Page 8 of My Fake Relationship With the Popular Boy (Port Lane Romances #1)

five

On Monday, I spent my morning terrified that I was going to run into Jaxon. How was I supposed to greet him if I saw him? We hadn’t laid any ground rules for how to fake this and I had never been in a relationship before, so I had nothing to go off.

Somehow, after a week of seeing him quite literally everywhere, I went an entire morning without seeing him.

Once the lunch period started, I knew I was safe since he almost always drove to get fast food with Eli and Sabrina for lunch.

After lunch, though, I knew there was no chance of me avoiding him, because he and I had French class together.

I made Madison wait to walk to class until the last moment so I could avoid having to see Jaxon for too long before the class officially started.

Despite my best efforts, though, we still made it to the French hallway with minutes to spare.

Up ahead, I saw Lewis come from the other direction and go into the classroom.

I just managed to stop myself from groaning out loud — I had somehow completely forgotten that Lew was in this class too.

I stopped mid-stride as a thought occurred to me.

“Hey,” I said. Madison paused. She was a couple of feet ahead of me but she turned to look at me inquisitively. “Did you know that Lewis was into me for the past few years?”

“What?” Madison asked. She awkwardly avoided my gaze. “Of course I… didn’t.” She barely even got the words out. Madison was good at a lot of things but lying to me was not one of them. “That’s… That’s crazy.”

I rolled my eyes and kept walking, leaving Madison alone in the middle of the hallway. As I walked by, I saw her grimace like she knew she’d been caught. She waited for a minute before she ran to catch up with me.

“Okay, okay, I did know,” she said.

“No,” I said with a fake gasp. “Really?”

“I wasn’t trying to hide it from you!” she said. “I could always tell the you didn’t like him back and I assumed you just didn’t want to talk about it. I figured you would bring it up if you wanted to.”

What I’d learned in the past couple of weeks was that my friends really liked making assumptions and then never discussing them with me.

“Yeah, well…” I tried to think of a good comeback but fell short. In the end, I just pathetically said, “That wasn’t the case.”

“As I can now see,” Madison said. “But if you didn’t know before then how did you find out?”

“Eli told me about the stupid bet Jaxon and Lewis made in the ninth grade,” I said. My chest tightened with anger as I thought of it again.

“Bet?” Madison asked. She looked bewildered. “What bet?”

So Madison hadn’t known about the bet, then. That was something, at least — not all my friends were keeping it from me. Maybe Jaxon, Eli and Sabrina had just made a pact not to tell us about it for some reason.

“I’ll tell you about it later,” I said. We were getting too close to our classroom door for me to feel comfortable talking about it. I would rather keep it under wraps, on the off chance that it was just a few people who knew about it.

“Well, hello there.” An arm wrapped around my shoulders and squeezed.

I didn’t even have to look over to know that it was Jaxon; I would recognize his cologne anywhere.

At least it was one that actually smelled good — the years of sitting next to pre-teen boys who had absolutely doused themselves in axe body spray after gym class had traumatized me.

“You know I never believed in love at first sight until I met you.”

Beyond the fact that I hated all pick-up lines, mostly due to Mr. Jaxon Andrews saying them to me every single day, that one was particularly bad since we had actually known each other for more than four years already.

Not to mention the fact that we were supposed to be dating already.

Was he planning on continuing the pick-up lines while we were in a fake relationship?

That seemed like an odd choice to me but then again, what did I know about having a boyfriend?

Madison rolled her eyes. “Leave her alone, Jaxon,” she said.

Okay, I took back anything bad I thought about her for not telling me about Lewis’s feelings.

She was a good friend. Unfortunately, I was about to seem like a really awful friend to her because I had completely neglected to tell her that Jaxon and I were dating now.

Of course, if it was a real relationship, I would have told her as soon as it happened, but that obviously wasn’t the case.

And now, she was about to find out about it from Jaxon in a public hallway, which couldn’t possibly end well.

Given the way Jaxon was smugly grinning, I was right to be worried.

“What?” Jaxon said. “She didn’t tell you?”

Madison crossed her arms and narrowed her eyes. “Tell me what?”

“Why, Violet and I are dating!” he said it so loudly that there was nobody in that entire hallway who didn’t hear the news. Everyone sitting at their desks in our class turned to stare at us, shocked faces all around.

My face warmed so much that I felt like it was burning.

I couldn’t believe Jaxon just announced it in front of everyone like that.

Of course, I knew that everyone would find out eventually, but I figured it would spread around our grade a little more slowly.

Fast enough that pretty much everyone would know about it by the time the grad trip started in two days, but not so fast that I would have to deal with thirty kids staring at me like this.

Cursing Jaxon in my mind, I grabbed Madison’s wrist and pulled her into the room.

She and I sat at a table beside the far wall in the second row, which meant that we had to walk past everyone to sit down.

I refused to look at anyone as I walked, staring steadfastly at the tiled floor.

Madison, for her part, was so shocked by the news that she didn’t resist me pulling her along.

Unfortunately, sitting down didn’t save us from being near Jaxon, since he sat in the spot right in front of me.

Sitting in the first row of desks wasn’t exactly his prime seating choice, especially since his desk was pressed against our teacher’s desk.

That spot was usually left open for part of the year, only used when somebody got in trouble so many times during class that Madame Dubois felt like she needed them right under her nose.

Jaxon, on the other hand, had gotten in so much trouble over the past three years that as soon as he walked into the classroom on the first day of school, Madame Dubois made him sit there, even though nobody else had assigned seats.

Of course, Jaxon took his trouble-making seriously and wore that punishment like a badge of honour.

Jaxon all but pranced to his seat and sat down like royalty. As usual, he sat sideways on his seat so his arm was resting on my desk. Madame Dubois always got angry with him for doing so and told him to sit forward during class, but that didn’t stop him from doing it before class every afternoon.

Today, though, it felt especially loaded.

There was a good chance that nobody in the class believed Jaxon’s announcement on his word alone.

They were waiting for some sign of confirmation from me, some reason to believe it.

Short of kissing him, I could only think of one thing to do.

Feeling everyone’s eyes on me, I hesitantly put my hand on the desk and reached for his.

I expected his skin to be rough and calloused but it was surprisingly smooth.

I wouldn’t say that it was pleasant to hold his hand but it also wasn’t as unpleasant as I would have previously expected.

He shifted his hand so that they were positioned more naturally then leaned back in his seat and smiled dopily at me.

That was what couples did, right? Hold hands at every possible moment and smile weirdly at each other?

I finally looked up properly at everyone.

They all suddenly pretended they weren’t looking, choosing instead to stare out the window or doing their work or talking with their friends.

The only person who continued to stare at me was Lewis.

I couldn’t believe the audacity of him to stare at me like that, looking so angry, as if he wasn’t the one who ruined our friendship.

As somebody who wasn’t even my friend anymore, he had no right to be angry about who I was with and especially not to glare at me about it.

If he wanted me, he should have said something sooner.

Lewis finally broke eye contact with me, instead turning to stare at the blackboard. I focused my attention on Madison instead, who was looking at our intertwined hands with wide eyes.

“Are you okay?” I asked. Her eyes softened and she smiled widely at me. Then she held up her hand towards Jaxon for a high-five.

“Well, it’s about damn time,” she said.

I didn’t have a class during the last period of the day but didn’t bother to go home immediately. It would take me almost an hour to get home by bus, assuming there was no delays, and at that point, it was more worth it for me to wait for Madison to finish her final class and drive me home.

Students weren’t technically allowed to use their phones anywhere on the school campus and with the trip coming up so soon, I wasn’t willing to risk it despite my potential boredom.

Most teachers were more lenient by that time of year since they were also desperate for summer but there were a select few who never lightened up and that kept me in line.