Fake Dating The A-Lister

I kicked my cheating boyfriend onto his knees outside my building. I took a photo of him down there. Then I went out for barbecue.

Three hours later a man in a ball cap sat down next to me and asked if he could interview me.

I did not know those beautiful hands belonged to Quinn Calloway, the biggest movie star in the country.

I did not know that in the end, I would be the one backing him into a wall and telling him to lean down. The skewer in my hand was my exboyfriend.

I was chewing him very slowly. "Excuse me. Could I interview you? Just a few questions." "..." A few seconds. Then a voice. High, sweet, completely fake. "Ahem.

I'm a girl." I looked up. My eyes landed on his hands. Long fingers. Sharp knuckles. Pale as paper.

And I had no idea that this ridiculous conversation was about to swallow the entire internet. Chapter 1 Blaine let out a breath and reached for my hand.

I kicked the back of his knee. He didn't see it coming. He dropped straight down. Both kneecaps. No hands out. Let me back up.

Two minutes earlier I'd come home from a business trip. My boyfriend was making out with a girl in the parking lot of my own building. Are people this bold about it now?

I took out my phone and took a picture. The shutter clicked. Whoops. Volume was on. Blaine went rigid. He turned toward the sound. He saw me.

He shoved the girl off him so hard she stumbled. "Jo, it's not what you think, we were just." "You were helping her look for a contact lens," I said. "Right?" He nodded fast. "Right.

Right, you believe me, don't you?" I smiled at him, warm as anything. "Of course I believe you." Which brings us back to Blaine on his knees.

I flipped my hair back and crossed my arms. I gave the girl one flat look. "We're done. Hope you two last forever.

If you live that long." She stood there like someone had unplugged her. Blaine sucked air through his teeth, face twisting, and hauled himself up on one leg. "Josephine.

You hit me?" I took a step back like he was something on the bottom of my shoe. "Take your side piece and go.

Come near me again and I can't promise where that photo ends up." He chased me for a long time. We were together a little over a month. He cheated. I wasn't sad. I was disgusted.

Textbook fuckboy. Lucky for me, I'd been traveling that entire month. We barely went on dates. We never even held hands. All I lost was time.

I dumped his stuff in a box, then went out for barbecue. Part funeral for the dead boyfriend, part welcomehome party for me.

I ordered a couple of beers and got to work on the skewers. That's when a man sat down next to me.

Ball cap pulled so low it ate half his face, hood up over the cap, shoulders hunched like he was hiding from a warrant. "Excuse me. Could I interview you?

Just a few questions." At that moment I was pretending the beef on my skewer was Blaine and chewing accordingly. "You can interview me," I said. "But not if you're a guy." "..." A few seconds.

Then that voice, hiked up two octaves, sugary and awful. "Ahem. I'm a girl." I lifted my head. Three feet away, mounted on a tripod, was a camera. The red light was on.

Chapter 2 Maybe it was my face. Whatever it was, his voice cracked. Picture it.

He was already pitching it high, and then the crack sent it sideways, like a car alarm going through puberty. I laughed so hard I choked. Coughed twice. Recovered. "You.

You go ahead," I said, pulling myself together. "Sorry. Sorry, I couldn't help it. Ask. Ask away." I went back to my skewers and waited.

He sat there for a strange, long moment. "Excuse me. What are you doing?" I looked at the meat in my hand. Then at him. Wasn't it obvious? A few more seconds.

He repeated it, faster this time. "What are you doing?" Oh. So we were doing this. Fine. You want nonsense, champ. Let me show you what a chronically online woman can do.

I held up the skewer like an exhibit in court. "Photosynthesis." I couldn't see his face.

Something caught in his throat. "And why," he said, "are you doing photosynthesis?" Was this man ever going to stop. "You know Newton's first law?" I propped my chin on my hand and smiled at him. "It has nothing to do with that." "Then how." He was audibly struggling. "How does one usually do photosynthesis?" I tapped my finger on the table and stared at him, wideeyed. "You seriously don't know?" His posture got stiffer with every second.

It was making my whole night. "Your biology's a little weak there, champ. What's your home address? I'll mail you a textbook." He paused. He glanced toward the camera.

Then he stood, tugged his cap down, and said, "That's the end of the interview. Thank you." And that was when I finally saw his hands.

Under the orange light of the storefront they were unreasonably pale, longboned, the knuckles clean. No calluses. Not a single one. Not the hands of a man who worked for a living.

More like hands somebody had been maintaining for twenty years. I raised an eyebrow. "Nice hands. Bye." His shoulders hitched.

He thanked me again. "Seriously though." He was very tall standing up. Tall enough to put weight in the air. I lifted my chin at him anyway. "The textbook.

Free shipping." I forgot about the interview by the next morning. The last comic was going into print. The outline for the new one was still a blank page.

Two weeks later, my phone lit up with a wall of texts from Bex. Bex: [JO. Are you on X. Is that YOU. Are you seeing this. YOU'RE FAMOUS.] Me: [what] Bex: [GO LOOK AT TRENDING.

NOW.] I opened the app.

The top four trending topics on the entire platform: QuinnCallowayImAGirl QuinnCallowayBabyVoice OffTheGrid QuinnCallowayInterview Something cold started in my stomach.

I stared at the last one. My thumb hovered over the screen. I didn't tap it. Chapter 3 I tapped it. OK, fine. So I humiliated myself in front of the entire country. That's fine.

Totally fine. It was not fine. There I was on screen, chewing with my whole face, and beside me sat a man buried under a cap and a hood, like something caught on a security camera.

Bex: [DID YOU SEE IT. I'm dying. I'm actually dying, I can't breathe.] Me: [.] I told myself: I'm nobody. Give it twentyfour hours and the internet forgets.

The next morning the numbers were higher.

Commenters: [she is eating those skewers with such devotion. imagine finding out later that was Quinn Calloway] [NOT the photosynthesis] [am I the only one who thinks "nice hands, bye" was the smoothest thing a woman has ever done on camera] [also she's stunning. objectively. except while chewing] Except while chewing?

Excuse me. I was hungry. And then, underneath all the cryinglaughing, the other kind: [Staged.

So obviously staged.] [people actually believe this? come on.] [the reaching in this comment section is Olympic] By the second day it had stopped being funny and started being a war.

Half the platform thought I was a delight. The other half thought I was a paid actress. Neither side was going anywhere. Then someone found my accounts. I have three.

The first one is professional. My pen name. paperboat. That one's for the comics. The second one is where I draw whatever I want and take commissions. driftwood.

The pinned set on driftwood is the two leads from some cop drama. I never watched it.

I saw a still of them standing next to each other, thought they had chemistry, and drew it in an afternoon. I didn't even know one of their names. The third account is private.

I made it on a whim, posted a handful of times, haven't touched it in two years. I couldn't remember the handle.

The internet remembered the handle. @ohMySillyGoose I sat and looked at it, tagged nine hundred times in a comment section.

Two years ago I went through a phase where I could not stop doing that dubbedanime narrator voice. So I named my account in it.

Now it's the number one trending topic in the country. The last post on that account is from two years ago.

Under it, four thousand new replies. [oh my dear Edwin~ are you all right~] [oh my silly goose~ are you all right~] [oh my silly goose~ are you all right~] The whole thread was that.

Just that. My X account was out. If I sat here and did nothing, the rest of me would be out too. Address. Job. Family. I was still doing the math when my phone rang. I picked up.

Silence on the other end. Two seconds. Three. "Hello?" Chapter 4 Someone coughed. Then a voice came through, low and a little rough at the edges. "Hello. This is Quinn Calloway.

About the trending topic, I." It took me a second to process the sentence. "Oh," I said. "The real one?" "Yes, I." "And I'm his mother." I hung up.

The trending thing was not done with me. "Congratulations," Bex said. "You've officially broken into the entertainment industry." I threw a plush cow at her head. "One more word and Theo gets your prom photos." "Fine, fine." She caught the cow and tugged my sleeve. "I want fruit." I sighed like a woman with a mortgage. "The things I do for you." I went to wash the fruit.

When I came back out with the bowl, Bex was waving her phone at me, eyes enormous. "Jo. Someone's calling you.

He says he's Quinn Calloway's manager." I snorted. "And you believe him?

Yesterday I got a call from a man claiming to be Quinn Calloway himself." A small, strangled voice came out of the phone, audibly holding in a laugh. "Ms. Sang. I'm not a scammer.

I really am his manager." The bowl hit the counter harder than I meant it to.

I looked at Bex. "He's still on the line?" Bex looked at the ceiling. "I never said I hung up." The man cleared his throat and got professional again. "Ms. Sang.

We'd like to discuss the situation with you in person. As for whether I'm actually his manager, you'll find that out when you see me.

Would that be all right?" He said it like a man who had never once been asked for ID. I said yes. "I apologize for the inconvenience, but given the nature of Mr.

Calloway's work, we'd have to ask you to come to us. Would tomorrow at ten work?" The address came through. I looked at it for a long time. Ashford Point.

If you don't live in Portland you've never heard of it. Old families. Old money. Tech millionaires and movie stars have tried. It isn't about the price. They simply don't qualify.

Quinn Calloway lives there? Two weeks ago I asked that man for his home address. I told him I'd mail him a biology textbook. Free shipping. He didn't answer.

Now the address was sitting in my hand. And it was mine. Chapter 5 Well.

My parents' building, technically. "Quinn Calloway lives there?" Bex leaned over my shoulder to read the message, an apple halfway to her mouth. "I don't think I've ever met anyone named Calloway in Portland." She swallowed.

Then she started grinning. "You'd better hope your mom doesn't spot you.

Didn't she call you about dinner yesterday and you said you were busy?" "If I'd gone home yesterday they would have laughed me out of the house." I took a savage bite of pear. "I'm not stupid." The next morning I raided Bex's closet.

Cropped black hoodie. Wideleg cargo pants in a brown so dark it read as sludge. Sunglasses. A ball cap I found in the back of my own wardrobe and could not date. Yes.

In this outfit my own parents could stand three feet from me and see nothing. I took a car to Ashford Point. The gate opened for me before I finished reaching for my phone.

Why does the resident system still have my face. I was still working through that when the guard came around the corner. "Ms. Sang?

Haven't seen you in a while." My whole soul left my body. I looked left. I looked right. There was nobody else. "Me?" He paused. Then, uncertainly, "Is.

Is something wrong?" I looked down at myself. The hood. The cargo pants. The sunglasses at nine in the morning.

This is recognizable? "No," I said. "Nothing's wrong." My phone rang right on cue. "Ms. Sang, I'm out front. I don't see you anywhere." Ah.

Because I'd walked straight in on my own face. "I'm," I said. "I'm already inside." A beat of silence on his end. "Oh.

Oh, all right, give me one moment, I'll come in." Quinn Calloway opened the door himself. Pale blue shirt, buttoned all the way to the collar.

Except one or two pieces of hair were standing straight up, and against that cold face they looked ridiculous. I bit the inside of my cheek.

I took the sunglasses off and put them in my bag. He looked at me for a second.

Then he bent down, took a pair of men's slippers out of the hall closet, and set them at my feet. "I don't have any women's." Still in the plastic.

Never opened. "They're new." "Let's do this properly. This is Quinn Calloway. I'm his manager, Landry." Quinn held out his hand. My eyes went to it before anything else.

Cold white skin, a wide palm, knuckles like architecture, fingers long without being delicate. There was strength in it.

It was, professionally speaking, a hand out of a comic panel. Occupational hazard.

I took it. "Josephine Sang." Cool, dry, and gone in under a second. "We've done some background on you," Landry said pleasantly, setting a glass of juice on the table in front of me. "When the story broke, someone leaked your personal information.

Fortunately we caught it early and got it buried." Ah. So we were doing a favor now. Sit a civilian down, speak gently to her, mention casually what you've already done for her.

That's not information. That's a down payment.

I picked up the juice and took a small sip. "You buried the posts with my personal information," I said, looking at Landry, "and left the trend up.

That's harder than just killing the whole thing, isn't it?" Landry's fingers, folded across the back of his hand, stopped tapping. "I like people who are direct." Quinn was looking at me.

I looked back and didn't move. "So I'll be direct." Chapter 6 "That episode.

Your part of it tested better than anything we've aired this year." The corner of his mouth moved, barely. "The director wants me to ask you onto the next one.

The format is celebrities bringing a friend from outside the industry." I had not seen that coming. He watched me while he waited.

His eyes were deepset, with something not quite from here in them, and it made him look like he was paying more attention than anyone had ever paid me. "Would you do it?" For one weightless second I nearly nodded. "You'd be paid, of course." I thought about it.

Then I said, honestly, "Sorry. I'm not interested in that." Landry opened his mouth. Quinn stopped him without looking at him. "All right.

I respect your decision." Landry took a call two minutes later and had to leave for the office. Quinn insisted on walking me to the gate.

We were maybe thirty feet out when I saw someone come around the corner ahead of us. Threat level red.

I grabbed his wrist and turned to go the other way, and then I heard a voice I have known my entire life. My mother, calling out to us. "Quinn?" What. Hold on. My mother.

Is calling. Quinn Calloway. I got the sunglasses back out of my bag and onto my face in under a second. She was already in front of us. "Nadine told me you were back in the country.

And you come all the way to Portland without telling us?" She reached up and measured the top of his head with the flat of her hand. My mother knows a national movie star.

My mother is standing in the street measuring how tall a national movie star has gotten. "Mrs. Sang," he said, and smiled. I did not hear a word after that.

I kept my head down and made myself as small as physically possible behind his shoulder and prayed she would look past me. If only my mother were nearsighted. She wasn't.

Her eyes came to rest on me. Then slid down to the wrist I was still holding. "Is this. Your girlfriend?" Quinn blinked. He opened his mouth to answer. I pinched his wrist.

Then I hooked my arm through his and leaned into his back, shy as a girl in a photograph. He didn't move. Not one muscle. I want it on the record that I faked it first.

My mother's face softened into something unbearable. "She's shy. I won't keep you two, then. Come by for dinner soon." I let out a breath. She turned to go. My phone went off.

It's an anime theme song. It is extremely catchy and extremely stupid, and back when I couldn't produce a boyfriend my mother used to bring up the ringtone as evidence.

I never changed it. There is exactly one person on this earth who can identify my phone by sound. Her. I fumbled it silent. I prayed.

If only my mother were hard of hearing. "JOSEPHINE!" Chapter 7 My mother was not angry. That was the problem. Her eyes crinkled up. "Sneaking around behind our backs.

And Quinn, of all people. That boy has never given anyone a day of trouble." She turned on me. "Josephine. Was this your idea? Were you keeping it from me on purpose?" Y'all.

I am experiencing regret. Enormous regret. Why did I pretend to be Quinn Calloway's girlfriend. The lesson arrived very fast. I risked a look at him.

His face was doing nothing at all, but his eyes were warm, and the corner of his mouth was up. "Mom. It isn't what you think. Quinn and I aren't." "You're still performing?

After I've already caught you?" She waved a hand at me. "Look at what you're wearing.

You dressed down for a date so I wouldn't figure it out." "We're not, we really aren't." "Fine, fine, I know." Rosalie Sang waved again, dismissing every word out of my mouth. "I'll pretend I don't know.

Come to dinner soon, both of you." Then she gave me a look I will be seeing on my deathbed, and left. So now it was the two of us, standing on the sidewalk.

Quinn turned to me. "Could you," he said, "let go first?" I was still holding his wrist. I let go. There were four red marks on the skin where my fingers had been.

I could not think of a single thing to say. He was completely unbothered. He raised an eyebrow.

The long line of his eye tilted up at the corner, and it took all the cold out of his face and put something else there instead. "Jo. Se. Phine." One syllable at a time.

I looked at the hedge. "So, ah. Long time no see. I'll explain it to my mother. I'll work on it." He laughed under his breath. "You got smaller as you got older.

What are you panicking about?" What is this man saying.

Ten minutes ago he was made of ice. "Your luck is genuinely historic." Bex was still going an hour later. "Not only did she catch you, it turns out he knew you as a kid.

No wonder his name sounded familiar. You really don't remember him at all?" I steadied her by the shoulders and said, seriously, "I remember something.

It's just." She clawed at my arm. "Don't do that. Say it." "Ahem." I took a few seconds. "I remember that Mr. Calloway's son was. Was pretty cute." Bex stared at me.

Then she detonated. "Then it's perfect.

Just go get him." I hugged the plush cow against my chest and put my face in it. "You don't understand," I said. "What I did to him before." Bex went very still. "Before what?" Chapter 8 "Forget it.

I'm not telling you." I threw the cow across the room. "The point is my mother thinks he's my boyfriend and she won't listen to a word I say. I'm suffocating.

This is what suffocating feels like." "Rough," Bex said, thinking about it. "Although honestly it's rougher for him.

Shouldn't you make it up to the man somehow?" Bex took my face in one hand and squeezed until my mouth went fishshaped. "Josephine. Are you missing part of your brain." "Ow.

Ow." "He's not a movie star." She let go. "He's the Calloway heir. He is the only son of the Calloways.

And you're about to suggest a fruit basket, aren't you." "Then what," I said, rubbing my cheek. "A signed copy of my book?" "..." What we landed on, eventually, was that I would do the show. "Think about it.

You go on the show, that squares you with him, right? And the lead in your new comic works in the industry, so you get material. Plus there's a fee.

Plus it promotes the book that just came out.

Although you don't exactly need that." "So really, it's a win in every direction, we should be celebrating, this is the greatest idea anyone has ever." I looked at her with no expression whatsoever. "Did you major in music, or in pyramid schemes?" "So are you going or not?" "I'm going." Once my mother had established that Quinn and I were a couple, she texted every day about bringing him home for dinner.

I explained. She did not absorb it. When she called again, I went on offense before she could speak. "Mom, Quinn is very busy. He's a movie star. He works constantly.

I've asked him a hundred times, it's just not convenient for him to." "Is that so?" The voice was low, unhurried, and unmistakable.

Every remaining word stuck in my throat. "Listen to yourself, Josephine.

Lying to your own mother." Whatever softness she used on him did not exist for me. "Quinn is sitting in my living room right now. You're coming home for lunch.

Today." I would like the court to note that I was the victim here. Then I heard him, covering for me. "Mrs. Sang, she did tell me. I've just been busy.

Today opened up at the last minute and I hadn't gotten the chance to let her know." My mother's voice went soft as butter. "Ah. Well, then." Quinn Calloway. Not just beautiful.

A genuinely good person. When I got home he was on the sofa scrolling a tablet, dressed down. Black tee, loose jeans.

You could have told me he was a college junior and I'd have believed you.

I had barely set my bag down when my mother came out of the kitchen with a dish in her hands. "You're home and you don't even offer to help." She set it on the table and turned, transformed. "Quinn, sweetheart, are you reading a script again?

You work around the clock. You need to rest." He smiled and put the tablet down at once. "All right, I'll stop. Mrs. Sang, let me help you." "Absolutely not. You sit and rest.

This is good, now Josephine can keep you company. Food's almost ready." OK, fine. I would like to retract my statement about him being a good person.

I am jealous of a man in my own house. I sat down at the far end of the sofa, as far from him as the furniture allowed.

By the time the food was on the table and everyone had sat down, I had recovered. Somehow, his seat was next to mine. "Eat, Quinn.

There's plenty." My mother put another piece of chicken on his plate. I looked at the table. Not one chili on it. Not one. My mother has never in her life cooked like this.

She remembers he can't take heat. Thirteen years, and she still remembers. I put my head down and ate. Three bites in, it surfaced. He can't take heat.

Somehow, I remembered too. "Last time I saw you was overseas," my mother said. "You were what, sixteen, seventeen." He smiled. "That's right.

Back when you were still coming to San Francisco. Actually, the house here in Portland was bought through you.

You did all the work on it." I kept eating. "Oh, stop being polite." My mother was glowing now. "Josephine lived in San Francisco for a whole year when she was eight.

That's when she met you.

Then you went abroad, and you only came back two years ago, and we've barely seen you since." She counted it out on her fingers. "Thirteen years." Chapter 9 My mother looked at me.

Then at him. "Her father died young." "All these years, the thing I worried about wasn't that no one would take care of her." "It was that no one would be worth her." "And now I look at the two of you, standing there." She smiled and didn't finish the sentence.

Something got stuck in my throat. By the time I'd unstuck it she had moved on to something else entirely. I glanced sideways at him.

His profile was beautiful, and I mean beautiful, not soft. Every line of it landed exactly where it should. Sharp. Cold. He turned his head and caught me.

I looked away and muttered into my plate, "Why does he have to be that goodlooking." I said it under my breath. He was not supposed to hear it.

At the edge of my vision, his mouth curved. After lunch my mother invoked the sacred principle that young people need exercise and pushed the two of us out the door for a walk.

Near the gate I stopped and turned around. "What's wrong?" "You're going out there? Like that?" So he pulled his hood up. "It's fine. Nobody's out in Ashford Point.

The hood is enough." We walked side by side. A few steps in, his hand closed around my wrist. "Watch it." His voice brought me back.

There was a bollard directly in front of me and I was three inches from walking into it. "You weren't this jumpy as a kid." He let go of my wrist. "Something you want to say?" Caught.

I stopped bothering. "That show of yours. I'll do it." He nodded, unsurprised. "I'll call the director tonight." I nodded back.

The quiet came down again. "Wait here." He was gone before I could answer. I stood on the path like a coat rack.

When he came back he had a paper cone of pink cotton candy in his hand. "Here." I reached for it without thinking, and my fingers brushed the edge of his.

Cold. "You liked sweet things when you were small. Cotton candy especially." He raised an eyebrow. "Mrs. Sang wouldn't let you have it, she was worried about your teeth.

So you came and begged me to buy it for you." Under the streetlight his eyes had a whole sky in them. "And on my twelfth birthday." The memory did something soft to his mouth. "You said.

Quinnie, I got you a birthday present, will you let me have one bite of your cake?" "It was one bite." "You left me one bite." "Stop it." "And then there was the time you." I have never in my life wanted so badly to stop existing.

I grabbed his wrist with one hand and clapped the other over his mouth. And then my palm was against his lips. Soft. Cool. That was when I understood what I had done.

He stopped talking. So did I. His breath came out through my fingers, and it was warmer than his mouth. He didn't step back. My hand was still there. I snatched it back.

My palm was still warm where his mouth had been