Page 29 of Fake Skating

Fake dating Alec quickly became the easiest thing in the world.

My favorite part? The way he kept showing up for my library lunches.

Because the truth was that I didn’t necessarily like being alone for that hour, yet I was too scared of the cafeteria to do anything about it.

So seeing him walk in made me feel… like, some kind of way.

Safe.

Happier…?

Not alone.

“Is that a new book?” he asked one day when he showed up at my table looking ten feet tall, towering above me.

“It is,” I said, taking my foot and pushing out the chair across from me. “Where’s your book?”

He gave me a little half smile as he looked down at the chair; then he sat down and unzipped his backpack. “In here, but my book is much fatter than yours, so I’m still working on it.”

“You don’t have to make excuses for being a slow reader,” I teased. “It’s fine.”

“Please, I could totally kick your ass in a speed-reading competition,” he said, pulling out Billy Summers . “Not that something that nerdy has ever been an actual competitive event.”

“Here.” I pulled the sandwich out of my bag and set it on the table in front of him.

“What the hell is this?” he asked, his eyebrows all squished together as he looked down at it.

“What does it look like? It’s a sandwich,” I said, rolling my eyes.

“First of all, what kind of sandwich, because it looks weird,” he said with a smirk. “Second of all, why did you bring me a sandwich?”

“Because an oversized man-child like you is going to starve to death and probably pass out if he doesn’t eat lunch.”

“Are you concerned about me, Collins?” he asked, his voice dropping into a lower octave that made my stomach flip.

“Not at all, but if you pass out like a little old lady and bash your face on the ground, it’ll make Sarah sad, and I would hate that,” I said with an eye roll. “And it’s ham and cheese.”

“It doesn’t look like ham and cheese,” he said with a scowl, holding up the baggie.

“That’s probably because I couldn’t find sandwich fixings in Grandpa Mick’s kitchen, so it’s queso with Spam. And pickles.”

“Are you serious?” He stared harder at the baggie. “You brought me a Spamwich?”

“It was a last-minute idea, and that was all I could find in his fridge,” I said, laughing at his ridiculous word.

I went back to my book, but I could see in my peripheral vision when he took out the sandwich and cautiously raised it to his mouth.

“This is… interesting,” he said in a weird voice as he chewed.

“I’m so happy you think it’s delicious,” I replied, my eyes on the pages of my book.

“I don’t think that’s the word I used,” he said.

He opened his book and started reading, and I couldn’t help but notice he finished the entire sandwich as he read. The fact that he’d wolfed it down made me think he was either more polite than I’d given him credit for, or absolutely starving.

We read in silence for the rest of lunch, but when the bell rang and I looked up from my book, he was watching me with his arms crossed over his chest, a smirk on his mouth.

“What?” I said, closing the book and pushing up my glasses. It was impossible not to smile when he looked at me that way.

“The rest of the world just disappears for you when you’re reading, doesn’t it?”

“Yes, thank God,” I said, nodding and unzipping my bag. “It’s like magic.”

“I bet it is,” he said, and I noticed his book was already put away, his backpack on his back.

“Oh, so you’re already packed up,” I said, a little embarrassed that I’d been that out of it. I quickly shoved my paperback and my water bottle into my bag, zipped it, and stood. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be,” he said, and then he came around the table to slide those fingers between mine yet again.

The familiarity of the move, the way it was beginning to feel natural even though our game was still new, made me look up at his face.

I wanted to see what he was thinking.

“It’s weird, right?” he said quietly, his eyes all I could see as he read my mind the way he always had when we were kids.

I just nodded, too sucked into his gaze to think of words.

The moment held, and the rest of the world just disappeared like magic for a split second.

I watched his Adam’s apple bob around a swallow, and then he said, “We should go.”

“What?” I blinked and realized there was movement everywhere around us. The librarian was carrying a stack of books, students were filing through the hallways, and my heart was pounding in my chest.

“Yes,” I said a little too loudly, clearing my throat and nodding. “We should go.”

We walked out of the library, and just as he let go of my hand because we had to go in two different directions, he leaned down and said, “Hey, thanks for bringing me a sandwich.”

His eyes were a little squinty as he grinned at me.

“Hey, thanks for eating it,” I said, smiling back at him.

“I’ll never look at Spam the same way again.”

I didn’t see him for the rest of the day or after school, since Cassie whisked me away to ride with her to practice.

Being a team manager, so far, had been easy, and I was actually having a good time.

There were still a million things about hockey I didn’t know, but she was making it fun to learn.

Weird, right?

“Do you want to film today, or do you have homework you need to do?”

“I’ll film,” I said, mostly because I knew I wouldn’t be able to focus on homework while Alec was hockeying.

It was becoming a problem. Every day, as soon as I set up the camera and started recording, I couldn’t do anything but watch him play.

I was obsessed.

On each play and on every drill, he played like his life was at stake and the only way he was going to see tomorrow was if he beat the other guy to the puck.

He was beyond impressive.

When the guys finished drills and I was able to hit pause, Cassie walked over and said, “I’ll see you at Vinny’s…?”

“Vinny’s?” I repeated, having zero idea what she was talking about.

“The team dinner is at his house tonight.”

“What? Do hockey managers have to go?” I asked, having no interest whatsoever in going to a team dinner. Me and a table full of obnoxious hockey players I didn’t know?

No, thank you.

“Yeah, it’s mandatory,” she said, and I felt like she was giving me a little side-eye for sounding so disinterested. “For all players, coaches, managers, and trainers.”

“Oh—I didn’t know,” I said dumbly, as if that weren’t obvious.

But I felt stressfully unprepared for this kind of social interaction.

I needed time to mentally prep for outings.

“It’s tradition,” she said as she put on her coat, “and super chill. It’s usually something like pasta or soup, and you just eat a plate and leave. I don’t think I’ve ever stayed for more than an hour.”

“Oh,” I said, my stomach filling with dread.

“Zeus said you’re riding with him.”

“Oh yeah,” I played along, even though I knew we’d discussed this. My stomach sank deeper inside my body at the thought of unwelcome social interaction while playing pretend with Alec—ugh. “I forgot about the whole thing.”

As if on cue, my mom texted at that very minute:

Mom: Sarah says there’s a team dinner after practice tonight—are you going?

I texted: I literally just found out about it. It’s mandatory, apparently.

Mom: Just stick with Alec and you’ll have a great time!

She’d seemed fine with my aversion to social situations before we moved here, but now it was like someone had lit a match under her. It was all the little things she said, her perky suggestions.

You should go!

Maybe you should see if Cassie wants to study with you at Starbucks.

Do you want to have anyone over for the game?

It kind of made me feel like she thought I was a broken weirdo who needed an intervention before my entire life was ruined. I could feel her stress that I wasn’t running around with a group of friends already, but the truth was that all the school bullshit wasn’t worth it.

It wasn’t.

I used to do it. I used to move to a new school and work my ass off for friends and sleepovers, feeling like everything was right and settled when I found people I connected with.

And I’d be the first to admit—that shit felt good .

But eighth grade was a nightmare of mean girls and embarrassment so terrible that I’d been excited to move, and then ninth grade was better but ended up being the worst.

After I left.

Because the awfulness that came with being forgotten felt ten times worse than the discomfort of assimilation.

It was never intentional, the forgetting, but it was always a given.

At some point, you would just literally never hear from your “best friends” again.

I probably would’ve played that soul-crushing game forever if it hadn’t been for Jackson Ford.

I dated him for six months my freshman year— six months.

I’d been head over heels in love with him and it felt like a movie when we were together.

I slept in his COIN sweatshirt every night (before his mom made him get it back because it’d cost a hundred bucks at the concert) and he held my hand in the hallways.

We were inseparable.

I’d seen literal tears in his eyes when we said goodbye and I moved away.

We talked on the phone and texted continuously. FaceTimed whenever we could.

But after about a month, he sounded different when I called. I convinced myself I was paranoid, but something was off.

And suddenly I was the only one calling.

That should’ve had me prepared for the end, but I’d been stunned when I’d seen the Instagram post making him and Olivia Lowell official.

It was a picture of them grinning at the movie theater, holding hands, and he was wearing the COIN sweatshirt that had once been my uniform for dreaming.

They were a couple.

It absolutely destroyed me, but the realization that he hadn’t even felt the need to break up with me was what shattered every little piece of my heart. I’d been so forgotten that it hadn’t even occurred to him that he needed to end our relationship before starting another one.

I was just somebody that he used to know.