Chapter 4
the fake dating chronicles
Jax
I slouch on my couch, arms folding tightly across my chest. I’m staring at my phone as if it could tell me all the worlds secrets and end all my problems. This whole fake dating thing is already a disaster in my head and we haven’t even planned out anything just yet.
Morgan, of course, was pacing around my living room as if she’s had an endless supply of coffee running through her bloodstream.
“Okay Grumpy-pants,” she says, skidding to a stop and waving her phone at me. “It’s time to announce our relationship. We just need one social media post and we’re golden. It will go viral in minutes, and then we will just watch everything else unfold naturally.”
I groan, rubbing my thumbs against my temples. “Can’t we just, I don’t know, not do that? Let people guess or something when we’re out and about?”
She raises an eyebrow, with a curl of her lip like I just suggested the worst imaginable thing to her. “Oh sure, Jax. Because nothing screams happy couple by not getting on top of the story of someone who is always under the microscope. We need to be calculated.”
“Your way is too loud,” I mutter. “Anyone would know that something would be up if all of a sudden, I announce that I’m deeply in love with someone.
Can we just do this more naturally, be seen together a few times beforehand, then we sprinkle in the relationship, so that way it’s not overload right away? ”
“Sprinkle it in.” Her hands moves to her hips as she considers my words.
“Okay, how about this — I post a photo of you and I from back when we were kids and pair it with a selfie of the two of us. I’ll caption it with something mushy, and you like it, then comment with a heart or something.
That will lead people to start thinking.
And I don’t know, you put it in your stories or something along that, so then people start connecting the two of us. ” She proposes.
“You’ll have to show me how to do all that. I’m not sure I know what the hell you’re talking about.” I say with no shame. Social media isn’t my thing, but I have a feeling that I’m going to get to know it like the back of my hand by the end of this whole charade.
She flops down next to me, her knee knocking into mine, holding her phone up to her face with her tounge sneaking out of the corner of her mouth.
“I just need to find the perfect photo of the two of us.” For a few minutes her thumb brushes over her phone screen, until she sits up with a loud squeak.
She holds her phone out to me, and I see the photo of us on the screen.
We’re sitting at a picnic table. She’s sitting on the bench of the table, and I’m sitting above her on the table-top.
She’s sitting between my legs, her head leaning on my thigh with both of our faces with a big smile on it.
I’m wearing my letterman jacket and she’s wearing her cheerleading skirt with a big sweatshirt.
We look like the perfect couple. But we weren’t.
She was dating some baseball player, and I was probably dating three girls at the same time.
“I think this would be the perfect photo to post. Maybe I caption it with something along the lines of: ‘We looked the part then, it only took —how many ever—years.’ That doesn’t really come out saying anything and it’s not super obvious.”
“Okay.”
She leans back. “Put your arm around my shoulders.” She instructs, holding up her phone. With her shoulder pressed against mine, she leans her head against mine. “Smile like you don’t hate everything.”
I bare my teeth in what might pass for a grin and she snaps a photo, then begins to make her magic happen as she types furiously.
“Posted!” she exclaims. “Where’s your phone. Check it out.”
I reach forward and grab my phone off the coffee table, and open up the app she posted her images on.
I click on the notifications and see that I’m tagged in a photo with her.
I click on it, and smile as I see the photo of us from high school, then scroll to the next photo of the photo she just took.
It doesn’t look forced. We look relaxed, and dare I say, happy.
“Okay, so what do I need to do?” I ask.
She holds out her hand and I place my phone in her palm. She quickly gets to work. She makes some heart comment and then double taps on the image. Then, she presses somewhere on the screen and it opens up another screen. She types something, then hands me my phone back.
“Show me what you did.” I state.
She leans against me again and moves through the motions, then opens up whatever a story is and shows me a reposting of the photo from our high school days with text across it saying: “Years in the making.”
My phone starts to buzz. Notifications are flooding in. Hearts and comments. “Jesus,” I mutter, scrolling through the notification page. “It’s been, what, a minute?”
Morgan smiles, “Told you. Viral. Look at all those comments coming in. Wow, you have a lot of female followers. Step one is accomplished. How does it feel?”
“I guess I didn’t realize how simple that would be.” I admit.
“Good. Over the next few days, we’ll post a few more times, before we make our first official appearance.
Now step two is to create a backstory. We need to rehearse how we ‘fell for one another after all these years being just friends, that way we don’t look like idiots in public if we were to be questioned adn so, we’re on the same page. ”
“Can’t we just say that we realized on anothers potential to be hot in bed and we caught feelings?”
“That just sounds boring,” she says, waving off my suggestion. “We need a story like how we danced at a friends wedding, and it just clicked. Something that girls would fawn over and think that it’s possible to happen to them. That way, it’s something rememberable.
“A friends wedding. I honestly don’t know the last wedding that I went to. I think that would be a shit idea. How about something along the lines of us helping one another out and then it turning into something more?”
“We started hanging out during your off season — movies, pizza nights, sleepovers, whatever couples do, then one day it all just clicked.” She says as my phone continues to ping with notifications.
“That works. It’s simple, believable. I can sell that.”
“Good,” she says, jumping up from the couch and tanking me to my feet. “Now, we need to practice acting like a couple. Let’s go get some ince cream.”
“But I don’t want ice cream.” I grumble.
“I do, and you want to pease your fake girlfriend.” She throws over her shoulder as she approaches the front door.
“You’re exhausting.”
“And you love it,” she shoots back, linking her arm with mine. “Come on grump, it’s time to shine.”
The ice cream place was packed. I hated the place in an instant. People of all ages were inside going about their nights as we entered. At first, no one paid any attention to us.
“Okay, so we didn’t talk about PDA,” she whispered, slipping her hand into mine, pulling me into line with a devilish grin. “Hold my hand like you mean it.”
My heart skips at the contact, and I scowl to cover any emotion. “This is dumb.”
“Relax,” she says, squeezing my fingers, her warm hand fitting into mine, and I hated how comfortable I was with the contact. It feels weird, not a bad weird, just different.
We ordered our ice cream and toppings and waited patiently, still holding hands.
“You’re doing great. I think if anyone looks our way, it’s very convincing.” She says, her eyes dancing with our faces inches apart, and I catch myself staring at her mouth. What the hell, Jax?
The she whispers, “there’s a group over by the windows that are watching. Let’s sell it.”
I tilt my head back and grin. I lean back in, my lips near her ear, “you’re pushing your luck.” I murmur.
She giggles — a real giggle, not forced and I feel a spark that I’ve never felt around her.
“It’s worth it,” she whispers back. “Pizza is on me next time.”
I pull away, grinning despite myself. A few more heads turn out way — some guy even held up his phone, in what I assume would be taking a photo of us.
“Great. Someone just took our photo.” I say under my breath.
“Good. It’s working.” She smiles.
Her name is called and we grab out ice cream cups. With the entire store staring at us, we exit. Until we’re out on the sidewalk, I release the breath I was holding and I realize that I had been squeezing Morgan’s hand pretty hard.
“Final test,” she says, leading me to the empty bench. We sit down, and she leans her head on my shoulder. “Look lovey-dovey as we eat our ice creams.”
I tense. “This is overkill,” I grumble, as my arm slides behind her anyways. She fits against me as if she belonged there, and my pulse kicked up. This isn’t real. She’s one of your oldest and best friends. Stop it.
“Not bad. You’re pretty good at this stuff.” She says, glancing up. Her breath tickled my neck, and I swallow, hard. “You’re almost a natural.”
“Don’t get used it it,” I say, sharper that I meant. But I don’t pull away from her, I turn my face into her, smelling the coconut and vanilla of her hair. My mind then wanders — what would it be like if this wasn’t a game?
“Holy shit. You’re Jax Carr, aren’t you? Dude, can I get a pic with you?”
Morgan sits up and smiles, ready to take the phone of the fan and myself.
“Sure buddy.” I say standing.
“Your girlfriend can be in the picture too, if you want?” the kid says.
“Nah, I’ll just take the photo of you two.” She grin holding out her hand as the kid places the phone in her palm.
The photo is taken quickly and as the kid and I are talking, Morgan slips beside me, places her arm around my middle, and I instinctively put my arm around her shoulder.
“Thanks babe.” I say, selling the romance.
She leans up on her tip-toes and kisses my cheek. My face burn burned red, and my heart beat a little faster.
“Thank you.” The fan ran off in the other direction.
“You’re enjoying this too much.” I tell her, my arm still around her shoulder as she squeezes me at the waist.
“Maybe,” she says, smirking.” You didn’t hate any of that though.”
I don’t answer. I couldn’t. Because she is right and that could become a problem.
We walked back to my place in silence, hand in hand with her teasing fading into silence.
My head was a mess. The kiss on the cheek, was innocent enough.
The way she looked at me though, felt different — or was I thinking too much into it.
This is fake, but there’s a small part of me that is unsure if it is.
I am curious, a little too curious and I wonder what that means.