CHAPTER 1
Ash
Finding a fake boyfriend for a weekend that was fast approaching should have been easy. Unfortunately, night seven produced no more results than the previous six nights.
Searching through online dating profiles at three in the morning wasn’t at all pathetic. Ashton May Johnson tried to convince herself as she leaned back against her pillows. Her laptop lay open, screen glowing, illuminating the room. She blinked tired grainy eyes. Okay, maybe it was a little pathetic to be up in the middle of the night, perusing guy’s portfolios given that she was on hour number five.
Ash cast a glance at the cat curled up at the foot of the bed. Slappy snoozed happily, completely unaware of her plight. Not like he’d give a shit. He was a cat. An ancient cat.
“I’m running out of time, Slappy,” she said softly. “This online thing hasn’t exactly panned out.” Though she’d joined the dating site, paid her monthly fee of thirty-four ninety-nine, and spent days looking, no one was right. No one jumped out at her. Most of the people on the site just wanted to get laid.
Or had a criminal record. Which wasn’t exactly a deal breaker. They just weren’t right for other reasons.
They had to be… convincing. Someone who would willingly date her, like her, put up with her, and make it convincing enough that her old ‘friends’ from high school believed it. Maybe friends was a strong word. Especially given that she was actively perusing the internet in the early hours of the morning and hadn’t yet gone to bed couldn’t actually term those people she was trying so desperately to prove herself to as friends.
Ash turned to Slappy. “I might as well take you as my date. I think you’d melt a few hearts. Plus, you’d look pretty snazzy dressed in a tux.” The thought of the old tom in a fancy suit made her giggle. “And all those cliquey bitches… you’d do the right thing and scratch them.” She thought about Slappy sharpening one nail just for the job and giggled again.
Ash had been the typical nerd in high school. The girl who was bullied by other girls because she was pretty enough, but also awkward and completely misunderstood. The girl that guys ignored like the plague unless it was to pull merciless pranks on. She liked to think of herself as a crackfaller. One of those people who just… falls through the cracks. Disappears. Gets forgotten. By everyone. Even when she was right there in front of them, she was invisible, at least until someone needed an emotional punching bag.
She was surprised anyone remembered to add her to the online group for the ten-year reunion and send out an invitation.
Who plans a ten-year reunion anyway? Oh right. Sonja Wills. Because like the decade before, she obviously still craved attention. She was probably living out her glory days, riding high on her blond haired, big boobed popularity. Sonja Wills was now Sonja Campbell, married to a man whose annual salary was just over five hundred thousand dollars. He was a lawyer of all things. And a good one.
Ash knew because, embarrassingly enough, she’d checked.
So, while women like Sonja, who undoubtedly deserved to get struck by lightning, if Karma had a say in it, attracted a rich husband and prospered and probably gained even more popularity, if her three thousand social media followers were any indication, nice girls like Ash still remained invisible. Karma obviously either wasn’t a thing anymore, since Sonja was alive and well, or the woman must have done something to stave it off, mixed in with all those condescending smirks and poisonous jabs. She had the worst resting bitchface that Ash had ever seen for eff sakes.
She was still the nerdy girl who loved comic books and cosplays, and no, not in an overly sexual way, unfortunately. Though she didn’t have pimples or braces anymore and she was pretty enough, she was always going to be that geeky, awkward girl at heart.
Ash was still nearly first in line whenever a new comic book movie came out. She went to board game cafes to play on game night. She was good at strategy games and kicked ass when it came to trivia. She was the girl with one tattoo and of course it was of her favorite villain. She was definitely that girl who sat in the front row of the theatre and bawled into her popcorn when said favorite villain got a hard time from the heroes. She was the girl who laughed at all the comic book memes, because of course, she got them. And yes, she was also that girl who worked at a small shop that sold used comic books, games, and memorabilia and counted it as her dream job. Oh, and she wrote. Yeah. Total nerd central.