Page 11 of My Fake Date With My Childhood Friend (Port Lane Romances #3)

six

The bell rang loudly at the end of lunch, echoing off the walls of the cafeteria. Alexander stood up, brushing the wrinkles out of his uniform, then held a hand out to me to help me up.

“Thanks,” I said as I got to my feet. I didn't really need the help, but I appreciated it nonetheless. Alexander just nodded in response, seeming almost embarrassed, although I couldn't think of any reason why he would be. He was acting like a perfect boyfriend.

We walked together to our math class, hand in hand.

Alexander didn't let go once, even as we weaved our way between people.

As we walked, I couldn't help but notice all the girls who were giving Alexander flirtatious looks.

He deserved it — he always looked so perfect and handsome, and he was probably one of the most popular kids at school, which only made him more appealing to the ladies.

But even though he and I weren't really dating, I was still a little offended that they were looking at him like that.

I mean, they thought he was my boyfriend, and they knew I'd been cheated on before, and they were still looking at him like that?

“Relax,” Alexander murmured in my ear.

“What?”

“You're grabbing onto my hand so tight that I feel like my fingers are going to pop off.”

“Oh.” I loosened my grip. “Sorry.”

“You okay?” He asked in concern.

“Yeah,” I said. I shook my head and tried to ignore everyone around us. “Yeah, I'm fine,” I said. Even to me, my voice didn't sound convincing, but Alexander didn't say anything else.

When we got to class, I automatically headed to my usual seat in the back of the room, but Alexander had other ideas. He pulled me to the middle of the room and pushed me down in the seat next to him.

“Why here?” I asked with a frown.

“Because this is where I sit,” Alexander said simply. “And I want to sit with my girlfriend.”

“But I usually sit over there,” I said, jerking a thumb over my shoulder. “Which means somebody else usually sits here, and I'm taking their place.”

“Relax, it's just Kyle who usually sits with me,” Alexander said. He stretched his arms out and yawned. “He won't mind. I always move for him when he gets new girlfriends.”

Now that he mentioned it, I did notice that it happened a lot. Kyle always seemed to end up sitting next to a new girl every few weeks.

“Fine,” I sighed. “But if Kyle gets mad, we have to move.”

Alexander just laughed and leaned his head against my shoulder. We sat in silence for a few minutes, just taking in the noise of the room and the people around us. It felt oddly comforting, like I had finally found a place that was mine.

A minute later, Kyle walked into the class.

He didn't even look shocked that I was sitting in his spot.

He winked at us as he went by, then continued on to the back of the class.

I turned around in my seat just in time to see him casually sit in my typical spot and start talking to the girl in the next seat over.

“Told you,” Alexander said smugly.

“Yeah, yeah.” I faced forward again and opened my binder. “I get it. You know everything.”

Alexander tugged on my hair lightly. “Could I get that in writing? Just to remind me when you're not there.”

I shoved his shoulder. “Shut up and get your books out.”

Our teacher walked into the class. Everyone adjusted themselves and stopped everything they were doing, and the class became silent.

“Okay, class, let’s get on with today's lesson,” he said.

He projected his laptop screen onto the whiteboard, and my eyes scanned the mess of notes scrawled on the mundane-looking image.

He started droning on about some concept, but my mind immediately drifted, getting distracted by everything going on around me in class.

Usually, when I was in a class, I easily focused on the teacher and what they were saying.

But today, it was just background noise.

I could hear the rustling of paper as people moved around, the occasional cough or laugh, and most importantly, Alexander's steady breathing next to me.

Two rows ahead of me, Sally was cutting out something that must have been for an art class.

Kyle was whispering with the girl sitting next to him.

She kept throwing her head back to laugh, which felt too showy and over-the-top to me, but hey, what did I know?

Alexander was hunched over, writing so fast that I thought his hand was going to fall straight off his wrist. I looked between him and the board in confusion.

There wasn't enough information up there for him to write that many notes. What was he doing?

I kept watching him for another minute before he finally ripped the paper out of the notebook, folded it up into a little square, and passed it to me. When I looked at him, not knowing what he wanted me to do, he mouthed, 'open it.

I held the paper on my lap so my teacher wouldn't see it and unfolded it.

Joseph's been staring at us all class. Smile and pretend I wrote you a cute note if you want to make him jealous.

I didn't even have to pretend to smile as I read it.

Alexander was smart, and he knew how to play people.

I toyed with the edge of the paper for a second before I folded the letter back up.

I bent over to put the letter in my bag, and as casually as I could manage, I looked down the aisle.

Where everyone else was focused on the board or on their notes — or at least pretending that they were — Joseph was making no effort to hide the glare he was sending my way.

He gripped his pencil so tight that his knuckles were white, and he looked ready to challenge Alexander to a fight.

I sat back up and faced forward, doing my best to hide my smirk.

A moment later, Alexander's hand closed around mine and squeezed gently.

I smiled at him. He was taking this seriously.

It was sad to think, but he was putting more effort into being my fake boyfriend than Joseph had put into being my real one.

He winked at me, then released my hand and turned back to the teacher.

I felt oddly cherished by his actions and to be receiving this kindness and attention from him. I didn’t even expect that much effort from him. Man, if this was what fake dating him was like, I wondered what a real relationship would be like.

A paper ball hit me in the back of my head.

I frowned and looked over my shoulder. Joseph raised his eyebrows at me and pointed at the paper ball, which had landed at my feet.

If I understood his expression correctly, he wanted me to open the note and read it.

I considered it for all of one second before deciding that I didn't want to give him the satisfaction of doing what he wanted.

I flipped my hair over my shoulder and turned back around the face of the front, ignoring the paper by my foot.

A minute later, another one hit the back of my head. I sighed deeply but did my best not to react at all, not even flinching visibly. Same with the third one. When the fourth one hit, I finally picked it up. But instead of reading it myself, I raised my hand.

“Penny!” Joseph hissed from behind me. I ignored him.

“Yes, Miss Owen?” My teacher asked

“Joseph is passing notes, sir,” I said. I held up the paper ball. “I'm finding it very distracting to my learning.”

“Ah.” Mr. Maddox walked up the aisle and took the note from my waiting hand. “Mr. Key, I'm disappointed in you. You're well aware that passing notes is strictly forbidden in my classroom?”

“Yes, sir,” Joseph mumbled. The bell rang.

“We can discuss this more in detention this afternoon,” Mr. Maddox said sternly to Joseph.

“Well played,” Alexander whispered to me. I smirked at Joseph one last time before I sauntered out of the room.

“Penny, will you please get off the couch and help your family?” Mom snapped.

She was trying to wrap tinsel around the Christmas tree with the help of my younger brothers and sister, but even on their tiptoes, they were way too short to help with the pieces at the top.

If anything, they were actually just getting in her way.

“Why?” I asked. “So, I can celebrate some stupid holiday that I don't even like, anyway?”

“But you love Christmas, Penny!” My little sister, Florence, said. “And Dad said that Santa doesn't bring presents to people who don't help out.”

All my siblings who were home were significantly younger than me and still full of Christmas spirit.

I hated to ruin it for them, but I didn't have it in me after this long day to pretend for them.

I would have preferred to just go upstairs and let them decorate in peace, but my mom insisted that I stay downstairs and “be a part of the family,” whatever that meant.

“Well, Santa?—”

“Penny!” Mom snapped, interrupting me. I sighed deeply and stopped talking. I guess she was right that I shouldn't say anything about Santa to my impressionable eight-year-old sister, but that didn’t mean I was happy about it.

“Fine,” I said, getting up from the couch. “I'll help you for a little while, but I'm going to go upstairs and watch TV when it's all over.”

“That's the spirit!” my mom said. It wasn't, but I didn't correct her. I helped my mom pull the boxes of ornaments out of the closet at the top of the basement stairs, grumbling under my breath.

It wasn't that I didn't like Christmas—far from it.

I usually loved the excitement of getting everything ready for Christmas day and opening all the presents.

But this year... well, let's just say that everything seemed to be going wrong in the lead-up to the day.

My mood had sunk so low that all I wanted to do was go to bed early and avoid Christmas altogether.

I helped my mom hang ornaments on the tree and put up the lights, but I was really just going through the motions. My mind was elsewhere, focused on what I was going to do when it was all over.

The doorbell rang.

“I'll get it!” I said, seizing any chance I had to get away from this. I ran to the door and threw it open. “Oh, hi, Francine.”

Francine was my mom's best friend from university. She lived a few streets over, but she and Mom both spent a lot of time at each other's houses.

“Hey, Penny! It's so nice to see you,” Francine said, giving me a warm hug.

“You too,” I said, returning the hug. We pulled away and smiled at each other. “Mom's just in the living room. Come in.”

“Oh, perfect. Thank you.” She took off her jacket and followed me inside. “So, how are you? Alexander tells me that school is really busy right now.”

“Yeah, it is,” I said. I was a little on edge by her mention of her mention of Alexander.

Did she know about our “relationship”? Alexander hadn’t mentioned whether he told her yet.

Based on the way she was talking about him so casually, though, I guessed she didn’t know, and I didn’t want to tell her right then.

“We’re all just waiting for Winter Break. ”

“And Christmas, right?” Francine asked, a twinkle in her eye.

“Yeah,” I said unenthusiastically. “Of course.”

She didn’t seem to pick up on my tone as she smiled and patted my shoulder before going to greet my mom.

I took advantage of everyone being distracted by her entrance and ran upstairs.

I was sure nobody would notice. As one of six children, I was used to being invisible — even when only four of us were home.

Not that I minded too much. Being a middle child meant that I could get away with a lot more than I otherwise would.

But sometimes, I did wish that someone would notice when I left the room or care what I said or thought beyond reminding me that it “Wasn't appropriate for young ears.” Somebody who loved me the way that Joseph claimed to.

It was a pipe dream, though. Who would want to be friends with a loser like me, right?