Page 9 of My Fake Date With My Childhood Friend (Port Lane Romances #3)

Nikki huffed and crossed her arms. “You know, Penny, there was a time we told each other everything.”

My blood started boiling at the familiar line she used every time she wanted my support for something. “Yeah, so I wonder why you didn’t tell me you were making out with my boyfriend in the bleachers every day after lunch, and I had to find out like a fool when I walked in on you.”

“Who is your date?” She exclaimed, with a stomp of her foot.

“I'll give you a hint,” I said. “He didn't use me to cheat.”

She glared at me with annoyance in her eyes. “Hey, I’m just worried about you. No need to insult my boyfriend.”

“Maybe it’s not a necessity, but why to give up the opportunity, right?” I rolled my eyes. “Besides, I wasn't just insulting him.”

Her glare deepened at that. “Tell me who it is, Penelope!” She said urgently. She was trying to sound sweet and innocent, but we both knew she was anything but that.

I smirked, forgetting my other problems for a moment. Could she not see that she wasn’t driving me crazy?

“You’ll just have to find out when you see me at the formal — if you can even get tickets.”

Before she could somehow try to pressure me into telling her, I walked away, remembering how we got into this situation in the first place: the day I found Joseph and Nikki together was permanently seared in my brain.

Sometimes, I managed to go a day or two without thinking about it, but then, without any warning, the memory would reappear at the front of my mind, playing like a vivid never-ending clip. Tormenting me forever.

I found them under the bleachers. It was a Tuesday at lunch, and I couldn’t find either of them anywhere.

I thought I would go check if Joseph was outside since he sometimes went out to the field during lunch with his friends.

I didn’t see him out there, but I did see Nikki’s bag resting at the base of the bleachers.

I figured she must be around somewhere if she left her bag there, so I thought I’d sit and wait for her.

But when I got closer, I found them under the bleachers together.

I wasn’t sure how long I stood there, just staring at them in shock before they noticed me.

Joseph practically shoved Nikki away from him in an attempt to hide what he was doing.

Looking back, it was honestly a little pathetic how much he expected me to believe they weren’t doing anything.

He came up with every excuse in the book — that they weren’t even kissing, and I had seen it wrong, that he was just helping her get something off her lip, that it wasn’t even Nikki he was kissing as if that made it better. Of course, I never believed him.

“Babe, it’s not what it looks like!” He desperately called as I stormed away, trying to blink back the tears that were threatening to fall. He ran after me. “Really, I can explain!”

He grabbed my hand and spun me around to face him.

“Explain what, Joseph?” I asked. “How you were cheating on me? Or how you were doing it with my best friend?”

He didn’t even flinch. “I wasn’t cheating on you.”

I scoffed. “Yeah. That sure explains it.” He tried to grab me again, but I pulled my arm away. “We’re done, Joseph. Why don’t you go back and tell your new girlfriend the news?” I suggested, my words dripping with sarcasm.

The worst part? He actually did it.

But what stood out to me more than Joseph at that moment was Nikki.

She looked like a deer caught in the headlights, her eyes wide and her mouth hanging open.

Like she couldn’t believe I had found them, even though they were in a public place.

For days after that, she tried to convince me that it had only been that one time.

That it had been a mistake, something she would never do again.

But I never believed her — and when I pushed a little harder, she’d broken down and admitted it had been going on for over a month.

“But everyone knew,” she said. “Everyone. I thought… Maybe you did too.”

“You really thought I’d stay with him if I knew?” I felt like I was going crazy. It was like everyone else somehow thought this was okay, and I was the one in the wrong. “You really thought I would be okay with this?”

She had genuinely expected me to forgive her. I didn’t.

And what made everything worse was that everyone knew what had happened.

Word spread fast through Falcon High, and it couldn’t have been more than 24 hours before everyone knew about Joseph’s two-timing, and nothing was more humiliating than that.

To pour salt into that wound, Joseph suffered absolutely no repercussions.

Everyone else at our school chalked up his cheating to “boys being boys.” He and Nikki started dating officially, and no one batted an eye.

His friends all took his side, and my (albeit not very close) friends all abandoned me.

I was left getting snide looks, pity stares, and whispers where I went because I was just the unknown girl who had been going out with a football star.

I will never forget the feeling of utter betrayal at that moment. My best friend and my boyfriend. The two most important people in my life. Their lapse in judgement destroyed everything.

I’d been so in love with Joseph. He was my first love, and I had fallen hard. When we were together, I was sure he loved me, but there was no way he had. If he loved me, he never would have hurt me like that — with my best friend, no less.

Poor past me; I had no idea what was coming. How much everything would fall apart.