5. Shoua
CHAPTER 5
shoua
I stared at Anthony’s texts again with a wide and gaping mouth.
Anthony
Will you be
My girlfriend ?
I must’ve read those words over and over at least twenty times. Where in the world was this coming from? I quickly went into my messages as Jackie and Alicia peered overhead like a pair of hawks. We all watched as a bubble of three dots popped up. Anthony was still texting.
Anthony
I mean FAek GILRFIREND
F A KE
Don’t ask. It’s a lot to explain
Come over to my place when you get back
The girls and I shared a glance.
“What the fuck was that?” Jackie asked.
“How would I know?” I answered, exasperated.
“Ask him!” Alicia squealed.
“He just told me not to ask,” I said.
“Who cares?” Alicia said.
“Just ask anyways!” Jackie said.
I stared at my phone, trying to make sense of Anthony’s cryptic messages. What on earth was going on? My mind raced with possibilities, but none of them seemed to fit the situation. Why would he ask me to be his fake girlfriend? What the hell did he get himself into? Why would he even need a fake girlfriend in the first place?
This was Anthony Hughes we were talking about.
I sent him the only response I could muster.
Me
?
“Do you think his ex is getting married, suddenly invited him to the wedding, and now he needs a fake girlfriend as his date?” Alicia asked.
“Isn’t that a plotline straight out of a rom-com?” Jackie asked, laughing.
“No,” I answered. “He doesn’t keep in contact with his ex-girlfriends like that. Even if he was invited, he wouldn’t bother wasting his time.”
“But what if it’s an ex-girlfriend that was obsessed about how he was the one that got away?” Alicia asked.
I blinked, unsure. He did have one ex-girlfriend back in college that kept trying to keep in contact with him after they broke up. But Anthony told her to stop after she bombarded his phone with texts, missed calls, and voicemails.
As far as I knew, she hadn’t reached out to him in years. Unless she suddenly did over social media and he had yet to tell me. I highly doubted it, though. He wouldn’t bat a single eyelash at a wedding invitation of someone he didn’t care about. Especially not an ex.
“You’re thinking too much, Alicia. It can’t be that,” I said. “It has to be something else.”
“Whatever it is, you have to tell us. I’m curious!” Jackie said.
As a server walked past our table, Alicia asked for the bill and Jackie quickly thanked her as she gave us a firm nod.
“Wait, I thought we were going to catch up?” I glanced at my half-filled glass of wine.
The girls gave me a look. “We can catch up another time! I want to know what in the world Anthony got himself into!” Alicia said.
Before I knew it, they forced me to down the rest of my wine, covered the bill, and even grabbed a rideshare for me. I guess Anthony’s strange text messages made them that intrigued. I sat in the back of the rideshare and wasn’t even sure what to expect when I got home. I never responded to his question over text and I realized I now had to respond to it in person.
Will you be my girlfriend?
My stomach flipped uncontrollably. My feelings for him were getting hold of the better of me. He didn’t ask me to be his real girlfriend, yet my heart felt that way, despite knowing the details. I took a deep breath to calm my beating heart before I walked up his driveway to his front door.
I gave the door two hard taps so I wouldn’t interrupt anything. I could hear his loud voice talking on the phone on the other side. Before he could come to the door, I pulled out my set of his house keys and opened it only to meet him in the foyer.
Anthony’s Adam’s apple bobbed with a loud gulp. “H-hey, you’re here,” he mumbled weakly. “Mom, I need to go. Shoua’s here.” I could hear Aunt Gao exclaim excitedly on the other end, but I couldn’t make out what she was saying. “Yeah, yeah. I’ll talk to you later. Love you, Mom.”
I locked the door as he turned away to end his phone call. “So, about your cryptic text messages earlier?” I asked. Although my words were slow, my heart was hammering at breakneck speed.
Anthony turned to me with a bright, firetruck red face. His gaze completely avoided mine. “Maybe you should sit down,” he said quietly.
“For what?” I asked, looking up at him.
While I stood at five feet and five inches tall, Anthony easily towered over me with his six-foot frame. I watched how he shuffled his feet and then took a step back, clearly nervous.
“J-just sit down. I don’t know how you’ll react to this.”
He sounded jittery. This was so unlike the usual Anthony that I didn’t know how to react properly. I became alarmed as I took my seat on his couch.
“Anthony, what did you get yourself into?” I asked and watched him struggle to answer.
“Don’t be angry at me, but Aunt Sue thinks we’re dating . . . She thinks you’re my girlfriend.”
His face was even more red than before his confession. In all the years I had known him, I didn’t know he could get this flustered . As he buried his flaming face into the palm of his hands, completely embarrassed, his words hung thick in the air. He took the seat next to me and I noticed even his ears were burning red.
“Why would she think that?” I was dumbfounded. My mind and heart started to race at Anthony’s strange confession. This was far from what I had expected him to say.
“It’s a long story. Apparently, Evelyn is going to be here again and it’s worse this year. Kelvin will be tagging along with her. Both will be here all of June,” he groaned into his hands.
The blood drain from my face as my eyes grew wide. “What do you mean Kelvin will be here?”
“Well, Aunt Sue invited him, and my mom was okay with it,” Anthony said as he frowned. “Both Evelyn and him will be here this weekend.”
“ This weekend already?” My lips parted and brows furrowed in surprise.
“I know!” Anthony said with a heavy sigh. “I think Aunt Sue was trying to sniff out if I was still single like last summer.”
“So, you lied that we’re in a relationship?”
Anthony finally pulled his hands away from his face. It was still beet red as he turned to glance at me. I knew perfectly well about Aunt Sue and how she attempted to make one of the twins fall in love with Evelyn. Because it didn’t take a genius to figure out that Evelyn had the hots for both Hughes twins. However, neither of them saw her in that light, and it was obvious in the way they were overly polite with her.
It didn’t help that Aunt Sue seemed to thoroughly encourage Evelyn’s feelings despite the reality of it all. Things got awkward during their visit last year when Aunt Sue casually mentioned how she would love to see her daughter marry either Andy or Anthony one day. They were both so shocked they were rendered completely speechless.
“When Aunt Sue asked me if I was single over dinner, my mom stepped in and lied,” he explained with wide eyes as his voice began to raise. He started to become animated with his hands as he explained what happened. “ She lied, Shoua! She lied that I’m in a relationship! And guess what? I had no choice but to go along with it because my dad started lying through his teeth too. It’s as if they conspired together.”
“What do you mean you didn’t have a choice but to go along with it? Why would your parents lie to Aunt Sue anyway?”
“You weren’t there! You didn’t see the way my mom was giving me this look, practically begging me to agree with her. I don’t even want to know what kind of wrath I’d be going through if I hadn’t, all right? And if it isn’t obvious, my parents clearly never liked Evelyn, but they’re never going to admit it out loud to Aunt Sue!”
My lips pulled into a frown, trying to comprehend the situation. “How am I involved in all this mess, though?”
“Well, since I went along with my mom’s lie, Aunt Sue started to ask details about my fake, nonexistent girlfriend!” The same fiery, red flush from earlier rose up his neck all the way to his ears as he locked eyes with me. “I started panicking and, without thinking, I blurted out that you are my girlfriend.”
I stared at Anthony with a wide and gaping mouth like I did with his texts earlier.
He gulped as if he was guilty of something horrible. He took in my expression and tore his gaze away. “I know I fucked up by saying your name, Shoua. I’m sorry.”
I sat for a moment, still trying to process the mess Anthony pulled me into. “W-wait, let me get this straight. Your mom lied to Aunt Sue that you’re dating, which you’re not . Then you went along with what she said. You proceeded to lie to her that your girlfriend is me. Just because you’re trying to avoid being stuck with Evelyn this summer again?”
There was a moment of silence.
“Yes.” His voice was now meek and tiny compared to earlier. He was obviously flustered by how he lied about me being his girlfriend. “But it’s not just for me. It also benefits you .”
“How?”
“You don’t have to deal with Kelvin. Do you really think Aunt Sue won’t try again this year now that he’ll also be here?”
“ Anthony Nhia Hughes, ” I said with a sigh. The searing heat of my blush immediately climbed up my face as he met my eyes, still rosy cheeked. Kelvin was the least of my concerns right now, even if he had a point.
“Look, look! I know you’re upset, but this is just for one month. C’mon, Shoua. Think about it. Us being in this fake relationship will save us both from Evelyn and Kelvin. Aunt Sue will finally stop pestering us with her horrible matchmaking schemes. Besides, how hard can it be? We’re just pretending, right?”
Disbelief washed over my face as I let out another sigh. “Anthony, you’re my friend. ”
And I have a crush on you.
It wasn’t going to be as easy as he claimed it’d be. Maybe it would be easier if I didn’t have these feelings. It would be fun, actually. But with my crush on him, everything would be complicated.
He let out a long sigh as he ran his hand through his hair. I could see the regret etched into the lines of his face. “I know. But this whole entire ordeal with Aunt Sue and Evelyn is getting out of hand. They are pushy and clearly won’t take no for an answer. So, please , Shoua. Help spare me this June from Evelyn. All I’m asking for is for us to be in a fake relationship for a month.”
“I—I—” I couldn’t say anything back.
Anthony frowned at how I was struggling to find the right words. “I swear I’ll make it up to you.”
“How?”
“By being the best fake boyfriend you’ll ever have.” His frown pulled into a cute little smile. “I promise.”
I stared back, confused. “What exactly does that mean?”
“I’ll be respectful, attentive, and as doting as possible. I’ll make it so convincing that Aunt Sue and Evelyn are eating out of the palm of our hands. We’ll set some ground rules and establish some boundaries, of course. Once they’re out of town, we’re going back to our normal lives.”
I couldn’t deny how sincere Anthony’s words were, nor the desperation coloring his gaze. But I just couldn’t bring myself to go through this kind of deceit while having true, beating feelings for him. Even if being his fake girlfriend meant I’d get to be free from Kelvin.
“No, Anthony, I just . . . can’t ,” I breathed. “I’m sorry.”
There were flecks of disappointment in his eyes as he nodded slowly. I tore my gaze away from him, feeling guilty for making what I thought was the right choice. If I wasn’t so close to falling harder for him, then I’d immediately agree to it. Maybe I’d even enjoy being living a life different from my current for a few weeks—with a fake boyfriend and all.
“Hey, don’t look so guilty for saying no,” he said, giving me a gentle smile. “If you’re not comfortable with it, then it’s completely fine. I’ll just find some other way to get myself out of this mess.”
“How?”
“If you’re okay with me lying that we broke up, then you would help me a ton.” His head tilted slightly, hoping I’d at least say yes to this.
I swallowed down the urge to take it all back. “Of course.”
His smile stretched a little wider. “Thanks, Shoua. You’re the best.”