Page 12 of My Fake Relationship With the Popular Boy (Port Lane Romances #1)

“Take what you can get,” I snapped back. I was holding up my end of the deal enough so he would just have to live with it. Jaxon huffed in annoyance. He moved his arm, pushing me off his shoulder. “What are you doing?”

“Just…” He wrapped his arm around my shoulder. “That. Put your head back down.”

I did as he requested, even though the position hurt my neck a little. I hoped Lewis was still looking at us; I had no interest in being this close to Jaxon for any other reason.

“How long do we have to sit like this?” I asked.

“Hm… I think we’ll say the whole bus ride, just to be safe,” Jaxon said cheekily.

I snorted. “Fat chance.”

Jaxon hummed, making his chest vibrate. It was a funny feeling against my face. Then he rubbed his thumb up and down on my shoulder.

“We’ll see,” he murmured.

I must have fallen asleep somewhere along the way, because the next thing I knew, we were parked outside a hotel.

To my embarrassment, my head was still nestled on Jaxon’s shoulder, though his arm was no longer wrapped around me.

Had I really been laying like that for six whole hours?

I guess that was one way of convincing Lewis.

“Sorry,” I murmured to Jaxon as I sat up. I rubbed at my hands and yawned widely. How long had I been asleep?

“Don’t worry about it,” Jaxon said. He smiled fondly, looking more genuinely sweet than I had ever seen. “I was about to wake you up. Ms. Moscowitz is checking us into the hotel right now.”

“Oh. Great.”

“How’d you sleep?”

I shrugged. “Pretty well. You’re a good pillow.”

As soon as the words left my mouth, I regretted them. I pressed my lips together tightly and looked away, even as Jaxon’s smile widened.

Sabrina’s head appeared above the seat and I jumped in my seat.

“Sabrina!” I snapped. I hadn’t even heard her move.

“Sorry,” she said. “Didn’t mean to scare you. I just wanted to tell you not to compliment Jaxon in any sense.”

I frowned. As far as Sabrina knew, Jaxon and I were dating. Wasn’t it normal for girlfriends to compliment their boyfriends?

“Why not?” I asked.

Sabrina grinned wickedly. “The last thing he needs is a bigger ego.”

Sabrina dropped back into her seat just as Jaxon tried to throw his water bottle at her. The water bottle ended up flying down the length of the bus and hitting Ms. Moscowitz, who had just re-entered the bus.

“Oh, crap,” Jaxon muttered.

“Thank you, Mr. Andrews,” Ms. Moscowitz said flatly. “You can pick up your water bottle as you exit the bus.”

A smattering of laughter rang out through the bus.

“Now,” Ms. Moscowitz continued, “as you can see, we are at the hotel. I will be calling you up in your roommate pairs. When you hear your name, come up to the front of the bus. I will give you your room key for the week, then you will exit the bus in an orderly fashion, then get your suitcases from under the bus. Does everybody understand?”

Everybody nodded.

“Fantastic,” Ms. Moscowitz drawled. “Alright… Madison McKinnon and Reilly Drew.”

I frowned in confusion. I’d been practically certain that Madison and I would be sharing a room. She had put Reilly down as a third option, but Madison and I had put each other as our top choices and there was no reason for that to be declined.

The two girls walked up to the front of the bus and grabbed the key cards for the room from Ms. Moscowitz. As she climbed down the stairs of the bus, Madison glanced back at me and shrugged.

“Violet Evers and…” I braced myself as I waited for her to say who I would be sharing a room with for the next few nights. “Sabrina Brooks.”

Wait, what?

I hadn’t put Sabrina anywhere on my preference sheet for the trip and I was certain she hadn’t put my name either. After all, why would she? We barely knew each other.

“See you later,” I said to Jaxon. Still lost in thought, I stood up and walked to the front of the bus. Sabrina followed behind me. I grabbed the room key from Ms. Moscowitz and jumped down the steps. At least it was bright and sunny outside now, instead of the awful weather for that morning.

The bus driver had already opened the compartment underneath the bus where everyone’s luggage was being held and was putting the bags on the sidewalk.

I spotted my suitcase quickly and rolled it away from the curb.

The suitcase was shiny with pink, orange, and white flowers all over it.

It was the first suitcase I’d ever gotten to pick out for myself and I’d had it since the fifth grade.

It was one of my most prized possessions, even if my dad thought that I had outgrown it.

I walked over to the wall of the hotel, where Madison was standing with her boring navy blue suitcase and talking with Reilly.

“Hey,” I said.

“Hey,” Reilly said. “Do you think we’re supposed to go in?”

“I’m not sure,” I said. They did give us our keys, which had the room numbers on them, so it was pretty safe to assume that we could indeed go inside, but I was enjoying the fresh air. “Maybe we should wait for some more people first.”

She shrugged. “Okay.”

Sabrina joined us a second later. With her suitcase still standing, Sabrina sat down on the top of it, facing the outstretched handle bar.

The suitcase was barely big enough for her to rest on and would roll away if she moved her feet too much, so I couldn’t imagine that it was a particularly comfortable seat.

“So, uh, not to be rude,” Sabrina said, “but how did we end up with these room placements?”

I frowned. “Is this not what you requested?”

Sabrina shook her head. “Definitely not. I mean, no offence or anything.”

“None taken,” I said. “I put down Madison as my top choice.”

“And I put Violet down as mine,” Madison said. “Why wouldn’t we be rooming together?”

I shrugged helplessly. I glanced toward the bus where Eli and Jaxon were now walking down the steps.

“At least those two got paired together. I’m sure they wanted that.”

“Not exactly,” Sabrina said.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Jaxon and I requested to room together,” she explained. “We normally do on school trips. They make an exception to the boy/girl room rule for us since we’re family.”

“Who was Eli supposed to share with, then?” Madison asked.

“Peter Johnson,” Sabrina said.

That set up made a lot more sense to me. Eli and Peter had gone to the same elementary school and in the early days of high school, they had stuck together. Since Eli, Jaxon, and Sabrina couldn’t all room together, it added up that he would put Peter as a back-up.

Jaxon and Eli joined us a minute later. Jaxon moved to stand between Sabrina and I, while Eli stood on the other side of Sabrina, forming us into a nice circle.

“Hey,” Jaxon said. “What’d we miss?”

“Not much,” I said. “We’re just trying to figure out why Sabrina and I got paired together, even though we didn’t request it.”

“Ah, I actually have the answer to that one!” Jaxon said happily.

He looked like a kid who was surprised to see that he actually knew the answer to a question on a test he didn’t study for.

He pushed his glasses up his nose. “Originally, Sabrina and I were supposed to room together, Eli was supposed to room with Peter, and you were supposed to be with Madison.” He looked at Reilly.

“I have no idea who you were with, sorry.”

“No worries,” Reilly said with a small shrug. She looked like she really couldn’t care less about this whole situation.

“Then how did it get switched around?” Madison asked.

“The teachers got worried about some of the roommate pairings, so they moved them around at the last minute,” Jaxon said. “I think they were mostly worried about me and Sabrina being together. For some reason, they think Eli, and I guess Violet, keep us in line.”

Sabrina snorted like that was the most ridiculous thought ever, even though I was inclined to believe the teachers. Unlike the wonder twins, Eli actually had a solid head on his shoulders.

“How do you know all of this?” I asked. It wasn’t exactly information the teachers would just randomly share.

Jaxon smiled wickedly. “Oh, you know, I just like to occasionally spy on the staff meetings. Make sure I know what’s going on in the school and all that.”

I sighed. “Why am I not surprised?”

I only knew of four secret passageways in the whole school. I was certain that Jaxon knew of at least three times as many and used them.

“You know, we don’t have to stick with these room assignments if you guys don’t want to,” Madison said. She looked around us quickly, then added conspiratorially, “We could always switch it up.”

“Feels a little late for that, Mads,” I said. “The teachers would never allow it.”

“Oh, Violet,” Madison said loftily, “I’m not suggesting we ask.”

“What room pairings were you thinking?” Jaxon asked Madison.

“Couples?” she suggested. “You and Violet go together, Eli and Sabrina go together, and then Reilly and I will just stick together.”

“So, you’re suggesting we switch around while you stay out of trouble,” Eli said.

“Hey, I’m just trying to help,” Madison said, placing a hand daintily to her heart. “If you don’t want to do it, then fine, but I think Jaxon and Violet would appreciate getting to share a room.”

I grimaced. “Why would I want to share a room with Jaxon?”

The whole group fell silent as everyone turned to stare at me. I replayed what I’d said in my mind. Had I done something wrong? So what if I didn’t want to share a room with Jaxon? He was gross.

“It’s okay, sweetie,” Jaxon said in a forced voice. “Everybody knows about us now. You don’t need to pretend.”

Right — girlfriends usually liked to share rooms with their boyfriends. Why anyone would want to share a room with a boy was beyond me but that wasn’t important. If we had to do this to convince everyone we were together, then so be it.

“Oh,” I laughed. “Right. Yeah, of course, that would be great.”

“What rooms do you guys have?” Sabrina asked. Thank goodness for distractions.

“We’re in 3009,” Madison said.

“Jaxon and I have 3003,” Eli said.

“And we’re 3017,” Sabrina said. “That’s not bad. We can get away with that.”

“Are we really all on the same floor?” I asked. “I thought boys and girls would be split up.”

“They just booked out an entire floor because it’s easier to chaperone and reduces the chances of us annoying guests,” Eli explained.

“Let me guess,” I said flatly. “You learned that at the staff meeting.”

Sabrina and Jaxon howled with laughter while Eli shrugged with a small smile.

“Are you sure we won’t get in trouble for this?” I asked. Honestly, I wasn’t overly worried about getting in trouble at this point in the year. What was another detention or two, in the grand scheme of things? But it was the only excuse I could think of to get out of sharing a room with Jaxon.

“Nah, the teachers are notoriously lenient on the grad trip,” Sabrina said. “They occasionally do room checks but they don’t put tape on the door or anything.”

“Tape on the door?” Madison asked. She had to squint as she looked at her because the sun was so bright. She had sunglasses sitting on top of her head but she liked to keep them there as a fashion statement, rather than actually wear them.

“Yeah,” Sabrina said. “After they check your room for the night, they put a small piece of scotch tape with one end of the door and the other end on the doorframe. If you open the door, the tape disconnects. You obviously can’t put it back on when you’re inside the room, so it’s their way of seeing if you left during the night.

But since they’re not doing it, we can switch rooms after bed check without any trouble. ”

I couldn’t think of any other excuses to get out of this, so I turned to Jaxon.

Since he was the only person who knew we weren’t dating, he would also be the only one to understand why I didn’t want to share a room.

I assumed he wouldn’t want to share a room with me and would come up with an excuse that I hadn’t thought of.

Instead, he just shrugged and casually threw his arm around my shoulders.

“I’d be happy to switch,” he said. “Anything to get to spend a little more time with Violet.”

I sighed deeply. There wasn’t any way I could argue against this now — everyone would realize the relationship wasn’t real.

“It’s settled then,” Madison said. She handed her room key to Jaxon and everyone else passed theirs around to the right person.

I forced a smile. “Perfect!”