Page 11 of My Fake Relationship With the Popular Boy (Port Lane Romances #1)

seven

Our grad trip involved a six-hour bus ride from our town to Montreal, the city we would be staying in for three days. Since it was such a long drive, and we wanted to get as much time in the city as possible, we had to meet at the school at five in the morning on Wednesday.

“It’s too early to be alive,” Madison groaned.

It was a cold and rainy day, so we were both hiding under the overhang outside the doors to the school.

The bus was already there and our suitcases were all packed in the compartment under the seats, but the teachers weren’t letting us get on until they were done doing attendance.

It didn’t seem like the most efficient way to run things to me, but I was sure they wouldn’t appreciate my criticism.

“At least you have coffee,” I said, eyeing the silver travel mug in her hand. I wasn’t big on coffee but I would kill for any hot drink right now; I couldn’t believe it was this cold in June.

“Should have brought your own,” Madison said, taking a large swig on the drink.

“Or my best friend could be nice and share.”

“I could,” she said easily. I raised an eyebrow, waiting for the second half of the statement. She smiled. “But I won’t.”

I rolled my eyes and laughed. I didn’t really expect her to share — rule number one was to never get between Madison and her coffee, especially that early in the morning.

“Okay everyone,” Ms. Moscowitz called out. “You can line up to get on the bus now.”

As I expected, there was practically a stampede as everyone ran for the door to the bus.

Personally, I would have just waited for the really eager people to get on the bus first and then gone to line up, but unfortunately for me, Madison was one of those eager people.

She grabbed my wrist and ran to the bus, pulling me along behind her.

My shoelaces were undone so I was tripping with every step that I took but unable to stop until we made it to the bus.

“Basically at the front of the line,” Madison said happily.

I forced a smile on my face. “Yeah.”

When it was our turn to get on, Madison pushed me in front of her, so I got on the bus first. It was much warmer once I got inside, since the bus was running and had the heating on.

“Where do you want to sit, Madison?” I asked as I walked down the aisle.

“Wherever,” she said. She was walking so close behind me that she was practically on my heels.

I could feel her looking over my shoulder every two seconds.

I had a feeling that she did not really mean what she said; based on the way she was looking around, she had a specific spot where she wanted to sit, or people she wanted to sit near, and she was trying to look around me to make sure we got in the right aisle.

Why she pushed me to get on the bus first just to do that, I had no idea.

“Near the back?” I asked.

“Right…” She stretched out the word for nearly thirty whole seconds, before unceremoniously shoving me into a seat. “Here.”

“Hey!” I yelled as I toppled onto none other than Jaxon Andrews in a moment that was reminiscent of our time in the closet the week before.

There was a loud cracking sound as I hit him so hard that his head slammed into the window.

I gripped the edge of the seat in front of me to help pull myself up.

Behind me, Jaxon groaned and rubbed his forehead. “What was that for, Madison?”

“Couples are supposed to sit together,” she said. She flipped her blonde hair and continued down the aisle. “Have fun, my lovelies!”

I twisted in my seat. A couple of rows back, Madison sat down in the window seat, put her bag on the aisle seat, then rested her legs on her bag. Of course — she had forced me to sit with Jaxon so she could have an aisle to herself.

I pressed my lips together and turned forward again.

I felt like I should apologize to Jaxon for falling on top of him, maybe ask if his head was okay, but I didn’t have it in me to talk to him yet.

I was sure he was fine; if he wasn’t, he would have been making a big fuss about how he was probably concussed.

“You know, you could at least look happy to see me,” Jaxon said. Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted his trademark smirk. I didn’t respond. “Come on, Evers. Am I really that bad?”

Yes. You really are.

Knowing he wouldn’t shut up if I didn’t give him some sort of response, I said, “I’m not much of a morning person.”

Jaxon scoffed. “That is not true.”

“Yes, it is!” I argued. He was actually right, I was the kind of person who genuinely enjoyed waking up at five in the morning, but I hated for him to think that he knew anything about me.

“No it’s not,” Jaxon said, shaking his head. He lifted his foot and harshly kicked the seat in front of him twice.

“Jaxon!” I snapped. “What are you doing? Stop!”

“Relax,” he said. “It’s just Sabrina’s seat.”

“You still shouldn’t kick it!” I said. He ignored me and kicked it one more time.

Unsurprisingly, a moment later, Sabrina’s head appeared above the seat.

Based on her messy black and pink hair and swollen lips, she and Eli had been making out.

I was just thankful that I couldn’t see it through the crack between the seats because that would have made this already awful bus ride just so much worse — I wasn’t a fan of PDA.

She rested her arms along the top of the seat and grinned at us.

“Miss me already, Andrews?” she asked. Jaxon smirked.

“You wish,” he said. He jerked his chin toward the seat in front of me. “I actually wanted to talk to Eli.”

“Of course you do,” Sabrina sighed. “Couldn’t have kicked his seat instead, though? No, you had to kick mine.”

“This was more fun,” Jaxon said.

“Eli!” Sabrina called, as if her boyfriend wasn’t sitting right next to her.

Eli popped up a second later. We were technically supposed to be wearing our uniforms today but the teachers were being pretty lax about it, so he had a rainbow knit sweater on over his collared shirt.

He looked a little dorky but I could also see why Sabrina liked him.

“What’s up?” Eli asked. He brushed his sandy brown hair out of his eyes. His bangs were getting a little too long, so he had to do that constantly. I’d suggested many times that he just cut it but he kept saying he would get around to it later.

“Is Violet a morning person?” Jaxon asked him. I rolled my eyes. Did he really care about proving me wrong so badly? I guess that wasn’t fair of me to say — I wanted to prove him wrong just as badly. It was just more annoying when he did it.

“Yeah, of course she is,” Eli said.

Jaxon pointed an accusing finger at me, his brown eyes lighting up. “Ha!”

I did my best to ignore Jaxon and focused my attention on Eli instead.

“Thanks for selling me out,” I said flatly. Eli just shrugged with a goofy smile.

“Oops,” he said.

“If you’re a morning person, then you and Jaxon are well-matched,” Sabrina said. “He loves waking up at five in the morning to go for runs and I would appreciate it if he would force somebody else to go with him instead of me.”

Jaxon and Sabrina were cousins — raised more like siblings — who had lived next door to each other for their whole lives. I had no doubt that when she said Jaxon forced her to go, she meant it.

I grimaced. “I’m not much of a runner.”

The other day was very much an exception and not one that I particularly wanted to repeat.

“Neither am I,” Sabrina sighed. She dropped back onto her seat. Eli laughed.

“Sorry, she’s a little grumpy this morning,” Eli said.

“Believe it or not, we noticed,” I replied.

Ms. Moscowitz got on the bus and called out for us all to settle down. Eli smiled at us then sat back down.

“Boys and girls!” Ms. Moscowitz called out. “We need to stop talking now.”

Sometimes, our teachers seemed to forget that we were graduating high school in less than a month and instead spoke to us like we were five years old. It was more than a little grating and made me that much more excited to get out of there.

The general sound of chatter slowly fell away. Ms. Moscowitz smiled and clapped her hands together.

“Well,” she said perkily. “Isn’t that better?”

I wondered how dead we all looked staring back at her.

“Do you think she’s going to go over the rules of the bus again?” Jaxon whispered to me. Ms. Moscowitz was notorious for spending twenty minutes at the beginning of every field trip going over basic bus rules like “don’t stand up when the bus is moving.”

“I hope not,” I murmured.

Up at the front of the bus, Ms. Moscowitz said, “Now, as always, we just have a few rules to go over before we can leave.”

The whole bus collectively groaned. I elbowed Jaxon in the ribs.

“Ow!” he hissed. “What was that for?”

“You jinxed it.”

“She was going to do it anyway.”

“You don’t know that.”

Jaxon chuckled to himself and looked around the bus. His eyes fixated on something over my shoulder and his expression shifted into a glare.

“Are you all right?” I asked, keeping my voice low. Ms. Moscowitz was still droning on at the front of the bus and I didn’t want her to yell at us for talking. Jaxon moved to look forward again.

“Lean your head on my shoulder,” he said quietly.

“What?” I asked, my eyebrows pulling together. I was so not interested in cuddling with Jaxon Andrews.

“Lewis is staring at us,” he said.

Of course he was. As subtly as I could, I tucked my hair behind my ear and glanced behind me.

He was only two rows behind us, in the row in front of Madison, so I barely needed to turn my head to see him.

I was a little taken aback to see that he was not only staring but glowering at us.

Although I definitely didn’t want to become friends with him again, it hurt a little to see how much he clearly hated me now.

I shifted in my seat a little so I was sitting closer to Jaxon, then stiffly and slowly rested my head on his shoulder.

“Could you make it look any more awkward?” Jaxon hissed.