Faking It

Book 1: It Girls

by Leah Marie Brown

Genres: Women's Fiction; Contemporary Romance; Romantic Comedy

Synopsis

Haven't you ever told a little lie in the name of love? Vivia Grant couldn't be happier. She has her dream job and is about to marry her dream man. Does it really matter that she's led him to believe she's a virgin? After all, being in love makes every experience feel like the first time anyway! But an unexpected encounter with an ex-lover is about to expose her embarrassing lie... When Vivia's fiancé discovers the truth, he ends their engagement--via text--and uses his connections to get her fired.  Unemployed and heartbroken, Vivia begins planning her new future--as a homeless spinster. But her best friend has a better idea. They'll skip the Ben & Jerry's binge and go on Vivia's honeymoon instead. Two weeks cycling through Provence and Tuscany, with Luc de Caumont, a sexy French bike guide. Too bad Vivia's not a big fan of biking. And she's abysmal at languages. Will she fib her way through the adventure, or finally learn to love herself--and Luc--flaws and all?

Release date: May 12, 2015

Publisher: Lyrical Press

Print pages: 214

Sample

Saint or Sinner?

 

All right, I’ll admit it; I have told more than one man he was my first lover. I don’t know why I started lying about my sexual history, but I think it could have something to do with my name.

What’s in a name? If you’re looking for the poetic answer, check out Shakespeare. If you want a real-life example of the importance of a name, of how it helps shape the personality and sexuality of an individual, read on.

I’m Vivia Perpetua Grant. I know what you’re thinking. What in the hell sort of name is Vivia Perpetua?

I’m a little shaky on the details, but apparently old Vivia Perpetua was a noblewoman who lived a thousand years ago and was imprisoned because of her faith. I’m not sure if she was known for her modesty or her virtues. Either way, my grandmother—God rest her soul—raised my mother to believe that Saint Vivia Perpetua had been the superlative woman, someone who knew that chastity and humility paved the road to Heaven, just as wantonness paved the road to Hell. Saint Vivia Perpetua spent her last few morally-correct moments on earth in a Roman amphitheater being torn limb from limb by a boar, bear, or leopard. I don’t remember which wild animal mauled the martyr, but that’s not really the point.

My mother named me Vivia Perpetua because she believed naming me after some long-dead, mostly forgotten saint would motivate me to spend my life collecting unused eyeglasses for the blind or doling out mosquito netting to malaria-plagued Africans. Not that there is anything wrong with those efforts, but please. Even more important than my mother’s desire to raise a socially conscious do-gooder was her desire to raise a young woman who would guard her chastity until matrimony.

It didn’t work.

I never dabbled in drugs—not even a puff on a joint, despite the fact one of my friends promised me smoking pot would make me popular and increase my breast size—but in high school I cranked Aerosmith and had sex. I’ve been out of high school for ten years now. I still like rock and roll and I still like sex.

In fact, I love sex.

My mother could have named me something more normal. I could’ve been one of a million Jennifers or Amys, and it wouldn’t have made one bit of difference. But no. She had to saddle me with Vivia Perpetua and a load of baggage about sex. I have more baggage than the Louis Vuitton flagship store on 5th Avenue in New York City, which I visited once with my best friend Fanny Moreau who works as a Regional Merchandiser for LVMH. Fanny is gorgeous, smart, talented, and has sophistication oozing from her otherwise immaculate pores. She’s French, so I’m pretty sure the sophistication gene is hardwired into her DNA. Fanny never lies about her sexual history. She is confident and blunt.

Like when I first met her. She told me her name was Stéphanie Elise Girard Moreau, and I told her mine was Vivia Perpetua.

“How horrible,” she gasped, as if I had just confessed to having been born one half of a blind and deaf Siamese twin. “I cannot call you this name. To me, you shall be Vivian.”

She pronounced the name in such a seductive way it made me wish my name was Vivian.

“Like Vivien Leigh?”

“Exactement.” She smiled. “Only less tragique.”

We were best friends from that moment on. We talk every day, and we share all of our secrets.

The first time I told her I’d lied to a lover about my sexual prowess, she said, “Honestly Vivian,” pronouncing the end of my name with her charming nasal accent, “I do not understand why you lie about such things. If a man won’t accept you for who you are, he is not worth the Dior Gloss.”

Fanny and I are addicted to Dior’s Addict Ultra Lip Gloss, but at $25.00 a tube, we’re careful to use it on only the most delectable and Dior-worthy dates. It has become our code-phrase.

“Was he Dior-worthy?”

“I thought he would be, but he spent sixty-eight minutes talking about his ex, suggested I pay half of the bill, and then tried to use a Groupon to pay for his half.”

“Chérie, I hope you saved the Dior.”

Fanny is obsessed with Christian Dior. Not the conglomerate, but the couturier. She even quotes him.

“Remember Christian’s mantra: ‘The tones of gray, pale turquoise, and pink always prevail,’” she once quipped, in an effort to persuade me to wear an absurd fuchsia bubble skirt.

But I digress.

I was supposed to be telling you about my pathological need to portray myself as a virgin, why it is my mother’s fault, and why I am now in the eye of the maelstrom that has destroyed everything I once cherished.

Maybe I should start at the beginning….

Losing My Virginity

 

I lost my virginity when I was seventeen to Leo Crandall, a gangly cello player who lived down the street from us. My mom fell in love with Leo from the first time he rode his Little Fire Chief Big Wheel up our driveway and declared he was “on duty.” She proclaimed his mop of blond hair, wide brown eyes, freckled nose, and slight lisp “blooming precious” and insisted we play together often, even though I complained he used his Transformer to crush my Strawberry Shortcake doll. As he grew, Leo became more studious, earnestly practicing his cello while other boys his age were perfecting rad tricks on their BMX dirt bikes.

In our junior year, we both worked at Sonic Burger. Sometimes he would give me a lift home. Leo was sweet and dependable, like a sad-eyed basset hound, but he didn’t raise my pulse. If Steven Spielberg ever wanted to turn my life into a movie, Leo’s part wouldn’t be played by Ryan Gosling or Brad Pitt. Leo did not have leading man appeal. He was more of a supporting character, like Harry Connick, Jr. in Independence Day.

I had sex with Leo because I was angry that Jason Thomas asked Carrie Stemokowitz to the prom instead of me. Jason had been the subject of my preteen fantasies ever since he’d blocked a dodge ball from hitting me in the face during fourth grade PE. Carrie was my arch nemesis. Petite, popular, pretty, and the captain of the pom-pom squad, she was my polar opposite.

I was angry with my mother for insisting I go with Leo to the Prom and for making me wear one of her vintage store finds, a ruffled gown in a shade she called delicate daffodil. I disagreed, saying it was more of a junkie jaundice yellow, which prompted my mother to cross herself and my father to peer at me over the top of his tortoiseshell glasses. My dad, a professor of Religious Studies at UC Davis, could make a lecture hall full of self-impressed students tremble with a single disapproving glance.

I was angry at Leo, too. Why’d he have to ask me to the prom? Why not Carrie Stemokowitz? After all, Carrie was the one with the super-huge crush on Leo. Not the silently-suffering, worship-you-from-afar kind of crush I had on Jason, but a creepy stalker-like pseudo-obsession that reminded me of that Glenn Close movie—the one where she has an affair with Michael Douglas and then becomes unhinged when he won’t leave his wife. I’m not saying Carrie would have killed someone over Leo Crandall, but if pushed, I think she could have been a bunny boiler.

The way she always stared at Leo was kind of disturbing. She twirled a lock of her wavy hair around a finger and batted her long, curly eyelashes at him. Once, in Chem class, Leo’s Chap Stick dropped out of his pocket and rolled across the floor without him noticing. Carrie picked it up. Later, I saw her pop the lid off, sniff it, and then rub it over her lips. She had this weird look on her face, a bit like when Buffalo Bill tossed the bottle of Jergens down to his victim in Silence of the Lambs. I half expected her to moan, “It rubs the Chap Stick on its lips.”

If Leo had asked Carrie to the prom, I think Jason would have asked me to be his date. So my first sexual encounter was the product of this bizarre love triangle fueled by molten teenage anger.

I liked Leo, but I didn’t love him. And that’s all I could think about when we fumbled around in the back of the rented limo. Why aren’t I doing this with someone I really love? I’ll bet Jason Thomas wouldn’t be so awkward.

I didn’t have sex again until my senior year in college. I was too busy trying to keep my GPA up and my waistline down. Freshman fifteen? Try freshman forty. The night I met Travis Trunnell, I was uncharacteristically hammered. My then-BFF, Grace Murphy, had lured me to a cheesy bar called the Tijuana Yacht Club.

“The servers wear tight speedos and dance on surf boards,” she’d said.

“Speedos and surf board dancing? Are they straight?”

“Vivia, seriously! You can’t study all of the time or you’ll die an old maid, like Mary Shelley.”

I was into Gothic literature at the time, and more than a little obsessed with Mary Shelley, so her comment was like a jugular shot.

“Mary Shelley experienced one of the greatest love affairs of all time. She did not die an old maid,” I argued.

“Are you sure?” Grace squinted. “Because I am pretty sure Professor Atkins said she died a virgin.”

“Mary Shelley did not die a virgin! She was Percy Bysshe Shelley’s wife. When they were courting, they would meet at her mother’s grave and Percy would recite poetry.”

“Eww!” Grace grimaced. “Is that what you want, Vivia? To marry an effeminate necrophiliac who recites poetry as foreplay?”

Unable to argue with such logic, I slipped into my tightest jeans and followed Grace to the ramshackle bar with sand on the floor.

I had just slammed my sixth Hawaiian Punch Shooter and stumbled onto the dance floor when I noticed a tall, muscular beach boy staring at me from across the bar. My stomach flipped and I had a sickening vision of me hurling all over his feet. I thought I looked so cool, gyrating to 2 Live Crew’s old school anthem, “Me So Horny,” but when Travis Trunnell stared at me, I suddenly felt lame.

I was grinding away to the climactic moan backtrack when I caught my reflection in the club’s mirror, hips rotating, booty shaking. Years later, Grace described my smooth moves as a sad epileptic white girl’s imitation of a twerk. Harsh. Could anyone look sexy dancing to lyrics that include “Sucky, sucky. Me sucky, sucky”? I don’t think so.

Travis waited for me until the song ended, a slow, easy smile stretched between his dimpled cheeks. I must have stopped breathing because he leaned down and whispered in my ear.

“Breathe, baby, breathe. You don’t want to pass out here. You’ll wake up with your pretty face buried in a sandbox.”

I don’t remember what I said. I just remember looking into his blue eyes and thinking I would die if I didn’t have sex with him. I didn’t know his name. Didn’t know his story. But I had to have him. Grace, the psychology major, called it primal lust.

Travis ordered me another Hawaiian Punch Shooter, and beneath the glow of neon palms, we pretended to be interested in each other’s lives when all we really wanted to do was drop and have dirty, sweaty sex.

Travis attended UC Berkeley on a full ride football scholarship. The more we talked, the more I liked Travis. His slow, sexy drawl and his hand on the small of my back made me feel fuzzy all over.

I still wanted to have nasty sex with him, but I also wanted something more than a bar hookup/bootie call connection. I didn’t want him to think I was a slut. I summoned the last vestiges of my common sense and told him I would have to call it a night.

That’s when I realized Grace had encouraged me to dance with Travis and then slipped out the back door. She even took my purse. Clever bitch.

No Grace meant no ride home.

Do you believe in serendipity?

I do.

I don’t believe everything is preordained. I doubt our higher power involves Herself in every detail of our lives. If you had the universe at your disposal and an infinite amount of time stretching before you, would you fill your days deciding whether Nancy Jones should have Caesar Salad for lunch? Probably not.

I decided Fate had brought Travis to me. A higher power was telling me to abandon my no one-night stand rule and go home with the sexy Texan. After all, when the universe gives you a tall, handsome gift, you don’t give it back.

We went back to his place, a third floor apartment with a frat house vibe. He offered me a warm Corona and put on a slow jazz CD. I hate jazz. All of those horns. It’s like someone handed out musical instruments at an asylum and ordered the patients to play whatever came to mind. He had a fake mink blanket on his bed. That’s about all I remember: jazz, warm beer, and a cheap blanket.

I woke the next morning with a case of bedhead and a tennis ball-sized rug burn on my tailbone. What would Saint Vivia have said if she looked down from her celestial perch to witness my walk of shame? I had to walk the five miles from Travis’s house to the dorms, heels in hand, pride in shambles.

Travis and I hooked up a few more times, but I was never able to get over the way we had met. My shame was that huge. Little did I know, my naughty night with Travis would come back to haunt me like a Kardashian sex tape.

I vowed to abstain from sex, graduate college, and channel my energies into my Journalism career. I worked freelance until I landed a job at San Francisco Magazine writing fluff pieces for the Style Section—ironic, since the bulk of my wardrobe consisted of heavy metal band Ts and jeans. Fashion was not my forte. Once, I bought a fake Prada from a sketchy boutique near Chinatown. A burgundy satchel in buttery soft leather, with braided biker chain handles. Later, Fanny pointed out the shiny emblem read Prado instead of Prada.

The editor who interviewed me said she dug my “edgy youth on the verge vibe” and hired me on the spot. Since then, I’ve been assigned pieces titled Out of the Recycle Bin and Into Your Closet and Fabulous & Faux: How to Rock a Fake Fur.

It isn’t hard-hitting, investigative journalism, but I like to think my work at San Francisco Magazine serves an educational purpose. Besides, if I hadn’t gotten that job, I might not have met Nathan. Nathaniel Edwards, III.

Nathan’s family owns Opulent Style Publications, the publisher that produces San Francisco Magazine and a slew of other upscale monthlies devoted to culture, art, and posh living. He is a junior partner in one of the largest law firms in the Bay Area, but also serves on Opulent Style’s Board of Directors. He is smart, driven, stable, respectable, and honest. He would make any woman the perfect husband. In fact, in seventy two hours and thirty four minutes he is supposed to become my perfect husband.

The Sexy Texan Returns

 

“What do you mean you think the wedding is off?”

I barely open the door before Fanny rushes in, an impeccable vision in knee high black leather boots and a fuchsia Burberry trench. She takes one look at my puffy, tear-streaked face, shrugs out of her trench, and engulfs me in a hug. I must look a wreck because Fanny is not a hugger.

“Tell me what happened, ma chérie.”

We stop hugging and snake our way through a labyrinth of packing boxes until we locate my couch. Fanny sits with her legs crossed, hands folded in her lap, while I assume a fetal position, knees tucked under my chin, a wad of soggy Kleenex clutched in my hand.

Fanny waits patiently until I begin my story.

“I met Nathan at Snob tonight.”

Snob is this super swank wine bar/art gallery in the Mission District. Each month they feature the work of a different local artist. One month, marionettes hung from the ceiling, and the next month, mixed media collages depicting the conflicting patterns found in nature, chaos versus order, covered the walls. I don’t really like wine all that much, but Snob has this hip, laid back vibe that stimulates my creativity. And they serve the best tapas. Nathan thinks the artwork is “weird” and the tapas overrated, but he waxes poetic about Snob’s impressive selection of wines. As I see it, Snob is the perfect place for us.

Make that, was the perfect place for us.

“I wanted to spend a little alone time before the wedding chaos began,” I say, resuming my story. “Just relax. Be our single selves. I thought it might be our last chance to be plain old Vivia and Nathan, before becoming Mr. and Mrs. Edwards. You know?”

Fanny nods, encouraging me to continue.

“I got there before Nathan and grabbed a table. I noticed this guy staring at me. He looked familiar, but I wasn’t sure how I knew him. Guess who it was?”

“Who?”

“Travis Trunnell.”

Fanny squints, and then her eyes snap open.

“The sexy Texan?”

I nod.

“Is he still sexy?”

I nod again, and tears of shame fill my eyes. I want to tell Fanny that Travis is as gorgeous as ever, that seeing him made my heart skip a beat, but I don’t because it feels disloyal to Nathan.

“Mon Dieu!” Fanny puts her hands to her face, peeking at me through her fingers. “I think I know where this is going.”

“We were talking when Nathan arrived.”

“Uh-oh.”

“I introduced Travis as a friend from college, and Nathan invited him to join us for a glass of wine. ‘A toast to our impending nuptials,’ he said.”

Fanny removes her hands from her face. “Travis politely declined, right?”

“No! He slid into the booth beside me and smiled.”

“Fils de pute! Did he mention the night you spent together?”

“No, he didn’t.”

“Thank God!”

“His friend did, though.”

“What friend? You didn’t mention a friend.”

“Travis was there with his college roommate, douchebag Drew. He stumbled over, spilled his drink on Nathan, slid into the booth with us, and said, ‘Wasssup?’”

“Oh my God.”

“When Travis introduced me, Drew slammed his drink on the table and said, ‘Vivia? Wait a minute. I remember you! You’re the girl who spent one night with m’boy Travis and then broke his heart?’”

“Shut up! What did you say?”

“I didn’t say anything. Travis told Drew he was thinking of another girl, but Drew wouldn’t shut up.”

I tell Fanny the rest of the story, about how Drew accused me of being the virgin who spent one night with Travis and then walked barefoot for five miles just to escape him.

“He was oblivious to Nathan’s furious expression and my tears. He just kept blathering about how much Travis had liked me and how upset he’d been when he woke to find me gone.”

“What did Nathan say?”

“Nothing at first. He waited until Travis hauled douchebag Drew out of the bar and then he asked me if I had lied to him about being a virgin.”

“Please tell me you said no.”

I stare at Fanny.

She throws up her hands in exasperation. “Vivian!”

“I tried, Fanny, but I just couldn’t lie.”

“Vivian, you had already lied. What were you thinking?”

“I don’t know! I just felt so guilty. I didn’t want to start our marriage with a big black cloud of deceit hanging over us.”

“You created that cloud, Vivian, because you have some foolish notions about chastity.”

“I know. I know.”

“What did you tell him?”

“I confessed everything.”

“Everything?”

I nod.

Fanny drops her head back and lets out an explosive breath.

“We’ve been to Snob dozens of times and never run into Travis. So why did we have to run into him tonight? Why? Oh God!” I bury my face in my hands and sob.

Fanny sits up, scoots closer and pulls me into an embrace. She holds me until I stop crying, until I am forced to draw a deep, shuddering breath.

“Have you tried calling Nathan?”

“Yes, but it goes straight to voicemail.”

“Send a text.”

“I sent fifteen already!”

“You should explain in person.” Fanny stands and grabs her purse. “Let’s go over to his place, right now.”

“I went to his apartment after I left Snob.”

Fanny sits back down. “And?”

A lump has suddenly formed in my throat and I have to fight to get the words out. “His doorman wouldn’t let me enter the building.”

“What do you mean he wouldn’t let you enter the building? That’s ridiculous.”

“He said, ‘I’m sorry Miss Grant, but Mister Edwards has added your name to the Do Not Permit Log.’ Then he asked me to leave the premises.”

“Did you?”

“Of course.” My cheeks sting. “He threatened to call the police.” . . .