Page 8 of Faking It with the Firefighter

Huh? On the TV, the main shit-stirrer was in the confessional, telling the camera about how she’d exposed the kiss onpurpose to make a third girl look bad. She was awful. “Yeah,” I said distractedly as I read the captions. “Sure.”

“Cool. Abigail’s house is so close to the venue, you know. And there are no hotel rooms available at such short notice.”

“Makes sense,” I said, brows arching when the wildcard girl barreled onto the screen and threw her glass of champagne at the bachelor. That’s something Abigail would do if she thought it was justified. This shit was so bad and so good. Like watching a slow-motion car crash.

Then Donny’s words registered.

“Wait. What? Abigail’s house?”

“She still has that place on Persimmon Road, right? The one that backs up to the botanical gardens?”

I fumbled the remote to pause my show, then cleared my throat and wiped chicken grease off the corner of my mouth. “Yeah. So what? What’s that got to do with you?”

“You said it’s serious between you two, right?”

I cringed. “Yeah.”

“So you must sleep over at her place all the time.”

Abigail had warned me about the sticky web of lies. The problem was, she didn’t know the half of it. I hadn’t exactly been honest with her, either.

“Yeah, I sleep over,” I lied.

Donny said, “Well…” and I tried to stop my shoulders from hiking at the sound. I knew that tone: it was the one that told me that pretty soon I’d have to clean up his mess. I always did.

“Come on, Rex. You’re not going to let me crash with you? It’s my wedding!”

“Why do you need to crash with me? What happened to the bridal suite at the Briarwood Hotel?”

“It was all booked up.”

“It was booked a year ago when you started planning the wedding?”

Donny groaned. “Look. I forgot, okay?”

“You forgot to book a hotel for your own wedding?”

“There was a lot going on!”

“Donny.”

“Rex. Throw me a bone, here, bro.”

I looked at the chicken bone I still clutched between my fingers. No friggin’ way. A fake date was one thing. Inviting myself—and my brother and his fiancée—to stay with Abigail was quite another. There was no way she’d agree to that.

“Stay with Mom.”

“No, she lives in that tiny one-bedroom senior apartment. We’d be on top of each other the whole week.”

“What about Blair’s parents?”

“They moved to San Antonio to be near her when I got drafted.”

“Did they get a hotel room?” I asked. “Stay with them. Hell, get a tent!”

“C’mon, Rex, what’s the big deal? Abigail has a decent house, and it’s right next to the botanical gardens. It’s perfect.”

Except it wasn’t perfect. And it wasn’t an option.

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