World's Worst Boyfriend: A Romantic Comedy Adventure (Fake It Book 3), Carina Taylor [ebook reader online txt] 📗

maybe I was reading into it too much. Shaking my head, I turned on the dryer, then went and grabbed my purse before heading out the door to my parents’. Wanting to get my mind off of things, I spent the drive there catching up on a past episode of Bee Best.

When I pulled down the gravel driveway, I tried to put behind all worries of Fletcher’s and my relationship. He said he would meet me here, and I was sure he would be only a little late after finishing up a work project.

However, he texted just as I stepped through the front door of my parents’ two-story colonial-style home. I assumed it was to tell me he was halfway to my parents’ or something. Color me shocked when I read what his message said.

Fletcher: Something came up. Rain check?

What? Was he the one about to turn eighty-one? I didn’t think so. Who used the term ‘rain check?’

Fletcher: Tell Glamma I love her.

That only made me madder. He was the only one allowed to call her Glamma. Glamma thought the sun rose and set on Fletcher’s backside. Although, I had to admit, his backside was a nice one. He would be the only one who could skip her birthday dinner and still be forgiven.

“Whatever you’re angry about, you’re about to add a new wrinkle to that forehead of yours.”

I pocketed my phone and tried to iron out the wrinkle that Grandmother—that’s what us minions who were biologically related to her were required to call her—was talking about. She stood in the front hall, a glass of wine in her hand, looking down her nose at me. I was always impressed with her ability to do that since we were basically the same height. I truly hoped it was the only genetic thing I’d inherited from her.

“Something came up and Fletcher isn’t going to be able to make it.” I prepared for the reign of terror…

“Oh, that poor boy. I hope he’s all right,” she replied, as her face melted with concern. “I’ll go text him right now and make sure he doesn’t need me. And stop slouching!”

I straightened my shoulders until she left the room, then resumed my slouching pity party once more. She never texted me to see if I needed her. The only time she texted me was to tell me how she’d rearranged my entire life for me.

It turned out I spent the evening with my family. Alone. Without my boyfriend. I guess I should be grateful that I at least had company tonight, unlike my dinner date, party of one. But this was my family, and things were often tense around them.

My wonderful buffer of a boyfriend. It was something he’d done so well ever since we started dating. He was excellent at directing the conversation and standing up for me in a way that a family feud didn’t break out.

Without him there, however, I entertained questions about my “little decorating hobby.” Not a hobby, thank you very much. It covered my house payment and cost of a cheese pizza quite nicely.

My interior design business was a travesty to my grandmother. I hadn’t even gone to college for it. My Dad could care less since he was color blind, but he’d given me his blessing when he told me if it made me happy, I should do it. My mother…well, let’s just say she was my biggest supporter, and she’s the one who turned me into a design monster by handing me a paint brush at far too young of an age.

I could be around my parents all day long. It was the rest of the family that made it difficult.

Since Grandmother was horribly disappointed with my lack of “reach,” as she called it, she continually hounded me to expand my business. “Turn it into something real, with real employees,” she told me over and over again.

Her dreams of me getting into Juilliard had been crushed, so she’d set her eyes on making me a businesswoman extraordinaire. You would have thought she was the CEO of a Fortune 500 company with the way she pushed me to become a “real” business owner.

My brothers and I looked a lot more like our Dad, his Latino genes won out against my mom’s blonde hair and fair skin. But our similar looks were about all we had in common as siblings.

My oldest brother, Andre, was a professor at the nearby university. Grandmother dubbed him an intellectual. Which somehow ranked him higher on the familial totem pole. While he wasn’t married yet, he’d had the same girlfriend for ten years. We all figured he would propose sometime in the next five. He was not ever one to make a rash decision.

My younger brother, Marco, was pursuing a career as a hotel manager. He still wasn’t managing anything, I think he was a glorified desk clerk, but he did have a wife and a baby on the way, so that made him okay in my grandma’s eyes.

Unfortunately, none of them took my interior design company seriously. Ironically, I knew I made at least twice my brothers’ incomes. While my oldest brother’s girlfriend, Anna, made way more than I did each year, she would always be considered the “brilliant” one since she was a surgeon. Part of the reason they’d dated so long was that she didn’t want to be weighed down by the “burden of marriage” (her words) while she was finishing med school.

I’d never been to surgeon school—was that even what they called it? I was pretty sure it had a special name. And since I didn’t even know what the school was called, I had no room to comment. It was one of those jobs where I hoped the school was incredibly hard. I didn’t want just anyone off the street operating on me. I hoped they had to pass rigorous exams. Maybe hike Kilimanjaro before donning that white jacket. Some type of great feat—not just picking the right