Page 101 of The Ruse

More so at the beginning of things. That last month before she disappeared, she’d been more distracted, claiming she was tired and just wanted to go to bed instead of hang out.

“And is that normal for you?” Elyse asked. “Kissing girls you don’t have feelings for?”

I narrowed my eyes, trying to figure out what she was trying to get at.

“I wouldn’t say it’s normal,” I said. “But since we both knew it was just for fun, I didn’t see any harm in it.”

“Interesting…”

I studied her for a moment. What was going through her mind? But the female mind was too complicated for me to decode right now.

I said, “Anyway, we kept our little ruse going all the way through April, went to Prom together and were crowned Prom King and Queen. Everything was great on my side of things, and well…” I sighed, looking down at my hands in my lap. “I guess after over two months of pretending to be in love with her and doing all the things couples do together when they’re in love…”

“It wasn’t fake for you anymore?” Elyse finished for me, somehow guessing my exact words.

I nodded and lifted my head to look at her. “Somewhere along the way I started to catch feelings for Bailee, and yeah, I realized I wasn’t acting anymore. It was real for me.”

28

ASHER

“So did you tell her?”Elyse asked. “Did she feel the same?”

“I didn’t tell her right away,” I said. “I wanted to feel things out before I said anything.”

“What happened next then?” Elyse asked. “If you were already Prom King and Queen at this point, it means she had to disappear sometime shortly after you realized how you felt about her.”

“This was just a few days before she vanished.” I sighed again, taking myself back to that last week with Bailee. “We were both really busy that next week with school and the spring play. She missed school for a couple of days and went to visit her parents in New Haven.”

At least that was what she’d told me. Who knew if any of the things she said she was doing were actually true.

“Then on the night she disappeared, she came to The Italian Amigos where I was working my shift. I could tell that something was wrong.” She’d been a little more on edge than usual. “I asked to take my break. It was cold outside, so we went and sat in a corner booth.

“I asked her what was going on and she told me that she wanted to break up. She said that we had put on a great show and it had been fun, but she was ready to move on to the next adventure.”

“The next adventure?” Elyse asked, like that should be some sort of clue.

“Something like that.” I shrugged. “Anyway, I was obviously shocked since I thought things were going so well. And since I realized I had feelings for her, I was more than happy to keep everything going. I told her I didn’t want to break up, that I actually liked her and hoped she might have some of the same feelings. But she told me she was sorry, that it had all been pretend on her side and just a way for her to try to get over her ex.”

“So she was kissing you to get over her ex?” Elyse asked.

“I don’t know. I guess…?” I held my hands out. “Anyway, I got kind of emotional because I was confused and sad, and then she got upset at me. She told me that she’d made it clear going into this that it was all just for show and I shouldn’t have let any feelings get involved. I got defensive because she was basically scolding me for falling in love with her. I told her it wasn’t my fault and that I couldn’t control how I felt.”

I shook my head. It had been a mess. And it was proof that you can’t beg someone to love you back. No matter how much you care about someone, you can’t force them to fall in love with you if they don’t want to.

Especially if they were still in love with someone else.

Which would probably be a good thing for me to remember when it came to Elyse. Because if she was still in love with Nash after their date tonight, then it meant I should probably find a way to not like her.

I didn’t need to learn that lesson again.

“Anyway, we broke up that night. She left the restaurant, and I finished my shift. I texted her when I got back to the school because I wanted a little more closure, and yeah, I also hoped I could convince her that being together was a better idea than breaking up.”

It was pathetic. Trying to chase a girl who was just using me to get over another guy.

“She didn’t respond to my texts, so I figured she’d just gone to bed early again and that I’d talk to her the next morning.”

“Except the next morning you found out she never came back to the school,” Elyse said, knowing that part of the story well enough.

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