Making a fake fiancée questionnaire is surprisingly fun, and I’m definitely unleashing every bit of nosiness that I ever had about Rex.
“Night owl or morning person?” Jada asks.
“Rex is neither a morning nor night person. He has one setting, and that’s grouchy.” But I put it down, because he needs to know that I’m a morning person.
“You know what you also need? A getting-together story,” Jada says. “How did you go from stylist and client to romance of the century?”
“Totally,” I say. “It’s the first thing people would wonder.”
“Did he just ask you to dinner one day? You’re cutting his hair and he wants to know, what are you doing this Saturday?”
“Too boring,” I say.
“Sometimes boring is believable.”
“Yeah, but Rex is not boring. I think Rex saw me out somewhere after a month of my cutting his hair. I was out for tapas on a Tinder date, and he found himself burning up with jealousy. It was then he realized he had to have me, and that’s when he asked me out.”
“Burning up with jealousy behind a fern,” Jada says. “You want to get in the little details.”
“Okay, he was behind a fern, but not hiding. Rex wouldn’t hide. It’s just where his table happened to be.”
“And he didn’t realize what a high point of his week your haircuts were until he saw you with another man. And he was wining and dining an important client from Tagastan. And then he came up to you and asked you out.”
“Tagastan,” I say. “Perfect.”
She shrugs.
“But here’s the thing—Rex would never hit on a woman who’s out with another man,” I say. “He’s an asshole, but not a douche. Rex has a code—a very old-fashioned code.”
“I like that,” Jada says.
“A dark emotion must compel him,” I say.
“Okay,” Jada says, “how’s this—the Tinder date was going poorly. The guy was drunk. And Rex had been watching you from afar, burning up with jealousy behind his fern. And then the guy gets handsy, and you push him away but he won’t get the message and lay off, and suddenly Rex was there.”
I sit up. “And Rex clamps his muscular hand on the guy’s shoulder, and he growls—literally growls like an animal. And in a low and menacing voice, he says, ‘walk away.’”
“Don’t you want him to say something more dramatic?” Jada asks. “Like, ‘touch her again, and I will rearrange your face like a marble cake.’”
“Would a man say that to another man, though? Rearrange your face like a marble cake?”
“Why not?” Jada says. “A marble cake is kind of swirly, you know?”
“Rex is more of a ‘talk softly and carry a big stick’ guy. He goes understated. Like, he has this insane control over himself, but inside he’s a raging volcano.”
“Really?”
“Yes,” I say. “Growling is like half of his communication. That’s what he’d do. A growl and a simple command.”
Jada lowers her voice to a loud whisper. “You think he growls during sex?”
“Yes,” I say without hesitation.
“I’m getting goose bumps,” Jada says. “So we’ve established that he growls. A simple command and a growl.”
“True enough,” I say. “And my sniveling Tinder date is immediately alarmed—he is alarmed on a primal level, deep in his lizard brain. He senses danger. Yet he’s a douche, so still he has to impress me, and he’s all, ‘what the F?’”
Jada snorts out her drink. “Tabitha, you definitely have to have the Tinder date say ‘what the F.’ That is too priceless.”
“Done!” I scream, but it might be the Bellini screaming. “Why did I say yes to this Tinder douche? I don’t even know! And then Rex is like, ‘if you touch her again without her express permission…’” I’m pointing at Jada, doing the Rex growl.
Jada grabs my finger. “I will rearrange your face like a freaking marble cake!”
“Okay!” I say. “Why not? I’ll run it by Rex. If nothing else, it’ll spur him to say what he’d really say in that kind of circumstance. It’s a way to start collaborating.”
“And then you’ll immediately text me,” Jada says.
“I will let you know his answer at my earliest convenience,” I assure her.
“And the Tinder douche runs off. And you’re sitting there, trembling.”
“And Rex comes to me, and he cups my cheeks in his confident hands. His touch is kind of harsh, yet gentle. He’s being as gentle as he can possibly be while trembling with dark and explosive angst.”
“He’s like King Kong,” Jada says, “so hot and powerful and overcome with emotion that he’s frightened he’ll hurt you, but he can’t resist kissing you. He takes your lips in his. It’s a trembling and forceful kiss, my friend, and you’re on a high barstool. And he moves in on you and you wrap your legs around him and feel his shaft. Like steel!”
“Okay, that part might not go in our couples origin story,” I say. “I’m gonna stay with just the first part.”
We go on to concoct our first date (at Primo’s in Tribeca) and our first kiss (at the Central Park Pinetum). By the time we go home, Rex and I have a full-blown imaginary relationship.
It’s incredibly hard to not tell my girlfriends about my fake fiancée gig, because they’ve all been incredibly worried about my wrist and my livelihood. My solution is to totally avoid them, but it’s not easy.
I run into Noelle from down the hall, just getting back from her mail route, looking cute in her blue jacket. She makes me wait while she quick changes and drags me out to the Cookie Madness down the street for coffee and cookies. She peppers me with questions about my wrist, and suggests remedies that her fellow mail carriers swear by. “And if worse comes to worst, we won’t let you be homeless,” she says, meaning the gang in the building. “We’ll figure something out.”
It means everything.
“Unless we’re all homeless,” she adds unhelpfully. She updates me on the rumors of the new owner of the building kicking us all out. She insinuates he’s been corresponding with the zoning office.
“I’m not going to ask how you know that,” I say, biting into a National Pig Day cookie.
She shrugs. “Best that you don’t.” Noelle’s a shy small-town girl but she’s all alone in the world—our building is her only family. “And I’ll tell you this—if he decides to tear it down, I will be flipping a few tables at Malcolm Blackberg’s office!”
I smile. She’s such a waifish little pixie—I love to imagine her flipping tables.
Mia from upstairs has her yearly clothes swap on Saturday—it’s a fun party where we lug bags of unwanted shoes and clothes to her place—stuff that either no longer fits or stuff that falls into the WTF was I thinking? category—and we swap them around.
So we’re all sitting around with our drinks and piles of clothes. Our friend Lizzie is holding up a vintage maxi sundress with giant red flowers. “It’s so beautiful, in a kind of throwback Sonny and Cher way, but seriously? The halter-style top with my weird shoulders? Just say god, no. But if anyone needs something for a glam occasion…”