in the room.

“Be careful!” I said.

“This is for the elevator,” said Pretend Boyfriend.

He was wearing his boxers and a t-shirt, completely unselfconscious with his black dress socks pulled high on his hairy calves. I felt something like love for Pretend Boyfriend then.

I hugged him, and he gave me a glass of champagne, which was cheap but still bubbly enough to fill me with warmth and gratitude for men as a species and for places like Atlantic City, where I could be an ambitious young woman who just wanted to feel pretty and sexy from time to time.

We sat on one of the beds and drank most of the bottle, laughing. He hugged me until my stomach started to growl. He rubbed my tummy and asked me if I wanted to get dinner.

It was already 8 PM, and I was very hungry. The champagne was going straight to my head, and I could feel the room was starting to spin. I wouldn’t mind staying in bed for the rest of the night, but I wanted food.

“Yes, let’s get dinner.” I said.

“Sure. By the way, I told some of my friends that I’m here. I’m waiting to see if anyone wants to come out with us. Might be more fun with a big group,” he said.

My heart broke. I thought I would have Pretend Boyfriend to myself. I thought we could pretend until the morning. But now there was a chance that other people might join us.

“Ashley lives nearby so she might come too,” he said. “I used to work with her and haven’t seen her in a while.”

Another girl? I didn’t mind other women and was always happy to make a new friend, but I didn’t want to share Pretend Boyfriend.

After we had mojitos and Cuban food at a restaurant downstairs, Pretend Boyfriend announced that Ashley had messaged him. She was going to meet us by the elevators.

Ashley was pretty and bubbly, and I immediately liked her, in theory. She had a black dress similar to mine, and we bonded over our outfits and the prospect of a good night. I was drunk and happy and hugged her and welcomed her to our group. But I still wasn’t happy to share.

We went back to our hotel room while Ashley changed, and we drank some of the whiskey that she brought as a gift. Feeling glamorous and like Hollywood movie stars, we found a bell hop to hail us a cab.

Pretend Boyfriend and I sat in the back of the cab, and we held hands while Ashley made friends with the driver in the front. The window was open, and the lights on the street were spinning because I was already drunk. My hair was stuck to my lip gloss, but I was so happy to have the warm night air blowing on my face that I didn’t even bother to fix it.

Pretend Boyfriend was twirling the large rhinestone ring on my finger, and I held on to the moment so hard I thought it might burst.

“Why are you so happy back there?” Asked the cab driver.

He had to shout it because he was playing a Reggaeton radio station very loudly, and he looked at me in his rear-view mirror. Ashley was waving her arms in the air, and I had to lean forward to tug up her strapless dress because it was falling dangerously low.

When we arrived at the luxury casino where the club was located, we all got out of the cab, and Pretend Boyfriend paid for us. He took one of us on each arm, and we walked the red carpet into the hotel. All eyes were on us.

I suddenly didn’t care about looking like an accessory. I actually felt powerful and happy.

The club was very crowded, and the music was playing loudly. Girls in booty shorts and cut-off shirts were dancing on raised platforms, and men were staring at them. We got drinks and found a place to stand so we could assess the situation before joining it.

Ashley ran into some people she knew and disappeared for long periods of time. Each time she reunited with us, she was more drunk than before. She kept complaining to Pretend Boyfriend that another young man wasn’t paying attention to her. Pretend Boyfriend kept buying Ashley more drinks because what else was he supposed to do?

I kept trying to reenact my birthday, pulling Pretend Boyfriend on the dance floor and making him dance close to me. He seemed happy, glancing away every few moments to look at the girls dancing on the raised platforms. He was my Pretend Boyfriend, and I couldn’t mind. I didn’t. Because he had his hands on me, I was feeling sexy enough to not care.

When we were both sufficiently drunk and achy from dancing, we decided to tell Ashley it was time to leave. When we found her, she was crying.

“He won’t pay attention to me,” she sobbed.

“It’s okay, Ashley,” I said. “Be glad you have friends who care about you and who will make sure you get home safely.”

I couldn’t stand seeing other young women cry over men. Their tears hurt me to the core, even when I was so drunk that my face was numb, and I could barely tell whether or not Pretend Boyfriend was kissing me.

“Please don’t cry,” I said. “He’s not worth it.”

“I don’t know how I’m going to get home,” she said. “I have to work tomorrow.”

“What? You told me you have the day off,” said Pretend Boyfriend. “You’re in no shape to drive home. You better spend the night with us. We have two beds, you know.”

(Photo by geishaboy500)