Page 37 of My Fearless Fake Fling

“Kami, I won’t get sick of you. Now say you’ll move in here so we can get ready and get your stuff.”

Getting rid of my apartment was kind of a big decision to make on the fly, but hadn’t I been trying to get back to the old me? Get back the girl who jumped in head first because you only live once?

Fear was the only thing stopping me. And all that fear brought to this party was a cheating ex and a backstabbing friend.

If I said yes, what would the pros be? Len’s company. We had a lot of fun together. His breakfasts. The man knew his way around the kitchen. His big, comfy bed. I tended to like to snuggle at night and these past few Len had been better than a body pillow. The sex. Okay. There, I said it. The sex. Len is, was, and probably forever shall be extraordinary in the booty department and he seemed to enjoy what I gave in return.

I’d gone so long without it that I just didn’t feel ready to go back to a sexless life.

Down with a sexless life, I shouted in my head. Then to my utter mortification, “Down with asexless life,” I shouted out loud.

He threw his head back and laughed. “I wholeheartedly agree. Sexless life, bad. But what does that mean?”

“It means that I’m putting in my notice.”

“So I assume you plan to take advantage of me while you stay here? Because I’m totally down with that.”

Embracing my boldness, because it was just that easy with him, I smiled. “Yes. Yes I am.”

“We should kiss on it to seal the deal.”

Kiss on it to seal the deal? We went at it like a couple of teenagers on a curfew time crunch. Then we cleaned up breakfast and he led me back to the shower, where it took us a bit longer than intended to get ready for the day.

But eventually we made it out of the house.

He dropped me off out front of the complex office. And left me to go give my notice while he left to buy boxes.

I walked from the office over to my apartment and let myself in. I got hit with the weirdest sensation. Like, the space was familiar but didn’t really feel like my home any longer. No more Crazy Kami. Introducing onto-bigger-and-better-things Kami. Okay, that was kind of a mouthful. I needed to come up with a better new nickname to use when telling my former friends to suck it.

My phone pinged stating that I had a new email. Freaking Brianagain. No contact for over a year and now, when he thought I landed myself a new man, he decided to talk to me? No. Absolutely no. I swiped to the left on the message and hit delete. He could stuff his ‘good for you, Kam’ and ‘I’m proud of you, Kam’ right up his handsome-though-not-nearly-as-handsome-as-Len’s nose.

By the time Len made it back to my apartment, I’d cleaned out my entire closet. Dresser drawers. Bathroom medicine cabinet. And I’d stripped the bed and tossed the bedding into baskets to be washed.

He went to work on my kitchen while I packed all that stuff into the boxes he’d folded for me. As I had less stuff in my bedroom to pack than he did in the kitchen, I made my way out there to help.

We worked for hours. At about half-past four, Dion and Brigeeta showed up with bottles of Prosecco and pureed peaches for bellinis along with platters of frou-frou finger foods such as stuffed mushroom caps and blini with crème fresh and caviar. Len had called Dion when he’d gone to get the boxes. Dion called Brigeeta. They came right after work.

Dion’s newest fling owned a catering company and could pretty much be considered a culinary Einstein. I ate my body weight in delicious hors d’oeuvres and we all got snockered to the point that we laughed and fell on each other more than we packed my belongings.

I was so going to miss working with these two for half-a-freaking-year.

Brigeeta found my board game collection on the top shelf in my hall closet and pulled them down. We moved from drunken Pictionary to drunken Twister (orTwishter, as Dion pronounced it now that he’d made it to the slurring-his-words portion of the evening).

Later that night Henri, the newest fling, showed up with leftovers from an event he’d catered earlier in the day. Creamed chicken and herbed potatoes. Haricot Verts, which is really a fancy name for French green beans, yeast rolls and triple chocolate cake.

This was what friendship was about. How could I have been so foolish about Dierdre? How could I have mistaken what she and I had for what I continued to have with these amazing people in my apartment tonight? When I got things wrong, I really got them wrong.

Eventually, we’d all drunk way too much for any of us to drive home, so I unpacked blankets. Dion and Henri took the pullout sofa. I had an inflatable air mattress for Brigeeta and Len and I took the bedroom.

We passed out pretty much on contact with the pillows. Again, I rolled into Len. I know because when I woke the next morning we were holding each other. And hungover. Or, at least, I was. This was the first time since we’d started spending the nights together that I’d woken up before him and he hadn’t pretended to be sleeping just to see what I’d do next.

Carefully, I extracted myself from his arms and the bed, making my way into the living room. I expected to see my friends passed out like Len. Instead, they’d woken and decided to avoid any morning-after-party interactions and had already slipped out. Brigeeta’s air mattress was deflated, her blankets folded on top. Dion and Henri’s sofa bed transformed back into a regular old sofa.

We were back to just me and Len.

“Mmm… morning, baby.” Speak of the devil, Len appeared in the hallway at the mouth of the living room.

“Good morning.”

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