Foolish Games: A Brothers Best Friend Fake Dating Romance

twenty-nine

#1 at the Box Office:Titanic

Vivienne Delacroix

I’m happy to go back to school after the break. I’m relieved to have something to take my mind off Sebastian, and we don’t have any classes together, so it’s not hard to avoid him. I was fine when he was nothing but my brother’s obnoxious, hot—and obnoxiously hot—football buddy, and I’ll be fine now. I float the idea of having practice in the classroom every day until the competition, and the teacher in charge of quiz bowl agrees.

Not too many people from Faulkner High were at the Darling party, and the ones who were don’t care about nerd drama. I wonder if Sebastian’s getting it worse than I am, since they definitely care about football player drama. I hear a few whispers in my classes the first day back, but it looks like the big reveal might blow over without too much notice.

And then Sebastian has to come barging into the library like he’s going to confront me. My brother’s smart enough to predict he’ll find me, and he intercepts. I wish he would have let Sebastian say whatever he had to say. The whole library goes silent while they fight in the AV room, trying to hear what they’re saying. I’m dying of embarrassment, but I want to hear more than anyone. What did Sebastian come to say? Was he trying to win me back?

Do I want him to?

We can’t really hear what goes down between them, but after Rob leaves, and Sebastian punches out Chaz and also leaves, the library is in chaos.

“Should we call an ambulance?” Krissy wails, kneeling over Chaz.

“Nah, he just knocked his lights out,” says William, who’s in for tutoring.

“Yeah, he’ll be fine,” Jerome agrees. He checks Chaz’s pulse as the librarian comes back to tell us she called the nurse.

Chaz groans and finally pushes himself up on his elbows. “I knew that guy was dangerous,” he says, rubbing his head. “I’ve been saying that for years.”

“Then why do you go out of your way to goad him?” I demand.

Krissy gives me a sour look. “Are you saying it’s Chaz’s fault he got assaulted? He’s the victim here, Viv. Not your fake boyfriend.”

“Wait, you and Sebastian were faking the whole thing?” asks Scarlet, one of Keisha’s little minions.

I wince, not wanting that information spread around to more people than the ones who already heard it. Ignoring her, I address Krissy. “Chaz may be the victim, but if he wasn’t lying, trying to provoke Bash, he wouldn’t have gotten punched.”

“You really think you’re in a position to lecture anyone about honesty?” Chaz asks, sitting up fully.

“Yeah,” Krissy says. “It’s not his fault Sebastian is a caveman who only knows how to express himself with violence. And why are you defending him? It’s not like he’s your boyfriend.”

I don’t say anything. Why am I defending him? He chose to leave that party with his friends. He made that choice.

“Oh my god,” Krissy says. “She totally likes him!”

“No,” I say, holding up a hand.

“You do,” Krissy says, staring at me with wide eyes. She chokes with laughter. “Oh, this is priceless.”

“You like him?” Chaz asks, having the audacity to look wounded about that.

“You dated a player and actually believed he could change,” Krissy says. “That’s even more pathetic than just trying to look better after Chaz dumped you.”

“People don’t change,” Scarlet says. “Especially guys like Sebastian Swift. Once a player, always a player.”

“Guess you had to get played to learn that lesson,” Krissy says, tossing her mousy hair back.

“I feel for you,” Scarlet says, giving me a pitying look. “Been there, and it sucks. If you want to talk about it, I’ll take you for ice cream after school. I’m a good listener.”

I have no idea why a cheerleader is offering me ice cream, but since there’s not even an ice cream place in town, I figure it’s an empty offer. She’s probably just fishing for gossip on the captain of the football team.

The nurse arrives then and takes Chaz to her office. Krissy goes back to the announcements, and the rest of us settle in, but no one gets anything done. We’re all too keyed up from what just happened to focus.

The next day, I hear a few people mention something about a fight, and how Sebastian got suspended. We’re in the middle of homeroom when the regular announcements cut off, and suddenly, the whole school is witnessing my brother and Sebastian arguing in the AV room.

“What’s going on?” Mr. Diaz asks, looking up from his gradebook.

Everyone’s too busy watching every detail unfold to answer him. The announcements have never gotten so much attention in the history of school. They’re not boring today. They’re full of drama, fighting, and salacious gossip.

Gossip about me.

I feel myself shrinking in my seat, but I can’t escape the eyes sparkling with excitement at the newly revealed information. I want to shrink until I’m no bigger than an ant, so they can’t even see me, and crawl out of my desk and race out the door. Instead, I sit frozen while my brother and Sebastian unknowingly tell the entire school about my pathetic attempt to not look like a loser when I was dumped. And a thousand times worse, that I was never anything to Sebastian but a bet—one I lost.

I slept with him.

I thought he cared about me, that yesterday, he was there to tell me so. And even in the moments where I told myself he didn’t, I never would have imagined this. At the very least, I thought he was attracted to me. That we were having fun, even if I was just one more hookup to the notorious playboy. At least that I went in knowing what I was getting into—the wild fling my grandmother encouraged, a no-strings attached arrangement that felt so damn good it would be worth the heartbreak when it inevitably ended.

I didn’t know he had to be paid to sleep with me.

That I was nothing to him but a challenge, something to prove to his buddies.

That he could sleep with anyone—even a na?ve, inexperienced nerd like me.

And I proved him right. I made it so easy. I even let him fuck me without a condom, cum inside me. I let him go down on me. I let him, and I loved it. And all along, he was laughing at me behind my back. Telling his friends about it, about how easy I was.

I was nothing but a joke to him.

As if that’s not bad enough, the whole school knows. The teacher can’t get them to shut up for the rest of homeroom. I ignore the questions pelting me from all directions. Everyone is talking about it in the hall. There’s a clamor of voices when people see me. There are notes in my locker when I get there after second period. I don’t even read them. I toss them and duck my head, holding my books to my chest and plodding to my next class.

I want to kill Sebastian.

But some stupid, stupid part of me still clings to some hope, some delusion that I couldn’t have been stupid enough to misread all of it. I couldn’t have felt so much for someone who felt nothing. It couldn’t have been completely one sided.

That stupid part of me is the one that has the courage to seek out the giant gangster on the football team and ask for Sebastian’s address.

The smart side of me knows Maddox won’t gossip. He’s not the type.

But he’ll give me an address.

That stupid side of me is the one in the driver’s seat that night when I pull up to the curb outside a depressing, tiny brick house in a decrepit neighborhood on the south side of town. A faded, navy blue Geo Prism sits at the curb already. They don’t even have a driveway to park their car in, let alone a garage full of foreign luxury cars.

So, this is where he lives. Now I know why he never invited me over, why he didn’t want me to drop him off at home. He was afraid I’d judge him.

I’m ashamed to admit I might have. I’ve always been so worried about what people would think. I always played it safe and strove for the highest in everything—the best grades, the best test scores, the best extracurriculars. Even the best boyfriend, someone suitable and safe and carrying the parental stamp of approval. I had to be the perfect daughter, the perfect example of a founding heir, just like my perfect cousin.

Now I’m under scrutiny from the whole school, and I’ve failed spectacularly at being perfect, or well-behaved, or an example for anyone to follow. I hate that I’ve let my parents down, let my family down. I hate that I’m standing on Sebastian’s front step right now, not caring if he’s the furthest thing from perfect or safe or predictable, or that he’d never get my parents’ approval.

I just want him to tell me it’s not true.

His little sister comes to the door, the freshman who I’ve seen around school a few times but never really talked to. She has a pair of headphones on and a portable CD player in one hand.

“You a Mormon or something?” she asks. “Because we’re not interested in your church.”

“No,” I say, shaking my head. “I’m here to see Sebastian.”

“I think he’s sleeping.”

“It’s six o’clock,” I point out.

She sighs. “I’ll go check.”

She closes the door in my face. A minute later, Sebastian comes to the door. His hair is mussed and sticking up on one side, like he really was sleeping on it, and his eyes are bleary and unfocused. He’s wearing a pair of pajama pants low on his hips, and his tattooed chest is bare. I try not to get distracted by the sight of him all warm and sleepy, try not to remember those strong arms wrapped around me, cuddling me while we fell asleep together and he told me he wanted to wake up with me every day.

“I know about the bet.”

“What?” he asks, blinking at me without comprehension.

“The whole school knows,” I say, refusing to let my voice crack when my mind returns to the humiliation I faced every moment of the day. “They know it was all a game.”

“It wasn’t a game,” he says, seeming to come alive at my words. “I swear, Viv. It was just something the guys said at the very beginning. Before anything happened.”

“But you really did make a bet with your friends that you could sleep with me? That’s why you agreed to be my fake boyfriend?”

“No,” he says, stepping out and pulling the door closed behind him. “I mean, yes, I made a stupid bet with the guys at the start, but everything that happened after that… That’s not why I did all the stuff we did. I would have been your fake boyfriend forever just to keep hanging out. I—I’m crazy about you. So crazy I burned every single picture on the stack except yours.”

I manage a small laugh. “You were supposed to burn those when we broke up.”

“I could never get rid of your pictures,” he says. “You’re the only girl I ever want to look at again.”

My heart starts to melt, but I won’t let myself be swept away so easily. “You really did want to sleep with me?”

He lets out a snort of disbelief. “Yes, hell yes,” he says. “I shouldn’t have pushed you, but god, I couldn’t help myself. You’re so fucking sexy, Viv. I lose my mind when I look at you.”

“Did you want more than that?”

“Vivienne,” he says, a pained expression on his face. “Of course I did. I do. You’re fucking amazing. And it didn’t mean anything. I barely remembered it, it happened so long ago, and we’ve been together and had so much fun since then. It was nothing. I swear.”

“Even when it happened?” I ask. “By the time we slept together?”

“I was already nuts about you,” he promises. “It had nothing to do with that.”

“So it was real?” I ask, hope like a flower opening in my chest. “When we slept together?”

He reaches for me, tentative at first. When I don’t pull away, he draws me into his arms.

“It was always real, Viv. All of it. I meant every word I said. I meant it so much it scares the shit out of me.”

I press my cheek to his warm chest, listening to his strong heartbeat, so powerful it could hypnotize me. I remember when he said something about making smart girls stupid. He was right. His touch makes me all kinds of stupid.

“Did you take the money?” I ask quietly.

“What?”

“When you won the bet,” I say. “Did you take the money?”

He doesn’t say anything.

And that’s all the answer I need.

I push him away, and he lets me. He lets me turn and walk away, and climb in my car, and drive away. Tears roll down my cheeks as I go, but I don’t look back. I know that there’s nothing behind me. It was all an illusion.

No matter what he says, if he took the money, then none of it was real. If he’d felt something real, even when he won the bet, he would have told the guys that he couldn’t take the money. That he did it because he liked me, not to win.

Once he took it, that’s all it was and all it could ever be. A bet.

A lie.

And yes, I recognize the irony, that I’m crying over a fake relationship. Somehow, even though I created it and knew it was fake all along, I still felt like it was real.

What I felt was real.

The hurt I feel now is real.

*

“There you are,” Robert says, bending to peer in the window of my car.

When I don’t answer, he pulls open my door. “What are you doing in the garage?”

“Wallowing in self-pity,” I admit, pulling off my heart-shaped sunglasses.

“If you’re trying to die of exhaust poisoning, you gotta have the engine running, not just the radio,” he says. “Plus, I think you have to plug the tailpipes.”

“Are you giving me suicide tips?”

“Just testing you,” he says with a grin.

“I’m not going to kill myself over a boy,” I say. “I might kill you if you don’t leave me alone though.”

“Dude,” he says. “What the fuck are you listening to?”

I turn down the volume and cast him a guilty look. “Steve Miller Band.”

He points to my lap. “Are you eating French fries?”

“Maybe,” I say, covering the carton with a napkin.

“Okay, so this is serious,” he says, straightening and coming around the car. He slides into the passenger seat and tips it back, the way Sebastian always did.

The memory brings fresh tears, and I sniff them up and grab my shake. I take a drink through the straw, then pick up a handful of fries and dip them into the creamy chocolate.

“Go on,” I say. “Tell me I’m disgusting.”

“Yeah, you’re pretty disgusting,” Rob agrees, shutting off the radio. “You’re probably dripping snot and tears in that shake, and dipping French fries in chocolate… That’s just nasty.”

I drop the shake and grab some napkins, mopping up my tears and blowing my nose before balling them up and tossing them into the fry cup and setting it aside. “I hate you.”

“You can’t hate me,” he says. “As my sister, you’re obligated to love me. And as your brother, I’m obligated to tell you the truth.”

“I didn’t tell you the truth,” I say, staring down at my hands.

“And that’s why I’m punishing you by ruining your pity party.”

“I’m sorry,” I tell him. “I never meant for anything to happen. It really did start out as just an arrangement.”

“Hey, I’m not buggin’,” he says. “I get it. I’ve been friends with Sebastian for a long time, and I can tell you, that guy is charming as hell. That’s why I was skeptical about the arrangement from the start. I was afraid something like this would happen. I should have stopped it from the beginning.”

“You did try to warn me,” I admit, slumping in the seat.

“For what it’s worth, I think he really did like you.”

My heart opens like that damn flower bursting into bloom. “Really?”

“Yeah,” he says. “I’ve known him for three years, and I’ve never seen him get stupid about a girl before. Dude was downright giddy the last few months.”

“Wait, so you knew all along?”

“Not all along,” he says. “But I’ve suspected for a while now.”

“How’d you find out?”

“You think you could hide that shit from your brother?” he asks. “I’ve known you all your life—a hell of a lot longer than I’ve known him. Neither of y’all hid it worth a damn. All those times you went out driving and came back looking like a lovestruck fool… You couldn’t stop smiling. Looked like someone made a jack-o-lantern out of your face.”

“I did not.”

“Anyone with eyes could see how happy you were,” he says. “That’s why I didn’t shut it down right away. But I knew something was up when you weren’t together at the New Year’s party.”

“You were okay with us dating?”

“Not exactly okay,” he says. “But as long as he was making you happy, I wasn’t going to ruin it. I may bust up your wallowing session, but I’m not going to break up a relationship that makes you that giddy. I want my little sister happy.”

“Your big sister,” I say, rolling my eyes.

“Hey, the minute I got bigger than you, I became your big brother,” he says. “And it’s my job to kick anyone’s ass if he’s not treating you right.”

“Yeah, well, that may have backfired,” I say. “Since it got recorded and shown to the entire school.”

“I was hoping that wouldn’t come up,” he says with a sheepish grin.

“How could you do that?” I ask. “I’m the joke of the school now, not to mention everyone thinks I’m a slut after everything y’all said in that video and then Chaz lying about sleeping with me and how freaky I am.”

I wipe my lids when another tear leaks out, stinging my eyes with the shame of walking around school being catcalled and laughed at.

“I’m sorry,” Rob says. “We had no idea it was being filmed. She must have turned the camera around and kept rolling. And hey, if anyone calls you a slut, come tell me, and I’ll personally kick their ass like I did Sebastian’s.”

“I hate to tell you, but that punch looked pretty weak,” I say. “I don’t think you kicked his ass. In fact, if he’d bothered fighting back, I think you’re the one who would have gotten your ass kicked.”

“I sent him over the table,” he protests.

“I wish the camera had been rolling in the library when he punched Chaz,” I say. “Then you’d see what sending someone over the table looks like. Hey, if you and Sebastian ever patch things up, maybe he can teach you how to throw a punch.”

“Yeah,” he says, cracking a grin. “I heard it was pretty sick. And Chaz had it coming, running his mouth like that about you. Hell, he’s had it coming for years after all the shit he’s said to us.”

“Y’all give us so much shit for being nerds.”

“True,” he says with a shrug. “But I gotta hand it to Bash. He may be a fuck up, but he got that right.”

“What, that one punch is the only thing he’s gotten right in his whole life?”

“No,” Rob corrects. “Defending you.”