Page 43 of My Fake Relationship With the Popular Boy
“See?” he said excitedly when he came back down to the lobby. I had no idea what he wanted me to notice so I just awkwardly nodded a little.
“What are you talking about, Jaxon?” Sabrina asked. Jaxon’s smile didn’t falter at all as he pointed at his feet and then mine.
“We’re both wearing open-toed shoes,” he explained. “Now everyone can see that we’re matching!”
I covered my mouth with my hand to hide how big of a smile appeared on my face. When he got the colour, I assumed he was just trying to show people how great of a boyfriend he was. I didn’t realize he genuinely cared this much.
For the rest of the day, whenever we saw anybody, he would make sure they noticed our matching nails. We got a lot of compliments on it from our classmates, with most of the girls telling me how lucky I was to have Jaxon and how cute he was. I just smiled and nodded every time.
I liked seeing this side of Jaxon. I found that a lot of the guys at Bayshore hid their real personalities away to seem cooler or whatever, so it was refreshing to see someone who was so willing to be himself. And it was adorable how much he loved this.
No. I shouldn’t be finding anything that Jaxon Andrews, of all people, did adorable. That was a line I couldn’t cross.
fifteen
We got backto the hotel about twenty minutes before our curfew that night. Even though that meant we still had time to hang out before we technically had to be in our rooms, Jaxon and I both decided to just return to our room and just stay in for the night, after such a long day.
As we walked inside, I noticed the shopping bags from earlier that were now safely tucked against the wall on his side of the room. I’d been wondering all day what they got up to that morning.
“Hey, what’s in the shopping bags?” I asked.
“Hm?”
“What did you buy when you were out shopping today?”
“Oh, that,” he said. “Nothing.”
“You bought nothing?” I asked. “Huh, interesting you got a bag for that.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Why won’t you just answer the question?” The more he evaded it, the more my curiosity was peaked. What could he be hiding?
“It’s just nothing important,” Jaxon said.
“The bag looks pretty nice,” I said. It was a big white bag, like one that would hold a box in it. I couldn’t see the brand name on it but I had caught a glance at it earlier and even the font made it look like a nice place. It was just one of those ones where it was easy to tell. “I didn’t know you were someone with such expensive taste.”
“It wasn’t really expensive,” he said. “Just some souvenirs.”
“Jaxon,” I whined. “Just tell me what it is!”
When I first asked him, I didn’t really care, but now the curiosity was killing me.
Jaxon sighed and looked away.
“It’s just this thing for some girl I like,” he mumbled. The smile dropped from my face.
“Oh,” I whispered. Jaxon sat down with his back to me to take off his shoes.
I wasn’t annoyed that he got something for a girl he likes. That would be ridiculous. It wouldn’t be fair of me to expect that he never liked anyone else while we were in this fake relationship. We were only doing this to make Lewis angry and it was serving its job as that. Once it was over, Jaxon would have every right to ask out some other girl. In fact, I was certain he would have a new girl before the summer was over.
Even though I knew all that before going into the relationship, though, I felt a little empty inside as I thought about it now. I guess it was because even though I never wanted to be with Jaxon, I always liked the idea that he wanted me. In fact, since starting this whole thing, he had stopped greeting me with his classic pick-up lines and I actually found myself missing them. And sure, he told me the other day that he didn’t like me anymore, but at least he didn’t like anybody else like that either. Gosh, I was an awful person, wasn’t I? Jaxon wasn’tmine. I couldn’t expect anything of him. I’d turned him down athousand times; it was only natural that his feelings would go away and he would try to find somebody else.
I wondered about who the girl he liked might be. That girl from the bleachers who wanted him to ask her to prom? Or was it somebody in our grade? That was weird for me to imagine — one of my friends dating my ex. Fake ex! I mean, they wouldn’t know it, but I would and it made a difference. Maybe it was somebody that I didn’t know, though. A family friend or a girl on the track team at a different school. He would like that, going out with someone who understood track more than me.
If he did start dating somebody more seriously, then he’d probably have to stop asking me out constantly. Whenever he was in relationships over the past four years, he hadn’t stopped with the pick-up lines but I think that was because all the girls he was dating knew and understood the joke. Even if they didn’t totally understand why he did it, I think they knew that it was something they had to put up with to be with him, just one of those odd quirks that he had. Who knew, maybe that was why none of those relationships lasted long. What I did know was that the only reason anyone would give in to that is because they didn’t want to give up on dating the most popular boy in school and he wouldn’t be able to coast on that forever.
Weirdly, even though I knew it was going to end soon either way, the idea of him stopping made my heart ache a little. As much as I acted like I hated it, I wanted it to keep going.
