Page 6 of My Fake Relationship With the Popular Boy (Port Lane Romances #1)

Normally, I would just shoot down the suggestion immediately.

I had no interest in helping Jaxon Andrews with anything, especially some childish bet.

But the timing of the suggestion was actually pretty convenient.

I may not have been particularly pleased with Jaxon right now, but I liked him a heck of a lot more than Lewis.

And Lew getting knocked down a peg or two was something I could absolutely get behind.

“What exactly do you want?” I asked. I couldn’t say yes right away. I needed some room to negotiate if I was going to do this favour for him.

“I want to start pretending to date as soon as possible,” Jaxon said. “That way, when we leave on the grad trip next week, it will seem like we’re together.”

The grad trip was something that couples always loved to do together, so that did make sense. Plus, given how much time everyone was forced to spend with one another on that trip, there was no way Lewis would be able to miss us.

“Okay,” I said neutrally.

“After that, we just need to keep faking it for a couple more weeks until graduation,” Jaxon said. “Once we graduate, I don’t really care. I never run into Lewis outside of school so it doesn’t matter to me.”

Unfortunately, I did see Lewis quite a bit since he lived down the street from me, but then again, normally we were meeting up all the time. I had no idea if I would accidentally run into him a lot when I was actively trying to avoid him.

“If you want to keep this going until graduation, that means you want me to go to prom with you,” I said, more as a statement than a question. Jaxon frowned in confusion.

“Yeah, that’s generally what couples do,” he said slowly. “Why? Is that a deal breaker?”

“No,” I said. “Just curious.”

The whole thing didn’t sound too terrible, but I also didn’t completely trust Jaxon and I wasn’t willing to blindly agree to anything he asked of me. I needed to know how badly he wanted this.

“What’s in it for me?” I asked.

“Name your price.”

I blinked in surprise. I wasn’t expecting him to be so willing. I thought it over for a moment. What did I need that Jaxon Andrews of all people could help me with?

“I want you to buy me new dresses,” I said. I lifted my chin. “A prom dress and a graduation dress.”

The two things together were pretty expensive and I wouldn’t be surprised if they were out of his price range, especially as payment for this, but I figured it was better to set my price high and let him negotiate down.

Except he didn’t negotiate. He just said, “Why do you need me to do that?”

I sighed. I wasn’t in the mood to get into this.

“It’s a bit of a long story,” I said.

“Try me,” he shot back.

A swarm of voices broke through the silence of the hallway. I glanced through the small window in the door and saw it was a group of grade nine girls comparing their test scores. Behind them, Ms. Moscowitz called, “Keep moving, ladies!”

I moved away from the window so she wouldn’t notice me in there and looked at Jaxon again.

“Are you sure you want to do this here?” I asked. “We’re going to get in trouble for being in the hallways too late.”

“I have track practice at four,” Jaxon said flatly.

Right — I forgot that some people actually did extracurriculars that ran on Fridays.

Eli and I were head boy and head girl of the school, but we rarely had to stay after school, unlike the sports teams. “And don’t try to distract me, Evers. Why do you need the dresses?”

Gosh, why did he care so much?

“Look, my dad offered to either pay for the grad trip or for prom. I chose the grad trip.” I really didn’t want to be the only senior who didn’t go on the trip and miss out on the experience.

That was also why I was determined not to get detention before then — I would feel endlessly guilty for making my dad pay for a trip that I didn’t even get to go on.

“Prom is in like two weeks,” Jaxon said. “You really haven’t gotten a dress yet?”

“I have a dress,” I said defensively. “It’s just a hand-me-down dress from my sister and she’s like a foot taller than me, so it doesn’t look good on me. And I would have been okay with that before but if I’m going to prom with you, then all eyes are going to be on us and I want to look good.”

My dad was stretching himself thin enough to pay for me to go to private school after my mom left when I was twelve, so I wasn’t going to complain, but that didn’t mean I was happy about wearing crappy dresses.

If there was any chance that I could get something nicer, I was going to take it.

Not to mention the Jaxon was the most popular boy in school, so being with him would mean no chance of falling under the radar.

“Nobody is going to look at you just because you’re with me,” Jaxon said. His face scrunched up in confusion.

“You can’t honestly think that,” I said. He looked at me hopelessly. I shook my head and scoffed. “You’re an idiot, Jaxon, you know that?”

“Hey!”

“Listen, I can promise you that I know what I’m talking about right now,” I said.

I leaned forward like I was letting him in on a secret.

“You are the most popular boy in school. Everyone will be looking at me and I am not going to wear a crappy dress when that’s happening.

So if you want to stick this out for the rest of the year — and let’s be be honest, you really do, because otherwise Lewis will just mock you for only getting me to date you for two weeks — then you need to buy me these dresses. ”

Once again, I expected him to negotiate a little. To say that he would buy me the prom dress but not the graduation dress (which I could definitely work with), or give me some sort of budget to work within.

“If you can pull this off, Evers,” he said seriously, “I’ll buy you whatever you want. The dresses, a prom ticket, graduation photos… anything.”

Anything. That was a lofty promise but it wasn’t hard to tell that he was being serious.

I definitely wasn’t going to take him up on anything other than what I actually needed, but it was nice of him to offer nonetheless.

Well, nice might not be the right word for that.

What it did show was that he was desperate for this to work.

What had happened between him and Lewis that made Jaxon hate him this much?

“You have a deal,” I said. I held out a hand for him to shake. He did so with a grim face, as though he was agreeing to a business deal he wasn’t particularly happy with instead of a fake relationship.

“Starting tomorrow?” Jaxon asked.

“There’s no school tomorrow,” I said.

He shrugged. “If anybody asks, we had our first date tomorrow, though.”

I rolled my eyes. “Who is going to ask when our first date was?”

He blinked. “Every single one of my friends.”

I frowned, unsure of whether he was messing with me. He looked serious, but that didn’t necessarily mean anything.

“Besides,” he continued, “isn’t that, like… what girls talk about?”

“Oh my gosh,” I muttered, putting my hand to my forehead. I took a moment to collect myself before looking to the oblivious boy in front of me. “Fine,” I said tightly. “In any case, I’ll see you Monday.”

I went to open the door but Jaxon moved beside me and held it shut.

“One more thing,” he said. I looked at him, my eyebrows pulling together in confusion. What else could he want from me?

“Everything okay?” I asked. Was this when he was planning to add in that catch that I was worried about? Did he make me agree first so I would feel guilty backing out once I heard the extra terms? If that was the case, he did not know me well.

“We can’t tell anyone about this,” Jaxon said. “If it gets out, the rumour will spread like wildfire around the school and the whole plan will be ruined.”

That was a reasonable condition. “Okay.”

“I mean it, Violet. If Lewis ever gets wind of this, it will give him leverage to mock me for the rest of our lives.”

“I don’t know about you, but my plan is to cut Lewis off as soon as I finish high school,” I said lightly.

I was hoping this so-called relationship would be enough to get the point across that I never wanted to see him again.

With any luck, in a few years, all he would remember of our friendship was that I dated the person he hated most in the world.

“This is serious, Evers,” Jaxon said. He looked at me over the rim of his glasses. Geez, he was being intense about this. “You can’t even tell Madison.”

“I’ve got it,” I said, enunciating every word. I straightened. “And maybe you should be worrying about yourself. Have you ever kept a secret from Sabrina in your life?”

Jaxon grinned. “Touché.”

He swung open the door and looked both ways in the hallway. Once he was sure the coast was clear, he said, “Great doing business with you.”

As I walked away, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I had just a deal with the devil — and that I was so going to regret it later.