Page 65 of Fake It Till You Break It
I always knew that Ben was great, but I never realized until now that he was such an amazing guy. Even though I put him through all of that, he still came to sort of give me his blessing and—Oh my God, he was the Second Lead Syndrome. My life had suddenly officially turned into a K-drama.
Not to mention, I ruined my relationship with Jake and now I was all alone.
With a loud groan, I sank down on the top step and rubbed at my temples with both hands.
A couple of minutes went by until the front door creaked open. Mom came out onto the porch and handed me my box. “I figured you’d want this back.”
“Thanks.” The mochi was all melted by now, and I poked my finger at the gooey green mixture.
She hesitated for a few minutes before sitting down beside me. “Who was that boy?”
“It’s… a really long story.”
“Does he have anything to do with why you and Jake pretended to date in the first place?”
“Sort of. We were kind of seeing each other, but Jake and I—” To my surprise, tears sprang to my eyes, and I blinked rapidly to make them go away. Wailing about it wasn’t going to make things better. All it would do is make my eyes swollen. Although puffy eyes were the least of my problems right now. “It doesn’t even matter now because there isn’t a Jake and I. Not anymore. And it’s all because of me. If I hadn’t been nosy and butted in when I shouldn’t have. I ruined everything.”
“Oh, honey.” Mom wrapped an arm around my shoulders and hugged me. “You didn’t. You did what you thought was right. Hell, I think what you did was amazing. You brought Finn home.”
“But I still shouldn’t have gone behind Jake’s back.”
“That’s true, but you did it for him. I’m sure he will understand with time.”
I glanced up at her. “But if he doesn’t, then that means all of our family stuff… the Adlers won’t be in our lives anymore. At least not like they were. Are you okay with that?”
She looked wistful. “It’s fine. You’re more important to me.”
“Aren’t you mad that we lied to you about dating, though?”
Mom’s body grew rigid and she glanced down at me with a guilty look on her face. “Honestly, Mrs. Adler and I knew that you two were lying about dating ages ago.”
I pulled out of her embrace, momentarily forgetting about Jake. “Uh, what?”
“Well, we did believe you at first. But once we started talking about it, we realized it was too convenient. Too easy. Plus, you two aren’t as great at lying as you think you are.”
“But…” I shook my head as I tried to figure things out. “But if you knew, why did you two go along with it?”
She swept her dark hair over her shoulder. “Well, we were going to call you out on it, but I realized that this way you two would actually willingly spend time together. And be a couple. Which was a step closer than anything we’ve ever thought of to get you two together, so we decided to just play along. And if you two decided to break up afterward, then at least we gave it our best shot.”
I stared at her for another few seconds before laughing. An uncontrollable laugh that just burst out and I couldn’t do anything to stop it. Mom just sat there and watched me with a confused look on her face, which only made me laugh even harder. Tears came to my eyes, and I wiped at them over and over again until the only thing left was my tears.
I just couldn’t believe that we got played by our moms.We thought we were being so clever. All the things we did, the PDAs, the pet names, everything was all for nothing. Because they were laughing at us the entire time.
Damn.
And now here we were, finally getting what we had been longing for years for, and now everyone was miserable. Especially us.
“Sounds like you’re having a blast. Can I join you?” Aly asked, walking toward us with a large tote bag over her shoulder.
“Did you come to yell at me?”
She shook her head. “Nope. I’ve decided that if you’re determined to mope, then I’ll sit here and mope with you. I already ordered the pizza and picked up some caramel popcorn and nut mix. Plus, I wrote out a list of the top-five most tragic K-drama romances. After a couple of hours of watching cancer scares, overbearing mother-in-laws, birth secrets, and angsty fights in the rain, everything will seem much better.”
I couldn’t help laughing as I wiped at the tears on my face. “You promise?”
“Of course. Everything will work out eventually.” Aly hugged me before lifting her head to grin at me. “I swear on my Netflix account that everything will be back to normal in a month.”
A reluctant smile tugged at my lips. “Are you sure you want to do that? Holidays are coming up.”
