Free Jenna & Jonah's Fauxmance by Emily Franklin, Brendan Halpin

there into the basement while they’re on the can. I hope it’s not me. Though it does mean a trip to the bathroom is riskier and more exciting than usual. I might even say “extreme.”
    “I’m Fielding Withers,” I say in my best sports announcer voice, “and welcome to X-treme crapping!”
    “Well,” Charlie’s voice says, “I see I’m not the only one who gets bored around here.”
    I emerge from the bathroom and find Charlie standing there. This is surprising enough. What’s doubly surprising is that she is dressed in the Rug Suckers coveralls and holding a can of paint in one hand and a big paper bag that says CARPINTERIA HARDWARE in the other.
    “Anyway, I thought you were Aaron now,” she says.
    “Uh. Yeah. I, uh—I thought you were going to go on some TV show and cry about how I’d deceived you.”
    Charlie places her bags on the floor and begins pulling out painting supplies—a roller, a pan, and a plastic drop cloth emerge one by one.
    “You think I’d throw you under the bus like that just to save my career?” she finally replies.
    “Well. I mean, it’d kind of be the smart move.”
    Charlie sighs. “You really need to read the celebrity magazines more often. In light of the fake script thing, it would be hard for me to say I’m in on one deception and not on the other. Me as the victim is going to be a tough sell since I was alone at the farmer’s market with the fake script.”
    “I would say I’m sorry, but that would be insincere.”
    “Oh, I know. And you’re so real, so small-town—or should I say so Littleton, so above the petty deceptions of us morally bankrupt Hollywood types.”
    “Littleton! Like it! Okay, I’ll give you points for the name thing, but, you know, we really need to get this straight. Cincinnati is not Los Angeles, but it’s not a small town. It’s a major Midwestern city with a population of over three hundred thousand. So whenever you’re getting snotty about how I’m morally superior because of my small-town roots, let’s just be clear and say that I am so real, so small- city . Four years of this crap. You know how many millions of people don’t live on either coast?”
    “You’ve obviously forgotten our concert tour of the CD departments of various Valu-Marts in the Midwest and South.”
    “Oh, yeah. That was kind of fun!”
    Charlie spends a long moment looking at me, then picks up her paint cans. “Yeah. Like dental surgery is kind of fun. Whatever. I spent the morning measuring rooms—did you know a dollar bill is six inches long? Makes a handy little ruler in a pinch—and I’m going to paint this afternoon.”
    “You’re going to paint.”
    “Yes!” she says, grabbing her stuff and heading up the stairs. “I may be stuck in the middle of nowhere, but I’m not going to sleep in a room with peeling paint.”
    “What have you ever painted before?” I yell up the stairs to her.
    “How hard could it possibly be?” she yells back. And then she’s gone.
    I don’t see her again until dinner, which I cook.
    “I’m going for a run,” she announces when she comes downstairs. “I’ll just grab something later.”
    I look at my vegetable stew and couscous. It’s colorful, and yet it looks kind of sad now. I eat it while reading.
    Charlie returns from her run before dark, takes a long shower, and roots around in the kitchen, apparently not interested in eating my couscous. Her loss. It was pretty good, even if I didn’t have enough cayenne to make a decent hot sauce.
    The next morning, I am awakened by stomping sounds. I stagger out into the hallway, and there is Charlie, looking fit and sweaty and cute as hell with her ponytail and other interesting parts bobbing up and down as she runs up and down the stairs.
    “What the hell are you doing?” I croak out.
    “I’m running the stairs!” she says.
    “Yeah. Why?”
    She pauses, jogging in place. With great effort, I focus on her eyes, which are not bouncing up and down.