Page 72 of Pretend Girlfriend

“I’m a member of the in-house counsel,” he replied. “The lowest member. Basically a paralegal. But I’m on a good path.”

“That’s what you want to do long-term?”

He shrugged. “I guess so? It wasn’t what I dreamed of doing when I was a little boy, but I like my job. I’d be happy to work my way up in the department for a few decades and then retire with a golden parachute.”

“So what did you want to do when you were a little boy?”

“Astronaut,” he replied without hesitation.

“Wait, really?”

“Ever since I saw Armageddon. I wanted to be just like Bruce Willis, landing on asteroids and then blowing them up. Turns out, being an astronaut isn’t that exciting. And it requires a lot of skills and education that I didn’t have.”

“So you went into a field that requires very little education: the law.”

Landon chuckled and ran a hand through his dark hair. “Education wasn’t the main roadblock. I have terrible vision when I’m not wearing contact lenses. And I get motion sickness easily.”

“So I should cancel the parasailing outing I booked for us?”

“Unless you want me to vomit all over you and everyone else on the boat, yes. What was your dream job?”

“Honestly, I never had one.”

“Really?”

I nodded. “I kind of liked the idea of being a waitress. Bringing people yummy food and drinks all day? I assumed waitresses were the most-liked people in the world! Until I got a part-time job when I was sixteen and learned that it’s actually the opposite.”

“Thankfully I never had to work in the food service industry,” Landon said. “The closest thing was the summer I worked at Nike, putting shoes on people’s smelly feet all day. That’s when I realized I wanted to work a boring desk job.”

I laughed and the server arrived to take our orders. “Your mom isn’t going to be upset if I drink beer, is she?”

“She’ll get over it.”

There was a strange feeling between us tonight that I couldn’t quite place. After our drinks arrived, I realized what it was: this felt like a first date. We were eating dinner alone together for the first time, asking the kinds of get-to-know-you questions people asked on a first date.

But I was on vacation, a free vacation, and I was embracing the fact that I was unemployed and didn’t have any worries in the world. So I decided to lean into the first date vibe.

“Here’s a question for you. How did you lose your virginity?”

“Senior year of high school,” he replied, deadpan. “Her name was Florence, and she was the woman who refilled my grandma’s oxygen tanks. Her fingers were really strong from turning the nozzles all day.” He raised his brows suggestively.

“You’re fucking with me, aren’t you?”

“I definitely am,” he said, cracking a rare half-smile. “I never got in Florence’s pants. The real story is boring.”

“Boring can be fun.”

“Believe it or not, her name was Joanna. She was my prom date. We hardly knew each other before that, and only agreed to go together since we didn’t have anyone else. And then we went to Kyle Parker’s after-prom party, got drunk, and hooked up.”

“That may be stereotypical, but it’s not boring,” I said. “My story is boring. I was a virgin throughout high school. I thought I was waiting for the right person. The one.”

“We took ourselves too seriously back then,” he agreed.

Nodding along, I continued. “The summer before going off to college, I was seeing this guy named Ezra. It was super casual, because we were going off to different colleges and knew it would only last the summer. We would hang out at the pool all day, then go back to his house and make out before his parents came home from work. Then one day, he suggested we lose our virginity together before going to college. So we wouldn’t be inexperienced. It sounded like a good idea at the time, so I agreed.”

Landon tilted his head to the side. “And did it give you all the sexual experience you needed to survive college?”

“Of course not! We were so awkward and bad at it. He spent ten minutes rubbing my pubic hair. Never came close to anything I wanted him to touch. I wasn’t any better: I spent way too much time stroking his balls. Like, squeezing them and rubbing them up and down.”

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