The Boyfriend Project Read online

  “Ah, yes, I’ve heard about his sick mama. Actually, I’m his sick mama. He’s supposed to meet me in another half hour.” She tilted her head to the side. “I wonder who played the sick mother when he fed me that line on our first date.”

  “That would be me.”

  The three of them turned as a statuesque woman with rich brown skin, a head full of enviable coily, natural hair, and shoes to die for approached the table.

  “At least I think it was me. Hello all, I’m London.” She plunked her hands on her hips, her wry smile directed at Craig. “The Internet is amazing, isn’t it? One of my fellow Walking Dead tweeps retweeted this hilarious first date from hell into my timeline. Imagine my surprise when it turns out to be the exact first date I had, down to the volcano sushi roll.”

  “You have to admit that sushi roll is amazing,” Samiah said.

  “Incredible,” London agreed.

  Taylor pushed her plate toward them. “It’s the best. Dig in, ladies.”

  They’d started to garner attention from the other tables. A number of people were openly staring, and the hum of whispers filtered in from various corners of the restaurant.

  “I haven’t had dinner yet,” London said. “Should we order another?”

  “Okay, now, wait a minute.” Craig put both hands up. “Let me—”

  “Shut up.” Samiah cut him off. “You don’t get to speak here.”

  “Come on, Sammy.”

  “Shut. Up.” If he knew how close she was to elbowing him in the throat, he would walk out of here without saying a word. The grip she had on her rage was tenuous at best. “And don’t call me that stupid nickname. My name is Samiah.”

  “That’s a beautiful name,” London said around a mouthful of sushi.

  “Yes, it is. So is that jacket,” Taylor added. “I love the way it cinches a bit at the waist instead of being all boxy.”

  “That’s the reason I bought it,” Samiah answered, looking down at her jacket. “Hey, are you ladies up to listening to some blues music? My ‘date,’” she said with an eye roll, “was supposed to take me to that new club on Sixth. I’d hate for this makeup to go to waste.”

  “Oh, I don’t blame you,” London said. “That smoky eye deserves to be seen. I end up looking like a raccoon whenever I try for that look.”

  “I can give you some tips,” Samiah offered. “It’s all in the primer you use.”

  “All right, enough of this.” Craig pushed his chair away from the table and stood. “I can explain—”

  Samiah whirled on him. “Read the room, Craig. Read the fucking room,” she snarled, unable to pull off the blasé pretense a second longer. She was hurt and upset and ready to lay into this asshole. “You’re caught, you lying piece of dog shit. Your stupid little game is over.”

  The other patrons weren’t even bothering to hide their interest now. Even the waitstaff had stopped what they were doing. All eyes were on them, but Samiah was too incensed to care about the scene they were causing.

  “I don’t know how many other women fell for it, but it’s over.” She jabbed her finger against his chest. “Lose my number. If you try to contact me again, I’m calling the police.”

  “Same goes for me,” London said as she pulled Craig’s chair to the side of the table to get closer to Taylor’s sushi roll. Taylor passed her a new pair of chopsticks from the container in the center of the table and slid the soy sauce closer.

  “The number I gave you was a fake, so I don’t have to worry about hearing from you again,” Taylor said. She tossed her napkin on the table and joined Samiah. Folding her arms across her chest, she said, “Make sure you fill up your Benz before you return it to the car rental place. They charge an arm and a leg if you bring it back on empty.”

  His eyes widened. “How’d you know?”

  Samiah had to refrain from punching him in the gut. “You’re pathetic,” she spat.

  “Can I get a to-go box?” London called. “Also, add another volcano roll to the order. He’ll pay for it. His cheap ass still owes me from our last date.”

  “Oh, let me guess,” Samiah said. “He forgot his wallet at work?”

  “And the Apple Pay on his phone was acting up,” London said with a nod. “He isn’t very creative, is he?”

  Two women at a nearby table laughed out loud. One of them held up a phone to snap a picture.

  Great.

  Samiah turned back to Craig. “You are a horrible person, and your jokes are corny. I wish nothing but the worst for you.”

  A waiter arrived with a black paper bag and handed it to London. She stood and motioned for Samiah and Taylor to walk ahead of her.

  “Don’t I get a chance to explain?” Craig called.

  “No!” the three women said in unison as they marched out of the restaurant without a backward glance.

  Chapter Two

  Samiah squinted against the sunlight slicing across her face through her living room’s floor-to-ceiling windows. Grimacing, she expended a supreme amount of effort to open her left eye. She quickly shut it. A dull thud repeatedly beat against the back of her skull, reverberating around her brain like a Ping-Pong ball in slow motion.

  “Is there coffee?” a strange voice croaked. “Please tell me there’s coffee.”

  Samiah bolted upright and twisted around on the sofa. London Kelley stood next to the eight-foot soapstone island that separated her kitchen from the living room. Make that Doctor London Kelley, as Samiah had discovered last night.

  “I’ll take kombucha if you have any,” came a muffled voice from somewhere underneath the mound of pillows on the living room floor. Taylor Powell moaned before leveling herself up on her elbows. “You see this headache right here? This is why I don’t drink alcohol.” She straightened. “I gotta pee,” she said before scrambling up from the floor and racing toward the bathroom.

  Exhausted and hungover, Samiah still had the presence of mind to acknowledge that she should be concerned about waking up to find two strangers in her home. Strangers who were now familiar enough with her home to utilize the kitchen and bathroom without her help or permission.

  Yet in the few short hours since she’d met them, Taylor and London no longer felt like strangers. Being conned by the same lowlife accelerated the sisterhood-development process.

  Samiah placed her bare feet on the cool hardwood floors and rested her elbows on her thighs, covering her face with her hands. She still wore her jeans from last night, but at some point had changed into her favorite blue-and-gray Rice University T-shirt.

  “Hey, chica? Coffee?” London called again.

  “There are coffee pods in the cabinet above the Keurig.” She turned to Taylor, who had just resumed her spot on the floor. “Sorry, no kombucha. I’ve seen it, but I’m too chicken to try it.”

  “Chicken? After the way you went after Craig last night? Woman, there is nothing chicken about you. You are badass.”

  Samiah grimaced. She didn’t want to hear the name Craig ever again. She’d cloaked herself in fury and indignation last night, but in the light of day his treacherous deception cut through her like a switchblade. How could she have been foolish enough to trust him? Why hadn’t she seen through his lies?

  “Did he try calling either of you last night?” London asked.

  Samiah reached for her phone and checked the screen. Other than a couple of missed calls from her sister and an exorbitant number of Facebook notifications, her phone was clear. She would call Denise later. She didn’t know when she would look at Facebook.

  “I guess he heeded my warning,” Samiah said. “He didn’t try to contact me at all.”

  “I wasn’t lying when I said I didn’t give him my number,” Taylor remarked, wrapping her arms around her bended knees. “It was a burner phone. A friend suggested I use one after this guy she met on a dating site started stalking her.”

  “Shit, that’s scary,” London said. She plopped onto the sofa next to Samiah, her fingers wrapped around a stea
ming cup of coffee. Her crinkly curls were mashed on one side. “This place is gorgeous, by the way. I didn’t get a chance to tell you that last night.”

  “We were all too busy bitching about that asshole,” Samiah replied. “But thanks.”

  A foggy veil obscured her recollection of the past twelve hours, but she remembered inviting London and Taylor back to her place after deciding she wasn’t up to going to the blues club. She’d probably never step foot in there now that it was linked to Craig and his lying ways.

  Samiah glanced to the right and noticed the empty vodka bottle, stray lime wedges, and copper tumblers on the glass end table, remnants of the Moscow Mules she’d made last night.

  “Is anyone up for breakfast?” she asked. “I can order something.”

  London lifted her cup. “This is my normal breakfast.”

  “Aren’t you a doctor?” Taylor tsked. “You should know better. You need protein to get your day off on the right foot.”

  London replied with a grunt before sipping her coffee.

  “What is it you do for a living again?” Samiah asked Taylor. “Sorry if you mentioned it last night. Everything is a bit fuzzy.”

  “Personal trainer and nutrition expert,” Taylor answered. She was way too bubbly now that she was fully awake. Samiah would have found it endearing if her head wasn’t pounding so much. “Which means that I should know better than to pollute my body with the half liter of vodka I consumed last night.”

  “It was warranted.” London settled back on the sofa, crossing one long, slim leg over the other. “If you can’t get drunk after finding out your boyfriend has been cheating on you with who knows how many other women, when can you get drunk?” She turned to Samiah. “By the way, I figured out this morning that you were the first to date him, at least among the three of us. You went out with him on the Friday of the Fourth of July holiday weekend, and my first date with him was that Sunday night.”

  “He told me he had to go to Dallas that weekend. Things were just sooo busy at his job that he couldn’t take the holiday off.” Samiah snorted out a humorless laugh. “I swear I thought I was smarter than this.”

  “Hey, I’m no dummy, and he fooled the hell out of me too.” London shrugged. “He ran a good game. I’m just happy I never slept with him.”

  “I didn’t either!” Samiah said. “It’s as if our instincts knew better.”

  They high-fived each other.

  Taylor pouted. “I’m kinda bummed I found out he was a dog before I got the chance to sleep with him.”

  “What?” Samiah and London’s simultaneous screeches echoed off the condo’s high ceilings.

  “What?” she asked with an incredulous shrug. “It’s been a minute, okay? I swear I saw cobwebs the last time I looked down there.”

  Samiah burst out laughing then regretted it. The hammering that had all but subsided returned to her skull with a vengeance. She drew her feet up on the sofa and tucked them underneath her.

  “You can do better than Craig Walters’s lying ass,” she told Taylor.

  “I thought his name was Craig Johnson?” London said.

  “He told me his name was Craig Milton,” Taylor said. “And if I could do better, I would have been out with better last night. I don’t know about you, but this dating shit has been brutal for me since I moved to Austin.”

  Samiah was still reeling from the revelation that Craig’s cheating behind had given them all different last names. She’d looked him up on social media. Everything had seemed legit. She wondered if he’d set up profiles for all his different names. How much time and energy had that leech put into this little scheme of his?

  “I hear you on the dating front,” Samiah said. “Craig was the first guy in six months who’d made it past a second date.”

  “Look, I’m from this area and it’s been brutal for me too,” London added. “I guess that’s how he was able to dupe the three of us. There’s slim pickings out there.” She drained her coffee mug and set it on the sofa table. “And now I have to find someone else to take to my damn class reunion. Shit.”

  The three of them released commiserating groans.

  “My ten-year reunion was a nightmare,” Samiah said.

  “I used my move to Austin as an excuse to skip mine,” Taylor said.

  “Well, this makes fifteen years for me, and there is no skipping it. That’s what I get for being class president.”

  “When is the reunion?” Samiah asked.

  “Thankfully, it’s still a few months away.” London shoved her hands in her hair and fluffed out her mangled curls. “I hate this shit. The only reason I started dating Craig is because I didn’t want to show up alone. I did that for both the five- and ten-year reunions.” She choked out an incredulous laugh. “You’d think this whole pediatric surgeon thing I have going on would make up for being single, but not with that crew.”

  Samiah knew that song all too well. Whenever she went back home to Houston, the talk quickly shifted from her career to her relationship status. It was nauseating. And infuriating.

  “You know you can rent a date, right?” Taylor asked as she gathered her braids in one hand and wrapped a purple scrunchie around them. “And not just from Craigslist.” She gasped, her eyes widening. “I’ll never be able to go on that website again after last night.”

  “Taylor’s right,” Samiah said. “Why don’t you just go with one of those escort services?”

  “I kind of wanted it to be real, you know? A fake relationship with a Rent-A-Date guy sounds like something from a supersweet Hallmark movie.”

  “That’s only if you two end up married with two-point-five kids and a basset hound named Molly.”

  Samiah grinned at Taylor’s quip. Her sense of humor beat the hell out of Craig’s.

  “If I took an escort to my class reunion, I’d spend the entire night worrying about whether or not we’d get found out. I’d rather go alone than deal with that kind of anxiety.” Her resigned sigh struck a familiar chord. “What’s a little judgment from people you only see once every five years, right?”

  “I get what you’re saying, but to be honest, why do you even care?” Samiah asked. She looked from one woman to the other as her question began to resonate in her head. “Why do any of us care? So what if I’m not dating the perfect guy? Who says everything on my checklist needs to get checked off?”

  “You have a checklist?” One of London’s perfectly shaped eyebrows arched. “Do tell.”

  “Everyone has a checklist. And mine is almost complete.” She ticked items off on her fingers. “I’ve got the fancy downtown condo I always wanted. I have a fabulous job in my field. I still expect at least a few promotions in the near future, but to say I’ve only been with my company for three years, I’ve done pretty well for myself.”

  “Is that the extent of the list?”

  “No. I also drive the car of my dreams.”

  Taylor perked up. “Oooh, what kind?”

  “Mustang GTE.”

  “Full package?”

  “Full package.”

  “Oh, you are definitely a boss bitch. Why did you think you needed someone like Craig in the first place?”

  “Because even with this nice condo and her incredible job and her boss-bitch car—whatever that is—people will still question why she doesn’t have a man,” London said.

  “Bingo.” Samiah sighed, her shoulders wilting in defeat. No matter how successful she became, there were some who would still think her life was lacking because she didn’t have a significant other.

  But why should she care what those people thought? What anyone thought? Why in the hell was she putting herself through this kind of trauma for the sake of attaining some impractical, ideal life that would never be enough for those people?

  Samiah sat up straight, planting her feet back on the floor.

  “You know what? Fuck that,” she said. “Fuck. That.”

  “Fuck what?” London asked.

  “This.
Craig. All of it. And fuck anyone who says what I’ve accomplished isn’t enough. Do you know how much time and effort I’ve put into finding someone? The hours I’ve wasted filling out dating profiles alone makes me wish I’d gone ahead and punched Craig in the stomach.”

  “You’re right,” Taylor whispered, her voice tinged with awe. “You are absolutely right. Want to know how I ended up on that date with Craig? Because one of my friends signed me up on a dating site because she’s tired of imagining that I’m lonely.” She pointed to her chest. “I’m not lonely. I’m too busy to feel lonely. Hell, when I wasn’t live-tweeting our date last night, I was invoicing clients. My time would have been better spent at home working on my marketing plan.”

  Taylor directed her attention at Samiah. “Maybe it’s time you rethink that checklist. If a con man like Craig is all there is out there, you’re better off using that time to do something that will actually make you happy.”

  Her words collided with the beliefs Samiah had held since her freshman year of college. She had not gone into any of this lightly. She’d taken stock of her life, examined every crevice, and devised a list of goals that she firmly believed were crucial to living the kind of life she wanted to live.

  Happiness had not been part of the equation when she’d made her plans. The concept was too vague for her to fully grasp it. She felt safer, more in control, when dealing in absolutes. True happiness—whatever that meant—would follow once she finally achieved these concrete items she’d set out to attain.

  But she could define happiness for herself if she tried hard enough. She thought about the boxes of sketch pads and reams of notes in her closet and knew one thing that would make her happy.

  No. You been over this already. You don’t have time for that.

  Samiah cradled her head in her palms. This was too much for her hungover brain to think about right now. “Why are you making so much sense?”

  “Right?” Taylor asked, as if she’d surprised herself. “But it does make sense, doesn’t it? Imagine if we’d all devoted the time we wasted with Craig to doing something worthwhile. Isn’t there something you’ve always wanted to do that you haven’t done yet? Stick that on your checklist instead of looking for some man who doesn’t deserve you.”