14. Macey
MACEY
I curled my toes into the damp sand with each step, my sandals swinging from my fingertips. It was hard to believe we were already closing in on the end of our last full day in Aruba. This was a grounding moment, though, just the sound of the waves, the soft give of the earth beneath me, and Noah.
Strokes of gold and pink painted the sky, the last traces of daylight melting into the horizon. The waves lapped at the shore, their foamy edges catching the sunset’s glow before retreating back into the endless blue.
“I can’t remember the last time I slowed down like this,” I said, turning my face to the sky.
Noah’s voice was light, teasing. “Work keeps you that busy, huh?”
“I think the problem is that when I’m not working, I’m too busy feeling anxious about the next time I have to work, so I don’t get to enjoy my free time.”
“Sounds stressful,” he said. “Is that really what you want to be doing?”
A question I had asked myself a million times over again. “Not forever,” I answered .
Noah shoved his hands into his pockets. “I was thinking: maybe you should start a small travel blog, then leave the magazine once you build a following. You’re certainly talented enough for it.”
That wasn’t the worst idea. I’d have to be careful about not letting Victoria see it, considering it could be considered a conflict of interest. Which wouldn’t be that difficult. New blogs popped up every day, but only a few grew a successful following.
Up ahead, a sandcastle sat near the tide, its towers misshapen and slumped as the ocean crept closer. I veered toward it and crouched down to trace a finger along one of the crumbling walls.
“What about you?” I asked.
Noah sank onto the sand, stretching his legs out in front of him. “I don’t think I’d have much success starting a blog of my own.”
I rolled my eyes. “I meant what are you planning to do next?”
“Oh.” He dragged a hand through his hair, his fingers ruffling through the waves like he was stalling for time. “I’m planning to take a break from social media. Daphne and I want to do a big cross country summer road trip, and I’ve been saving to have enough cash to afford the social break.”
Noah Hansley, with his one million followers and endless brand deals, wanted to quit social media? I thought he was joking, but he stared at me with a serious expression.
“A road trip? Now I’m the jealous one.” I dropped down beside him, the sand cool beneath my palms. “And after that?”
“I have no idea.” His voice was quieter now, almost lost beneath the sound of the waves. He stared straight ahead, where the ocean stretched into forever.
This uncertainty in him caught me off guard. Noah always seemed so sure of himself, so at ease with his place in the world. But here, stripped of filters and curated captions, he wasn’t the guy I’d built up in my head. He wasn’t untouchable. He didn’t even seem all that happy.
And the strangest part? I wanted to change that. I wanted to be the reason he felt a little more certain, a little more steady. Maybe even a little more himself .
I nudged his knee with mine. “Well, maybe that’s the best part.”
He turned to me, brow furrowed. “What is?”
“Not knowing.” I drew lazy circles in the sand with my finger. “You get to figure it out. No deadlines, no pressure—just seeing where life takes you.”
Noah huffed out a laugh, but there wasn’t much humor in it. “That’s one way to spin ‘aimless drifter.’”
I frowned. “You’re not aimless. You’re just…recalibrating.”
He let out a breath, tipping his head back to look at the sky.
The sunset had deepened, the pinks and oranges giving way to dusky blues.
The first few stars had started to flicker in the distance.
“I’ve spent so long chasing after the next thing—next brand deal, next trip, next post—and now that I’m recognizing I hate it, I don’t really know how to change my patterns. ”
I studied him, the way the flickering light from the water cast soft shadows across his face. The way his fingers sifted absently through the sand, like he needed something to hold on to.
“Well,” I said after a beat, “I happen to be very good at helping other people figure their lives out.”
His lips quirked, and this time, it felt real. “Oh yeah?”
“Yeah. It’s a great distraction from how I also don’t know what I’m doing.”
“That’s not true,” he said. “You’ve got ideas, plans. You just haven’t taken the leap yet.”
I shrugged. “That’s one way to look at it.”
His gaze met mine, something flickering behind his eyes. “We can help each other, then. ”
I leaned my head against his shoulder, feeling the warmth of his skin through his shirt, the steady rise and fall of his breath. The air between us felt charged, like the moment before a storm—expectant, waiting.
The tide rushed in, lapping at my toes, but I didn’t move. Neither did he.
I wanted to kiss him again. The thought had been creeping in all night, sneaking up on me like the tide inching closer to shore. But now that I was here, pressed against him, I was too afraid to move. Too afraid that if I did, I’d ruin whatever fragile, uncertain thing was forming between us.
Because this wasn’t just some fleeting, vacation-fling kind of attraction. It wasn’t just curiosity.
It was something I actually wanted.
And that terrified me more than anything.
The plane ride home was considerably more comfortable than the last. I didn’t need much to get comfortable, but Noah, the diva that he was, settled in much better this time.
We had a row of three seats to ourselves, and we settled our things, plus a variety of airport snacks, onto the seat between us.
The rest of the press trip had gone smoothly. Dinner, photos, and long, drawn-out goodbye speeches. This morning, we enjoyed one last breakfast as I lamented over not having a permanent butler to deliver me breakfast each morning.
My phone began to light up with notifications. Generally, I ignored them or kept my phone on silent, but I had already decided to pass the flight time by rotting my brain on social media sites.
“What is happening?” I muttered to myself as I unlocked the phone .
When I opened Instagram, it nearly combusted on itself. Truthfully, I was losing track of my follower count because it increased every time I opened the app. Since I wasn’t an influencer, I didn’t check my profile too often, but it was getting tempting to check frequently.
Now my follower count stood at 100,000. Crazy to think that just one week ago it was a fraction of this. The first surge was due to the viral video, but what led to it now?
“Noah,” I said and received a raised brow in response. “Did you just get a bunch of followers, too?”
“Not sure,” he said absentmindedly. “Too busy trying to understand why all my comments and DMs are asking why I’m not single any—oh.”
“Oh?”
He held up his phone in front of my face. My first thought was that he needed a new screen because his was cracked in the corner, but that was quickly overshadowed by the photo on the screen.
Us. Kissing. By the pool.
I was the one who instigated the kiss, but I didn’t expect Opal Serenity to post it to their feed so fast. Not when there were hundreds of other photos taken during the weekend that they could have posted instead.
The caption read The resort pool provides the perfect ambiance for couples to relax together. Posted ten minutes ago.
My eye twitched. I slowly banged my head against the seat in front of me. “I wasn’t ready for this to happen yet.”
The middle-aged man in the seat turned around to glare at me. “Excuse me?—”
“Sir, I’m in the middle of a crisis,” I pleaded. “Please let me have this.”
He looked at me like I was crazy—maybe I was—but he turned back around .
And oh, poor Noah. He must be freaking out. Anonymous girls on Instagram were terrifying. If I had to choose between fighting an army of wrestlers or an army of anonymous Internet girls, I’d choose the wrestlers.
His whole brand centered on being the center of the female gaze. If everyone thought he was taken, that would ruin his image. Normal girlfriends probably weren’t okay with their boyfriend posting shirtless selfies for all the world to see.
I could fix this.
“Noah, I am so sorry,” I said once I had damaged my forehead enough from the banging.
His brow furrowed. “Why are you sorry?”
“I have a plan. When we get back to Chicago, you can announce our breakup. Tell the world you ended things with me. Then you can go back to being the single bad boy of Instagram, and maybe I’ll get some pity points out of it.”
“First of all, no one will believe I broke up with you.” He shook his head, like the idea was unfathomable. “Second, why do we need to do this?”
“Everyone in the world thinks we’re dating.” Was it possible that ocean water had sunk through his ears and into his brain? Did he need medical attention? “Now that we’ve left the resort, we can put an end to it. Or just make them think we dated briefly.”
Noah shoved his phone into his pocket. Honestly, it was a miracle that thing was still working after he fell into the ocean with it. “Or,” he said slowly, “we can let them go on thinking we’re dating.”
Scratch my earlier thought. I must be the one who had ocean water in the brain. “What?”
“If we continue to fake date, I can post about you, too. You’ll get tons of new followers and drive traffic to your blog.”
“What blog? ”
“ Your blog.” He put his hand on my shoulder. “It’s now or never. If I’ve learned anything about you this weekend, it’s that you’re letting other people decide what direction your life goes in. I think you should go after what you really want. I’ll help you.”
Oh, shit. Was this happening? Was I finally going to take the leap and start my own blog?
“What do you want in return?”
He dropped his hand. “I want your help, too. I have no idea what I want to do after the road trip. Unlike you, I have no direction in my life, and it’s time for me to change that.”
I exhaled slowly and rubbed a hand at the base of my neck.
Would the public believe it? What reason would someone like Noah have to date me and me him?
As the resident conspiracy theorist, Ariadne would say that many famous couples were faking it.
If larger celebrities could do it, then why couldn’t we?
Maybe could versus couldn’t wasn’t the real problem. The problem was if we should do it. It would help Noah, and it would really, really help me get a new blog started.
God, I couldn’t believe I was considering this.
“Okay.” I met Noah’s eyes. “If we did agree to fake date, how would we go about it?”
“The setup is already there,” he said. I thought of the photo Opal Serenity posted of us and all the questions I’d have to field once we landed. “All we need to do is continue the cute online presence and go out once a week together so people think we’re on a date.”
Simple enough, but I wondered how this would impact Noah and me.
We’d been getting along well, and I didn’t want to ruin that.
I liked to think that I could conquer my unreciprocated crush on him and that we could be friends.
Go on runs together. Cook matching savory and sweet breakfast foods together. Occasionally make out .
Wait, friends didn’t do that.
Fake dating could change things for the worse, but it could also be a bonding opportunity. Sure, it would be the most bizarre bonding ever, but those were where the memories were, right?
I was crazy for considering this. Certifiably insane.
“It could work…” I debated. “We’d need a few ground rules, though.”
“Like?”
“One, we shouldn’t see other people. Your followers are probably more skilled than the FBI and they’d find out immediately.”
Green eyes narrowed. “I don’t cheat, Macey.”
I couldn’t help but flinch. Hadn’t my ex once said the same thing? Noah had proved to me that he was different—and that not all influencers were the same—but it was difficult to believe that unwaveringly.
“It’s not technically cheating since we’re not together.”
Noah only glared back at me.
“Second, we should have an end date, so we can plan out how much content we need and how many dates we need to go on. Do you have one in mind?”
He thought it through, tilting his head. “How about May 15? Right before my road trip.”
That was two months from now. Plenty of time to convince the world that we were in love and then fell out right when the honeymoon period ended.
“That works.” I held out a hand, which he took. “So we’ve agreed on our fake dating plan?”
Noah nodded once. “Until May 15, I’ll make sure everyone believes you’re my girlfriend.”
He shook my hand, and we flew back into Chicago as a fake couple.