Page 14 of Knocked Up by My Fake Fiancé
"I don't want another Marina," she'll say, and I won't be able to argue back against that.
So, my fiancée can't be an actress. She has to be someone with an upper-class upbringing, someone who knows what to say and when to say it, and who is comfortable around people with money.
This person must also be reasonably attractive to me, and she needs to find me at least reasonably attractive too, which isn't hard, if I do say so myself. She has to be intelligent, independent-minded, and most of all, I have to be able to stand her presence for more than an hour at a time. Then, for my father to like her, she needs a business background and should ideally be self-made, just like he is.
That last one is going to be the real challenge.
Here's the thing: I'm not interested in a whole lot of people, and I'm not very good at faking my lack of interest in things I don't care about. I'm no actor. Never wanted to be. I call things how I see them.
My face pretty much always displays my real feelings, whether that's genuine interest, or whether it's displeasure or boredom. Even when I'm not upset, I've been accused of scaring people with my RBF, or resting bitch face, as my sister calls it, but I can't help it if that happens to be my normal, relaxed expression. What does the world want me to do?.
If I date someone I find irritating, which is the case for the vast majority of women I meet, my family will instantly know it's a trick.
So to add to the already nigh-on impossible criteria, I also have to like her, at least on some level. Even if pretending to be in love is too far-fetched, my parents will probably accept a regular old "we like each other well enough not to kill each otherfor the next twenty or so years until we amicably divorce" kind of marriage.
After all, that's pretty much how they started. She wanted his money, and he wanted a young model as a trophy wife. They eventually grew fond of each other as time passed, but they were initially an arranged marriage, albeit one that was arranged between the two of them, rather than by their parents.
The other complication in finding the perfect woman involves the nature of my family.
Every single member of my family can be vicious and cruel, sometimes unknowingly but oftentimes quite intentionally, frankly. They're reluctant to accept anyone new into their fold, and they've scared off plenty of the people I've brought home over the years, just for the hell of it.
Marina was able to handle that with aplomb, and she eventually—grudgingly—earned their respect.
Whoever I choose next has to be able to do the same thing, or she won't even last a week. Instead, they will bully her into submission, and my plan won't work.
On a human level, I don't want to put anyone through that. The guilt would eat me up if I had to watch them turn her into a shell of who she was. This woman must be strong, resilient, and self-confident enough to withstand their mind games and other bullshit.
In a nutshell, the criteria are: a woman I like, who is not an actress, who knows how to behave in good society, who has some kind of business or entrepreneurial background, who is young, attractive, healthy, and able to have kids. She also has to be strong-minded, witty, capable of standing on her own two feet, and tough enough to handle the worst that my family can throw at her.
Finally, while she should be attracted to me well enough to sell the ruse, she should not like me all that much. She mustn't get caught up in her emotions and actually fall in love with me.
That would be an epic tragedy of Shakespearean proportions—worse than that would only be me falling in love with her. But of course, that's not going to happen. Or to her becoming pregnant, but that's not going to happen either, because the relationship won't be real. No sex equals no babies. Simple.
I'd known it was a tall order before I'd started looking, and it rapidly became even more apparent when I started to look for any likely candidates. I found exactly zero. Not a single one did I come up with. Not in several months of looking, so I'd given up. To be totally honest, I'd forgotten about the whole idea, until my sister Steph just raised it again this afternoon. Sure, the pressure's even greater now. I have to do something if I'm going to stop my father from acting on his word and giving the CEO role to my brother, but where am I going to find the right woman? A woman with all those qualitiesanda woman who would be willing to take on the job. Where the hell will I find one of those on short notice, in time to stall my father's plans? Where do I even begin to look, come to that?
And then, just as I'm paying the taxi driver and stepping out of my cab, I see Jenna.
She's just a yard or so ahead of me, stalking up the steps toward the doors of my apartment block, anger in every step. It makes her hair bounce, and her hips sashay like a cat. A panther perhaps. Lithe, sexual, slinky, as if she's teleported here directly from the Brazilian rain forest, rather than walked up from the subway station.
All the noise from the traffic and people surrounding me fades away. It's as if there was only me and her, and these other millions of people no longer exist. Just a fiction. A background hum.
Lust pounds in my ears as memories flood my mind.
Her gasps and cries. Her grip on my shoulders, and the fucking insane wet heat that pulled me deeper inside her.
What is she doing here? Has she come to tempt me out of my mind again? Does she want a repeat performance?
I certainly do.
A horn blares louder than even New York's usual standards, and by cruel fate, she turns my way to look and she sees me.
She stops, pivots, and now she's coming toward me.
Her eyes speak of murder, not lust, telling me to scrap any idea of a repeat performance.
Yet, her anger's still strangely seductive. It arouses a dark heat within me. I feel myself twitch and stiffen in my pants.
"There you are," she says. "I've been looking for you."
