Page 31 of My Fake Relationship With the Popular Boy (Port Lane Romances #1)

nineteen

We spent most of the afternoon at Eli’s place, just the three of us talking and laughing. It was a good end to the weekend, though I wished it could have gone on longer.

On Monday, Sabrina and I got paired together during our English class.

We were technically supposed to be talking about the short story we’d just read as a class but neither of were particularly inclined to do that, so we were just doing our own thing.

School was basically over for the year and we were about to graduate anyway.

All of our classes at this point were our teachers just trying to fill the time however they could.

“Sorry, by the way,” Sabrina said. She started twirling her pencil around on her desk with one hand and we had both been staring at it for the past two minutes straight.

“Hm?” I asked, unsure of what she was talking about.

“For crashing your last night alone with Jaxon,” Sabrina said. She rested her chin on her free hand and stared at the moving pencil.

“Oh, don’t worry about it,” I said. It wasn’t like it mattered much to me — as much as I loved being alone in a room with a boy that liked while also pretending to date him and knowing that I couldn’t act on my feelings. What better way to spend an evening, right?

“I’m really glad you two have made it work,” Sabrina said. “I know Jaxon can be a bit of a dud when he’s trying to show his love, but he’s been really into you for years.”

“Wait,” I said. I blinked a couple times, processing her words. “What?”

My heart clenched as I remembered the way Jaxon told me that he wasn’t into me anymore. I hated that it hurt me as much as it did.

Sabrina’s gaze shifted from the pencil to look at me.

“Oh, sorry,” she said. “Do you not like me insulting him? I don’t mean anything by it or whatever. I mean, he’s my best friend, but he can just be such an idiot sometimes.”

I’d learned years ago that Sabrina and Jaxon’s form of love consisted greatly of insulting each other, in the way that so often happened with family, so I hadn’t even thought twice about Sabrina calling Jaxon a dud.

“No, it wasn’t that,” I said. “It’s just that Jaxon told me he wasn’t really into me for the past couple of years.”

Sabrina’s eyes narrowed in confusion. It took me a second to realize that what I said probably made no sense to her, since Jaxon was supposed to be into me right now.

“I mean, he told me that his feelings only came back recently,” I hurried to add. “You know, when we kissed in the common to avoid detention.”

Boy, that was a weird way to phrase that but I hoped she got the gist. I was also praying that lined up with what Jaxon had told Sabrina. I had no idea how he explained our relationship to her.

“You guys kissed in the common room?” Sabrina exclaimed. A bunch of our classmates turned to stare at us. I hunched over in my seat, letting my hair fall in front of my face as I blushed. I preferred for everyone not to know my business, especially when it came to my relationship with Jaxon.

“Could you keep it down?” I muttered.

“Sorry,” Sabrina said quietly. “But when the heck did that happen?”

I was really crashing and burning here. Now that I thought about it, I knew that Sabrina didn’t know about the kiss; I’d asked her about it on the day that it happened and she had no idea what I was talking about.

“It was a few days before we started dating,” I said. “We were skipping class and we heard Ms. Moscowitz coming to the common room, so Jaxon suggested we pretend to make out so she would get uncomfortable and leave.”

Sabrina laughed loosely. “Brilliant! Of course, it only works with her. If it was Mr. Smith, he probably would have given you two detentions.”

I grinned. “Yeah, I don’t doubt it.”

“But anyway,” Sabrina said, shaking her head, “that’s not when Jaxon fell for you.”

“It’s not?”

“Definitely not,” Sabrina said. “He’s been into you basically since he met you and there was never a gap in that. Trust me, I would know — he never stops talking about how great you are.”

I just stared at her, unable to form words. I couldn’t even talk this out with anyone, since everybody thought we were dating. I was the only one who knew that he told me he didn’t have feelings for me anymore.

“He talks about me?” I finally asked in a small voice.

“Only all the time,” Sabrina said. She started fiddling with the pencil again.

“It was different before you started dating because you guys didn’t talk much.

He would just talk about how pretty you were or how good that presentation you did in class was or whatever.

Then I would tell him to just ask you out already and he would say he didn’t want to bother you. ”

“He didn’t want to bother me?” I echoed.

“Yeah, I guess you turned him down enough times that he thought it was better to wait for you to make a move. And I guess it worked right?” She shrugged.

“Anyway, if he told you that he hasn’t liked you for a while, then it was probably just because he was trying to convince himself that he hadn’t been pining after a girl who didn’t like him back for four years. ”

Jaxon was still into me. Like actually into me. Was that why he started this whole thing? Had he lied to me when he said he didn’t see it going anywhere? Or did he really care so much about beating Lewis that he was willing to put his feelings for me aside?

I didn’t like either of those options very much.

I felt like I was sleepwalking for the rest of the day. I went to all my classes and I was sure I spoke to lots of people, but my brain was squarely on what Sabrina had told me.

How could Jaxon still be into me? He said he wasn’t.

He had looked me in the eyes and said that he used to be into me and wasn’t anymore.

Why would he lie? Well, I guess I knew the answer to that — Sabrina had said so herself.

Jaxon didn’t want to admit that he was still into me when he thought there was no chance I would like him back. But I did. I really liked him.

I walked from my last class of the day to the common room with my thoughts spinning like that. I sat down on the nearest seat, not even bothering to look around at who else was there.

Did I tell him? That seemed like the obvious choice.

I should tell him and then he would say that he felt the same way and then we could live happily ever after or whatever people did when they were in relationships.

But… what if he said no? Or what if he thought I only liked him because I liked this fake-boyfriend version of him?

What if he didn’t actually want a girlfriend or there was someone else he was interested in more?

All of a sudden, somebody clapped their hands directly in front of my face. I almost jumped out of my skin.

“What was that for?” I demanded. Finally out of my own head, I looked over. Eli and Madison were staring at me.

“I said your name like five times and you didn’t answer,” Eli said.

“Oh,” I murmured. “Sorry. I must have been lost in my mind or something.”

Eli and Madison shared a concerned look. A second later, the couch dipped beside me as Eli sat down.

“Penny for your thoughts?” he asked.

I looked at him, really looked at him, then at Madison across the room. They both looked so concerned for me. I hated that I couldn’t tell them the truth, hated that I agreed to keep up this lie. Look at all the good it had done me.

Without any forethought, the words just spilled out of my mouth: “Jaxon and I aren’t really dating. It’s all fake.”