Page 44 of Your Pace or Mine
“Keep talking, Reg. I’ll remember how mean you’ve been to me next time your mum calls me for an update.”
Reggie shuddered. “You wouldn’t.”
Jamie grinned and jogged on. Reggie laughed out loud, catching him up quickly.
“Speaking of love, how’s your posh coach?”
Jamie stumbled slightly, making Reggie smirk. “Oh my god, something happened.”
“Nothing happened. I don’t even know who you’re referring to.” He hadn’t told Reggie about the fake dating scheme. Probably because he knew that despite the many mad-cap schemes they’d enacted together over the course of their friendship—this one was possibly the most unhinged Jamie had ever come up with.
“Sure, you don’t.”
Reggie fell silent. Jamie knew what he was trying to do; he’d pulled this before. He’d pretend to drop the topic, just long enough to get Jamie to the point where he was bursting to tell him something. Well, Jamie wasn’t going to fall for that. He wasn’t.
Bloody hell, he absolutely was.
“We’re pretending to date.”
“I’m sorry, you’re what now?” Reggie laughed.
Jamie winced. “We’re pretending to be boyfriends so it’ll be easier for him to come out without making a big announcement and generate some positive press… and I’ll have a date for the Oliviers so I don’t look pathetic in front of Stephen and can convince people I’m a serious, committed person.”
“Oh, good, and here I thought it was something completely mad,” Reggie replied, voice dripping with sarcasm. “So you’re fake-dating the man you’ve been obsessing over for weeks. Totally sane and normal, that.”
“I haven’t been obsessing.”
“Sorry, I meant thinking and talking about constantly. It’stotallydifferent,“ Reggie said. “You see why this is a bad idea, right? Tell me you can see why this is a bad idea.”
Jamie shifted. “Of course, I can see that. But, we kissed.”
Reggie looked at him quizzically. “You kissed?”
Maybe Reggie was thinking the same thing as Jamie was. It wasn’t like him to be all twisted up over just a kiss. He kissed people all the time. On stage, off stage, friends, strangers. It shouldn’t have been that big of a thing.
But that kiss. It had knocked the air out of him.
“Reg, it was…” he searched for the right word. “Devastating.”
“Jamie?” Reggie sounded like he was approaching a particularly skittish horse. All tentative and soft.
Jamie scoffed. “It’s nothing, it was one kiss.”
Reggie arched a brow.
“It doesn’t matter, Reg. This is just to help him control the narrative and hopefully let me save some face in the process. He’d never want more with me.”
Reggie frowned. “Why the bloody hell not?”
Jamie shook his head. “Come on, Reg. I’m the fun stop before people find their forever person. I’m not the guy people settle down with. I’m the bit of chaos they get out of their system. I know that now, and it’s fine, I get it.”
“Well, that’s a load of bullshit,” Reggie replied. “You just haven’t found the right person yet, or maybe you have and you’re too chicken shit to take a punt, so you’re hiding behind some contrived act where you get to have what you want without having to put your heart on the line.”
“Ouch. Spoken like a man who has never swiped right just to be sent a barrage of dick pics.”
Reggie flushed. “I’m serious, mate. Give it a real chance.”
“Yeah, yeah. I’ve got more important things to worry about, like how I’m going to have to front £800 for charity if I can’t make up the donations in the next few weeks.”
