Page 12 of Fumbled Into Love

My fingers itch to organize her mess, to place the pens back into the cup in the corner of her desk and neatly file the papers she shoved into the drawer.

Instead, I scan the piece of paper attached to the bright pink clipboard.Deon and Nathalie’s Guide to Fake Dating.

“What is this?”

Questions fill each page with a line for an answer. Some are simple, like my favorite foods and colors, but others are personal—private things I harbor no desire to share with anyone, especially not Nathalie.

There’s nothing more shameful than admitting the person you planned to spend your life with—the only person you hadeverbeen with—deemed you unworthy.

“It’s a dating questionnaire I made.” Those bright eyes shift to mine behind her glasses. “These are things we would usually learn about each other at the beginning of the relationship, but since this is rather…unorthodox, we’re getting creative.”

I tap my pen against the clipboard.

“Are all of these questions necessary?”

The question about previous partners and sexual relationships is particularly concerning.

“Yes. Now, before we fill these out, we need a timeline. The auction is in January?” I nod. “We canbreak upa few weeks after the event.”

“Alright…”

“And we need to establish a social media footprint. I have your jersey, so we can take a few photos after a game.”

I lift my gaze from the chaos on her desk, and Nathalie stammers, choking on a gummy bear.

“I-I didn’t know it was yours when I bought it,” she amends, “and Maren and Sawyer never told me. I got the jersey that the teenage boy in front of me bought. ”

“You chose my jersey because a kid in front of you bought it?”

Maybe I’m hearing it wrong; that she didn’t randomly pick my jersey but purposefully selected it because it’smine.

I remember the exact moment I saw my name on Nathalie’s back for the first time. Henry bought tickets for Sawyer, Maren, and Nathalie and sent Sawyer his jersey. When we took the field, the three of them spun around to show us their backs.

Sawyer with Henry’s name, Maren with the name of a random player to annoy Jack, and Nathalie with my name stitched along her shoulders.

I was taken aback, memories of Savannah flashing through my mind, of the photos of her wearing Brian’s jersey after we broke up, but when Nathalie spun around, and I saw her smile for the first time, only one word bobbled through my mind: breathtaking.

Nathalie smiles sheepishly.

“I didn’t know anything about football. Still don’t know that much.” Nathalie shrugs, “I trusted the kid, and I would say he picked a pretty good jersey.”

Nathalie winks, and my cheeks flame.

I return to my clipboard, focused on the questions instead of the heat creeping up my neck. “There are a hundred questions on this thing,” I mumble.

And I don’t want to answer half of them.

What is your biggest mistake?

No line on any piece of paper is long enough to tell the story, and I will ‘accidentally’ forget to answer it, along withhow long ago was your last sexual partner?

“There are only seventy-five,” Nathalie replies, beginning to answer the questions she created, brows furrowing and bottom lip between her teeth as her pen flies across the page. She’s…cute when she’s focused. I shake the thought and reluctantly pick up my pen.

This might be a new form of torture.

Half an hour later, I’ve spilled almost all of my secrets, told Nathalie all my favorite things, and had to subtly adjust myself in my sweats after she released a moan while eating gummy bears. At this point, there is nobody who knows me better than this sheet of paper and my fake girlfriend who is about to read it.

“Now, I’m going to quiz you,” Nathalie says, a mischievous smile peeking out from behind her clipboard.

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