I Paid a Stranger Fifteen Hundred Dollars to Be My Boyfriend for My Father's Birthday Weekend, and He Obeyed Every Order I Gave novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Pie
In front of nine relatives, Nick and Janelle ask if Jodi is okay with their engagement, and the rented boyfriend walks in with a pie; Jodi calls him her fiancé and he kisses her hand.
I paid fifteen hundred dollars for a boyfriend, and he walked into my father's birthday weekend holding a pie.
It was Thursday, a little after three, and nine of my relatives were jammed into the kitchen of a rented farmhouse outside Burlington, Vermont.
Coolers sat on the floor.
On the counter was a casserole with JODI written on the foil in masking tape.
My mother makes pity casseroles for funerals, hip surgeries and, apparently, me.
Six months ago my fiancé, Nick Zell, left me.
Eleven weeks after that he got engaged to my cousin Janelle.
They were standing six feet from my casserole.
Janelle held her left hand out to the room so the light could hit the ring.
It was a big oval diamond, and it had the decency to be gorgeous.
Nick stood behind her with a beer and one hand on her hip.
That hand had spent four years on my hip, and it looked very comfortable.
"We just want everyone to feel okay," Janelle said, and she turned her whole face toward me. "Jodi, you're okay with all this, right?"
Nine people stopped unpacking.
"Of course she is," Nick said. "Jodi's always fine."
He said it the way you'd say Jodi's always on time.
It was the lowest bar in the house, and I cleared it every year.
My aunt patted my arm.
"We'll put you next to Lou's cousin's boy at dinner, honey. He's divorced, but he's very clean."
My phone buzzed in my back pocket.
Ben: Parked at the end of the drive like you said. Pie is riding shotgun. Say when.
I looked at it for a second.
Three weeks ago I had sat at my kitchen table in Winooski.
I had paid a stranger half of fifteen hundred dollars through an app called Plus One.
His profile photo was the only one on the site where the man was holding a dog that wasn't his.
On our video call he asked me three questions.
The ex's name, the cousin's name, and whether anyone in the family was allergic to nuts.
"Pie," he said, when I asked why.
I hadn't asked for a pie.
The other seven hundred and fifty dollars was folded in an envelope in the back pocket of my jeans.
I could feel it through the denim.
The plan was simple.
He'd wait in the car, I'd go out, we'd rehearse our story in the driveway.
We'd walk in.
I started to type, Wait there.
My mother put down her spoon.
She wiped her hands on her apron and walked out of the kitchen toward the front door.
Nobody had knocked.
I had told her one thing about my plus-one on the phone in September, which was that there'd be one.
She'd said, "Good," and hung up.
My mother does not end phone calls.
My mother asks questions about the mailman's divorce.
Through the doorway I heard the front door open, and her voice go bright.
"There you are. Come in, come in, don't stand out there."
Then there was a man in the kitchen doorway.
He was tall, with a broad plain face, a nose that had been broken once and brown hair going grey at the temples.
He held a gift bag in one hand and a pie in the other.
He looked straight at me.
"Hi," he said, in a low, calm voice. "I'm Ben."
Behind him my mother smiled at nobody.
The kitchen got very quiet.
Janelle looked him over from his jacket to his hair, and she took her time.
Nick took his hand off her hip and said, "And this is?"
I did what I do at work when a schedule falls apart.
I looked for the biggest open slot and filled it.
The service had sold me a boyfriend.
Janelle was holding a ring.
So I stepped forward.
"Put your hand on my back," I said, through a smile, so softly that my own mouth barely moved.
He set the pie on the counter without a word.
His hand came to rest flat against the small of my back, warm through my sweater, and exactly there and nowhere lower.
I felt it all the way down.
I turned toward him and laid my palm on his chest to keep my balance.
Under it his heart was going slow and steady, much slower than mine.
"This is Ben," I said, and when my cousin's eyebrow went up I added, "He's my fiancé," and Ben said, "I'm hers," and kissed my hand like he'd been trained.
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