Fauxmance (Showmance #2)
L.H. Cosway
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“No matter how long I live, I shall live longer than you will love me.”
Alexandre Dumas fils, La Dame Aux Camélias.
Chapter One
Julian
I was obsessed with the woman from the coffee shop.
She always sat at the same table, and her stories were everything.
Each Tuesday at ten-thirty in the morning, she’d meet her friend with some new piece of scandal or adventure to tell. I normally arrived early, ordered my latte and sat down to wait for the latest episode of Elodie’s eventful love life.
On this particular Tuesday, I watched her walk into the Polka Dot Café with a blue scarf wrapped around her neck. She ordered a drink, then took a seat at the table close to mine where her friend was waiting. Elodie was medium height, with long, silky red hair and captivating green eyes. Her makeup was immaculate; red lips, smoky eyeshadow, and her clothes were edgy and sexy. She was also never without a pair of sky-high heels.
Her friend, whose name was Suze, was Asian and wore funky designer clothing from head to toe. Think Moschino with a touch of Vivienne Westwood. Visually, she was more striking than Elodie, but she didn’t have her friend’s adventurous soul, her joie de vivre.
I feigned preoccupation with my phone while they exchanged greetings.
“Gosh, my Kenneth just won’t stop going on about getting me a boob job,” Suze complained. She was also a source of entertaining anecdotes, though she had nothing on Elodie.
Elodie made a face. “Your boobs are fine. What does he want you to end up like? A blow-up doll?”
Suze chuckled. “Probably. Most men prefer silence and submission, right?”
“I’m not so sure about that. The guy I was out with on Saturday definitely enjoyed my vocalisations.”
A cackle from Suze. “Oh, do tell! How did you meet this one?”
Elodie took a sip of her coffee and made a face. I’d adjusted my seat so that I could watch her covertly from the corner of my eye. “On Tinder. He invited me for dinner at the Ivy and then we decided to hell with it and booked a hotel room.”
“I swear you invented the philosophy of YOLO,” Suze said with envy.
“I just want to enjoy myself while I’m young.”
“So, are you going to see him again?”
“Hmmm, maybe. He said he manages a gym. If things go well, I could get a free membership.”
“You’re too much,” Suze tittered.
“Anyway,” Elodie continued, “he had nothing on the guy I went to dinner with last Thursday. He was a pilot, even showed up wearing his uniform. I just about died and went to heaven.”
“Seriously? How do you find all these amazing men?”
Elodie grinned. “I won’t lie, it’s a skill.”
“Sometimes I wish I wasn’t married so that we could go out together and paint the town red every night.”
“Hey! It’s more like every second night,” she chided playfully, and I smirked before taking a sip of coffee. She was a woman after my own heart and I loved it.
Suze sighed. “Ugh, I’m so jealous. What happened with the pilot?”
“He was sort of kinky, wanted to tie me up.”
Suze slammed her hand down on the table. “No way!”
“And get this, he brought a pair of handcuffs. Fur lined to avoid chafing, of course.” She raised a saucy brow.
“Of course,” said Suze.
“It was all going great until we started doing the deed and he made these loud, high-pitched sex noises. I was like, okay, this is weird. But you know, he was good in bed, so I gave him a pass on the girly moans.”
Suze laughed so hard she almost spit out her coffee. “Oh, man. That’s too funny. You should write a newspaper column. More people need to hear these stories.”
There was a pause before Elodie replied, “Now where would I find the time for that? I’m too busy going out and enjoying myself.”
“Well, that’s true,” Suze agreed.
I listened to the rest of Elodie’s account of her night with the pilot and wondered if I should introduce myself someday. After all, I felt like I knew them both better than some of my real-life friends at this stage, such was the extent of my eavesdropping. I could be the third member of their group. Just one of the girls. Strangely, I’d always gotten along better with women than with men.
My bestie, Rose, could attest to that.
One of my few male friends, David, says it’s because I’m a lesbian trapped in a straight man’s body. I like to talk to women about their feelings and I also like to have sex with them. I happen to think that simply makes me an evolved modern gentleman rather than a lesbian, but what do I know?
David, aka, David Jonathan, was a pop star in the eighties. He achieved a grand total of three Top Ten singles and a platinum record before fading into obscurity. Now he worked as a wedding photographer. To his annoyance, I often enjoyed reminding him of two things. One, the lyrics of his biggest hit, “Naughty”, and two, the fact I was a mere toddler when it released in 1987.