Fake dating books, from a wedding plus-one to a viral rescue

The elevator glided in the air, in that smooth, noiseless way elevators in expensive hotels do, while Alexa checked her purse for the third time to make sure she’d tossed the fancy crackers and Brie in there. They would need a pre-dinner snack to soak up all of that champagne, after all. She wished she’d found the time to make brownies the night before. Olivia loved her brownies.

She spied the cheese and crackers in the corner of her purse, tucked away from the heavy champagne bottle. Just then, the elevator stopped with a jerk. A second later, the lights went out.

“What’s going on?” she said out loud to herself.

A few seconds later, a dim light came on, but the elevator stayed motionless. She looked up and around, and jumped to see a man with a suitcase in the opposite corner of the elevator.

“Were you here this whole time?” she asked.

“What am I, a genie?” He grinned back at her.

“I guess you don’t really look like a genie.” He was a tall white guy, with tanned skin, rumpled dark brown hair, and about a day’s worth of scruff where a beard would be. She had a sudden urge to rub her hand on his cheek to see how prickly it was. How exactly had she missed seeing this man get on the elevator with her?

“Thank you, I think. But isn’t that what a genie would say?” he asked. “You’re not claustrophobic, are you?”

“Um, I don’t think so. Why, were you going to bust us out of here with your genie powers if I said I was?”

He laughed.

“I guess you’ll never know if I’m a genie now,” he said.

“Well, there was that time I got an MRI,” she said. “Being inside that tiny machine wasn’t much fun. Maybe I am claustrophobic.”

“Sorry, you already lost your chance to see my powers.” He moved to the front of the elevator and picked up the emergency phone.

“Let’s see if they can give us an ETA on getting out of here.”

She tried not to stare at him in the dim lighting, but she couldn’t miss the opportunity to check out his butt in his perfectly fitted jeans. It was as good as the rest of him. She tried to wipe the grin off her face in case he turned around.

Stuff like this never happened to her. Not the stuck-in-the-elevator thing—her life was full of minor crises like that. No, it was being stuck in an elevator with a hot guy that was the unusual part. She was always the one sitting on an airplane next to a chatty toddler, or a knitting grandma, or a bored college student; never a hot guy to be found.

After about a minute of him saying, “Okay . . . okay,” in progressively tenser tones, he hung up the phone.

“Well . . .” He paused and smiled at her. “Wait, I don’t even know your name, my new elevator friend.”

“Alexa, and you, Genie?”

“Drew. Nice to meet you, Alexa.”

“Drew, it’s a pleasure, but . . .”

“Right, these circumstances are not ideal. So, the bad news is that there’s a power outage in the whole hotel.”

“I’m not fidgeting, Jack,” I say, fidgeting.

But after a second I just give in. I close my eyes. Relax into his chest. Feel the scent of him in my nostrils, anchoring me to sanity. And wonder which one, out of my millions of asinine life choices, led me to this moment.

WAVES AND PARTICLES

Twenty-four hours earlier

All throughout middle school, my halloween costume was the duality of light.

I made it with a marker, drawing a bunch of circles and zigzag lines all over one of Dad’s white undershirts I’d rescued from the trash can. In hindsight, the production value was so low, not even the physics teacher managed to guess what it was. I never minded, though. I’d walk around the hallways hearing Bill Nye’s voice in my head, his beautiful explanation of the ways light could be two different things at once, depending on what others wanted to see: a particle and a wave.

It seemed like a winning idea. And had me wondering if I, too, could contain two—no, a whole multitude of Elsies. Each one would be crafted, custom tailored, carefully curated with a different person in mind. I’d give everyone the me they wanted, needed, craved, and in exchange they’d care about me.

Easy peasy, photons squeezy.

Funny how my physics career and my people-pleasing career started around the same time. How I can draw a straight line from baby’s first quantum mechanics concept to my current job. Actually, to both my current jobs. The day one, in which I earn next to nothing by hatching physical theories that explain why small molecules cluster together like cliques of mean girls during lunch hour. And the other one, in which . . .

Well. The other one, in which I pretend to be someone else, at least pays well.

“Uncle Paul will try to rope us into a threesome, again,” Greg tells me, soulful brown eyes full of apologies, and I don’t hesitate. I don’t act annoyed. I don’t shudder in revulsion thinking about Uncle Paul’s sewage breath or his oily comb-over, which reminds me of pubic hair.

Okay, maybe I do shudder a little bit. But I cover it up with a smile and a professional “Got it.”

“Also,” he continues, running a hand through his messy curls, “Dad recently developed severe lactose intolerance but refuses to ease up on the dairy. There might be . . .”

“Gastrointestinal events.” Understandable. I’d resist giving up cheese, too.

“And my cousin Izzy—she’s known to become physically aggressive when people disagree with her over the literary value of the Twilight Saga.”

I perk up. “Is she pro or against?”

“Against,” Greg says darkly.

Like any self-respecting deity of love, beauty, and abundance, Oshun was covered in jewelry and not much else—unless one counted the bees and the enormous hair. Dani had little hair, zero bees, and no established habit of public nudity; nor did she devote any attention to romantic love, empirical evidence having proven it was a drain of energy that would distract from her professional goals. But the fact that Dani and the orisha didn’t see eye to eye on that particular topic wasn’t hugely important. The golden statue was an heirloom passed on from Dani’s dear, departed Nana—the same woman who’d once told her, “There’s power in knowledge passed between generations, whether it’s by those books of yours or by an elder’s mouth.”

Danika agreed. Plus, following in her Nana’s witchy footsteps was fun and came quite naturally. Must be something about the elaborate nighttime rituals and the history of dogged womanist defiance.

“Come on, then,” Sorcha nudged, apparently done listing Dani’s character flaws. And so, at a table shared by two different idols, in a room where candlelight and the full moon’s glow twined lazily together, Danika took her friend’s hands and closed the circle.

“You first,” Sorcha whispered.

“Oh, darling, are you certain?”

“Don’t start. I know you’re gagging to invoke something or other.”

Well, yes. In the month since Dani’s last situationship had ended, her vagina had developed cobwebs (the vagina was, unfortunately, prone to dramatics), and this invocation would hopefully end that awful state of affairs.

She took a breath and began. “Hello, Oshun. Hope the twins are well. This month, I have an intention I think you’ll support: I require another fuck buddy.”

Sorcha’s eyes popped open. “Hang on. Is this a good idea?”

“Shut up,” Dani said sternly. “I’m busy.”

On my way home from work, I detoured through the park, which I never did, but the weather was perfect. And I was wearing a floppy-brimmed hat, which I never had, but Mom mailed it to me the week before, and I felt like I owed it to her to at least try it out. I was reading as I walked—which I'd vowed to stop doing because I'd nearly caused a bike accident doing so weeks earlier—when suddenly, a warm breeze caught the hat's brim. It lifted off my head and swooped over an azalea bush. Right to a tall, handsome blond man's feet.

Peter said this felt like an invitation. Laughed, almost self-deprecatingly, as he added, “I'd never believed in fate before that.”

If it was fate, then it's reasonable to assume fate a little bit hates me, because when he bent to retrieve the hat, another gust swept it into the air, and I chased after it right into a trash can.

The metal kind, bolted to the ground.

My hat landed atop a pile of discarded lo mein, the lip of the can smashed into my rib cage, and I did a wheezing pratfall into the grass. Peter described this as “adorably clumsy.”

He left out the part where I screamed a string of expletives.

“I fell in love with Daphne the moment I looked up from her hat,” he'd say, no mention of the trash-noodles in my hair.

When he asked if I was okay, I said, “Did I kill a bicyclist?”

He thought I'd hit my head. (Nope, just bad at first impressions.)

Over the last three years, Peter dusted off Our Story every chance he got. I was sure he'd work it into both our vows and his wedding reception speech.

But then his bachelor party happened, and everything changed.

The story tipped onto its side. Found a fresh point of view. And in this new telling of it, I was no longer the leading lady, but instead the teensy complication that would forever be used to jazz up their story.

Daphne Vincent, the librarian that Peter plucked out of the trash, nearly married, then dumped the morning after his bachelor party for his “platonic” “best” “friend,” Petra Comer.

Then again, when would he even need to tell their story?

Everyone around Peter Collins and Petra Comer knew their history: How they'd met in third grade when forced into alphabetical seating, bonding over a shared love of Pokémon. How, soon after, their mothers became friends while chaperoning an aquarium field trip, with their fathers to follow suit.

For the last quarter of a century, the Collinses and the Comers vacationed together. They celebrated birthdays, ate Christmas brunches, decorated their homes with handmade picture frames from which Peter's and Petra's faces beamed out beneath some iteration of the phrase BEST FRIENDS FOREVER.

This, Peter told me, made him and the most gorgeous woman I'd ever met more like cousins than friends.

At least I take comfort in knowing that packing my own belongings in two weeks will be significantly easier than this.

Out at the curb, West emerges from the back of the truck and hops gracefully down to the street, gazing up at what I’m sure is a highly organized packing job. You should have seen our pantry: truly a work of cataloging genius. My meticulous ex is twenty-eight, infrequently verbal, and one of those incredibly capable men who make complicated things like doing taxes and fixing holes in drywall look easy. I admit, beyond the sexy capability vibe, West is also a fox. He’s that perfect combination of height and muscle, though I have no idea how tall he is. Is it weird that I’ve never asked? I realize that most tall women are obsessed with how tall other people are, but I’ve never had that itch. I’ve known lots of men—men who are taller, men who are shorter, men who are exactly my height. All I know is that West is chin-at-eye-level tall. At our wedding he had to bend to kiss me.

I haven’t thought about that day in ages, but I guess it makes sense that I’m thinking about it now. That kiss feels like it happened a lifetime ago. Two years into this adventure, and I’m better acquainted with the couch he’s leaving behind than I am with him.

Now, standing on the sidewalk, he turns and looks at me, our eyes meeting and giving me a weird, wavy feeling in my stomach, a touch of lightheadedness. It’s not low blood sugar; I ate half a bag of jalapeño chips while I watched him pack. And it’s not the heat; May in LA is the very definition of temperate. I think, strangely, it’s him.

West’s eyes are the color of sunlight passing through a glass of whiskey. His hair is that exact same color, but with more sunlight streaking through, and so thick I suspect it alone has ruined me for other men. I tried to paint it once, mixing Transparent Oxide-Red Lake with Old Holland Yellow-Brown but it wasn’t quite right, and as soon as I realized how much it annoyed me that I couldn’t get the correct color of his hair down on canvas, I immediately wondered why I’d become so invested in the first place.

With that intense eye contact still happening, West walks over and stops barely a foot away. For a weird, fevered beat I wonder if he’s actually going to kiss me goodbye.

“I think I’m all set here,” he says, and lol of course he isn’t going to kiss me. “But if I forgot anything, you can have Jake come pick it up.”

Jake: younger brother to West (and only slightly less good-looking) and that type of college friend who knows everything about my life at UCLA but has never met my father, who lives only an hour away. Jake introduced me to West; now Jake will be my sole remaining connection to West. The thought makes me a little sad, but then I remember I have the couch and T-virus zombies waiting for me inside.

“Sounds good,” I say.

“You’ve got copies of the papers?” he asks.