Page 7 of My Fake Date With My Childhood Friend (Port Lane Romances #3)

“Thank you very much,” he said, bowing as much as he could while sitting. Then he stretched his arms above his head and yawned. “Anyway, I think we've got enough rules for now. We can deal with anything else as it comes up.”

“Agreed,” I said with a nod.

“Perfect.” He jumped up. “Now, let's go devour those brownies.”

I glanced over the list and the rules one more time.

All of this did seem like a lot of work to convince everyone we were together.

But if this was what it took to get Joseph off his high horse — and everyone to stop talking about him cheating on me — then so be it.

They all needed some shiny new gossip to talk about, and we were giving it to them.

It was time to get to work. Falcon High didn’t know what was about to hit them.

The front door opened with a loud bang, making me jump and accidentally write a huge line across the middle of my paper.

“Crap,” I muttered. I grabbed an eraser from my pencil case and started diligently fixing my mistake.

Who opened the door like that, anyway? Definitely not my parents.

They always made such a fuss about it when my brother Charlie would — wait.

I dropped my textbook on my bed and grabbed my phone to check the date. It was December 15th! Charlie was home!

As if on cue, he yelled, “I'm home! Is anybody here?”

I jumped off my bed and ran out of my room as quickly as possible. My little brother Carter almost knocked me over as he ran past me at full speed.

“Hey! Wait for me!” I called as I ran after them.

It didn’t surprise me that everyone else was just as excited as me to see Charlie.

It was his first year at university and none of us were used to him being gone.

He always seemed to bring a little bit of magic into our lives, especially around Christmas time.

When I got to the bottom stairs, Charlie had already swept up all three of my younger siblings in a hug.

He shook them around a little, making them all giggle, then put them back down.

“Want your presents?” Charlie asked.

“Yeah!” They all cried. He held a large cloth bag out to them. As the oldest, Carter grabbed the bag and ran to the living room, leaving Flo and Benjamin to follow.

“Welcome home, Charlie!” Mom said, giving him a hug.

“Thanks Mom,” Charlie replied. “It's good to be home.”

“I’m in the middle of making your favourite dinner,” she said, patting his cheek. “Hope you’re hungry!”

“Always,” Charlie said with a grin. Mom nodded and headed off to the kitchen, leaving Charlie and me alone in the foyer. He held his arms open. “C’mere.”

I jumped off the step and let him pull me into a tight hug.

The Christmas sweater that he was wearing (because of course he was) was itchy, but I didn’t let it bother me enough to pull away.

Although Charlie and I hadn’t been very close as kids, we’d gotten much closer in the year that we were at high school together.

Sometimes, I wished we hadn’t because it made it so much harder to say goodbye to him when he left for school.

When everything happened with Joseph, Charlie was the one person I wanted to talk to about it, but I didn’t want to bother him when he was so busy.

“It’s good to have you home,” I said.

“It’s good to be home,” Charlie replied. He pulled back from the hug and held my face in his hands for a second. “I swear you’ve grown up since Thanksgiving.”

I laughed. “I don’t think I’m growing much these days.”

“No… I guess you’re not.” For some reason, he looked a little sad. Then he cleared his throat and put his hands in his pockets. “So, I heard about Joseph.”

The words forcibly sucked all the joy from my body. The smile dropped off my face, and I started to turn around towards the kitchen. I didn’t want to talk about Joseph right now. Not when everyone was so happy about Charlie being home.

“Screw Joseph,” I said with more confidence than I felt. “He’s dead to me.”

“Good.” Charlie grabbed my arm and held me back from walking toward the kitchen. “But if you ever need to talk, I’m here, okay?”

I nodded, not trusting myself to speak. I wanted to tell him about what had happened at lunch today and the situation I’d gotten myself into; to ask him for help because he was my big brother, and he always knew what to do.

But I wasn’t sure I could get the word out without crying yet, and I was worried that if I started crying now, I would never stop.

“Dad’s going to be home from work any minute,” I said instead. My dad always worked late into the evening, so we tried to eat as soon as he got home. “I should go set the table for dinner.

Charlie nodded and let go of my arm. He followed me deeper into the house, but when I veered toward the kitchen, he went into the living room with the kids.

That wasn’t surprising in the least; he was so good with them, especially my sister, Flo.

I think she and Charlie got along so well because they were both the middle kids.

I was technically a middle kid too, but in a different way.

Charlie, my oldest brother Elliot, and I were all from my mom’s first marriage, which was why we were so close in age.

Then, she got remarried a little while later and had Carter, then Flo, and finally Benjamin.

Charlie was the middle child of the first set of kids and Flo was the middle child of the second set, which were probably the worst kids to be in a family of eight.

I wasn’t much better either, but at least I got to be the youngest for seven years, until Carter came along.

Dad came home just as I finished putting the last plate on the table.

Within minutes, we were all sitting and eating like a big happy family, minus Elliot, because he had to be at school until three days before Christmas.

Charlie started filling everyone in on his first semester of college and what he had been doing.

I could tell that he was tired, but he was so happy to be home that it didn't matter.

My December still wasn’t going the way I wanted it to, but at least with Charlie home again; it was starting to feel just a little bit more like Christmas.