Page 13 of No Summer Hotter than You

“What the fuck was that?” Jackie asked.

“How would I know?” I answered, exasperated.

“Ask him!” Alicia squealed.

“He just told me not to ask,” I said.

“Who cares?” Alicia said.

“Just ask anyways!” Jackie said.

I stared at my phone, trying to make sense of Anthony’s cryptic messages. What on earth was going on? My mind raced with possibilities, but none of them seemed to fit the situation. Why would he ask me to be his fake girlfriend? What the hell did he get himself into? Why would he even need a fake girlfriend in the first place?

This was Anthony Hughes we were talking about.

I sent him the only response I could muster.

Me

?

“Do you think his ex is getting married, suddenly invited him to the wedding, and now he needs a fake girlfriend as his date?” Alicia asked.

“Isn’t that a plotline straight out of a rom-com?” Jackie asked, laughing.

“No,” I answered. “He doesn’t keep in contact with his ex-girlfriends like that. Even if he was invited, he wouldn’t bother wasting his time.”

“But what if it’s an ex-girlfriend that was obsessed about how he was the one that got away?” Alicia asked.

I blinked, unsure. He did have one ex-girlfriend back in college that kept trying to keep in contact with him after they broke up. But Anthony told her to stop after she bombarded his phone with texts, missed calls, and voicemails.

As far as I knew, she hadn’t reached out to him in years. Unless she suddenly did over social media and he had yet to tell me. I highly doubted it, though. He wouldn’t bat a single eyelash at a wedding invitation of someone he didn’t care about. Especially not an ex.

“You’re thinking too much, Alicia. It can’t be that,” I said. “It has to be something else.”

“Whatever it is, you have to tell us. I’m curious!” Jackie said.

As a server walked past our table, Alicia asked for the bill and Jackie quickly thanked her as she gave us a firm nod.

“Wait, I thought we were going to catch up?” I glanced at my half-filled glass of wine.

The girls gave me a look. “We can catch up another time! I want to know what in the world Anthony got himself into!” Alicia said.

Before I knew it, they forced me to down the rest of my wine, covered the bill, and even grabbed a rideshare for me. I guess Anthony’s strange text messages made them that intrigued. I sat in the back of the rideshare and wasn’t even sure what to expect when I got home. I never responded to his question over text and I realized I now had to respond to it in person.

Will you be my girlfriend?

My stomach flipped uncontrollably. My feelings for him were getting hold of the better of me. He didn’t ask me to be his real girlfriend, yet my heart felt that way, despite knowing the details. I took a deep breath to calm my beating heart before I walked up his driveway to his front door.

I gave the door two hard taps so I wouldn’t interrupt anything. I could hear his loud voice talking on the phone on the other side. Before he could come to the door, I pulled out my set of his house keys and opened it only to meet him in the foyer.

Anthony’s Adam’s apple bobbed with a loud gulp. “H-hey, you’re here,” he mumbled weakly. “Mom, I need to go. Shoua’s here.” I could hear Aunt Gao exclaim excitedly on the other end, but I couldn’t make out what she was saying. “Yeah, yeah. I’ll talk to you later. Love you, Mom.”

I locked the door as he turned away to end his phone call. “So, about your cryptic text messages earlier?” I asked. Although my words were slow, my heart was hammering at breakneck speed.

Anthony turned to me with a bright, firetruck red face. His gaze completely avoided mine. “Maybe you should sit down,” he said quietly.

“For what?” I asked, looking up at him.

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