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put aside the questions. Apart from the YouTube videos and syndicated dating advice column, they were the only part of Cassanova Matchmaking she’d come up with. Getting rid of the curtains didn’t count.
“I don’t think they’re necessary,” Libby decided. “Ms.
Soto, if you’re interested and would like to review the terms in detail, I’d love to have you as my faux girlfriend.”
Reagan pretended to be scandalized. “Ms. Cassanova, that’s the most romantic proposal I’ve ever gotten.”
As they signed the agreement and ironed out the details, including scheduling a full day of photos starting early the next morning, Libby dared to take a deep breath and indulge in a moment of relief.
C H A P T E R 3
MIAMI IN MID-SUMMER was hot and humid even at night. As Reagan walked away from Libby’s high-rise and toward her pick-up truck, the soft linen of her button-down clung to her back. If she hadn’t been surrounded by highfalutin onlookers rushing to overpriced drinks and dinner, she would’ve peeled it o and let the salty air coming o the bay cool her.
Driving from the glossy confines of Brickell to the familiar boxy, concrete paradise of Hialeah, Reagan rolled down her window and let the breeze ease the stickiness on her skin. The smell of rain, imminent but not falling, triggered a little smile. A nice centering moment for such an odd night.
When she’d received the call from Janice earlier that evening, she hadn’t been at all sure what to expect. She’d only joined the talent agency on a whim after a friend begged her to go with her for moral support. Once there, Janice was convinced that her artsy, femme/butch aesthetic was unique enough to be marketable. Reagan had balked at the idea of modeling for anything, but the possibility of making extra cash was too attractive to pass up. It wasn’t like she was making easy money teaching pottery classes and selling ceramics.
Reagan didn’t give a single shit about money, but she did care about some of the problems only money could solve. As she turned o the main road, congested with tra c no matter the hour, she disappeared into the lonely winding road that followed a canal littered with trash and plastic. It was the dusty, jagged artery feeding into the atrophied industrial heart of the city.
As she drove through the familiar road, dodging potholes by muscle memory, she grinned. Pretending to be a woman’s significant other wasn’t the kind of work she’d expected, but the opportunity was impossible to walk away from. In a few months, she’d earn more than she had all last year.
Spending time with Libby didn’t seem like it would be too much work. Other than a tightly wound demeanor and an obvious crushing amount of worry, her core energy was light. There was an ease in her company that intrigued Reagan almost as much as the hope of financial freedom.
It didn’t hurt that Libby was conventionally attractive in the crush-inspiring tradition of a Hollywood ingenue. There was no clear picture in her mind of what her odd new job would be like, but she couldn’t deny being excited.
Reagan was still smirking when she pulled up to the old ceramics factory that stood at the center of the manufacturing district for nearly a hundred years. It was a shadow of its former glory. With a crumbling exterior and perennially empty parking lot built to accommodate a hundred cars, it was the last building on the block harboring any signs of life. Albeit fledgling.
When Reagan was feeling particularly nostalgic, she’d lay across the hood of her truck, peer up at the starry sky, and wonder what the energy was like in the 1960s. Instead of a handful of lumbering factories hobbling on like zombies, there were thousands of new, thriving manufacturers making everything from garments to airplane parts. Her
grandparents had been two of the many dream chasers swarming the City of Progress for their chance at a new life in a new country. Reagan wasn’t naïve; there was no returning to some great, long-lost era, but she still worked to invigorate the once fertile soil with new life.
The thoughts filled her with pride and o ered comfort as she ignored the faded no overnight parking sign and unlocked the massive metal door that creaked so loudly it was like a living creature shrieking in pain.
As soon as she stepped into the vast space that now served as her art studio, she slipped on a sheet of paper that had been thrown through the crack under the door. Reagan didn’t need to pick it up to know what it was. Her landlord always used the same bright pink paper when he threatened her with eviction for some violation or another.
Without reading the notice, Reagan walked around a dozen worktables where her students learned to throw clay on pottery wheels, and all the way to the back where the massive kilns were. As she tossed the paper in the wood-fired kiln she only used occasionally, her phone buzzed in her back pocket.
Cash, a woman she’d gone on several dates with before she left for Micronesia a few months ago for a photojournalism gig, was back in town. With regret, Reagan turned down her o er of dinner at her place, knowing exactly where it would lead. She wasn’t going to break the contract within an hour of signing it, despite the temptation.
From the studio to the vast drying rooms connected to the sprawling storage space, Reagan reached an old set of wooden stairs. Taking her life into her hands as she climbed the rickety steps that swayed just enough to get her heart thumping, Reagan arrived home. The storage loft she’d converted to a studio apartment complete with shower
and kitchenette was her Shangri-La and favorite place in the world. The fact that they were all in essentially the same huge room didn’t bother her.
Dropping into the big bed screened o with a hand-painted wood divider, Reagan closed her eyes and pictured all the improvements she’d make with the easiest paycheck ever. Before she got too ahead of herself, she jumped to her feet and pulled out her suitcase. Tomorrow she’d give Libby as many days of fake relationship pictures as she wanted.
C H A P T E R 4
LIBBY AWOKE BEFORE THE SUN. Not that all the tossing and turning she’d been doing for six hours could really count as sleep. Wrestling with the wisdom of her decision left her more exhausted than when she’d gone to bed.
In the shower, her self-doubt went down the drain along with the cold water blasting her face. There was no room for indecision. Later that afternoon, she’d put out an o cial response to the tidal wave of questions surrounding her relationship status. If she had any good fortune left, it would shut down the internet trolls who’d been mocking her since the day before.
More importantly, it would ease her clients’ fears and let everything settle back to normal. She hoped it wouldn’t take more than a few outings with Reagan, and an explanation that she didn’t want the spotlight to a ect this relationship as it had her last, before she could ease her private life out of the public.
As Libby towel-dried her dark hair, she wondered what Davis would say when he heard that she’d moved on with someone new too. He was so self-obsessed he set up notifications for anytime his name popped up anywhere in the dark recesses of the internet. Would he be scandalized?
Intrigued? Jealous?
Grinning as she put a variety of products in her hair to mimic the soft, twisty waves her hairdresser had accomplished, Libby fantasized about Davis running back to her cursing himself for being such a fool and begging for her return to his side. The wishful thinking accompanied her as she applied smokey violet eyeshadow to highlight the green in her dark eyes.
