Page 100 of The Ruse

Our feud really was stupid the more I thought about it. Childish.

“What happened next?” Elyse asked, bringing me back to my story. “I’m guessing that since you ended up with the whole school believing you were the ultimate high school relationship, things didn’t go back to normal.”

“That would be right,” I said, my mind taking me back to the year before. “Things were pretty normal the next few days. We got to know each other a little better. Became friends—not super close or anything—but we got along well enough. She was actually super funny, like in an almost manic sort of way.” I smiled as I remembered some of the crazy antics she got up to. “Pretty soon we were hanging out after rehearsals, and she was inviting me to sit with her at lunch.”

“Sounds like things were pretty good then,” Elyse said.

“They were,” I said. “And I guess I just kind of lapped it all up because for the first time, I felt like I belonged. I had friends that I actually hung out with on the weekends instead of just classmates that I sometimes said hi to in the hall.”

Bailee had been magic that way. Even though she had her own motives for all the things she did, she really was great at making people happy.

“Anyway, a couple weeks before the musical wrapped, we saw one of the posters for the upcoming Valentine’s Day dance and got this crazy idea. We joked about how funny it would be if we decided to go together and pretend like we were suddenly madly in love, just to see if we could get people to believe it.

“We went back to her room to watch a movie, and I didn’t think anything of the Valentine’s dance again until she brought it up the next day. She told me she’d been thinking about it all night and said she really wanted to go to the dance because she’d missed out on all of the other formal dances. I guess her older boyfriend hadn’t wanted to go to a high school dance since he’d already graduated.” I shrugged. “Then she said there weren’t any other guys at school that she was interested in, and she knew that I wasn’t interested in anyone, either… So I thought about it.

“I wasn’t sure at first—I really didn’t want to be anything more than friends. Plus, I knew there were tons of guys who would love to take her out. But she said I was the only one she could see herself going with, even going as far as telling me that I was the only guy hot enough to believably be her date.”

The way Bailee could cater to anyone’s ego was her superpower.

I glanced at Elyse, feeling my cheeks warm after saying how attractive Bailee said I was. But instead of looking like she disagreed, she just nodded and said, “She must have been really beautiful if you two matched.”

“She was,” I said.

Though not as beautiful as you…

Not to me, anyway.

“As you probably guessed, we ended up going to the dance together. We played it up so much that by the end of the night, everyone was tagging us in their social media posts as hashtag Ashlee—our new couple name, using the first three letters of my name and the last three of hers.”

It would have been more fitting to put Bailee’s name first since she was the mastermind behind the whole thing.

“Sounds like you guys were as epic as everyone made you sound,” Elyse said. The room was too dark to see her face, but did I detect a hint of envy in her voice?

Was Elyse jealous of the fake relationship I’d had?

Was it wrong of me to hope that she was?

I shrugged. “We were pretty great together.”

“I heard you guys were voted Prom King and Queen as well,” Elyse said.

“That was another Bailee brainchild.” I nodded. “After the notoriety that we gained from the Valentine’s dance, she wanted to see how far we could take it, and so we really ramped things up after that. We came up with pet names for each other. We held hands everywhere we went. Sat close whenever we were in front of people. Sneak away from parties to pretend like we were finding a secluded place to make out.”

“And did you?” Elyse asked.

“What? Make out?”

"Um, yeah…?" she said, and there was a strain in her voice that made me think she didn’t want me to tell her that we had.

But since tonight was all about the truth, I said, “We were pretending to be obsessed with each other, so yeah, we kissed.”

“A lot?” she asked.

Was this some kind of test? Because if she was going to tell me that I shouldn’t have kissed someone I wasn’t into, then I should probably tell her that she shouldn’t have kissed me the way she had last night when she had plans to go on a date with another guy.

Not that I was complaining. I certainly hadn’t minded how far into character we’d gotten last night.

“We made out a fair amount,” I said.

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