Page 44 of My Fake Relationship With the Popular Boy
See, this was why the fake relationship was a bad idea. I was starting to think about Jaxon differently, as if he was really my boyfriend, when he was nothing close to that. I needed to be careful.
I stopped by the bed and kicked off my shoes. As I did, Madison’s words from the nail parlour popped into my mind.
“Hey,” I said. Jaxon looked at me over his shoulder. “Madison told me you’re going to Queen’s next year. Is that true?”
“Yeah,” Jaxon said. He looked surprised by the question. “Did I not tell you?”
I shook my head. “No.”
“Oh, sorry. It was a last minute decision.” He grinned wryly. “Basically the last day it was due, much to my parents’ delight.”
I fell silent for a moment and his face went serious again.
“Do you think it will be weird?” I asked.
“Weird? What would be weird?”
“The two of us being at university together,” I said. “With all our high school friends.”
“Sounds fun to me.”
“Jaxon, if we’re all still friends through university, then everything we’re doing won’t just be some fun thing that won’t matter in a couple of months,” I said. “It will follow us for years. Do you plan on telling people it’s fake after this or are we going to have to pretend to be exes for all of university?”
“This is the prom thing all over again,” Jaxon said. “Do you really think this will continue to be a big deal?”
“What if you get a jealous girlfriend in university?” I asked. “What if she doesn’t like that you’re hanging around with me all the time because I’m your ex and she doesn’t know it was fake? Are you willing to throw away our friendship over that?”
Three weeks ago, the idea of that wouldn’t have bothered me at all but now, it killed me a little inside.
“You’re overthinking this.”
“Well, one of us has to!” I crossed my arms. “You didn’t even consider the long-term problems when you asked me to do this, did you?”
Jaxon just grinned. “See, this is why Madison thinks we’re such a great couple. You balance me out.”
“Take this seriously, Jaxon.”
“I am,” he said. “I just think that we should worry about this later. We can decide what to do once we’ve graduated or better yet, once we’re at school. Things have a way of working out.”
Unlike Jaxon, I wasn’t a go with the flow kind of person, so I really didn’t like that plan. But I guess I could give in to not worrying about it until graduation. We could decide how we were going to approach explaining this once we had our fake break up. Besides, I had enough on my plate as it was, with school ending so soon.
I sighed and dropped my arms. “Fine. You’re right.”
Jaxon put a hand to his chest and looked around dramatically, acting shocked.
“Alert the media,” he announced to the air. “Violet Evers just admitted that I — Jaxon Andrews — am right!”
I laughed. “Shut up or I’ll take it back.” He did stop talking but the smug grin was still ever-present on his face. I shook my head good-naturedly and headed to the bathroom. “I’m going to take a shower.”
“Okay,” Jaxon said. He fell back on the bed. “Oh, Vi?”
I paused while closing the door and poked my head out again. “Yeah?”
“I promise if any girlfriend ever makes me choose between her and you,” he said seriously, “I willalwayschoose you.”
Well, I wasn’t expecting that. My heart thudded hard in my chest and I didn’t trust myself to be able to string a sentence together, so I pressed my lips together and just nodded. As soon as it closed behind me, I stuffed my fist against my mouth and let out a long squeal.
This was wrong. I wasn’t supposed to care about Jaxon in this way or to be happy that he would choose me over some hypothetical girl. I didn’t beat myself up for it, though. It was fine for me to feel like this for the time being, while Jaxon and Iwere still faking this. It would just make it seem more believable. But after this ended, I needed to get over all of this and fast.
