You’re useless. Worse than useless. If useless had a baby with extra-useless, it’s what you’d be. You can’t even screw in a lightbulb, and your whole life is that stupid c
ompany. Do you really think socks are so important to the world that you have to spend so much time perfecting them? It’s pathetic. You’re pathetic. Your entire family is pathetic. You can’t do a single thing for yourself, and you’re not even a man because men do things. They have hobbies. They do manly things like fix shit around the house. They have calloused hands. They work hard. You’ve had everything handed to you your whole life, and I’m sick of it. You’re so entitled, it’s disgusting. Don’t stand there with that hurt look on your face. Don’t tell me you love me. You have no idea what loving someone even means because it’s work, and you haven’t worked for anything ever. Learn to put a lightbulb in place, and maybe then we can talk. Oh, wait. No. No, we can’t because I am so over this. I’m so over you.
Okay, so maybe Ex-Stephanie wasn’t always that nice to me. Maybe Assistant Stephanie is right about that.
I’ve pretty much been rehashing the past and drowning in my own self-induced misery the whole drive here that I didn’t even take the time to enjoy the view. Now that we’re here, through the park gates and into the campground, the time for enjoying beauty is over because even I have to admit, it’s less than impressive. Steph is always very direct, and she lets me know just what she thinks about it.
“This is it? Oh my god. I can’t believe you booked us into this. It’s a square! A square surrounded by four trees. And there’s a fire pit that looks like it’s from the Stone Age. Dear lord, this is a shit idea.”
I snap out of my self-pity, the same circle my mind always takes, and follow Steph’s gaze across to the campsite I just drove up to. Apparently, my autopilot works pretty well. Fuck that. I’ve never been to this campground before, or to any campground, period. My family didn’t do camping. My parents did weeks away on a Swiss mountain range in an exclusive cabin. They did the Caribbean islands. They did…well…not family-friendly campgrounds.
“Technically, you booked it.” I stop the car and pull the e-brake. Stephanie stares at me in pure horror.
“No! No way! This is…this is horrible! There isn’t even wood! What are we supposed to do? Cut down one of those trees?”
“I think there’s probably a firewood pile around somewhere.”
“Why did you tell me to book a regular site when there are cabins for rent here? Please, can we just go and ask if they have one of those?”
“No.”
“You aren’t even going to be the one doing all the work! You’re going to sit on your butt and watch me struggle.”
“Are you serious?” Is that really what everyone thinks of me?
Steph sighs hard, and just a little bit of her panic and fury drain away though her cheeks remain flushed. She’s actually quite beautiful. She’s petite with long, dark hair. Sweet. I guess guys would probably call her sweet. She’s cute, and her eyes are huge and dark. Her nose is sweetly curled at the end, and her lips are pink and full. She has flawless, creamy skin, and if she ever bothered with makeup, it would be redundant because her features are already so classically beautiful that they don’t need any help. There are a few errant freckles that stray across her cheeks and the bridge of her nose.
I’ve noticed it before because I see her every day, but it’s never really meant anything until now. Until I offered her five grand to camp with me while pretending to be my girlfriend. Now it’s hard not to look at her and notice some of the things I missed because I wasn’t into checking out my assistants, coworkers, or anyone else.
So what if I haven’t exactly lived it up post-divorce.
“This is a terrible idea,” Steph says, switching tactics. Her eyelashes flutter as her eyes sweep the site through the windshield. It’s pretty barren looking. Just a patch of worn-out dirt where people park, a strip of grass beyond that, and some scraggly trees. Oh, and there’s also a picnic table that has seen some better days, and a barbeque pit—the kind they put at picnic sites for public use. “We could just go home and forget about all of this.”
Right now, I don’t appreciate her directness so much.
“I don’t want to leave, and I’ll help you set up the tent. That’s what this is about, right?”
“What? Proving to yourself that camping sucks? Or maybe you’re trying to remind yourself why you love the city so much—gaining a new appreciation for it but doing the exact opposite of seeing and experiencing it.”
I grind my teeth together. “You should try walking around with the stench of your failure and humiliation in everyone’s nose.” Well, that was dark. And completely not what I mean to say.
“My bum bum, the sun in my entire universe, the joy of my life, no one thinks that about you.” Steph ridiculously bats her eyelashes at me, and it looks like her eyes are going to fall out of her head.
“What?” I ask flatly.
“Just practicing. You know, the fake girlfriend stuff.” She reaches over and brushes one of my hands with her fingers. A strange current zaps up my fingertips and hits me straight in the groin. It’s so unexpected that I make a startled sound, one that’s the equivalent to a snuffling rhinoceros. Steph steals her hand back. “And I also know there’s no way I’m doing this for five grand. Up your game, or I’m gone.”
“What?!”
“You heard me. Ten grand, or I’m going back to the city.”
“What are you going to do? Walk there? Because I know you can’t drive stick.” I glance down at the car’s shifter.
“Is it an allusion to the fact that I haven’t been on a good date in the past six months? Because I’m pretty sure this car is actually called a standard.”
Only Steph would say something like that. She’s pretty private about her personal life, but me asking her to be my fake girlfriend seems to have upped the ante when it comes to the shockingly and brutally honest things she’s willing to say.
“Jesus,” I huff.