Page 4 of My Fake Relationship With the Popular Boy (Port Lane Romances #1)

“Do you know why Jaxon asks you out so much?” Eli asked semi-distractedly.

His foot curled against mine again as he made a big jump in the game.

I didn’t totally understand what he meant by the question but I became too preoccupied with the game to answer right away.

I was approaching the finish line with him hot on my tail and I could not lose my winning streak just because I was more focused on my conversation than on the game.

Within a few seconds, I had crossed the finish line and officially won the round.

Eli sighed dramatically and dropped the DS on my bed.

He couldn’t have been surprised; I could count on one hand how many times he had won against me.

Despite that, he kept insisting that it was going to happen one day.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Hm?”

“Your question,” I said. “You asked if I knew why Jaxon asks me out so much. Is there some ulterior motive I don’t know about?”

He bit his lip and tilted his head back and forth a couple of times.

“I’m not sure I’d call it an ulterior motive,” he said.

“Then what would you call it?”

“Well, first, answer my question,” he said. He jutted his chin out in my direction. “Why do you think he asks you out so much?”

I shrugged. “It was a crush that started in grade nine. Back then, he didn’t understand boundaries, so he would just ask me out all the time. Eventually it became a joke and he carried it on because he thought it was funny.”

“Yeah, I guess that’s true to an extent,” Eli said. He looked out the window, lost in thought. I waited for him to continue but I couldn’t take it anymore after he stayed silent for a full minute.

“But?” I asked. He snapped out of his reverie.

“Oh,” he said. “Um… Well, it goes deeper than that. See, basically, there’s been this bet between Jaxon and Lewis for years?—”

“But Jaxon and Lewis hate each other,” I said. Why would they have a bet?

“Yeah, that’s exactly what caused this,” Eli said. “You know how Lewis has a crush on you?”

No. No, I absolutely did not know that. Since when was that a thing?

There was no way that Lewis could have a crush on me — not in a million years.

My stomach turned just at the thought of going on a date with Lewis.

Even before our argument the other day, there was no world in which that would ever happen.

Eli went to keep speaking but cut himself off as he stared at me. I could only imagine what my face looked like right then.

“What are you talking about, Eli?” I asked.

“You… didn’t know that?” Eli asked

“No,” I said. I leaned forward. “Please tell me you’re joking.”

He shook his head slowly. “No… I’m sorry, I thought you knew. I mean, this is common knowledge in our grade — Lewis has been into you for years. We all just assumed that you had turned him down at some point but wanted to stay friends.”

“I had no idea,” I said. I curled my legs up toward my chest and rubbed my hands over my eyes.

“I mean, I guess it makes sense.” He always wanted to be around me, he never went out with any other girls, and he would act weird if I hung out with any guys other than Eli.

Heck, he was even a little weird around Eli until Eli and Sabrina started going out.

But I always just thought was him not liking my new friends, not him having a crush on me.

I shook my head. This wasn’t the real matter at hand right now.

“What does this have to do with Jaxon?” I asked. Eli suddenly looked really uncomfortable and he avoided my gaze. I poked his leg with my toe. “Eli. What does this have to do with Jaxon?”

“It’s a bit of a long story,” Eli said. It was easy to tell that what he really meant was you ’ re not going to like this .

“I’ve got time,” I said drily.

He sighed. “Well, Lewis has had a crush on you for as long as Jaxon has and they both know it. They’ve both known the whole time, that is.

And sometimes around the middle of grade nine — you know, when they really started to hate each other — Lewis told Jaxon that you never have and never would like Jaxon and that Lewis had already won. ”

My lip curled in disgust. Lewis had already won? What was I — a prized pig?

“Why didn’t anybody tell me?”

“I’m sorry,” Eli said. “I should have. I didn’t tell you when it happened because you and I weren’t really close friends yet, but I should have at some point. I’m really sorry.”

I shook my head. Some of my red hair fell in my eyes and I impatiently tucked it behind my ears again. My hair was getting too long and I desperately needed to cut it.

“Don’t blame yourself,” I said. “Honestly, I’m not sure if I would have believed you if you had told me back then.”

When I started high school, Lewis and Madison were my only close friends. I couldn’t afford to believe Lewis was a bad person. Obviously, a lot had changed since then.

“If you don’t mind me asking,” Eli said, “what exactly did Lewis say to you that made you this upset?”

I didn’t mind him asking but I really didn’t want to tell him either. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust him, or even that I didn’t really want him to know. It was just that I wasn’t ready to repeat what Lewis had said to me yet. The wound was still a little too fresh.

“He just made a comment about my mom,” I said. Eli was one of few people who knew about my family issues. My mother wasn’t in my life anymore and hadn’t been for many years now, but her words continued to haunt me, even with her gone.

“If you ever want to talk about it, I’m here,” Eli said.

I just nodded, hoping he would understand that I wanted to move on.

He immediately launched back into what he was saying before.

“Anyway, after Lewis said that, Jaxon said he bet that he could get you to go out with him first and Lewis took the bet. So, really, they’ve both been trying to get you to go out with them for the past four years.

They’ve each just had a different tactic, I guess. ”

How had I never noticed that before? Was that all my friendship with Lewis was — a way for him to win the bet? And how much of Jaxon asking me out had really been a joke liked I’d thought?

“Four years,” I said, completely gobsmacked. “This has been going on for four years and I never knew.”

“To be fair, I’m not sure how much they’ve both cared about it for the past couple of years,” Eli said. “Honestly, I haven’t heard Jaxon mention it in a while. Not since the ninth grade, probably.”

I looked at him dubiously. “He greets me with pick-up lines every day, Eli.”

“But he’s not being serious about it,” he said. “He’s matured a lot since he made that bet. That’s why him asking you out turned into a joke over the years. He realized that the bet was made in bad taste and decided not to keep going with it.”

“Then why are you bringing it up now?”

Eli looked uncomfortable again. “Well, that’s the thing… Jaxon ran into Lewis yesterday and apparently, Lewis made some comment about the bet and how Jaxon was going to lose. And you know how Jaxon is about losing, especially to Lewis.”

“So he asked me out yesterday,” I finished for him.

“Yes,” Eli said. “Which, I agree, was a bad move and I did tell him that when he mentioned it yesterday.”

“Well, that’s something at least,” I muttered.

Maybe that was why Lewis was in such a bad mood the other day. If he ran into Jaxon before meeting up with me, then he was probably annoyed. Not that anything excused the stuff he said to me. If anything, all of this just made it worse.

“I’m going to kill them,” I said.

“Please don’t,” Eli said. His wavy brown hair flopped around as he tilted his head and stared at me with wide eyes. “I promise they’ve both grown a lot since this all started.”

“Clearly they haven’t if it’s still going on!” I snapped. Even Eli didn’t have a response to that. “And if either of them think I’m going out with them after all of this, then they are out of their minds.”