Chapter Text
In retrospect, the entire thing is Van’s fault.
Technically, some of the blame can probably be placed on Mari for suggesting it, and maybe Nat for agreeing to it, and definitely on Lottie for opening her big mouth in the first place, but really, it starts with Van.
They’re in the middle of one of their semi-regular FaceTime calls, always planned somewhat in advance to accommodate for the time difference between Lottie in San Francisco and Van wherever she is in the world. Currently, she’s in Amsterdam, where she has been for the last four months for the latest movie she’s directing; some kind of psychological and homoerotic thriller that sounds like a gory and gay fusion of DEBS and Killing Eve, based on what Van has told Lottie about it and then threatened with a lawsuit if any details get leaked.
It’s early afternoon for Lottie, which means it’s almost 10PM for Van. She’s in the lobby of the hotel she’s staying at, earbuds shoved in and a comically large cup of bubble tea taking up the bottom third of the screen, with absolutely no regard for the fact she’s in public as she regales Lottie with every explicit detail of the latest attempt in her quest to find her soulmate through various dating apps.
“Are you going to see her again?” Lottie asks, once Van is finally done detailing every single moment, from foreplay right through to orgasm.
“Nah, I don’t think so,” Van says, chewing on her straw thoughtfully. “She just didn’t feel like The One, you know. Even when she bent me over the sofa.”
“Heartbreaking.”
“Isn’t it just,” Van sighs wistfully. “Alright, your turn. I have like an hour before I have to get back to set for our night shoot, so how are things going with you? Kodiak still driving you up the wall?”
“You have no fucking idea,” Lottie groans, launching into a lengthy rant about the latest in a long list of colossal fuck ups her sous chef keeps commiting.
When Lottie eventually runs out of both steam and synonyms for calling Kodi a useless know-it-all asshole, the topic then shifts to Jackie and Shauna’s upcoming wedding, and— well.
Lottie would like to reiterate that it’s Van’s fault.
Van is the one who makes some dumb throwaway comment about potential plus ones, and Van is the one who points out that the last person Lottie seriously dated is one of the brides in question, and Van is the one who says Lottie is one of the last people she would ever take relationship advice from when Lottie politely points out that leaving after the other girl has fallen asleep is not the most likely way to result in finding a potential plus one.
Okay, so Lottie is the one who snaps for your information, I am seeing someone, but still. It wouldn’t have happened if Van hadn’t been so annoying and goaded her into it. Temporary insanity, coming over her at the worst possible moment.
“What?” Van says incredulously. “Seriously?”
“Yes,” Lottie lies. In hindsight, this might be where everything goes wrong.
“And you didn’t tell me?” Van says, sounding hurt enough that Lottie almost feels bad. Almost.
“It’s... early,” Lottie says, scrambling for an excuse. “It’s still casual, we only just started dating recently. And before you even think about it, I’m not taking her to the wedding, it’s way too soon—”
“Oh, it absolutely is not, ” Van interrupts. “First of all, the wedding isn’t for another three months. Second of all, if in three months you and your commitment issues are still calling it early and casual, a wedding, even if it is your ex’s destination wedding, is the perfect opportunity to decide if you actually want something long term with this mystery girl or if you’re going to suddenly find something to dislike about her like you always do. And it’s not like cost is going to matter, you know Jackie and Shauna are paying for everything. An extra flight’s hardly going to make a dent in that Taylor old money.”
Clearly, telling Van to butt out and mind her own damn business is out of the question. Even on the other side of the world she’s like a dog with a bone with Lottie’s love life. Or lack thereof. Lottie’s not really sure why she’s surprised; Van and Jackie have been overly invested in her love life (or lack thereof) ever since Lottie and Jackie broke up over four years ago.
“We might not even still be together by the wedding,” Lottie says, like she doesn’t know fine well that this nonexistent girlfriend will have been conveniently dumped long before the wedding. “Like I said, it’s still new. I don’t want to scare her off by coming on too quickly.”
Van rolls her eyes. “Right, okay. Anyway, I need to know everything, immediately. Is she hot? What’s she like? What’s her name? Do I know her?”
“Um,” Lottie says, frantically stalling for time by taking a sip of her tea. As it turns out, that is the wrong thing to do.
“Oh my God, I do know her, don’t I?” Van says in delight, leaning forward so her face fills the entire screen of Lottie’s phone like some kind of horrifying all-knowing screensaver. “Who is it? Laura Lee? Your hot neighbour? Melissa? You know, you may as well spill now because you’re going to take her to the wedding anyway and— wait.”
Van cuts herself off, eyes going wide. The back of Lottie’s neck prickles uncomfortably, like some kind of omen that something unpleasant is about to happen, and then Van says, “Oh my God, it’s Nat, isn’t it?”
Lottie freezes, staring in confusion at her phone screen. “What?”
“I knew it!” Van cackles. “I knew you two would eventually get your shit together and stop dancing around each other. Finally. Jesus, it’s about fuckin’ time.”
“Van—” Lottie attempts to interrupt, but Van is fairly difficult to stop once she really gets going.
“You know, Jackie was convinced you two were never going to figure it out. But me?” At this point, Van places her hand over her heart dramatically. “I had faith in you. I mean, the longing stares, the unbearable sexual tension, all that jealousy when one of you would date someone else. One of you had to crack under the pressure eventually.”
Jealousy? Longing stares? Sexual tension? Lottie is still trying to catch up with what the fuck is happening, but she’s pretty sure that these ridiculous conclusions Van is jumping to are going to make this whole debacle even more difficult than it already will be.
“Van,” Lottie says flatly. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“Come on, Lot,” Van says, like she’s waiting for Lottie to drop the surprised act that isn’t actually an act. “You two aren’t exactly subtle, and I’m not blind.”
Lottie has no idea how to respond to that. She is quickly realising now that she really did not think this through. This was supposed to be nothing more than a simple I’m seeing someone to get Van off her back, and now she appears to have dug herself into a hole that is deepening by the second.
While Lottie is still quietly reeling, Van looks up at someone off screen, nodding and giving them a thumbs up at whatever they’re saying.
“Shit, I gotta go, Lot,” Van says, noisily sucking down the last of her boba and then shooting finger guns at Lottie like a fucking dork. “Great talking to you and your annoyingly perfect face as always, very happy for you and Nat, and I will see you both at the wedding because I will be telling Jackie about this in the next like, thirty seconds. Love you, bye!”
“Wait—” Lottie tries desperately one last time, before Van’s face disappears as she hangs up. She stares in disbelief at her phone long enough that the screen goes black and she can see her own dumbfounded reflection gaping back at her.
Shit.
Finally, Van had said. What the fuck does that even mean. Finally?
Has Van just imagined years of pining between Lottie and Nat? An assessment of their — entirely platonic, for the record — friendship that, not only does Van wholeheartedly believe in, but Jackie appears to agree with?
Lottie has never been so confused in her life. Nat is just... she’s just Nat.
No more than thirty seconds after Van has hung up, Lottie’s phone buzzes and lights up, this time with a text from Jackie. And then another. And then another. Thirteen times in total before she seems to stop, the notifications stacking together on her lockscreen, and the most recent one just reads lottie matthews you HARLOT. Her phone asks her if she wants to mute the conversation temporarily. Lottie taps yes, and then flops down onto the sofa with a groan.
Double shit.
/
After that minor disaster of a phone call, Lottie admittedly kind of forgets about the wedding for a month or so. Mostly because neither Van or Jackie bother her about her alleged girlfriend, which in retrospect is kind of suspicious. Her restaurant, Honeycomb, launches a wildly successful new weekend brunch menu, Kodiak finally quits after one single day of brunch, saving Lottie the paperwork of actually firing him, but she then has to sit through several exhausting hours of interviews to replace him until she finally finds a saviour in the form of Mari Ibarra.
And then the wedding invitation arrives. The one that’s addressed, in elegant flowing gold script printed on clearly expensive and heavy card stock — an ostentatious and unnecessary display of wealth, Nat had sniffed haughtily while Lottie was brooding over it like it was her own death sentence — to Charlotte Matthews and a guest. Inside the envelope there is also a smaller handwritten note, Jackie’s familiar loopy scrawl telling Lottie how excited she and Shauna are to meet Lottie’s girlfriend.
Her girlfriend. Not a friend who just so happens to be a girl, but a girl that is very much more than a friend. A girl that she is in a romantic, and hopefully sexual, relationship with. A girl that doesn’t fucking exist, because Lottie is a fucking idiot who somehow thought that Van fucking Palmer, of all people, wouldn’t go running her fucking mouth to literally everybody she has ever met.
In retrospect, definitely a slight miscalculation on Lottie’s part.
Which is how Lottie finds herself here: slumped over a slightly sticky table with her forehead resting on a beer mat an hour after Honeycomb has closed for the night, half-empty beer next to her head, while Mari and the rest of her kitchen staff cackle at her.
“So, just to clarify,” Mari says gleefully, like this is the funniest thing that’s ever happened to her. “Your friend accused you of not being able to hold down a relationship, so instead of doing the mature adult thing and just telling her to fuck off and mind her own damn business, you lied and told her you were seeing someone.”
“And Van was convinced I was talking about Nat, so then she told Jackie who told everyone, so now I’m expected to show up to the wedding in a month and a half with Nat, who is, can I just stress, not my girlfriend,” Lottie grumbles, lifting her head from the table just enough to take a long drink of her beer. “That’s about what happened, yeah.”
Mari cackles again. Gen politely hides her smile behind her own beer. Melissa tries and fails to muffle a laugh, then tries and fails to turn it into a cough when Lottie glares at her.
“So what are you gonna do?” Akilah asks, sounding genuinely concerned. Apparently, Akilah is the only one of her staff that Lottie can actually trust to not make fun of her. Mari’s still in her trial period, Lottie muses. She could just fire Mari and promote Akilah instead.
Lottie sighs. “I have no fucking idea.”
“Why don’t you just fake a break-up right before the wedding?” Gen says. “Is it like, a legal requirement that you bring someone?”
“If I fake a break-up, they’re gonna know I was lying, and then I’ll look even more pathetic,” Lottie says, staring into her beer like it might hold the secret to all of her problems. “Besides, Van would never let me live it down, Shauna would spend the entire time giving me those pitying I can’t believe you sank this low looks, and Jackie loves to meddle. I don’t think even her literal wedding would stop her from trying to set me up with someone. I think it’s like, lingering misplaced guilt or something, over the fact she’s the one who broke up with me.”
“You could hire an escort service,” Melissa offers. The four of them all turn to stare at her, and she holds her hands up defensively. “I’m just thinking out loud.”
“Okay, you don’t need to fake a break up or hire an escort,” Mari says, giving Melissa a sidelong look. “Can you not see that this Van person has given you the perfect cover?”
Lottie raises an eyebrow in question.
“She’s convinced you’re dating Nat, so just go along with it,” Mari continues, in a tone more fitting to discussing the weather or what they’re going to wear for Akilah’s birthday night out next week. “Fake a relationship with her, take her to the wedding, spend a couple days drinking free champagne in the sun with your best friend, and you don’t even have to admit that you lied and that the most action you get is your right hand—”
“I’m left-handed,” Lottie points out.
“And you won’t have to deal with any pitying looks from both your ex’s entire extended family and various members of the United States Women’s National Soccer Team and the Seattle Reign.”
“I still can’t believe you dated the Jackie Taylor,” Gen says, with the kind of awe that someone would reserve for talking about an immortal deity, and not someone that Lottie once witnessed lose her balance mid keg stand and almost brain herself on a stray bong lying on the floor. “You could’ve been a WAG.”
“This wedding sounds incredible,” Melissa says dreamily. “If Nat won’t fake date you, I’ll do it instead.”
Lottie ignores both of them. “So your advice is to just double down on the lie, and somehow talk Nat into being my fake girlfriend?”
“Yeah,” Mari nods enthusiastically, like it’s not one of the more insane things that Lottie has heard come out of her mouth. “It’s not like it wouldn’t be believable. You and Nat are best friends, you’re already super close, you know everything about each other. You live together. You get mistaken for a couple all the time.”
“Yeah, I actually thought Nat was your girlfriend for the first like, two months I knew you,” Gen says unhelpfully.
“I thought Nat was your girlfriend right up until this conversation started,” Melissa adds, equally as unhelpfully.
Lottie leans back in her chair, lifting her beer to her mouth and tuning the others out when Akilah poses the question of who they all think the hottest member of the USWNT is, and tries to picture it.
Fake dating Nat. Lying to Van and Jackie that Nat is her girlfriend. The idea is so insane that it’s actually kind of perfect. She and Nat have been best friends for so long that it wouldn’t be that surprising if they eventually got together, and it does sound kind of fun.
The only people she’s really going to know at the wedding are Van, Jackie and Shauna. Jackie and Shauna, obviously, are getting married, so Jackie’s hardly going to be able to keep Lottie company all the time despite her love of meddling and she doesn't even really know Shauna that well beyond you're dating my ex-girlfriend, and Van will probably be spending most of her time flirting with every girl with a pulse she can find. Five days of dodging Jackie’s various soccer teammates, some of which Lottie may or may not have hooked up with at some point or another thanks to Jackie’s well-meaning attempts to set her up, or God forbid Jackie’s mother, is going to be infinitely more enjoyable with Nat there to keep up a whispered snarky commentary and share sidelong glances with when Jackie inevitably goes full Bridezilla over some flowers or Van accidentally hits on Shauna’s grandmother or something.
This is probably a terrible idea, but unfortunately, it appears to be the only one Lottie has.
/
Nat is already asleep by the time Lottie gets home after several more beers, and Lottie isn’t about to spring this ridiculous plan on Nat while they’re having breakfast the next morning, so once Lottie has left for Honeycomb and Nat has left for Wildflower Ink, Lottie has all day to continue pondering Mari’s (insane) suggestion.
She thinks about it when they’re setting up the kitchen before Honeycomb opens for the day, mindlessly chopping tomatoes and onions and cilantro while she half-listens to Akilah rambling about the awful date she went on the previous night.
She thinks about it during the mid-afternoon lull after the lunch rush, while she’s doing some last minute stock orders and adjusting the schedule for the following week after Melissa bursts into the office and breathlessly asks if she can have Friday off so she can go to a concert with Gen.
She thinks about it when Nat texts her asking if she’s still finishing at five and if yes what time will she be home because Nat is going to cook dinner, and she thinks about it when she stops by the store on her way home to pick up a gigantic pack of peanut butter M&Ms and some of the weird mango IPA that Nat likes as a bribe, because she’s finally made up her mind.
If there’s anyone she would want to try this idiotic plan with, it would be Nat. Nat makes sense. Nat is her best friend and roommate, and after all, pretending to be girlfriends is how they met in the first place.
Four years ago, when they’d all still been in New York, Van had dragged Lottie out to some terrible frat party, partly because she was convinced Lottie was still wallowing in some kind of pathetic post break-up sadness after Jackie broke up with her and moved across the country to Washington after getting scouted by the Seattle Reign’s coach (she wasn’t), and partly because she insisted she needed both a wingwoman and moral support for some girl who she was convinced she was going to marry after having spoken to her twice.
As it turned out, Van had needed neither a wingwoman nor moral support, and had vanished off with Rebecca fucking Evans less than ten minutes after they arrived, leaving Lottie alone and sober (albeit a little stoned thanks to a pre-gamed joint in Van’s dorm room) in a dimly-lit basement, and therefore a prime target for drunk fratboys.
It took the grand total of about two minutes before she found herself being zeroed in on by some buff meathead, and the combination of the backwards baseball cap and constipated looking smirk told Lottie everything she needed to know about this boy before he even opened his mouth.
“I’m not interested,” Lottie said, the second he was within earshot.
The boy’s smirk widened, clearly undeterred. They never are. “You haven’t even heard my pitch yet.”
“Whatever it is, I’m still not interested,” Lottie said, in the same bored, uninterested please fuck the fuck off tone. “Leave me alone.”
He stepped closer, leaning his arm against the wall right next to Lottie’s head, and the delightful combination of beer and sweat and Axe body spray made Lottie want to gag. “Playing hard to get? I like it.”
Lottie scoffed, pushing off the wall and stepping to the side to get past him, intending on doing a cursory sweep of the party to see if Van and Rebecca had reappeared yet before she went home. Instead, she found her way blocked, her unwanted company mirroring her steps to keep her cornered.
She was debating whether telling him she’s a lesbian would get him to fuck off or make him try harder, or if she should just resort to a good old fashioned kick to the crotch, when an unfamiliar voice came from behind her.
“Hey, babe,” the voice said, before Lottie felt someone step up beside her. “Sorry, ran into Travis at the drinks table and he wouldn’t stop talking. Something about which of the Disney princes would be the best boyfriend.”
Lottie turned to be met with a girl she’s never seen before in her life, holding two red cups. She was shorter than Lottie, with shaggy blonde hair and dressed like she stepped straight out of the early 90s grunge scene; a sleeveless white tshirt, grey flannel tied around her waist, criminally tiny black skirt, ripped fishnets and scuffed black boots. Lottie was still just stoned enough to wonder if she was hallucinating, because this mystery stranger was the exact kind of smokeshow her weird brain would conjure up in its hornier moments.
The mystery girl smiled at Lottie, handing her one of the red cups that Lottie automatically accepted in her vaguely horny confusion, and then turned to give the boy still standing a little too close a venomous glare.
“Who the hell are you and why are you talking to my girlfriend?”
The stranger’s free hand settled on Lottie’s lower back as she spoke, and it took Lottie a second to catch up, to realise the lifeline she was being thrown by this wonderful (hot) stranger. And once she did, she decided almost immediately that the best course of action was to play along. To get rid of this unwanted man, obviously, but also to get as much time with this woman as she could.
“Um. I’m Andrew?” He said, clearly just as dumbfounded at this mystery girl’s appearance as Lottie was. Lottie barely heard him, still distracted by this pretty stranger. “Look, I was just talking to her. Jesus, dude. Is that a crime?”
“I did tell you I wasn’t interested,” Lottie said. “Twice.”
“See? So you can fuck off now,” the girl said, turning back to Lottie like Andrew no longer existed. “Trav also mentioned something about beer pong being set up in the backyard. You down?”
“Ugh, whatever,” Andrew said, rolling his eyes as he wandered off in search of his next victim. Or beer.
Once he vanished into the crowd of sweaty college students, the woman dropped her hand from Lottie’s back, taking a step back to give her some space. Lottie, somewhat pathetically, found herself missing the warmth.
“Sorry,” the woman said with an apologetic smile. “I hope that was okay. I know you probably had that handled, but I figured an assist never hurts with guys like that.”
Lottie got a slightly better look at her in the dim light of the party. She had a couple of tattoos scattered across both her arms, left bare from her Fleetwood Mac tshirt. A silver safety pin necklace glinted from the hollow of her throat. The whole messy bleached hair/smudged eyeliner/crooked smile sort of emo chic aesthetic that Lottie was very into.
She also, Lottie noted distantly, had dimples.
“Um,” Lottie said, in an incredible show of eloquence. She cleared her throat. “Thank you. For the assist. He really wasn’t taking the hint. Or clear dismissal.”
The other woman huffed out a laugh. “Yeah, they never do.”
“I’m Lottie, by the way,” Lottie said, and then, hoping she wasn’t overstepping: “But, as my girlfriend, you probably already know that, right?”
The woman laughed. “I probably should. And you should probably know that my name’s Natalie, but I prefer just Nat.”
Lottie stuck her hand out for Nat to shake. “Nice to meet you, Nat.”
The skin of Nat’s palm was warm and soft when she took Lottie’s hand. Lottie tried not to think about how Nat’s hands would feel on certain other parts of her body, and failed miserably.
There was a moment of silence then, where both of them were clearly unsure how to proceed. Lottie could have said okay, thanks for the rescue, enjoy the party! and went to find Van and then Lottie would never see her again. Nat could have said okay, see you around, try to avoid drunk frat boys! and went back to her friends and then Lottie would never see her again.
But Van hadn’t a) resurfaced from wherever she disappeared off to with Rebecca fucking Evans, or b) texted Lottie to say she was leaving and that Lottie could ditch the party too if she wanted. And she did promise Van on the walk here that she would try and have fun. If nothing else, Nat seemed fun, and she was hot, even if it turned out she wasn’t interested.
“So, uh,” Lottie said hopefully. “You said something about beer pong in the backyard?”
It’s a whole system that they’ve used multiple times over the years. They go out, one of them gets cornered by someone they have zero interest in, the other one steps in and pretends to be their girlfriend if necessary, and the unwanted third party backs off.
This would be the same thing, just... for longer. And on a much larger scale. Fooling Lottie’s ex girlfriend, best friend, and an entire wedding party, rather than some dumb drunk stranger in a bar.
Nat is in the kitchen when Lottie gets home, humming along to the Nirvana song playing from her phone as she stirs something in a big pot on the stove. The whole kitchen smells like garlic and chilli. Smells like home.
The whole domestic scene makes Lottie pause in the doorway to the kitchen for a moment, starting to second-guess herself. Mari had almost made it sound like a good idea at the time — fake a relationship with her! take her to the wedding! what could go wrong! — but now that she’s watching Nat frowning at the pot as she adds a sprinkle of salt into it, lifting the spoon to taste it, her furrowed eyebrows smoothing back out as she smiles, she wonders if pissing Van off is worth risking this.
Nat is her best friend. Admittedly, yes, Lottie did have a bit of a crush back when they first met, because who wouldn’t, but Nat had never once indicated that she was interested so those lingering feelings have mostly faded by now, only ever trying to spike back up whenever she’s three drinks past her limit, or she’s sick and feverish and woozy and Nat is taking care of her, or she accidentally walks in on Nat in the middle of getting changed and she’s abruptly reminded of the fact that hiding below Nat’s large collection of oversized band tees and flannel shirts thrifted from the men’s section Nat is still a former jock soccer player with the abs to prove it.
Nat is her best friend, the person who knows her better than anyone, who knows everything about her and hasn’t turned her back when Lottie gets too weird or too bad like so many other people have. She knows about Lottie’s lonely childhood in a mansion too big for one kid, and her distant parents who, in all honesty, just don’t know how to love her, and the rotation of therapists and psychologists and hospitals and the cocktail of medications to stop her from seeing and hearing things that aren’t really there. She’s the one who climbs into bed with Lottie and calms her down when she wakes up from nightmares that feel too real, who lets Lottie curl into her and holds her until she stops crying and shaking, and then makes Lottie tea in the morning and reminds her that if she ever wants to talk, she’s there. She’ll always be there.
Nat is her best friend, the steadiest and most solid constant in her life. They have a life here, in their cosy little two bedroom apartment where they’ve lived together for the past two years, after the lease on Nat’s cramped little shoebox was almost up and Lottie’s roommate at the time announced she was moving out and moving in with her girlfriend. So Laura Lee moved in with Grace and Nat moved into Lottie’s spare room, and has been there ever since. This, here, with Nat, is her home.
Their home, with the red and white tartan welcome mat, the kitchen island with a slight dent from when Lottie tried (and failed) to open a beer bottle on the edge, the squeaky bathroom door. The low hum of the AC in the summer and the wheeze of the central heating in the winter. The pink post-it stuck to their refrigerator door that Nat left a week after she moved in that says went out to the farmer’s market, i’m making us dinner tonight and then a scribbled drawing of a strawberry with a smiley face and stick-figure legs and arms that neither of them have ever bothered taking down and putting in the trash. Their coats hanging in the tiny hall closet and their shoes lined up on the rack by the door, Lottie’s books on the shelves and Nat’s vinyl collection and record player in the corner of the living room and their joint custody houseplants on the windowsill. Their whole lives, intertwined.
Lottie doesn’t want to potentially fuck all of that up all because she’s too proud to admit that she lied to Van and that she doesn’t want to show up to her ex’s wedding by herself.
Nat finally notices Lottie lurking in the door like a weirdo, eyes widening in surprise before her face relaxes into a smile.
“Hey, I didn’t hear you come in,” Nat says, dipping her wooden spoon into the pot, scooping up some of the bright red sauce and turning to face Lottie. “Here, I’m making penne alla vodka for dinner. Come try this.”
Lottie sidles up next to Nat at the stove and opens her mouth obediently, letting Nat spoon-feed her the sauce. It’s spicy and creamy and it makes Lottie’s stomach rumble, reminding her that she hasn’t eaten since the slightly pathetic cheese sandwich she shovelled down after the main lunch rush at Honeycomb died down almost four hours ago.
“It’s good,” Lottie says.
Nat raises an eyebrow. “It’s good? That’s all I’m getting? I slave over your stupid pasta maker and a hot stove for the last hour waiting for you to come home like a 60s housewife and all I get is it’s good?”
“You made the pasta from scratch too?”
“Damn right I did. I was bored. And you left your pasta maker... thing out, and I am not immune to the allure of your fancy expensive chef gadgets.” Nat lifts the spoon again, shoving it in the vague direction of Lottie’s mouth. “Try it again. I’ll give you a chance to do better.”
Lottie rolls her eyes, fighting off a smile and opening her mouth so Nat doesn’t smear pasta sauce all over her face. “Well, you know I always think things can be spicier.”
“That’s because you’re a freak,” Nat says flatly, pointing with her wooden spoon at an unopened bottle of Lottie’s favourite brand of chilli oil sitting on the counter. “And that’s what that is for. Your portion, and your portion only, because I prefer not to incinerate my taste buds.”
Lottie shrugs. “Your loss. But fine, it’s really good. Delicious. Incredible. Best thing I’ve ever put in my mouth.”
Nat tilts her head to the side, pressing her lips together in a clear attempt not to laugh.
“Yes, including that,” Lottie says, and Nat gives in to the laugh that bubbles out.
“I should fuckin’ think so,” Nat says, turning back to the pot to give the sauce another little stir. “I don’t know you if you know this, but I was taught how to cook by the one and only chef Matthews.”
"Yeah?” Lottie snorts. “The one who owns that overpriced bougie vegan restaurant? You know, I heard she’s kind of a fraud. Never cooks at home and just makes her roommate do it for her.”
Nat laughs, eyes bright and dimples creasing her face as she smiles at Lottie. “You know what, I think I’ve heard that too. She sounds like a lazy fucker.”
“Well, this lazy fucker brought you a gift,” Lottie says, lifting the carrier bag of beer and M&Ms onto the counter and watching Nat’s face light up as she opens the refrigerator to put the beer away.
“Have I told you recently how much I love you and that you are my favourite person in the world?” Nat asks, smile growing even wider when Lottie takes the pack of M&Ms out and tosses them at her. “Because I love you very much, and you are my favourite person in the world.”
“High praise from the Natalie Scatorccio,” Lottie says, bumping their shoulders together as she comes to stand next to Nat at the stove, peering into the bubbling pot. “Love you too, you fuckin’ loser. How long till dinner’s ready?”
“Mm, like ten minutes? I’m about to put the pasta on, and the sauce needs a bit longer.”
“Okay. I’m gonna go shower then.”
Lottie glances back at Nat just before she leaves the kitchen, her profile silhouetted against the late sunset light coming through the window. The sharp line of her jaw, the slope of her nose, her blonde hair turning golden in the sunlight. Lottie swallows, and looks away.
Once Lottie is freshly showered and changed into sweatpants and a tshirt, she comes back into the living room to find two bowls of steaming pasta on the coffee table, one of Nat’s gross mango beers by one, a glass of wine and the bottle of chilli oil by the other, and Netflix already open on the television.
Nat has taken to binge watching House MD, and Lottie joins her if she happens to be home at the time. With Lottie’s restaurant and Nat’s tattoo studio taking up most of their time, they don’t often have free evenings that line up together, but whenever they do, Lottie enjoys nothing more than letting Nat deal with dinner and then vegging out on the sofa in front of the television for a few hours.
“You know, you’re thinking really loudly,” Nat says out of nowhere, when they’ve finished their food and lapsed into watching the television in peaceful silence. “You wanna tell me what’s bothering you, or?”
“What makes you think something's bothering me?”
“You're not as hard to read as you think you are, Matthews,” Nat says. “Also,” she nods towards the clear medical malpractice occuring on the television. “This episode is almost over and you haven’t called Cameron annoying once. Red flag.”
Lottie looks up at the screen, where Cameron is, in fact, being fucking annoying.
“So, what’s wrong?” Nat asks. “Did something happen at work? Or with your parents?”
“No, it’s nothing like that,” Lottie sighs, shifting uncomfortably on the sofa. “It’s me. I... I might have fucked up.”
Nat narrows her eyes. “Did you kill someone?”
Lottie turns her head slowly to stare at Nat. “Why is that where your mind immediately went?”
“I don’t know,” Nat shrugs. “It was the first really fucked up thing I could think of.”
Lottie rolls her eyes, huffing out a little laugh. “I didn’t kill anyone.”
“Good,” Nat says. “Cause I don’t know how much help I’d be disposing of a body.”
“You’d help me get rid of the body? That’s...oddly touching.”
“Eh. Got nothing else to do tonight.” Nat shifts on the sofa, moving to lean against the arm so she’s facing Lottie fully, clearly unwilling to drop the subject. “So if you didn’t kill anyone, what did you do?”
Lottie takes a moment to really think about what she’s about to say before she opens her mouth. Despite Mari’s suggestion, she doesn’t actually have to do this. No one’s forcing her at gunpoint to ask Nat to be her fake girlfriend. She could still lie about a last minute break-up right before the wedding and just suffer through the endless ribbing Van will give her, even if it does mean Jackie will keep throwing random girls at her in the hope one sticks to alleviate her misplaced guilt.
She glances over at Nat, watching her and patiently waiting for her to talk, trying to ignore the nerves twisting uncomfortably in her stomach. Lottie sighs, and thinks fuck it.
“A couple weeks ago, I was talking to Van about Jackie’s wedding, and we were talking about plus-ones, and I—” Lottie sighs. “I kind of accidentally told Van I was seeing someone.”
Nat laughs. Laughs. Asshole. “And she believed you?”
Lottie reaches out with her leg and kicks Nat in the thigh, ignoring Nat's resulting offended squeak. “She did, because I’m a fucking catch, why wouldn’t she believe me, you dick.” Nat coughs pointedly. Lottie ignores her. “But obviously she told Jackie and now Jackie is insisting I bring this girlfriend to the wedding.”
“This girlfriend that you don’t have,” Nat points out, like Lottie isn’t already entirely fucking aware. “What are you gonna do?”
“Well." Lottie clears her throat awkwardly. "Here’s the thing. Van seemed to be under the impression that the someone I was seeing was you,” she says, wincing when Nat frowns. “And I kind of...didn’t correct her?”
Nat stares at Lottie like she’s grown a second head, mouth dropping open in surprise.
“You let Van think that we’re dating, rather than admit that you lied to her?”
Lottie shrugs helplessly, like this is just something that happened to her and not something that is entirely her own fault for opening her big mouth.
“Wow,” Nat laughs in disbelief. “So, what was the rest of your plan? Fake dump me a week before the wedding? Give me some kind of terminal illness as an excuse for why I can’t make it?”
“Actually, I was hoping you would come to the wedding with me and pretend to be my girlfriend,” Lottie says quickly, getting it out there before she can lose her nerve. She then adds a slightly desperate, “Please?” just for good measure.
Nat blinks. “You want me to be your girlfriend?”
“Pretend girlfriend,” Lottie says, placing a great deal of emphasis on pretend, because that’s the important bit here.
Nat’s lips twitch. “Right, of course. Because you’ve somehow gotten yourself into this shitty Hallmark romcom scenario, and now you need me to go along with your little scheme so you don’t get caught lying.”
Lottie sighs, deflating back into the sofa cushions. “It’s not just about not getting caught. I’ve always gotten the feeling that Jackie still feels bad about breaking up with me, even though it was years ago and I’m completely over her. She met Shauna not that long after, and they’re still together, but I haven’t really dated anyone since. And normally that doesn’t bother me, like I don’t even really think about it, but... I don’t know. The way Van was making fun of me for it, it was just kind of humiliating.”
Nat doesn’t say anything, and Lottie keeps her gaze on her hands sitting in her lap, not entirely sure she wants to see the look on Nat’s face. On the television, the patient is coding, and House and Cameron are shouting about legality at each other.
“Plus, you know what Jackie’s like, always trying to set me up with people,” Lottie adds. “If I go to the wedding by myself she’s going to spend all her free time trying to play matchmaker. You’ve seen her in action, sometimes the girls she throws at me aren’t even gay.”
Nat tilts her head to the side. “Are you talking about that blonde soccer player that was at her birthday last year? Rochelle or Rachel or something? Didn’t you sleep with her anyway?”
“That’s not the point,” Lottie says quickly, belatedly realising that yes , Rachel Goldman, goalkeeper for the USWNT who really emphatically is not gay except for that one night where she really was, is probably going to be at the wedding too. “I just really don’t want to have to deal with all the inevitable pitying looks and questions of if I’m planning on dying alone that I’m gonna get for being single at my ex’s wedding.”
“And you don’t want to admit to Van that you lied,” Nat adds.
“And I don’t want to admit to Van that I lied,” Lottie agrees.
Nat falls quiet again, clearly thinking over this ridiculous proposal. On the one hand, she’s still frowning like she’s pissed off her name got dragged into this whole mess, but on the other, she doesn’t seem like she’s about to run for the hills at the prospect of fake dating Lottie. Which Lottie takes as a tentatively good sign.
“Come on,” Lottie says, jutting her bottom lip out in a practiced pout that she knows Nat is notoriously bad at saying no to. “You can’t deny that it sounds kinda fun. No one would suspect anything. You’re hot, I’m hot, it makes sense we’d be into each other. Plus it’s an open bar the whole time. What’s the worst that could happen?”
“With an open bar, I can think of several things that could go wrong within the first like, three hours,” Nat says dryly.
“What?” Lottie forces as much bravado into her voice as she can, hoping it betrays the nerves still twisting unpleasantly in her stomach. “You scared I’m going to sweep you off your feet for real?”
Nat gives her a supremely judgemental look. “Absolutely not.”
Lottie laughs, but it’s less confident now. Nat hasn’t actually said no yet, but she’s probably going to. She’s going to say no, and that Lottie deserves whatever embarrassment happens to her at the wedding as karma for lying, or even worse, she’s going to say that the thought of dating Lottie, even if it isn’t real, makes her sick—
“Yeah, fuck it, why not?” Nat says. “Count me in.”
Oh. Or she could agree.
“Wait, really?”
Nat raises an eyebrow. “You sound surprised.”
“Well, yeah,” Lottie says. “I was honestly kind of expecting you to tell me to fuck off and find someone else to go along with this. I didn’t think you’d say yes to a wedding where you’ll be surrounded by insufferable rich people.”
Nat smiles sweetly at her. “I live with you, don’t I?”
“Fuck you,” Lottie says, rolling her eyes fondly.
“Why wouldn’t I say yes?” Nat says. “See, when you say Jackie’s wedding, you mean your ex-girlfriend, Jackie generational wealth Taylor, one of the highest paid female soccer players in the world, and she’s marrying Shauna author of multiple New York Times Bestsellers Shipman, right? So I’m guessing the wedding is going to be somewhere...expensive?”
Lottie fights off a smile. “They’ve hired out a private beach resort in Nantucket, yeah.”
“Not really somewhere I’d get to visit whenever I want unless I was actually dating someone as filthy rich as you, huh?” Nat says. “Besides, we’ve done this dozens of times, pretended to be together to get creeps off our backs in bars. It’s literally how we met, remember? How could you ever forget Asshole Andrew?”
“Yeah, but this wouldn’t just be for five minutes until some douchebag gets the hint and leaves us alone. This would be for five days.”
Nat’s eyes go wide. “Five days? I thought weddings only lasted one.”
“Have you met Jackie?” Lottie says in amusement. “You know she doesn’t do things by halves. It's a whole extended destination wedding. You still in?”
Nat smiles. “An all-expenses paid trip to wealthy New England where I can spend a full week sitting on the beach and getting blasted on free champagne with my best friend, and all I need to do is, what? Hold your hand once or twice?” Nat’s grin widens, dimples on show once again. “I think I can manage that. But, you fucking owe me for this, Lot.”
“What do you want in return?”
Nat hums thoughtfully, pretending to think about it. “Not sure yet. But I’ll think of something. I’ll let you know when I do. Until then, you can just have that knowledge in the back of your mind that I, Natalie Scatorccio, own your ass, Lottie Matthews.”
Lottie rolls her eyes. “As long as you don’t want me to do anything illegal.”
“What, like dispose of a body?”
“I didn’t kill anyone, oh my God,” Lottie huffs.
“You don’t have to convince me, I’m not a judge,” Nat says, extending her hand towards Lottie. “So, girlfriends?”
“Fake girlfriends,” Lottie corrects, taking Nat’s hand and shaking it. She looks at their joined hands, Nat’s pale fingers and tattooed knuckles against her own tanned skin.
“Right,” Nat says in amusement. “Fake girlfriends. So don’t go falling in love with me for real.”
Lottie scoffs, giving Nat a pretend-critical onceover and belatedly realising that the oversized tshirt Nat is wearing is actually one of Lottie’s. “I’ve managed to resist your charms for the last four years. Trust me, that will not be a problem.”