Chapter 5
Chapter Five
Hazel
T he annoying thing about fake dating Jeremiah Graley is, I’m not the only one who’s woken to what a stone-cold sexy beast he is.
He’s been my pretend boyfriend for less than three weeks, and I hate how well it’s working.
I can’t even walk into the teacher’s lounge without someone asking if he’ll be joining me.
And excuse me for not realizing it sooner, but there are a lot of extremely thirsty single female teachers at this school. A. Lot.
Worst of all is knowing there’s only a week left in our arrangement.
Starting next Thursday, he won’t be my fake boyfriend anymore, and I won’t be able to push my way between Jeremiah and his newly acquired legion of admirers.
What is it about wanting what we can’t have that makes us humans so hungry?
I don’t just mean my colleagues, either.
Honestly, it’s no real shock they notice him, now he’s demonstrating what a lovable, quirky guy he is.
The stunner is discovering how jealous it makes me whenever one of them asks me if he’s as good a kisser as he looks like he’d be.
Or if it’s true what they say about big hands equaling big… other things.
Because I have no idea what the answers are.
Three weeks of dates that weren’t dates, going places where our peers would be around, and not a single intimacy beyond having his arm around me or his hand in mine.
That first night, I’d been convinced there were actual sparks between us.
Guess it’s a good thing I teach in the English department and not the science one, because I clearly know nothing of chemistry.
“You’re staring at that gradebook like it did something to personally offend you. Are your students being shits about their assignments?” Jeremiah moves so silently it nearly always surprises me when he pops into my classroom.
“Just thinking.” The words are out too fast, and I know what comes next. Though that answer would be sufficient for most guys, Jeremiah always pushes to know my every thought.
“About?”
See? Just as I expected. Now, I have to come up with a bullshit thought or admit what’s bothering me.
“You know the other night when we were coming out of the movies?” We’d gone to see the newest superhero film because it turns out we’re both comic book nerds and it helps us to stay current on what our students will be fixated on.
“I was there, so yeah.” A month ago, a response like that would have seemed condescendingly prickish.
Now, I can know it’s just how Jeremiah processes information.
He realizes my question was rhetorical, but he doesn’t seem to grasp the socially correct way to handle those types non-questioning questions.
“Vanessa Genovese was there, remember?” Vanessa teaches Italian here at Mariposa High. She also really, really wants to know how serious things are between Jeremiah and me.
“Yes. She insisted on sitting with us for the movie, even though she and her date had bought tickets to the period drama you said you wouldn’t be caught dead watching.
She kept blocking the screen with her head, so she could show you students making out in the rows ahead of ours.
” The way he recalls the scene is so fact-based I can’t help the kernel of hope that blooms in my chest.
He doesn’t register how she’d maneuvered the seating so she was on Jeremiah’s right side or how she’d found every excuse imaginable to lean over him to whisper to me.
She hadn’t given two shits about the kids making out in the rows up front.
She’d only wanted a reason to lean over Jeremiah’s lap and push her breasts against him.
I clocked her intentions from the moment the trailers started scrolling across the screen.
“She likes you,” I grit out. “And she’s not the only one.”
“Okay. That’s good. It means the arrangement is working, right? The other teachers are realizing I’m not an asshole who thinks he’s too good to be friends with them.”
He has no idea. No freaking clue.
“Not the kind of like I mean, Jeremiah.”
And damn him for making me spell it out.
Three weeks of his attention, as platonic as it’s been, can never be enough.
Not now that I know his aloof outer shell hides a snark-filled nerd who likes action movies, Thai food, and playing with foster puppies at the shelter where we both happen to volunteer.
Jeremiah Graley is the whole package. Smart, quietly funny, sexy in that way only people who are absolutely secure in themselves manage. The whole package but not addressed to me.