FOUR
Brinley
I was half-tempted to ask Brent to pinch me.
None of this felt like it could be real. Not even when I got another text from Rachel making sure I had cleared the time with my husband, so she could know if they were to expect us. Not even when I got up a five in the morning the morning of the day. The day when my life had the potential to completely change.
Potentially, I reminded myself as I fussed with my hair and makeup and clothes, trying not to look like I was trying so hard.
In the end, I chose a simple deep navy sundress with a slight fleur-di-les pattern in gold on it, slipped into flats, left my hair down, and grabbed my purse and sketchpad before I could talk myself into changing for the eighth time.
"Breathe," Brent reminded me as I rushed through the living room, shoving normal chargers and car chargers into my purse, grabbing a granola bar to throw into my bag in case I got hungry, and mints in case I got the dreaded stale-coffee-breath.
"No time to breathe," I told him as I rushed out of the door.
The morning was staying blissfully mild after a week-long heatwave that had my clothes sticking to me, sweat beading up on my brows and upper lip, and slowly trickling down my back the moment I got into my car.
By the time I had stopped for coffee, and made it to Warren's surprisingly well - if sparsely - decorated home, my hair wasn't even damp at the roots yet.
The front door opened, bringing out Warren who hadn't decided to exactly dress up for the audition. Jeans and a dark blue tee. But at least this set didn't have grease or paint stains on them. Even his boots were clean.
"Ready?" he asked, waving toward his car, making me let out a sigh of relief. First, because I didn't like driving on the parkway. Second, because the no-AC thing would become an issue once the sun was high in the sky.
"Yep," I agreed, shuffling out with the coffees, purse, sketchpad, and a little plastic bag of touch-up makeup.
"You're not breathing," he declared a moment later after we had buckled in, backed out, and started down the road.
"I'm nervous," I admitted. "I don't lie much," I added. "I don't know how well I do it."
"Well, you're gonna have to get good at it in under two hours if you want this. If it helps, your future could depend on it."
"That does help," I told him, nodding.
Success, that was my motivator. Not having to worry about bills. Not having to buy exclusively off the clearance rack. Not having to take advantage of a buddy's charity. Not having to endure those looks from my family. The ones that said they were praying for me, that they were maybe a little disappointed that I hadn't gone into project management or law or something else that they wouldn't have to worry about me doing.
"Here, you need to put one of these on," he told me a while later, tossing a small box at me. Opening it, I found two simple white gold bands. Wedding rings. Right. Because we were married. It felt wrong sliding it on, but there was no way around it. He slipped his up his finger with a lot less hesitation than me. "We need to discuss details," he added as he took the turn onto the parkway. "The little shit that might help us sell this. When, where, what it is about each other."
"You're very good at your job," I offered, making a snort rush out of him. "What?"
"Being good at my job wouldn't make you want to fuck me, let alone marry me in secret."
He wasn't exactly wrong.
And, normally, I didn't find it hard to list positive qualities in a person. Most people had some of them. Brent was loyal, steadfast, supportive, protective, occasionally - mainly after he had too many drinks - funny.
Objectively, I was a hard worker, dedicated, and open-minded.
But I was having some kind of mental block when it came to Warren.
"I don't know you that well," I admitted, shaking my head. "What's your story?"
"My story. Alright," he started, sounding guarded, but as though that wasn't going to stop him - a combination I didn't understand. "Had a deadbeat dad who dropped me on my grandfather's doorstep. He had a farm right over the border of PA. That was where I grew up. Being a typical boy. And learning everything I know about workmanship from him."
"Was he a carpenter?"
"Farmer," Warren corrected. "But of an older generation. They built things. They fixed things when they broke. Aside from appliances and the like, I don't think a single piece of furniture he had came from a store. The house itself was built by his two hands. So were the barns. His workshop. Everything. He didn't have formal training."
"But he didn't need it," I finished for him, nodding. "Because he had real-life experience."
"Exactly."
"Why'd you get training then?" I asked, maybe peeping a look at his profile while his eyes were on the road, maybe finally seeing a bit more of his appeal, the things that made some of the women at the home improvement stores go a little gaga when he spoke to them. I guess because, for the first time, we weren't arguing, butting heads, disliking the very existence of each other.
"Because while hands-on experience is admirable still in our society, no one recognizes it as valid. If I wanted a career in this, I needed the education. My experience didn't count for shit."
"You didn't want to be a farmer? Like your grandfather?"
"When I was at the age where I was deciding what I wanted to do with my life, I had begun to want things. Superficial, nothing things. Like nice clothes. A nice house. A new car."
"There's nothing wrong with wanting those things," I told him, knowing it was a huge motivator for me as well.
"No. Nothing wrong, per se. But shallow," he went on. "By the time I realized that this," he said, waving a hand toward the windshield of his car, "is really nothing in the grand scheme of things, my grandfather was gone. And the farm fell into my father's hands."
"Couldn't you maybe convince him to give it back to you? If you want it so much."
"Maybe could have," he agreed, more of a guardedness slipping into his tone. But still, he went on. "If he hadn't gone delinquent on it. It's in pre-foreclosure."
"That sucks," I told him from somewhere deep, hearing a bit of emotion leak into my words. Because I finally understood him a little. I knew his dream. And when you knew someone's dream, you knew almost all there was to know about them. He wanted to go back, to farm, to live the life he had foolishly left behind to chase things he found never fulfilled him. "Is that why you agreed to do this?" I asked a few minutes later after the gears had a chance to turn. It seemed like the only explanation. "For the money? To try to buy back the farm?"
"Yeah," he agreed, chancing a look my way, his dark eyes almost oddly blank. "It's a pretty shitty motivator - money. But it's all I got."
"It's not like I have some noble reason for wanting to do it either," I admitted. "To get some notice. To get some more clients. To get a more steady income."
"That's your dream, though, isn't it?" he asked, shrugging. "This business. This is what you want most. To make a name for yourself. Doesn't make it a shitty motivator. If this is what you really want."
"I like making things pretty," I admitted, feeling silly the second the words were out of my mouth. Even if they were true. I did like making things pretty. I liked beautiful things, things that made you feel good inside when you saw them. I wanted everyone to have that feeling as they walked around their homes, as they looked at the items I had picked out specifically to give them those sensations. It made me feel good, I guess, to make them feel good. In the way that I was able to do.
"You do that," he surprised me by saying, making my gaze seek his face again, still finding it facing forward, unreadable. But I still thought there was sincerity there. It was in his tone, in the depth of it, in the way he wasn't - for a change - smirking at my expense. "So, you think you can find something convincing to say about me now?" he asked a few moments later.
"Yeah, I think I have something to work with now," I agreed.
"Wanna tell me?"
"No. I think it's better if it comes off the cuff. That way our reactions to what the other person says are real, y'know? Not practiced. It will come off more genuine."
"Because it will be."
"Exactly."
"You really think we can pull this shit off? It's a big lie."
"I don't know," I admitted. "I'm hoping for the best. And I will read over the fine print of any documents to make sure we aren't screwing ourselves over. Though I very much doubt that there will be a clause about pretending to be married in there anywhere, no matter how thorough it is otherwise."
"Fair enough," he agreed, reaching over to turn the radio on. A smile tugged at his lips when I let out a grumble that could never be confused for quiet when his usual country station came filtering from the speakers. It was a smile too, a genuine one. Not a smirk. No. This one made little creases form beside his eyes that suddenly seemed much brighter than I had seen them before. "Have you ever been to Cape May before?" he asked a while later, surprising me. Usually, I was the one who couldn't keep silent.
"Every summer when I was in elementary school. My parents - and aunts and uncles and grandparents - would all pitch in to rent a too-small house for a week. With an outside shower," I recalled, that always having been my favorite thing about the house. Such a foreign, but welcome concept to my young brain. "We would get there, and all the women would scrub the place even though it was supposed to be cleaned between clients, then we'd all go food shopping for the week. Then come home, and the men would cook out. The next morning, we would get up before sunrise to walk the pier to see the sunrise. Spend the day at the beach. Then maybe the arcade. They have this amazing arcade. And we'd save up all our tickets to cash in at the end of the week for big stuff. Then at night, we would walk to town. My siblings and I got spending money to buy things like trolls and shell necklaces and jumping beans. And we would all agree to meet at this ice cream place at nine. I wonder if it is still there," I thought aloud.
"The ice cream place?"
"Yeah. They had the best French vanilla I have ever had in my life. My sister used to say the same thing about the coffee ice cream."
"Why'd you stop going?"
"I don't know really. Everyone always talked about wanting to come back. But I guess life gets busy or complicated. It is hard to bring everyone together for a holiday, let alone a whole week, anymore. I guess everyone thought it wouldn't be the same if we didn't do it exactly how we did it in the past."
"We can go check."
"Check what?"
"See if the ice cream place is still there," he offered, chancing a look over at me. "For old time's sake."
There was an odd, warm, floating sensation in my belly at that, something that was foreign in general - let alone in relation to Warren - that I didn't even know how to interpret it.
"Okay," I agreed, smiling a little tentatively. "That'd be nice."
Nice.
And Warren Allen Reyes.
I never thought I'd see the day when I put those words together.
Wonders would never cease, it seemed.
"You ready for this?" he asked as we parked outside the hotel in question, having needed to drive the lot for five minutes waiting for someone else to pull out, so we could take the spot.
It was prime vacation time.
The entire area was packed.
Endless streams of people could be seen walking down the streets, flip-flops slapping on the concrete, bright beach towels stuffed into canvas totes, metal and plastic lawn chairs in hands, wide-brimmed hats on heads, coolers trailing behind with bags attached, teaming with sun-friendly snacks, everyone smelling of sunblock, wearing sunglasses, and already boasting their swimsuits.
Nostalgia was a live thing through my system as I watched them, mind going back to being no more than five or six, holding my aunt's hands as we jumped waist-deep waves. Occasionally I'd lose her grip when a strong one would hit, sending us both surging away from each other, my heart thudding, belly dropping, as I remembered at the last possible second to squeeze my nose as the wave dragged me under, tossing and turning me for what felt like ages before I surfaced on the wet sand, laughing up at the sun.
Simpler times.
Happier, too, if I were perfectly honest.
But that kind of came with the territory of innocence - ignorance to all the stuff in life that isn't light and happy, when your entire life was sunshine and chasing butterflies and building mud pies and making massive hopscotch boards on the driveway to play on with your friends.
No bills.
No familial expectations.
Or societal ones.
Just living deep, sucking up every moment of joy available to you.
One day, I told myself, one day I would know that kind of lightness again.
"Breathe," Warren reminded me as he eyed my bag with a grimace before he grabbed it, grabbed my wallet, then threw the rest of it on the backseat.
"What are you doing? I need that!"
"No one needs that much crap," he countered, holding out my wallet to me. "You need your ID and your sketchbook. That's it."
"You didn't bring any sketches," I realized as he just stood there, arms down at his sides, casual as could be. Like this wasn't the thing we were both pinning all our hopes on.
"No," he agreed, not even bothering to shrug.
"And your website is sparse," I added, head starting to spin, body starting to sweat. Which would be great. Just great. Showing up an anxious, sweaty mess when I needed to be calm and collected and convincing.
"What is this?" he asked callously, waving a hand at my obvious distress.
"This?" I hissed. "This is a professional who came to a business meeting prepared to talk business. And for us - in case no one has explained this to you, Mr. High-and-Mightly, that means we come prepared with examples of our work for the clients to see."
"If they looked into me, they could find my work out there."
"Out where?" I shot back. "I couldn't find your work when I looked."
"Stalking me, huh?" he asked, letting that damn smirk of his pull at his lips.
I'd never really been the type of person who felt moved to physical violence much, as hot as my temper often ran. But, good God, the urge to reach up and slap him was overwhelming. So much so that I needed to curl my fingers into my wallet and sketchbook to make sure I didn't do anything that might undermine our chances here.
Chances.
Which were getting slimmer by the moment thanks to his blasé attitude toward something that should have meant the world to us.
And, I reminded myself, even if - by some miracle at this point - we did get it, I would have to pretend to love this careless, arrogant man for a year.
As much as I wanted this, I didn't know how I would pull that off.
Forget all the designs I had worked on in my life, pretending to love and be married to this man? That would be my opus. My goddamned masterpiece.
"I Googled you. Being the professional I am, I researched the person I was about to work with. And since I could scarcely find anything, I doubt that anyone else..."
"Oh, there you two are!" a newly familiar voice called, happy, excited. "Fantastic." Yep. Rachel. The woman who held our future in her hands. Hearing us bitching. Again. I half-turned to find her walking up behind me from her car, a tray of sweating iced coffee drinks in her hand. "My assistant is enjoying some well-deserved time in the sun," she explained, waving the tray of drinks. "You two are right on time."
I shared a look with Warren, one that seemed to say I don't think she heard us.
"Were those some agitated voices I heard?" she asked, putting a pin in the balloon of hope in my chest.
"Someone didn't bring a sketchpad," I said, sending her an eye-roll, hoping she would take it as a typical lover's spat.
"Oh, that's not a problem. We did our due diligence. Found some amazing homes he has worked on."
Without thinking, I shot Warren a scowl to the smirk he was giving me.
Recovering faster than I could, he sent Rachel one of those mega-watt smiles of his that he was capable of here and there. "Brin here was just lecturing me about how she couldn't find any of my work online when she first met me."
"Online? No. But we did find you featured in a few magazines," Rachel said, giving him a smile that said that she wasn't exactly unaffected by Warren's charms.
Magazines.
Right.
Of course.
I don't know why it hadn't occurred to me to look there, as important as I knew they still were, even in this digital age. I guess I had figured that if he hadn't put the money or effort into getting a proper website designed, that he would never take the time to get himself featured in magazines.
I had a lot to learn about the man, it would seem.
"And you, Brinley, you can just relieve yourself of that sketchpad too. We have looked at your website and all your social media extensively. We know everything you have to offer as well."
Taking a deep breath, trying to tamp down my pride at being proven wrong yet again around Warren, I put my sketchpad in the back to cover my purse, and gave her a nod. "Okay, great!" I said, smile so fake it made my cheeks hurt. But I knew because I had been trained to be hyper-aware of such things, that it came across genuine.
"Ready, baby?" Warren asked, arm dropping down across my shoulder, making my whole body jolt unexpectedly.
Baby?
I mean, I knew we were supposed to be in love, but... baby? Was that supposed to be a crack? About how small I was? Or how badly I took defeat?
I wiggled instinctively against the touch, trying to dislodge it. "I'm sweating," I objected, suddenly aware of our audience, knowing I was supposed to crave his touch and other disgusting things like that.
"Yeah, you are," he agreed, not doing the gentlemanly thing, and ignoring the truth of my statement.
"Love this," Rachel sighed, holding up a hand like she was swearing to a higher power. "Come on, you two. Let's get the formalities over with."
Formalities.
That wasn't lost on me as Warren - and therefore me, since he was still one-armed-hugging me like a couple of lovesick teenagers at the mall - fell into step with Rachel as she gushed about the area, about how perfect it was for the show, about the amazing, sweeping drone views they could get for opening credits of the beach, the pier, shots of the destruction.
"That is part of the point of this season, of course. After the hiccups recently, we decided we could revamp the interest in the show if we focus on redoing some of these homes brought to devastation by Sandy all those years back. There are so many that have still been sitting vacant, you know," she added as we moved into the lobby of the hotel.
It was beachy.
Of course.
The design, the decor, it was meant to complement a beach town - all white-painted ever-loving shiplap, blue and seafoam green accents, shell designs. Actually, while it was done well enough - and expensively, I was sure - it was just a tad overboard. It looked like a beach-themed birthday party just threw up all over it.
But, I reminded myself, that was likely what the people who came to stay wanted.
"Right through here," Rachel guided us away from the elevators and down a hall where the conference rooms were likely situated. "We are going to talk to Mica Vich, she's the creator of the show. And Andy Walling. He's, well, he's the money," she told us, giving us a shrug. "Just be yourselves. Don't put on a show. They will appreciate the real you. The one I keep happening upon."
In we went into a somewhat sterile room with none of the accents found in the lobby or halls where we found a long fold-up table where two people were situated. Mica was around Rachel's age with fire-engine red hair that she had chopped so short it was barely hair at all, putting all the focus on her sharp, cat-like features and keen gray eyes. Long shell earrings dangled, dragging your attention to the spindle-thin column to her neck and the off-shoulder hem of her white shirt that showed off the sharp juts of her collarbones.
Andy was older, somewhere in his sixties wearing an appropriate tan-colored summer suit, impeccably neat from his black hair that grayed only at the temples to the brown leather shoes that I bet cost more than my car did. Though, admittedly, I probably couldn't give that damn car away at this point.
"Mica, Andy, this is who I was telling you about. Warren and Brinley."
Warren remembered his manners before I did, reaching an arm out to shake each of the interviewer's hands, his arm falling a bit down my back as he did, making the front of my shirt slide up, the collar cutting into my throat.
I yanked instinctively out from under his arm, grabbing the material to drag it back down. "You were choking me," I informed him when his head swiveled in my direction.
I couldn't be sure, but I could have sworn he mumbled Dramatic under his breath.
I took a deep breath, shrugging it off, introducing myself with a smile.
"Have a seat," Andy invited not a second before I felt Warren's hand snag me at the small of my back, strong fingers curling into the waistband of my pants - and panties! - then dragging backward, making me fall with a grunt onto his lap.
"A little warning," I said, giving him a hard look since I was turned away from them to do so.
"Where's the fun in that?" he shot back, shooting that smile of his at me. Even though I knew it was just for show, just for our audience, yeah, I got it. I got why girls forgot how to keep their saliva in their mouths when he flashed it at them.
"So," Mica started, giving us a smile as I shifted slightly to be able to look at them better, pretending to ignore the way Warren's arm was around my back, his hand situated on my thigh, heavy and possessive. For show, I reminded myself. For them. "Why don't you guys tell us how you met? What your first impressions were of each other."
"We met..." we both started in unison.
"We met on a job," I started when he didn't continue. "Warren was brought on as the contractor. I was the designer. We knew about working with each other, but hadn't met before then."
"And your first impressions?" Mica pressed.
"Well, it took about, I don't know, five minutes for me to decide he was the most impossible man on the face of the Earth," I told them truthfully, smiling when they all chuckled.
"And you, Warren?" Mica asked as I tried to make myself relax a little, look comfortable in my position.
"I thought she was beautiful," he started easily, making me jump, my head swiveling in his direction, looking for insincerity. "That I was a lucky man to get to work with her for a few weeks." He was telling the truth! I didn't just get taught to school my own body language, but how to read it, interpret it. He was being honest. He thought I was beautiful? "Of course, then she opened her mouth," he went on, making me snort hard, as the others laughed as well.
"So not exactly love at first sight?" Mica asked.
"We couldn't even have a civil conversation," I admitted, smiling a bit because it was true. "Everything was an argument. From what I wore to the actual design plans. Every day was a battle."
"Until..." Rachel piped in, reminding us about the inevitable. The love story part. The part we really hadn't come up with.
"Until she started really talking about her work, how much she loves it, how she enjoys making people's lives fuller with pretty things. You don't see that kind of passion much these days," Warren said easily. As though it was true.
"And you, Brinley?" Mica asked.
"One day, he was talking about his grandfather, about the farm he grew up on, about how he learned to build things at his side. I guess it kind of helped me see him as a human instead of, excuse my language, a thorn in my ass."
There was more laughter at that, and I could feel Warren's fingers give my thigh a squeeze, silently telling me we had them.
I had the same feeling.
"It was a whirlwind, huh?" Andy asked, tone skeptical.
"I know what you're thinking," I agreed, nodding. "I'm a skeptic by nature too. I've certainly never believed in love at first sight. But it was a lot of early mornings and late nights. We spent most waking hours together. It sounds fast, but it felt natural to us. I think... when you find something - or someone - who makes you happy, you have to hang onto them. We don't get a lot of that as adults, y'know? The kind of joy that makes you feel like it is going to burst through your fingertips and toes, like you can't contain it all. We decided it was silly to wait just because that was what society expects of us."
"So sweet," Mica mumbled to Rachel, and I knew that was it. Even if Andy wasn't a romantic, we had them. If we had them, they'd get him on board.
They spent the next half an hour explaining how the process would work - them buying most of the houses and footing he redesign bills, except for in two cases where there were owners and their budgets to work with. Telling us the time expected for each project, the teams we would have, the expectations for us to do promotional photoshoots and press tours if necessary. When shooting would start. What a day of shooting would entail.
By the time we had the documents in our hands, my head was spinning.
"I think I need to get some food in her," Warren explained for me. "We got on the road early this morning. Can we bring these back to you after lunch?"
"It's kinda ridiculous that I have to keep reminding you to breathe," he informed me as we stepped into the hall.
"That was a lot to take in," I told him, pulling away from the hand that was around my hips after the door closed, giving me the space I needed.
"I'm sure we will get it all on paper once we look over and sign the documents," he told me casually. Everything seemed to roll right off his back. Nothing was worth getting worked up over.
They would like that, the producers and creators.
He was the yin to my very anxious, prone to obsessive overthinking, aggressive yang.
"Are we eating here?"
"Where they can eavesdrop on us?" he asked, steering us toward the doors. "No. Do you know any restaurants here?"
"No. But if we just walk, I'm sure we'll happen upon some."
That was what we did, both silent as we did so, lost in our own thoughts until we finally settled on a seafood - of course - place, got a table, and placed our orders.
"Alright, here," I said, handing him one of the folders as I flipped mine open. "Tell me if you find any red flags."
But there weren't any.
Not a single one.
Nothing that said we had to be married.
Nothing that said we would be fined - or worse - if some scandal broke out. Which was surprising given the history of the show.
It was just all about what was expected of us, our obligations to filming and promotion, what the length of the contract was for.
"Wow," I said, exhaling my breath as I got to the part about money.
"What?"
"Twenty-thousand," I said, looking up at him, finding him still a page behind me.
"What?" he asked again, brows knitting.
"Twenty-thousand to us per episode. The season is sixteen episodes."
"Shit," he said, something I could only call hope completely overtaking his face.
"I know you need it," I said, surprising even myself. "The money. More than I do really. I'll take fifty."
"I don't think you mean what it sounds like you mean."
"I do. I'll take fifty of that. The other..."
"Two-hundred-Seventy," he supplied for me.
"Yeah, that can be yours."
"That's ridiculous."
"It's a lot of money," I countered. "I don't even make that a normal year," I added, trying not to let that hurt my pride too much. It wasn't like it was my fault, or that forty-two-thousand was chump change or anything. "And we're already halfway into this year. It will be like making two years' salary this year."
"It won't be enough to get you a house."
"No. But I could get an apartment of my own. No more roommates. Besides, this wasn't about the money for me per se. I just needed the visibility. I can make my own money from this. I know I can."
"That's really generous, Brin," he said in a careful way, a way that said he thought I was going to snatch it back.
"So, when we get back... we can just say to put the two-seventy in your name, since we... share that account. And then the fifty in mine because..."
"Because you want to start a brick-and-mortar office when all this is finished. It will ring true enough."
"Okay," I agreed, giving him a nod as the food was served.
"You're sure about this?" he asked, still unwilling to accept the deal I offered at face-value.
"Yes, I'm positive. Now, we just need to find a way to tolerate each other for a year."
"For three-hundred-twenty grand, I think we will be fine."
We weren't, of course.
We learned that the very next week when we had to start the promo work.
It was going to be the longest year of our lives.
We never did get the ice cream he promised me either.