Page 14 of My Fake Date With My Childhood Friend (Port Lane Romances #3)

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“I’m home!” I called as we took off our jackets. “And… I’ve got a surprise!”

“A surprise?” Florence yelled. She came running down the hall from the kitchen, sliding into her socks. “Hi, Alexander!”

“Easy, Flo!” I said. She tried to stop as she reached me but ended up barreling straight into Alexander's legs. Her head collided with his stomach, knocking the breath out of him. A second later, they both dissolved into laughter.

“You all right, Flo-Flo?” Alexander asked.

“Yeah,” she giggled. She grabbed his hand and started pulling him into the house. “Come on. We're making cookies!”

As Alexander got pulled away, he grabbed my hand and pulled me along with them.

I stumbled a little but didn't let go. We walked into the kitchen on this train, with Flo leading the way.

My mom was sitting at the edge of the kitchen table, with Charlie and Carter on one side and Benjamin and an empty chair on the other that was probably reserved for Florence.

Mom was wearing a white apron with a red J embroidered on the pocket that I'd gifted her for Christmas a few years ago. Her long, brown hair was pulled back into a tidy bun, and she had a smear of flour on her face that made it obvious she'd been the one baking the dough.

She smiled happily at us when we walked in.

“Well, if it isn't Alexander Rigby!” She said. She stood up and walked over to us. Flo seemed to lose interest, and she dropped Alexander's hand to sit at the table again. “What are you doing here?”

“Well, Penny and I were thinking of watching a Christmas movie,” Alexander said.

“Oh, that sounds lovely!” Mom said. She tilted her head. “I didn't know you two were friends. Francine is going to be thrilled.”

Francine was Alexander's mom and my mom's best friend. They'd met in college and stayed close since then, to the point of being each other's maid of honour, trying to have kids around the same time so we would be the same age, and spending every holiday together.

“I think she'll be more than thrilled,” Alexander said. He held up our interlocked hands. “Because we're not just friends.”

“Oh, my goodness!” Mom's hands flew to her mouth, and she looked at us with tears in her eyes. “Oh, this is great! Have you told your mom yet, Alex?”

Very few people in the world were allowed to call him Alex, and my mom was one of them.

“Not yet,” Alexander said. “You're welcome to if you want, though.”

“Of course, I want to!” Mom said. “Sit down! Help the kids decorate cookies before you watch your movie.”

She ushered us into the empty seats at the opposite end of the table and then ran upstairs.

“She won't be down for hours,” I said. When Mom and Francine got to talking, there was almost nothing that could end the conversation.

Alexander snorted. “Trust me, I know.”

Carter passed us some cookie dough and cutters.

We quickly got to work, with Alexander rolling out dough and using the cookie cutter.

We kept doing that for about twenty minutes, laughing along with the kids as they joked around.

I loved how much Alexander got along with my siblings.

If there was ever a time that Elliot, Charlie, and I couldn’t do something for them, Alexander always stepped up to the plate.

Last December, he went with my mom to take the kids to meet Santa, he came over on snow days to keep them entertained, and he often helped my dad and Elliot leave Santa’s “Tracks” for the kids to find on Christmas morning.

He was already like a part of the family — no wonder my mom was so excited by the idea of us being together.

“How did I let you talk me into watching this?” I asked. It was an hour after we'd gotten to my house, and we were sitting on the couch, watching some Christmas movie I'd never heard of before.

“The Santa Clause is a classic!” Alexander said.

He took a handful of popcorn from the tub on my lap.

I'd been planning to just make microwave popcorn, but Mom had my sister on using our popcorn machine.

She'd gotten it years ago, even though Dad said we'd never use it, and she brought it out whenever she had the chance.

“Honestly, I can't believe you've never seen it. What other movies haven’t you seen?”

I shrugged. “Probably a lot. We rewatch the same five movies every year.”

“Oh, man.” Alexander shook his head. “I’ve got some work to do, then. You need to see all the Christmas classics.”

“We don’t have the time,” I said. “There’s only what… two weeks to Christmas?”

“Sounds like we need to do a Christmas movie marathon, then,” he said.

“A marathon?”

“Yeah! My place this weekend,” he said. “I bet my mom would even let you sleep over.”

I raised my eyebrows. “You think your mom would let your girlfriend sleepover?”

I had slept over at his house many times when my parents went away overnight since we didn’t have any other close friends or family nearby, but I hadn’t done that since I was a kid.

I was sure his parents still would have been happy for me to sleep over before, but now that we were “dating,” it was a little more up in the air.

“Fair point. I’ll broach it carefully,” Alexander said. “But either way, we will watch as many Christmas movies as possible this weekend. And any that we don’t get done then, we’ll watch once the break starts. I’d like to see you still not be in the Christmas spirit by the end of that.”

“Wanna bet?”

“You know, I want to say yes,” Alexander said, “but even when the odds are stacked in my favour, I always seem to lose bets to you.”

“It’s my superpower,” I said.

“That it is,” he laughed. He paused the movie. “I’ll be right back. I’m just going to the bathroom.”

“Use the one downstairs,” I said.

With expertise that came from spending every New Year’s Eve of his life in our basement, he headed straight for the hidden doorway and went downstairs.

I put the bucket of popcorn on the coffee table and opened Candy Crush on my phone to pass the time.

I barely got through two moves, though, before Charlie came running into the room, jumped over the back of the couch, and landed on the cushion next to me.

“So, you and Alexander are dating now, huh?”

“Yes,” I said carefully. I hated lying to Charlie. Not to mention, I was utterly terrible at it. My palms started sweating, and I ran my hands along my pants anxiously.

“Since when do you two hang out?”

“We’ve always been friends.”

“I’ve never seen you interact outside of holidays.”

I shrugged. “We just ran into each other one day, and he ended up asking me out. And you know that I’ve had a crush on him forever.”

“I didn’t, actually,” Charlie said. Huh. I guess I hadn’t shared as much with him as I thought.

“Oh, well, I have,” I blurted. I bit my lip and looked at him. Unlike everyone else, he didn’t seem over the moon about Alexander and me. Why not? “It's great, isn't it?”

“I guess,” Charlie said, not sounding convinced.

“Everything okay?”

He looked at me intently. “Are you sure you're ready to start dating again?”

I recoiled. “What?”

“I'm just worried you're not as over Joseph as you think you are.”

“You don't even live at home, Charlie,” I snapped. “How would you know if I'm over him or not?”

“Hey, I didn't mean to insult you! It's just that... Mom told me you threw out all his stuff after you caught him with Nikki,” Charlie said. “But when we were in your room the other day, I noticed that you still had the necklace Joseph gave you for your birthday.”

My heart ached as I thought of the necklace.

It was a heart-shaped locket with a J on the front.

When on, the pendant sat on my breastbone, or as I liked to view it, as close to my heart as possible.

Inside, it was a faded photo of Joseph and me from a photo booth at a school fair.

I'd ripped it off as I stormed away from Joseph and Nikki the day I found them.

I felt pretty empty without it every day, but I'd broken the chain, so even if I wanted to wear it again, I couldn't. Regardless, my keeping the necklace meant nothing about my feelings for Joseph.

I just felt bad getting rid of such a thoughtful and expensive gift, regardless of how the relationship had gone.

“That has nothing to do with anything,” I said tightly.

I didn't care about defending my relationship with Alexander or convincing Charlie that it was all right that I moved on — I wasn't really dating him, so it didn't matter whether I was in the right space to be in a relationship right now.

But I'd be damned if I let anyone insinuate that I was in any way not over Joseph.

“He was your first boyfriend, Penny,” Charlie said. “It’s okay to be heartbroken.”

“I’m not heartbroken!” I yelled, throwing a handful of popcorn at him. It didn’t have the impact I would have preferred, but I didn’t have anything else in arm’s reach. I jumped to my feet, hands clenched in fists. “Just mind your own business, Charlie!”

He stood up too. “I’m just watching out for you, Penny! I don’t want to see you get hurt. Or hurt Alexander by stringing him along.”

“You’ve got a lot of nerve saying that, Charlie.”

“Penny—”

I shook my head and headed for the stairs to the basement. Alexander and I could finish watching the movie down there, away from my brother’s judgemental eyes.

“Leave me alone, Charlie. I don’t want to hear it.”