She had really done it. I couldn't believe her nerve!

There sitting on the kitchen table was a catalog, but not just any catalog. Oh no. It was a mail-order boyfriend catalog. What. The. Fuck.

"Mom?" I asked, not able to draw my eyes away from the glossy white cover. "What is that?"

"It's a catalog." She answered me so calmly – like we were talking about the weather.

"Perhaps I should rephrase. Why is that on our kitchen table?" Even I cringed at the venom hanging on my words.

"It's for you. You really need a boyfriend, honey. I think it'd be good for you." My eyes finally drifted to her with a look of absolute horror in them. She just sipped her coffee and glanced up from the paper with a small smile. I couldn't believe her.

"No." That was all I could manage. I was practically speechless from her words. My mother was eccentric, but I didn't think she was that weird.

"Don't 'no' me. You are twenty one years old and you have never had a boyfriend. I'm never going to have grandchildren at this rate!" My jaw slackened. Maybe she was that weird.

"I have had a boyfriend! I dated Randy in my senior year!" I protested, but she gave me a knowing look over the tops of her glasses.

"You never went on a date with him, you hardly spoke to him, and you never kissed. He was not a boyfriend in my book."

"Well, this isn't your book we're talking about. This is mine." I huffed and ran a hand through my limp brown hair.

"Darling, you're a successful and attractive young woman! You want a family. I don't understand why you're so vehemently against going out and flirting and picking up guys. You are though, so I decided to help you out. Look through the magazine and pick out whichever boys you think are attractive and we'll set up meetings."

"You. Are. Crazy." I ground out each word, my jaw aching with the effort. "I will not order myself a boyfriend out of a catalog!"

"Fine. I'll do it for you. I know your type anyway." Oh my God. She wasn't listening! I was going to strangle her.

"None of them will meet my standards. Don't even bother."

She smirked. She had the nerve to smirk at me. "We'll see about that." She grabbed the catalog and her coffee and strode out of the room. I collapsed into a chair and rested my head on the table with a groan. My mother was absolutely insane. I hoped to God it wasn't hereditary.

-#-

And that was how my love life went from bad to worse.

Shortly after my little morning chat with my mother she came back to tell me that she set up a meeting for me with a boy that she thought was 'just perfect' for me. I grimaced, but she seemed to take it as a smile. She pat my head and handed me a piece of paper that told me the details of the meeting.

Where: Webster Theater

My mother was beyond insane. She arranged for us to meet at a concert… seriously? That's what Webster Theater held. Concerts. Rock concerts usually. Who arranged meetings at concerts? Oh, well. At least it would be harder to talk to the boy there… and easier to avoid him even.

When: Friday June 20th at 6:00 pm

Great. The concert was at six. Webster Theater was at least an hour and a half away. I'd be spending my whole evening out with some stranger on a Friday. Fan-fucking-tastic.

Name: Macen Holstead

What a weird name. I already knew I hated him. One of my rules – no dating guys with weird names. I mean after Randy (what kind of name is Randy?), I was thoroughly put off boys with names other than John, Alex, Mike, Matt, Tim, Steve, or Joe. Normal names were key. Macen was not a normal name. Maybe if it was spelled Mason I'd be a little more lenient, but it wasn't. So I wasn't. End of story.

There was a little blurb after the three listings that said Macen had black hair and was about six foot four. No doubt that was supposed to help me identify him in the crowd, but there were a lot of tall black haired boys at concerts and I was a terrible judge of distance – meaning six foot four meant nothing to me. I couldn't tell a six foot four person from a six foot person or a six foot eight person to save my life.

Oh, yeah. This was going to be one hell of a fun date!

Maybe I could coincidentally end up working that night and avoid the thing all together. I thought I'd try it, but my mom was a step ahead. She had already bought my ticket and handed it to me over dinner that night. I sighed. I couldn't end up working that night after my mom already spent the money to buy me the ticket. As infuriating as she was, I loved her enough to appreciate things like her buying me a concert ticket. Even if it was a ticket to a concert I didn't want to go to.

Well it wasn't so much that I didn't want to go to the concert. I loved concerts. It was the meeting the concert was a mask for that bothered me. I grudgingly accepted the ticket and finished my meal before going to sulk up in my room. I should have stayed at school for the summer term. Why did I come home again? It was my last summer before I graduated university. Surely I could have handled it like all the others. I could have taken the summer term and have finished school in December, but no. I chose to come home. Stupid, stupid, stupid!

Oh, well. The damage was done. I'd just go to the concert, meet the boy, decide I didn't like him, and be done with it.

-#-

Unfortunately my mother had other plans. She came with me. My mother came to a concert with me. A concert where I was supposed to be meeting a potential boyfriend. God I felt like a complete loser. My fifty-something mother tagging along as I stood awkwardly in the middle of the floor looking around for a boy that didn't show up – now why would that make me feel like a loser?

Yes, you read correctly. He never showed up. At least not as far as I knew... My mother was supposed to help me identify him, but she said she didn't see him when I asked. Great. I got stood up by a mail-order boyfriend. How pathetic was that?

Sighing, I decided that that was just my luck. So I would enjoy the concert without the boy. He made it easier for me that way. Now I didn't have to make excuses to my mother for why I didn't want to see him again.

Of course it couldn't be that easy though.

A small no name band played first. Then another. Except before the second one started playing the lead guitarist stepped up to the microphone and smiled out at the crowd, not saying a word at first. He was gorgeous. Short, spiky black hair, tall, what looked to be a subtly muscular frame. He was dressed in jeans that sat at his hips without the aid of a belt and were loose fitting everywhere else – so much better than all the boys with pants down around their knees. You could see about an inch of his boxer (which happened to be green plaid by the way), but I could ignore that since his jeans fit properly and he probably meant for them to show for whatever reason. His shirt wasn't big on him, but it wasn't too small either. I'd say it gave him a good two inches of room. It showed he had something going on under there, but it left plenty to the imagination.

I had never fallen so completely in lust with a guy the first time I saw him before. This boy was my dream man though. Well, almost. I needed to see his eyes before I could say that for sure. Why did he have to be up on stage? It made him so untouchable it seemed. I sighed to myself and watched him as his gaze swept over the audience once more.

"Hey, everyone." Even his voice was gorgeous. Shit. "I'm Macen Holstead and we're Shatterclass. Totally psyched to be here tonight! Hope you guys – and gals – are just as psyched to be here with us!" The crowd was surprisingly receptive to the no name band. It almost brought me out of my shocked stated, but not quite.

In my head I was repeating his words. "I'm Macen Holstead and we're Shatterclass." "I'm Macen Holstead." "Macen Holstead." Cheesus Christ on a whole wheat cracker! He did not just say he was the boy who stood me up, did he?! My heart was hammering on my ribcage like mad. Beside me my mother tugged on my shirt. I turned and saw her smirking as she watched the band start playing.

I stared at her a moment and then turned my attention to the band too. They were good, or I gathered they were from the movement of the crowd, but my ears seemed to have stopped working. I was just staring at Macen in complete disbelief, the rest of the world lost on me for a moment – until his eyes somehow locked with mine. It was only for a brief second, but the world rushed back in along with the deafening sound of his band. I swayed on my feet, but regained my balance quickly enough.

Macen Holstead was the Godly guitarist of a rock band. My mail-order boyfriend was… gorgeous… and a guitarist. Fuck. Didn't I have a rule about not dating musicians? No? Maybe? I couldn't seem to think straight.

Let me be your ecstasy, your bitter sweet relief

I'll wrap you up and spin you 'round until the world is upside down

Somehow I had the sinking suspicion that Macen Holstead would definitely turn my world upside down.

A/N: So here's a crazy little fiction story for you with mail-order boyfriends! XD It actually came to me because my flatmate and I were joking around about how it would be great if you could just flip through a catalog and pick out a boyfriend. I mean they have mail-order brides, so why not? Haha. We planned it all out as a fall back plan if our current majors don't work out for us. We're weird. We know. This story probably won't be too long, just something silly I thought I'd write up when I got the idea. Not much planning to it. Heh. Anyway, read and review?