Page 8 of Fake Dating Adrian Hunter
“Tell me again why this guy has so much power over you.”
“You know why.”
“Yeah, you loved him and now you hate him,” he drawls, placing the garment to the side and looking straight into the camera lens with his massive brown eyes. “Listen, Verena, if I’m traveling across the world to play up this romantic crap between us, I want to hear the whole story.”
The story that I have refused to talk about in any kind of detail over the past seven years. But desperate times call for desperate measures. With a loud exhale, I launch into our history, starting all the way back at conception.
Our mothers have always been the closest of friends. They were pregnant with Adrian and me at the same time. We can practically say we’ve known each other since being in the womb. The two of us were best friends since day one. We went to school together. We spent every afternoon playing together in the backyard. Everyone joked about our future, saying we were destined to marry each other. Secretly, I adored when they made those comments. I’d been infatuated with him from as young as I can remember.
Our dynamic took a swift change once we entered high school. Adrian hit a growth spurt. His shoulders broadened, his voice deepened, and he shot up in height. My best friend turned gorgeous, and suddenly I wasn’t the only one in awe of him. All the girls wanted to be around Adrian, and boys wanted to be his friend. Everyone liked him. He was the most popular kid in school, and anyone could see he loved it. The attention was like a drug to him.
Meanwhile, I stayed the same. Puberty hit me later. I was a child beside Adrian. I hated the way he now looked at other girls. I hated how his time was divided a hundred different ways, instead of directed all at me. He moved on with his life while I stood still—a loner girl with a sketchbook as her only friend. The difference between Adrian and me was that I didn’t need a large group of friends to feel happy. I didn’t need to be the center of attention. All I wanted was him.
Come junior year, we weren’t on talking terms. He was embarrassed to be seen around me, and I was plain pissed off at him. If it were somehow possible, Adrian had grown even more handsome. He was captain of the baseball team, never missed a party, and more than once I’d seen him hidden behind a school building, pressing a girl against the wall with his mouth while sliding a hand up her skirt. There was no doubt in my mind he took girls to bed. Adrian oozed sexual energy. Everything about him screamed sex, sex, SEX! I’m surprised I didn’t get pregnant just by looking at him. But of course, that didn’t happen, because here I was, heavier than ever, going through my emo stage of fluorescent pink hair with terrible bangs and always dressed in black. His immaculate conception sperm wouldn’t go anywhere near me.
On the odd chance Adrian and I were forced into social situations together—like family gatherings—the interaction between us was stale and filled with awkward chitchat. He struggled to hold eye contact with me. He’d constantly be scrolling through his phone, giving me one-word replies. I hated him, yet that didn’t stop me from being so pathetically in love with him. There wasn’t one moment during each day that Adrian Hunter wasn’t on my mind. When I went to sleep at night, my hand would slip between my legs with thoughts of him.
In senior year of high school, my worst nightmare came true. Word spread around school that I was in love with Adrian, making me the laughingstock. I sat in a bathroom stall that day, crying during my lunch break because I couldn’t enter the cafeteria without being taunted. Through the crack in the door, I saw two girls prettying themselves up in the mirror. Becky and Tara, the school’s head cheerleaders.
“Can you believe that Vera chick, or whatever her name is?” Becky laughed. “Does she actually think she has a chance with Adrian?”
“Probably,” Tara said, brushing her golden Barbie-doll hair. “She stands no chance. He already asked me to the school dance.”
That made me cry harder. I didn’t have the strength to leave that bathroom stall for the rest of the school day. Even when the home bell rang, I waited another hour before I braved the school grounds. But that was still too soon.
“Verena!”
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
With one glance over my shoulder, I spotted Adrian and a group of his friends heading my way. My pace quickened, and with it, running footsteps came up behind me.
“Hey, Verena, wait.” Adrian overtook me and blocked my path.
My gaze fell to the ground so he couldn’t see how bloodshot my eyes were from crying. Behind me, I could feel the approaching doom of his friends.
“Look, Adrian, whatever you’ve heard—”
“Will you come to the dance with me?”
What?
All of his friends started laughing—his date, Barbie-doll Tara, among them. What the hell was this? A joke between Adrian and his friends? Ask the loser to the dance just to embarrass her? Public humiliation at its worst. Adrian and I hadn’t so much as spoken a proper sentence to each other in years.
“Fuck you, Adrian. I wouldn’t be caught dead with you.”
His lips twitched in amusement. Seconds later, he spilled into laughter, joining the rest of his friends. My pulse became deafening in my ears and my body turned red hot, threatening to burst with tears. I stalked off before Adrian could gain the satisfaction of making me cry.
“Nice one, man,” Thomas Huxley said. The slap of a high five rang through the air.
“You should have seen the look on her face,” Adrian laughed. “What a loser.”
That was the day I stopped loving him. I never went to the school dance, but two weeks later, after the big night, photos spread around the school of Adrian kissing Tara on stage in front of the entire student body.
Call me petty, but revenge became my best friend. The bastard needed to pay for what he’d done to me. And so began the Verena versus Adrian wars.
When I finish telling Darius and Zac the story, an explosion of swear words erupts from their end of the phone call.
“Verena,” Darius growls, “nobody treats my girl that way and gets away with it. Send your jet back to America immediately. We’re coming to Australia.”
