Page 11 of Knocked Up by My Fake Fiancé
I've been tricked. Duped by my own flesh and blood.
"Damn you, Steph," I mutter, wondering if I still have time to escape. My mother spots me across the room, grins, and waves. Shit, too late.
My sister, Stephanie, also spots me at the same time, and sends me a wide, shit-eating grin. She knows exactly what she's done, and she's enjoying every minute of it. She knows I hate crowds, but it's the gender makeup of the crowd that makes it even more obvious what my family is up to with this little get-together. It's at least seventy percent single women, beautiful, age-appropriate women, standing around and sending me glances underneath their eyelids.
Of course, there are men here too, cousins and family friends scattered around to present a thin veneer of normalcy.
But it doesn't hide my family's intentions. In fact, it's blatantly obvious what they are up to.
They're trying to find me a wife.
My sister extracts herself from her current conversation and heads across the lawn to me, smiling wickedly as she approaches, and takes me by the arm to give me a gentle kiss on the cheek.
"Here you are, darling brother. I thought you'd never get here. Come and greet our guests, they're longing to meet you."
"Not a party, huh?" I question wryly, mocking the words she'd used over the phone to persuade me to come. "There'll be almost no one here but family, right?"
"Oh, come on. Most of the people herearefamily." She laces her hand through my elbow when she reaches me, sucking on the tiny straw of her scotch glass and leaning in to whisper. "And one of them could potentiallybecomefamily, if you catch my drift."
I could hardly fail to "catch her drift." Subtlety is not Steph's strongest suit. I shoot her an annoyed look, and she giggles.
"My money's on the tall Amazonian blonde with the big bosom, by the way. She's Australian—some kind of big shot in track and field athletics, I believe. She's over here getting her doctorate in elite performance at NYU. She hasn't taken her eyesoff you since you got here. She's all poised and in control on the outside, but she looks like she has the perfect amount of crazy in her eyes to be really hot in bed. I bet she has some stamina too—phew, I wonder if she kills her partners after she's mated with them. If so I imagine it would be by suffocation. What a way to go."
"I'm glad you're enjoying this so much."
"I'm glad I'm enjoying this too. Oh, and the little brunette over there by the pond. The one in the cute pinafore dress. Her name is Anaya, and if I loved you as a human being, I would tell you to go for her. But she's too much of a sweetheart for you, and you would chew her up in a second, so you're to leave her alone."
"Earmarked her for yourself, have you?"
"Might have done. I might be planning to cover her in maple syrup, and then slowly lick?—"
"Isn't your flavor of the month going to be mad when you bring a different girl home?" I interrupt my disgustingly horny sister's lewd musings.
"We have an open relationship," she says. "And if she gets mad, well then I guess that's it for us. Plenty more fish in the sea."
I shake my head. "Anyone ever tell you that you're a disloyal, borderline chauvinistic pig?"
"Please, like you don't sleep around."
"I don't give them false hope like you do." Every woman I've been with has known the score. We get together, we fuck, and we go home. My secretary sends them some flowers and a nice bag in the morning, and we never see each other again. No sleepovers. No repeat performances. I don't give sweet words and false promises. I definitely don't start anything even close to a relationship with them.
My sister, on the other hand, likes to play games with the people she dates. They do this thing where they go super intenseand physical for the first few weeks, and then they cool off on each other, sleep with other people, and then come back together, on rotation ad nauseam until one of them gets sick of it.
It's so fucking confusing to me. Back when I did have a girlfriend, I didn't even think of being with someone else.
Oh yeah? And where did that land you?
A dull anger pulses at the thought, and I scrub it away. Now's not the time to think about Marina. There are way better things for me to be mad about.
"Why do they keep doing this?" I murmur, as she drags me in.
"Because mom is worried about you, and they want grandkids before they die."
"Why don't they get on your ass about this shit?"
"Because they know I'm a lesbian, you idiot. They don't expect grandchildren from me, and anyway, I'm a girl. Even if I did marry a man and have children, my kids wouldn't continue the Wolfe name." She makes a face. "Well, at least that's how Daddy sees it. Mom keeps accidentally leaving adoption pamphlets in my condo. Between you and me, I think she just wants grandchildren to coo over and spoil, regardless of their name." We finally reach where my parents are standing. My father is half a foot shorter than me, and balding with a rounded belly, but my tall, willowy mother, older now, but still showing the poise and symmetry that had made her a top runway model back in the mid nineteen eighties standing beside him, beams at him like he's the best thing since sliced bread.
"Oh, is that my wonderful son in the flesh?" She claps and gets on her tippy toes to embrace me. "I can't believe you're finally here. I was starting to think you'd found another family."
