Second Chance Bride: A Fake Fiancee Romance Read online

  But I guess that’s all I deserve. It’s not the morning anyway, and someone being woken up at night doesn’t deserve a gentle hello, I guess.

  I scrub my face with an open palm, all stubble and sweat, and grab the hot metal bar above my row of seats where the carry-on luggage is stashed. I must have gotten the last bus out of Philly, because there’s no one else in my row. Only a few other people on the bus, rubbing their eyes and yawning as they stretch their arms over their heads and clench their fists, rolling their necks and letting the audible pops of joints against joints play through the air.

  They’re bus people. But I guess I am one now, too.

  I swing out of my seat and into the empty aisle, grabbing my backpack from the metal grating up above. Leaning across the seats, I grab my guitar case, hitch everything securely onto my shoulders, and steady myself to leave the bus.

  I just came off a six-month stint as the hired muscle for a local band from my hometown that was somehow able to swing a major label record deal, book eight months of shows across the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic regions at mid-level venues, have a young actor from a hit TV show from the early 2000s post about them on Instagram, and basically become overnight sensations.

  That’s the short story. The long story is that it takes years to become an overnight success.

  The longer story is that even though they’d booked eight months of shows, the tour was cut short, after just six months, because a few members of the band were unable to keep their money out of their noses long enough to reliably show up for shows on more than two consecutive nights. I guess they thought they’d be able to party all night, sleep all day, and be able to actually do their damn jobs. And they were right, for a while. Until they weren’t.

  As for me? I’m reliable. I’m as reliable as all hell. Drugs? Don’t need them. Booze? Yeah, maybe I partake a little bit more than I should, but it doesn’t interfere with my ability to do my job like a professional.

  And women? Well, there was one, a long time ago.

  Don’t get me wrong. There have been women. I can’t hang my hat on something that never was. But it’s not like there’s a chance a woman I meet on the road will be able to tear my heart away from the girl who doesn’t know she’s possessed my soul since before I can even fucking remember.

  I step off the bus and onto the steaming hot asphalt of the parking lot in the bus depot. It’s hot - and I mean hot tonight, the kind of heat that you can’t even measure with just mercury in a glass tube. It’s a biblical level of hot out here.

  And this is just the way I like it.

  So the tour was cut short. Not a big deal. I have some connections out here, a few friends who work security for the casinos and strip clubs on the beach and in the surrounding exurbs, and one of them was able to hook me up with this gig at the last minute.

  So after six months on the road as security-slash-roadie for a band that crashed hard and burned bright and disbanded somewhere outside of Philly two months shy of their farewell show scheduled for New York City sometime in the fall, I’m here, in this strange, glorious little town off the boardwalk in the Garden State.

  And I couldn’t be fucking happier.

  Because Cassie is here. She doesn’t know I’m in town, but I know exactly where she is.

  Cassie Blake. Cassandra Blake was her real name, but I always called her Cassie.

  Cassie Blake, far smarter than her years, far more intelligent than any of the other kids at school. Cassie Blake, with the long, blonde hair.

  Cassie Blake. I never noticed her as anything more than a friend - until I started thinking about her as something more. When she was 18 and I was 20. When she went to the prom with some other guy. And it was all because I didn’t have the courage back then to tell her how I felt. I didn’t know what I wanted. I didn’t know what was right. I didn’t want to jeopardize my friendship with her brother.

  Cassie Blake, who went to college far, far away while her brother Mark and I stayed behind and took classes at the community college. I ultimately dropped out and enrolled in a trade school to become a bricklayer - seemed crazy for someone with my credentials, grades and test scores. I’d originally wanted to become an architect, but I realized I wanted to build something with my hands instead of with my brain. I’ve always like the music of liquid concrete slapping against a big, fat red brick better than the groan and drone of artificial cold air pumped into a cubicle farm. I thought that if I kept my head down, I could make it my career without settling for the sedentary lifestyle of someone who looks at four walls every day.

  I was always a good student, but I never liked school. I was always a smart kid - or that’s what I was told - but I never wanted to learn what they were teaching in the books. I wanted to get out and put my hands in the mud and feel it in my fingers and see how much life I could squeeze out and smell and taste and experience.

  Cassie wanted that too, and that’s why she left our small town. That’s also why I left, but it lead us on two very different paths.

  But now they’ve converged. And I couldn’t be more fucking excited to see her.

  I know where she’s staying, too - all the beauty queens are staying at the same hotel.

  Imagine that. Little Cassie Blake, prom queen, grew up to be a real life beauty queen. Can’t say I’m even a little bit surprised.

  I start through the parking lot. The ground is so hot beneath me that I can nearly feel my boots melting into the hot black tar.

  The parking lot is filled with busses just like the one I just got off. It’s like a funhouse mirror maze of commuter and tour busses. I finally spot an opening that seems to lead where I’m going. I squeeze through it and find myself standing behind the big wooden boardwalk, overlooking the sand, the sea and the sky.

  And after six months on the road, I finally feel like I’m home - almost. This place will serve as my temporary home for the next week while I provide the muscle for the pretty princesses and queens looking to woo the judges and take home a nice, big fat prize of the title, the crown, and bragging rights. Not that they’d actually brag. That would be uncouth.

  But I really feel like I’ve come home because I’m going to see Cassie. As I make my way up the rickety old shitty steps to the boardwalk and feel the thick, heavy air breathe against my skin and inside my lungs, I consider going to the concierge in the hotel to find out her room number. But the sky is black and I can tell it’s late without even looking at the time, so I won’t bother Cassie tonight; I know she’ll be pissed if I interrupt her beauty sleep, not that she needs it.

  I’ll wait until tomorrow to see Cassie. There’s gonna be plenty more tomorrows after the next one, just like there’s a lifetime full of yesterdays behind us.

  I take my lighter out of my pocket and flick it, starting a tiny fire that sparks brightly in the dark night. Just down the pier I see the final big bright bulbs of the rides in the little amusement park flicker out one by one, and I steady my guitar and bag on my shoulders, and take off for the hotel through the hot summer air.

  2

  Cassie

  I’m one of the front-runners this year, which means I get my own suite.

  This wasn’t always the case.

  When I started on the teen circuit in junior high, I wasn’t even given a free bowl of cold cereal the mornings of the pageants. My parents had to pay for everything out of their own pockets, not that they minded. They had enough - they still have enough - as my dad’s a big-shot corporate lawyer and my mom, though she has a master’s in education and was previously an adjunct instructor at a community college, was a stay-at-home mom and got me into teen pageants around the time I started junior high as a way for her to pass the time.

  I think she liked it because it gave her something interesting to do. For me, it was never something I was passionate about. I was always somewhat of a tomboy, my popularity determined by the fact that I could pretty seamlessly travel between cliques in high school. I listened to music with the emo ki
ds, kicked a ball around among the girls with the cleats on the soccer team, and was on math team with all the boys. The fact that I was a little beauty queen on weekends - princess at the time, I guess - gave my mom something to fill up the days while I was at school, planning everything out for me. And for me, on the weekends, it was primping and posture.

  Lots of exercises in posture.

  But right now, I don’t have to worry about posture at all. I’ll leave that for when I’m in public.

  I study my reflection in the mirror. At twenty-three, I should be getting on with my life - and if not doing something else entirely, then at least preparing to make a change. It’s not that I don’t like where I am. I most certainly do like it. I love it, in fact. I get to travel and meet people and rally behind causes that are important to me. This season, it’s the ASPCA. Next season, it will be adult literacy, I think, though I haven’t really nailed it down yet. I would have chosen adult literacy this season, but it was already taken. The ASPCA was my second choice. Nothing against the animals, though. It’s just that none of the contestants can have the same cause in one season.

  It’s been five years since I graduated high school. Two years since I completed my undergrad degree in American History, cramming everything into an accelerated schedule. And during the summers and breaks in school, and now for the past two years between taking random temporary office gigs, I’ve been on the pageant circuit because it’s the only thing I feel that I really know how to do.

  It’s fun. It’s kind of like being on one of those reality dating shows. I get to visit exotic places and meet so many kind, interesting and cool people. And I don’t have to have the pressure of falling in love or being accused of being here “for the wrong reasons.”

  It can get a little lonely, though. As one of the bigger names in the pageant this year, I should be happy to have my own suite. I should be happy I don’t have to be on all the time and don’t have to worry about my posture for one night.

  I get up from the small dressing table where I’ve been sitting and basically staring at myself for twenty minutes and go over to the big, floor-to-ceiling window across the room. The view is breathtaking - like a mini Las Vegas, except here we aren’t landlocked. I don’t know what’s better - the view of the little skyscape with the brilliantly glimmering buildings housing the casinos and hotels, or the view of the ocean, rumbling along slowly and silently like a boulder being pushed up an infinite hill, always moving and always going but never really getting anywhere or making any progress.

  I go back over to the dressing table and take a seat, regarding my reflection in the mirror again. All of the boxes are checked off, that’s for sure. I have long blonde hair that’s thick and wavy, and after a lot of practice I’ve been able to make it look like that without making it seem like I’ve put a ton of effort into it. My eyebrows are thick and full, and a couple of shades darker than my hair, which is the new trend in eyebrows, or so I’m told by one of my beauty consultants. My skin is clear of most traces of acne, which is ironic because when you’re a kid you think of acne is something that afflicts teens, not adults.

  My neck is long and thin, what I’ve been told makes me have the ballerina “look.” I’m not thin, and I have boobs and an ass and hips that make me just a little self-conscious during the swimsuit competition. None of the other frontrunners this year have hips that flare out like mine do, but I actually do really love my body. I think I’m sexy. Unfortunately I don’t have the luxury of not caring what other people think, though. It’s kind of my job to make sure people think I’m attractive on the outside. Oh, I need to make sure they think I’m attractive on the inside too, but I’d be lying to myself if I thought a beauty queen’s job was to be beautiful on the inside.

  But as my eyes scan over my features in the mirror in a detached, distant way, I let my mind go to the one place I know it shouldn’t. The one place that always makes me feel dreadful about myself. The thing that transcends the fact that all of the boxes are checked off.

  It’s the fact that this is not me. It’s the fact that as I look in the mirror, I can see that there is no sparkle behind my eyes. It’s the fact that I am just not really here. Not in spirit, at least.

  I’m good at this stuff, but it’s not my first choice. But that’s not the problem. The problem is I don’t know what my first choice would be.

  All I know is that I’m good at this.

  I get up and go over to the small kitchenette tucked into the corner near the door. I have a mini-bottle of my favorite vodka chilling in the freezer. Now all I need is some ice, so I grab the bucket from the counter and make sure it has the clear plastic lining inside, pull the belt tighter around my complimentary pageant-branded fluffy white robe, and make my way over to the door of my room.

  I lean against the door and push it open, but it hits something. It’s probably one of the maids’ supply carts. I guess it is kind of late, so they’re probably doing rounds for the folks who are out partying or gambling.

  “Watch where you’re going,” I hear a man’s voice grumbling from outside my door.

  “Oh my god,” I say, pulling the door closed slightly and peering around it, “I am so sorry!”

  And that’s when I stop dead in my tracks. Because the person I just carelessly opened my door onto is Jason Anderson.

  It’s the Jason Anderson, big and hard and taking up the whole hallway.

  It’s the Jason Anderson, larger than life and slightly wounded by a door slamming into him.

  He rubs his shoulder and looks down at me with devilish eyes and an even more dangerous smile. I swallow hard, look up at him, and slam the door behind me, making him disappear as though my talent for the pageant were magic.

  My heart is flying around in my chest like a pigeon that somehow flew down into the subway and is trying to get out. I don’t know what Jason is doing here.

  Jason Anderson is the kind of guy you have to mentally prepare yourself for seeing. You don’t simply walk into a room where Jason Anderson is and go about your business as if nothing strange is going on. Jason Anderson’s presence is an event.

  “Cassie?” he says through the door.

  That’s him. He’s still outside. The magic didn’t work. I didn’t actually make him disappear.

  I can’t very well ignore him now. He’s seen me. He knows I’m here. He knows I’m standing right behind this door.

  I turn around, take in a big breath of cold, air-conditioner-pumped air, and open the door slowly.

  “Hey, Cassie,” Jason says.

  “Jason?” I say as though there’s a possibility he might believe I didn’t realize it was him. “What the hell are you doing here?”

  He looks down at me, and I feel like he’s looking at me with his lips instead of just his eyes. He sucks his bottom lip into his mouth ever-so-slightly and tips his chin up.

  “Happened to be in the neighborhood,” he replies, clearly lying, that infuriating hint of teasing and sarcasm hitting my brain like I’m hearing a tongue-twister that he knows I won’t be able to repeat back to him. “What are you doing here?”

  “I am participating in this pageant thing,” I say, drawing my shoulders back and standing up straight by instinct. It’s the thing you do when you announce you’re on the pageant circuit to an outsider, as a way for them to take you seriously.

  But Jason has never taken much of anything seriously, least of all his best friend’s kid sister.

  “Pageant thing?” Jason crosses one leg in front of the other, digging his toe into the beige carpet of the dim hallway, leaning into the doorframe with his arms crossed in front of his chest.

  Why am I infatuated with the way this man leans?

  “Yeah,” I repeat, “pageant thing.”

  He clears his throat, laughs, looks down, and then looks into my eyes with enough heat to melt my panties.

  “Don’t be modest. The last I heard, you were a finalist in the 2018 Miss Long Walk on the Beach Beauty Pageant Extra
vaganza.”

  “That’s not what I said?” I challenge, narrowing my eyes at him, feeling a smile smile pull at the corner of my lips.

  “Alright,” he says, “get dressed, come with me to put my shit in my room, then I’m buying Miss 2018 Long Walk on the Beach a drink.”

  3

  Jason

  We say a lot on our way to the hotel bar, but really, after you’ve known someone as long as you’ve known Cassie Blake, idle chatter and silence are really two sides of the same coin.

  “I thought you were on tour,” she says as she slips into a high stool at the center of the big, circular bar in the middle of the cocktail lounge off the hotel lobby.

  “You thought right,” I say, getting the bartender’s attention. I order a local beer because I don’t know what else to get, and Cassie orders a dry gin martini with extra olives. “I was on tour. Turns out the band was a little too amateur to be on the road for such a long stint. Burned out.”

  “Ah,” Cassie says knowingly, shaking her head, “sex, drugs and rock and roll, huh?”

  She’s making fun of me, but of course she happens to be right.

  “Something like that,” I say, “doesn’t matter, though. They’ll disband and assemble a new lineup. I’m not too worried about it.”

  “So how did you end up here?” Cassie asks as the bartender delivers our drinks to us, shooting me a smile with her eyes, wide and sparkling.

  “I’m doing security for the pageant, actually,” I say, taking a sip of my beer. “Last minute thing. I didn’t have anything else lined up, so when the tour got canned early, I made a few calls. I knew you’d be here, Cas. I just didn’t think I’d be lucky enough to see you tonight.”

  Cassie Blake is like a diamond unearthed from a million-year-old block of stone, already cut and polished, like she was born nearly damn perfect, with long blonde hair and cherry red lips and a ripe peach-shaped ass that I’ve never been able to get a good enough look at.