Stay With Me 1 Read online

  “five hundred thousand for each of us,” he says excitedly. “If we won.”

  For a moment, Karin is pretty busy trying to wrap her mind around the possibility of her having five hundred thousand dollars at her disposal and how exactly that would save her in more than one way. The fact of the matter is that she is so deep in debt, she doesn’t know if she can ever pick up enough shifts at the cafe to pay it back. Suddenly having five hundred thousand dollars to spare would solve practically almost all of her problems. The rest of her problems is standing before her, studying her reaction and will probably not be helped by winning a game show. If she had all that money though, she could at least pay off her student loan, get her broken couch fixed (or maybe even buy a new one) and get rid of the astronomical debt racked up by the treatment costs from after her leg surgery and her nose job.

  Yes, she did get a nose-job at nineteen. It’s true that she possibly she jumped the gun on it a little bit. But that wasn’t her fault, she couldn’t have known it when she made the decision, because she got it done before rehearsals on Chanelle started, thinking that by the time the curtain went up on her first lead part in the National Ballet, she did not want her old crooked nose on any of the pictures that she would certainly treasure forever. So she had went to the bank to get a loan for the surgery, not knowing that a few short months later there would be another one. That one would be covered by her insurance. But it would still cost her her career.

  The physio after the procedure, in an effort to salvage what was eventually unsalvageable, cost about as much as her nose. It was a luxury she then could not pay for anymore, being let go off her contract upon retirement. So since nineteen, Karin had been carrying a price-tag of roughly twenty thousand dollars in debt from the legs and the nose, add that to the student debt of another twenty thousand she will be looking at by the time she gets her bachelor’s degree and add to that the credit card debt of about ten thousand dollars she had to make just to be able to buy books and furniture and food and pay rent every month.

  That half a million would sure go a very long way to help make all of that better. Looking at Declan look at her, she can tell he has followed her thought process exactly - probably because he is right with her. Six months ago, he’d sunken all his savings as well as a giant loan into a house outside of Bronstown that he wanted to remodel himself with the help of his siblings. In a ‘twist’ that shocked absolutely no one, he had miscalculated the work and cost of that project so severely that his grandkids will probably still be paying the mortgage if he doesn’t come into some money soon.

  It’s probably why he looks at her like he’s already hit the lotto jackpot when he finally snags his phone back and tilts his head at her expectantly.

  “It’s a lot of money,” he says, needlessly. It’s true.

  “But,” she voices, “the show- if we pretended ... I mean we would have to act like…” Suddenly her throat is very, very dry and it’s a bit hard to look at him anymore so she drops her gaze to the corner of the street that the cafe sits on, watching an old red truck rumble by. “We’d have to act like we’re a couple.” That surely can’t be a good idea.

  “So?” Declan asks her like it’s no big deal at all.

  “Well, we’d have to kiss,” she mutters in the general direction of the bushes in front of the cafe’s brick walls.

  “We’re adults. I’m not going to give you cooties, Rinny,” Declan scoffs and chuckles. “It’s half a million dollars. We can do what we need to for that.”

  “Don’t be like that,” she says and snaps her head back up to look straight at him, he looks back at her a little strangely, like she has something on her face. “I mean it’s strange, isn’t it? It would be so strange for us to do that.” She wipes at the skin under both her eyes, hoping to maybe catch whatever mascara clumps have fallen on there to make him look at her like that. “We’ve been best friends for seventeen years, it would be completely awkward.” Its’ not the reason it would be awkward, but she doesn't need to tell him that.

  “It’s so much money, Rinny,” he says, the use of his favorite nickname for her is unsettling her a little at this very moment for reasons she can’t really place. “And we could pull it off, you know we could. Jonny suggested us to Marietta because of our back story. You said it, best friends for two decades. They can sell that. Hell, we even live in the same building. It’s the perfect cover. Nobody will know that we’re not really together.”

  “People here know,” Karin deadpans, gesturing around vaguely.

  “Yes, and it’s our community, Rinny,” he reminds her. “They’ll support their own. They’ll lie for us. To be honest, I can call a town hall meeting in Bronstown tomorrow and you’ll bet we’ll have at least forty people swearing up and down the block that we’ve been together since eight and ten if anybody comes asking. We can do it, Rinny.”

  She chews on her bottom lip, feeling her belly rumble. This is madness. It’s insane. There’s no way they could do that, could they? But the money - that would be really good. Possibly getting to kiss Declan might be nice too, she thinks unbidden, chastising her brain. No, you are not going there again, she warns herself fiercely. Don’t you dare go there again. It’s stupid, they shouldn't do it, and it’ll likely end badly. To make things worse, they might not even win.

  “Half a million dollars,” Declan repeats, his voice low and then he catches her hand in his, recapturing her gaze and he knows what he’s doing when he arches up his eyebrows, looking so charming and pleading. Exactly like he had at twelve and fourteen, and whenever else he wanted her to do something silly like break into the Chad’s old barn or sneak beers into the carnival, and she could never say no to him. “Think about it, alright? At least think about it.”

  “I will,” she says and judging from his smug, triumphant expression, it’s enough.

  “Great,” he grins and she feels like he already knows she’s going to say yes.

  She does say yes that night after he left her to drive out to his buddies in Bronstown and she got home tired to the bone but with her brain in overdrive. She flips flopped the entire way home, weighing off the good and the bad and sadly can’t get past the obscene amount of money they could get out of it. Everybody has a price and apparently hers is five hundred thousand dollars.

  Finally, in the end she texts him “I’m in” and then waits for his reply. He calls her three minutes later.

  “Really?” His voice blares from her speaker, catching and tumbling over itself, and she thinks he might be out in the field with his buddies, shooting by the ambient sounds of it. “We’re going to do it?”

  “We’ll do it,” she confirms. “But if we do it, we do it to win, alright? We’re going to sell it. We’re going to be the best fake couple the world has ever seen.”

  “Absolutely,” Declan says and she can hear him grin over the phone. “We’ve obviously got to audition for it first, but we’ll get it.”

  “What do you mean, audition?” Karin asks, sitting down on her bed, half an hour away from him in her apartment near Glowing Street Park in the city.

  “Well, we have to drive out to Scanlon and meet the TV people so they can decide if they want us for it,” Declan replies.

  “Oh,” she mumbles. “That’s fine. Do we need to pretend there already?”

  “I don’t know, Rinny,” Declan says. “I don’t think so. I mean, they know we’re not really together. That’s sort of the point. We’ll be fine. I’ll just tell Jonny to tell Marietta we’re in and then it’ll all be fine. We’re going to be good at that fake love thing. It’s going to ruin real love for everyone else.”

  Karin laughs at his joke. It sounds hollow to her ears but she knows it won’t carry through the speakers.

  “You want to do what now with Declan?” Her sister asks the next day when she Skypes her from outside the library on campus and then Karin has to explain the plan to her again in detail. Kimberly sits in her lawyer’s office in downtown Scanlon where she’s
interning, a picture of grace and poise, on which Karin can find her own skepticism etched on her sister’s similar features. However, Kimberly had gotten the right sized kind of nose from birth and had always been better looking, her bone structure just that more graceful and symmetrical, her lips plumber and eyes brighter, blue and freckled where Karin’s were a muddy, dull green most of the time.

  “So, Declan got a call this morning that they want us to drive up tomorrow and interview for the spot on the show,” she closes and Kimberly takes a long moment to even answer, her face impassive.

  “What did Mother have to say about this?” Her sister asks eventually.

  “I didn’t tell her,” Karin shrugs. “What? I’m going to tell her if we get it. No need to wind her up now.”

  “She’s not going to be happy about you lying for money on national television,” her sister says.

  “Sounds like you’re not too happy about it either,” Karin remarks primly, raising an eyebrow.

  “Look, you do you, alright? I’m not judging,” Kimberly shrugs. “I didn’t think you’d be one for reality TV, private as you are, but I guess if you’re with Declan you’ll be fine. But, honey, it’s also Declan. What about that whole thing?”

  “I don’t know,” Karin says and realizes in the same moment that Kimberly’s eyes go big that she shouldn’t have been this honest. “I mean, I’m not in love with him or anything right now,” she says quickly. “I think I’m really past that now. For good, you know?”

  Kimberly merely cocks her head at her and lets her face do the talking, it spells ‘Yes, right’ so she doesn’t have to put the words to it.

  “Just be careful,” is what her sister says out loud, thoughtfully, and looks almost like she’s sorry. “Watch out for your heart.”

  “I will,” Karin promises. “It’s just that it’s so much money. I can pay for all the things that needs paying. I could even buy Mother’s house for her so she doesn’t need money from Dad anymore and we can finally be done with all that.”

  “Yes,” Kimberly nods. “I completely understand.” She pauses, considers her for a second as if she wants to say something else but then decides against it and asks her what she’s going to wear instead. Karin realizes with a start that she has no idea.

  She still doesn’t know it when Declan knocks at her door early the next day, dressed in jeans under a grey old sweater, with a baseball cap on his head, and complains about her still being in her pajamas.

  “I didn’t know what you’d wear,” she defends herself readily, stepping aside to let him into her studio apartment. It’s got an open kitchen, a couch and a queen-sized bed, a cupboard that holds both her non-perishables and her clothes and a little balcony that she barely ever uses. Declan’s apartment two floors down have exactly the same floor plan but far more stuff scattered around in it.

  “Why does it matter what I’m wearing?” He asks her and helps himself to a pot of her coffee without asking, since he goes in and out of her place as if it was his own and vice versa.

  “Because we need to match,” she tells him, studying the exact shade of the grey of his sweater and opens her cupboard door, skimming her wardrobe. “So, we look more together.”

  She deliberates for a moment and then picks her favorite blue jeans that match the color of his just enough and a blouse with grey pinstripes and then chooses a navy cardigan to go on top that is vaguely the shade of his baseball cap. She leaves him to plunder the little contents of her fridge while gets dressed and puts some mascara and lip gloss on. When she gets back, he gives her a curt once over and nods appreciatively.

  “Looking good,” he says and then grabs her purse from the countertop to toss it at her with no further pretense of sweetness. “Let’s get this show on the road.”

  As they should. They’re hitting the early commute traffic on the way out of the city and take twenty minutes longer than usual to get on the highway to Scanlon. Once they get going properly, they spend the first hour of the way talking about everything and nothing while Karin gets more nervous by the minute. Once the road signs read “Scanlon – 10 miles”, she is fidgety and shallow of breath and hasn’t listened to him monologuing about the dancers he helps coach and how their teenage in-fighting is driving him nuts in long enough for him to get prissy about it.

  “Rinny, you’re not paying any attention at all,” he complains.

  “I’m sorry, I’m just nervous,” she apologizes.

  “What for?” He asks.

  “Well, because,” she groans, “I don’t know what to do in there. I hate auditions.”

  “Just be yourself,” he offers lamely, and sounds like he wants to add a huff.

  “A failed ballerina with nothing to show for in her life?” She challenges and he groans.

  “Come on, Sunshine,” he says and reaches over the console to put his hand on her thigh. “You got so much going for you, don’t talk down to yourself.”

  This isn’t new, the touching her, he’s always been tactile. But in the context of what they’re setting out to do right now, it sort of makes her jumpy. He straight up laughs at her, that voice that only barely broke like two minutes ago, rasping a low chuckle.

  “You’re going to have to get a little more used to me touching you,” he says.

  “I know,” she sighs and tries to ignore the heat spreading from his palm on her down into her toes. “But it’s strange.” It’s so strange.

  “It’s only strange if we make it strange,” he shrugs and leaves his hand where it is for another long minute. “We know each other, we know why we’re doing it and it’ll be just fine.”

  She nods, breathes and turns up the radio so they can sing along to it for a while and she tries to pretend they’re just driving out to the Latin dance studio so he can laugh at her ballet dancer way of trying to perform sensually on the odd time they still get on the floor together. Instead of driving to meet some people who will decide if they can make eyes at each other wild enough to fool people into thinking they’re in love.

  They get in to the production company offices in downtown with exactly five minutes to spare. It is not enough time for Karin to have a full-blown panic attack before the meeting and thank God for that. Declan is right beside her, bubbling with excitement in the face of this new adventure and she wishes she could have just half of that ease. He takes her hand and squeezes once before letting go again when a blonde bobbed, hourglass-shaped woman in a smart floral dress rounds the corner to them and holds out her hand.

  “Karin and Declan?” She asks on a toothpaste-commercial-white grin and nearly crushes Karin’s hand when she nods. Declan winces when she shakes hands with him and Karin can’t help but stifle a laugh which is all nerves and very little actual humor.

  “I’m Marietta, we spoke on the phone,” the woman says to Declan. “Did you find us fine?”

  “Just got a little lost,” he quips and she laughs easily and then touches Karin by the arm to nudge her towards a hallway behind them leading out of the lobby into the offices.

  The space is air-conditioned and smells like dust and old paper but nobody seems to mind, they all just flit through the sleekly decorated glass-steel building looking fabulous and important. Karin in her blouse and cardigan feels suddenly frumpy and small-townish in comparison.

  She doesn’t have much time to ponder though how she already regressed way back to Rinny-from-next-door after her short stint of living in Scanlon only a few short years ago, because Marietta then leads them into another light-flooded space. They’re entering a relatively spacious conference room that has two chairs set up on the middle in front of a panel of tables with a camera on a tripod on it. This must be the room where it happens.

  “So, we’re just going to have a conversation and take some pictures,” Marietta tells them when she sees Karin eye the set-up cautiously. “Nothing to be nervous about.”

  “Is it that obvious?” Karin half-laughs very nervously indeed.

  “I’ve been
doing this a long time, I know my jumpy auditionees when I see them,” Marietta says in the cadence of an old, benevolent aunt. “But it’s really nothing to worry about. It’ll just be me and our coordinator Brody and you’ll just be answering some questions so we can get to know you all.”

  “I’m here!” A dark man in his mid-forties with a kind smile and salt-and-pepper beard sticks his head into the door and then waltzes in. “I’m Brody, nice to meet you.” He shakes Karin’s hand first and then Declan’s and she knows instantly who he’s more interested in among the two of them. He gestures at the chairs and Declan nods, herding Karin along, touching his hand to the small of her back to get her to sit down on his right. It’s almost like they’re driving and he’s at the wheel - he should be because she is so tense and she doesn’t think she remembers how to speak normally.

  “So, why don’t you tell us about yourselves?” Marietta starts when their bottoms have barely hit their destinations, not losing any time as Brody turns on the camera and trains it firmly on the two of them, fiddling with the zoom. “What’s your story, individually and together?”

  “Guess I’ll start then?” Declan says and her eyes flit to his to nod at him in an equal mix of gratitude and encouragement. “Alright, so I’m Declan Shelton, I’m twenty-five. I’m from Bronstown and I’m a dance instructor at my family’s studio and a volunteer firefighter. I like country music. That’s all I can think of at the moment.”