Riding the Pilot (Fake Marriage) Read online

  Riding the Pilot

  A Fake Marriage Romance

  Jillian Riley

  Contents

  Foreword

  Prologue

  1. A Day in the Life

  2. All Aboard

  3. Sleeping Dogs

  4. Martha’s Vineyard

  5. Surprise, I’m Home

  6. It’s Getting Hot In Here

  7. A Little Ditty About Dash and Diane

  8. Decisions, Decisions

  9. Dashed Hopes

  10. This Girl Is On Fire

  11. Splitting Off

  12. A Right to Know

  13. Coming Clean

  14. Hatching a Plan

  15. Integrity

  16. Options

  17. It’s All Relative

  18. Space A

  19. This Neck of the Woods

  20. Hot AF

  21. To the Max

  22. Intensive Care

  23. Let Go

  24. Chosen Family

  25. Nurse Corden

  26. Imagination

  27. Too Good to be True

  28. This Changes Everything

  29. Cher the Love

  30. No Room for Hate

  31. Gordon, We Have a Problem

  32. Leaving San Diego

  33. Fishing in Alabama

  34. Puzzle Pieces

  35. One Last Thing

  Epilogue

  Afterword

  © Copyright 2019 - All rights reserved.

  It is not legal to reproduce, duplicate, or transmit any part of this document in either electronic means or in printed format. Recording of this publication is strictly prohibited and any storage of this document is not allowed unless with written permission from the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locations is purely coincidental.

  Foreword

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  Check out my last series “Kissing the Alpha”

  Prologue

  “Peter!” His mother’s voice got madder and madder every time she said his name. “Peter Gordon. I know you can hear me.”

  He could hear her, alright. He was just ignoring her.

  “Pete. For Christ’s sake. Answer your mother.” That was his father, and he was likely standing at the top of the stairs that led into the basement where Pete lived.

  “I can’t come up right now. I’m in the middle of something.” What he was in the middle of was flying an airplane over the city of Los Santos in the video game Grand Theft Auto. It was not easy to do, and if he wasn’t careful, he would crash a very expensive airplane.

  He heard their footsteps coming down the stairs, both of them, and knew where this was going. He landed the plane so he could pause the game and listen to the lecture he knew he was about to get.

  His mother looked like she’d been crying and his dad looked angry. He always looks angry, Pete thought.

  “Please pause the game.” His father had his “stern” voice on.

  “I already did. What’s up?”

  They just stood there, staring down at him, and he became acutely aware of the condition of his room. Soda cans littered the coffee table, the couch that he’d been using as a bed for the last two years after he’d gotten kicked out of college still had his blanket and pillow on it. There were clothes strewn everywhere because he hadn’t gotten around to stuffing everything in the hamper and dragging it up to the laundry room. And the old TV he was using to play GTA had a layer of dust on it that was so thick you could write your name on it.

  “You tell us.” His father suddenly looked old to Pete. I guess working for twenty years in a soul-sucking job will do that to you. “How is the job search going?”

  “Dad. We’ve talked about this before. I’m putting in applications online. I’m sure it’s breaking news to you that no one wants to hire a 21-year-old college dropout.”

  His mother brushed some cookie crumbs off the couch cushion and sat down. “What kinds of jobs have you been applying for?”

  “Things that I’m willing to do. I’ve applied at Game Day, the record store at the mall, and…”

  His father interrupted. “Pete. You can’t just apply for the jobs you want. Don’t you think everyone wants to work at a fun place like a video game or record store? When your sister started looking for jobs…”

  “Yeah, yeah. I know. She spent all day long walking around filling out applications until she finally got a job at YogaBerry and then she worked there while she was going to school. You’ve told me this a thousand times.” Pete’s twin sister, Diane, had always been their parents’ favorite. That’s because I’ve always been the fuck-up.

  His father sighed heavily and ran his hand through his thinning hair. “Okay, son. Let me put it to you this way. Your mother and I have been talking, and we have decided that it’s time for some tough love.”

  Pete looked at his mom. That’s why she was crying.

  “Here’s how it’s going to be. You have two weeks to either get a job, return to school, or join the military. At the end of the 14 days, we will be changing the locks to the house. You will only receive a house key if you show us that you are doing something to move forward with your life.”

  “You’re kicking me out on the street?” Pete was shocked.

  His mother answered. “No. But, you have been sitting down here for two years doing nothing but playing video games, eating our food, and wasting your life. You are a smart boy with so much potential. We can’t let you keep wasting it like this.”

  “Where am I supposed to go?” Pete couldn’t believe they were doing this.

  “That’s up to you, son. I recommend the military. Your uncle Sean was on a very bad path, and the military turned his life around.”

  Pete had been hearing about Uncle Sean and the military his whole life. The last thing he wanted was to have some dude yelling in his face and making him use his toothbrush to clean a toilet. No, thank you.

  Pete was furious. He threw the controller down as he stood up, and said, “This is bullshit. You know I’ve been trying to get a job. It wasn’t my fault I flunked out of college. You’re acting like this is easy for me too.”

  Grabbing his wallet and stuffing it in his jeans, he headed for the stairs. “You know what? Fine. Maybe I will join the military and get sent to some god awful place in the world, and I’ll never come home.”

  Pete stomped up the stairs, leaving his parents staring up at him as he slammed the door shut.

  Fuck them, he thought.

  An hour later, Pete and his best friend Mike were in Mike’s apartment making their way through a case of beer and the last bit of weed Pete had.

  “Dude. That sucks. I’d hook you up with a job at Electronics City, but we actually just fired a bunch of people. We got bought out, and there were redundancies.” Mike used air quotes when he said the word redundancies.

  “It’s almost impossible to get a job without a college degree.”

  “Why don’t you just go back to school? Study cosmetology or something just to get your parents off your ass.”

  Pete laughed. “Cosmetology? Give me that pipe. You’re obviously too high. You think I’m going to become Paul Mitchell or something?”

  “Who?”

  “He’s the guy on the shampoo bottles.” Pete sighed. “Nevermind.” He set the pipe down and reached for another piece of pizza.

  “Maybe I’ll just start calling you Fantastic Sam.”

  “Stop it! Thi
s is serious.” It was hard to sound serious with pizza stuffed in your mouth, though. “I hate school. I’m not going back.”

  “Okay, so what are you going to do, then? You haven’t been able to get a job in two years, so it’s not really likely that you’ll get one in two weeks. If you’re not doing school, then that leaves the military.”

  “No way. Not the military.”

  “Why not, man? You could become a pilot.”

  Pete took another hit off the pipe. Being a pilot didn’t sound half bad, actually. But, it was everything he’d have to go through to become one.

  “Maybe I’ll apply to join the military, and get them to reject me. That way my parents can stop harping on that, and it will buy me time to get an actual job.”

  “How are you going to get them to reject you? You’re a strapping young man.”

  Pete batted his eyes at Mike. “Why thank you. You’re not so bad yourself.”

  “Shut up. I mean they have no reason to reject you.”

  “What if I lied on my application? They’d reject me for that.”

  “Like what kind of lie?” Mike got up to grab Pete’s pipe.

  “I could say I don’t use drugs.”

  “Weed is legal now. They’re not going to reject you for that as long as you’re not using when you’re actually in the military.”

  “Well, then, maybe I’ll say I’m married.”

  “That’s not illegal either.” Mike’s eyes were starting to water from the smoke in his apartment. Too bad they were too broke to buy a vape pen.

  “No, but lying about it on my application might be enough to get me disqualified.”

  “Bro. That’s brilliant. Who’s gonna be your wife? Charlize Theron is pretty hot.”

  “She’s almost as old as my mom!” Pete made a face. “No, what about…” After thinking for a moment, there was only one face that popped into his mind. “Kelly?”

  “Kelly, your sister’s best friend Kelly?”

  “Yeah. She’s hot.” He’d liked her for reals ever since they were freshmen in high school.

  “She’d never marry you. She’s out of your league.”

  “Mike, this is a fake marriage. She’ll never know. I’ll fill out the application online, say I’m married, they’ll find out I’m not, disqualify me, and then I can tell my parents I tried.”

  Mike belched loudly before taking another swig of beer. “Sounds risky to me, man. But, it’s your call.”

  1

  A Day in the Life

  The alarm went off at 0600, but Pete was already awake. It was Wednesday, which meant it was PT day, and he had to get his workout in before starting duty at 0900.

  His housing was about ten minutes from the gym, and since he’d laid out both his uniform and his workout gear last night, he could hit the snooze button for seven minutes.

  It was mornings like this that he was glad he’d chosen the Air Force instead of one of the other branches. Sure, he had to live on base, but he only had one other roommate in the apartment instead of living in a barracks with twenty guys like the other branches had. Pete’s roommate, Brian “Coop” Cooper was a good guy and easy to live with. Some of the other guys were, well, more challenging to have as roomies.

  The biggest issue with Coop was that he was an early riser. And, by “early,” it meant that he was out for a morning run at 0330. “I just got used to it in basic and never got over it,” Coop had said when Pete had complained about it the first morning.

  Pete, on the other hand, resumed sleeping in until the lazy hour of 0600 as soon as he’d gotten out of Basic Military Training. It still shocked him that he’d been able to go from a lazy, flabby kid to someone who could run ten miles and now sported six-pack abs. When he was living in his parents’ basement all those years, the only six-pack he had was the beer he shared with Mike every weekend.

  The alarm went off again, and Pete turned it off and got out of bed. Heading into the kitchen, he started some coffee and began throwing various fruits and vegetables into the blender for his morning smoothie. He made it a habit to get as much nutrition in before PT, in case things got delayed and he didn’t get to eat again before work.

  As soon as he hit the stop button on the blender, Coop came out of the bathroom. His bald head was shining, and he was wiping it down with a towel after his shave. Upon seeing Pete whipping up his morning smoothie, Coop shook his head. “How many times I got to tell you, Dash, all those vegetables are not good for you. You need protein. Like tuna or something.”

  Pete had picked up the nickname “Dash” in basic training, not because he could outpace everyone at running, but because of an unfortunate incident with food poisoning when he was on leave in Mexico. Unfortunately, the nickname had stuck. But, when Dash was flirting with the girls, he told them it was because he was a fast runner.

  “You want me to put tuna in a smoothie? That’s just disgusting.”

  “It’s no more disgusting than kale and tofu. Being a vegetarian slows you down.” Coop laughed and went to the fridge to pull out his daily ration of hard-boiled eggs.

  “Speak for yourself. I run faster as a vegetarian than I ever did when I ate meat.” Ever since the Mexican Taco Incident, Dash had stopped eating any form of meat. To say that his family was unsupportive of the decision would be an understatement.

  “But what about my famous meatloaf?” His mother had said, literally in tears. “And Thanksgiving. No turkey? No Christmas ham? How could you reject your mother’s food?”

  His father hadn’t been much better. “You’re eating that rabbit food? I guess you Airmen aren’t real men like your uncle Sean and his army buddies.” Dash still couldn’t please his father. First, it was that he was a slacker who couldn’t get a job and then when he finally did join the military, it wasn’t the right branch.

  Even Mike would tease him by sending text message photos of all his favorite foods. “I’m saving some of these ribs for you, pal.”

  Only his sister Diane had been supportive of his choice to stop eating meat. “Good for you, dude. Maybe I’ll try it, too.”

  Pouring the smoothie into a portable container, Dash grabbed his keys and headed out the door. On Wednesdays, PT was held at a park, and he wanted to get there early to get some warm-ups in before everyone else arrived. Although it was kind of a joke in the military that the Air Force’s physical standards weren’t the same as, say, the Marines, Dash still wanted to be as good as anyone in any branch. So, he worked harder and longer than just about anyone else he knew.

  Two hours later, Dash was showered and shaved and on his way into work. Listening to country music in his truck, he passed a group of guys going on their morning run in the light rain. It’s gonna be a hot one again today. Life in Montgomery, Alabama was far different than growing up in San Diego. It was a small, rural community, which took some getting used to. While the townsfolk loved the military, there wasn’t a lot to do for a guy in his mid-twenties. Most of the activities in town were sponsored by churches since there was a strong Christian presence in the community.

  Dash’s mother kept encouraging him to get involved. “Peter,” she said, refusing to use his nickname. “You should go to church. You could meet a nice girl and give me the grandchildren that your sister seems to be refusing to give me.”

  “Mom, she’s not refusing to give you grandkids, she’s not in a relationship. You want her to use a sperm donor?”

  “Good lord, Peter! The things you say. I’m just saying, a little church never hurt anyone.”

  Dash had been stationed at Maxwell AFB for a year and a half now, and while he didn’t particularly love Alabama, he did really enjoy his work in TACP. Joining the Tactical Air Control Party as a specialist was the best decision he’d ever made, and he absolutely loved it. Timing an air strike on the right target at the precise moment it was needed was something he discovered he was really good at. “Must have been all those video games,” Mike had joked.

  At the moment, he was enl
isted but had been thinking about becoming commissioned as an officer. Fortunately for him, he could now stay in TACP even as an officer. As recently as ten years ago, guys had to choose between TACP and a commission. Now, he could stay in the field he loved and also become a commissioned officer.

  That’s the primary reason he’d requested this assignment at Maxwell. He’d passed the Officer Aptitude Assessment, the specialty training courses, and all the other stuff that preceded admission into Officer Training School. Now, he was just waiting to hear from his commanding officer if he was going to write him a letter of recommendation.

  As if the guy had read his mind, Dash’s CO stuck his head in his office as he was walking to his own. “Gordon. Meet me in my office at 0935.” Without waiting for a response, he kept walking.

  Looks like he’s made up his mind.

  2

  All Aboard

  Kelly didn’t think Diane was there yet. They were having lunch at the Fish Market in downtown San Diego, and she didn’t see Diane’s Subaru in the parking lot.

  Kelly Jennings and Diane Gordon had been best friends since the first day of their freshman year at Torrey Pines High School. Diane’s name had been printed wrong on her schedule, and so they’d assigned Kelly Jennings and ‘Diane Jordon’ to the same homeroom class. The funny thing was, Diane’s twin brother Pete had the right name on his paperwork. “How can they mess up twins?” she’d asked.