Page 7 of Hard to Pretend

“Oh.” Matt laughed. I could imagine the flush of red to his cheeks. “Then why did you call?”

“To talk to my best friend?”

“Bullshit.”

It was my turn to laugh at the easy way he mimicked my tone, matching it almost perfectly. “I really did call to talk to you!” I inhaled, trying to calm the anxiety that was building inside me. Was this how Jonas felt all the time? God, that had to be hell. “I need you to tell me to stop being neurotic.”

“And you askedmefor this?”

Fair point. Matt had a tendency of spinning out, of letting his thoughts spiral completely out of control, and overthinking every little thing. It was why he was perfect for talking me down, because he knew how totalk himself down. At least, I assumed he knew how to talk himself down. Otherwise, there was no way he would be able to be the fully functional person that I knew him to be.

“Yes.”

“Maybe start by telling me what you’re being neurotic about?” Matt suggested.

I heard him plop down onto something. His bed, probably. I closed my eyes and imagined him laying on his bed, serious expression on his face, dark hair falling into his eyes. He probably had a rubber duck on his nightstand. He probably had several rubber ducks on his nightstand.

Maybe I should have just asked to borrow a few of his ducks, but I doubted they’d do anything to make me feel less unnerved.

“Okay, so a few months ago, I met this guy. We hooked up after Goliath.” That was a pretty standard thing. It wasn’t anything to get worked up over. I’d hooked up with more than my fair share of guys that I’d met at Goliath. “I ran into him the other day.”

“You don’t usually get bothered by running into your hookups,” Matt pointed out.

“I’m not. Usually.”

“Is this about the whole wanting to find a soulmate and fall in love thing?”

I forgot that I’d talked to him about that. He was going to read more into this than there was. I ran my hand through my hair and sighed. “No. Can I finish?”

“Sorry. Pretending to zip my lips.”

I gave him a moment. “Now throw away the key.” Another beat, and I could picture Matt miming throwing away an invisible key. “So like I said, I ran into him the other day, except it was weird. He wanted me to pretend to be his boyfriend.”

“I’m sorry what?”

“I think your lock is broken,” I teased, but I couldn’t really blame him. My reaction had been about the same. “He wanted me to pretend to be his boyfriend. Just for a few minutes, in front of his friend. I guess he was catching hell for not dating or something.”

“You think?”

“I was with him for about three minutes, Matt. We didn’t go into role motivations or what made him think that asking some guy he slept with months ago to be his fake boyfriend was a good idea. He just told me his friend was giving him shit.”

Maybe I should have asked more questions.

“Okay, and then what happened?”

“He bought my coffee and I left.” I stopped, because that wasn’t the full story. “He followed me outside. I got his number again, made sure he had mine.”

“Aww, you had a re-meet cute!”

“That’s not a thing.”

“That’s totally a thing. You just had one.”

“Your brain has been warped by rom-coms, Matthew. We exchanged numbers post hook-up, but then my phone met the puddle, remember?”

“And now you’ve been texting for days and you want to know how to ask him on a real date?”

“No.” I should have called literally anyone else. Matt was an amazing listener. He always had some of the best advice, but he was also a hopeless romantic. He was the kind of guy that believed in true love and believed that every love he’d ever had was his true love.

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