Page 19 of My Fearless Fake Fling

Six:

I stared at the money, dumbfounded. I made amazing tips in this salon. But never a grand at one time fromonecustomer.

“Breathe, baby. This is good,” Len said.

Len. I blinked. “How is this good? I can’t go with you.” The panic rose in my voice. But before a chuckling Len with his sexy eye crinkles could answer, my traitorous boss andMeredithwalked out from the back all smiles.

Dion spoke. “She’s going to triple your annual salary for the six months you’ll be gone and offered the salon a more than generous donation for the loan of my best employee. I’ll water your plants.”

And like Dierdre, who I considered one of my best friends, and coincidentally was a woman Dion couldn’t stand to be in the same room with, Dion wasn’t just my boss but my otherone ofmy best friends. And he stabbed me in the back.

He couldn’t loan me out.

He spent BFF nights in with me countless times over the years, where we’d give each other facials and watch rom-com chick-flicks, and talk about boys. That was mostly on him, as I had no boys to talk about other than Brian, and Brian had asked me not to talk about us to Dion—so I did it sparingly. He saw me through binge eating tubs of frozen cool whip when Brian left me. He had a key to my apartment so he could just let himself in when I was home, and to check my mail and water my plants when I went home to visit my parents.

Hecould notloan me out.

“I can’t just leave for six months.” I protested.

“You can and you will. We’ve signed a contract. Unless you wish to resign.”

Blackmail. Utter blackmail. He knew I’d never make the kind of money elsewhere that I made here. Our salon had a reputation for being the best of the best.

“What about my regular clients?”

“We’ll split them between the others,” he said.

“Then what happens when I get back and don’t have any clients?”

“Some will inevitably come back to you and I have no doubt that once they find out you’re Meredith Lowenstein’s personal stylist, new clients will drop at your feet.”

“But…”

“No buts. Unless you’re resigning today, you’re off through the end of the month when you leave. Get your affairs in order because you’ll be gone a long time. This is for your own good, girl.”

Meredith gave air kisses first to Dion and then to me, and then she kissed Len’s cheek for real before leaving the salon.

Talk about living in an alternate universe. Dion wanting me to go made sense, he liked his Italian designers too much to turn down such a payday. But how could Len think us working together for six months could end in anything but disaster? Like I needed to see him pouring his affections on other women, as if they deserved his legend-in-the-making orgasm skills. More than that, who were they to think they deserved his smile, where his eyes crinkled at the sides, or his boisterous laugh? They didn’t deserve his kitchen skills. And they certainly didn’t deserve the way he kissed and the way he held me, which made me feel wanted, appreciated… understood.

Even as a fake boyfriend, he’d given all that freely.

“That wasn’t nice,” I said.

Looking utterly confused, he grabbed my hand to tug me into his arms, holding on close and tight. “I think it’s very nice,” he whispered low.

I felt dizzy this close, almost drunk.

Len drunk.

“Kami, baby?” he asked.

His voice broke through the fog of my brain. “Uh, what?”

“I said get your stuff, fearless.” And he kissed the hinge of my jaw. My chin. The tip of my nose. And finally my lips. He kissed in a way distinctly inappropriate for public, let alone my work.

The kissing continued right up until we heard, “Girl…”

We both turned to see Dion biting his bottom lip. Right. I cleared my throat in an attempt to clear my head.

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