Page 38 of My Fake Relationship With the Popular Boy
“Yeah, of course,” Madison said. “Like, you’ve been the biggest will-they, won’t-they couple at the school for years! Do you have any idea how many bets have been won from you two finally getting together?”
Even though she wasn’t talking about Jaxon and Lewis’s bet, the comment hit a little too close to home for me. I looked to Jaxon in a panic, trying to tell him with my eyes to fix this. Luckily, he seemed to get the hint to change the subject — though he didn’t change it quite as much as I would have preferred.
“Why aren’t you suggesting that we nominate Eli and Sabrina?” Jaxon said.
“Nope!” Eli said immediately. “Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope! There is no way in hell I am doing that.”
Sabrina laughed. “Eli isn’t big on being the centre of attention,” she explained. “And, as I’m sure you know, I’m not really into school-sanctioned stuff, so all-around, it doesn’t seem like we’d be a good pair for Prom Court.”
“Exactly,” Madison said. Her bracelets jingled a little as she gestured at them. “I knew it wouldn’t be your kind of thing.”
“Oh, but you thought it was mine?” I asked incredulously. Madison knew I was most definitely not into this sort of thing.
“Well—” Madison faltered a little. “Okay maybe not, but it is Jaxon’s thing! And trust me, Jaxon will win.”
“Oh, I know,” I muttered. The joys of dating the popular boy, right there.
“And,” Madison said, “if they vote for Jaxon, they’ll want to vote for his girlfriend too.”
While I understood why Jaxon wanted to have a fake relationship right now and the benefits of us going to prom together for the sake of the bet, but I also thought the timing was the biggest downside for me. I didn’t want to have to deal with all this stuff about prom.
“I think it’s a great idea!” Jaxon said.
“You do?” Madison asked excitedly.
“You do?” I asked in surprise at the same time.
“Of course,” Jaxon said. He rested his arm on the back of my chair. “What better way to tell Lewis to suck it, right?”
“How romantic,” Sabrina said drily.
“Does anyone know how to nominate someone?” Madison asked. So, I guess we were just going for it, then.
“It’s on the school website,” Eli said. He pulled his phone out of his back pocket and went to do it. Sabrina leaned her head onhis shoulder to look at the phone as well. Eli visibly relaxed at her touch. He kissed her head quickly then went back to what he was doing.
I found them adorable but also equally hated them in that moment. While I normally wasn’t one to lament how my lack of being in a relationship, this ruse with Jaxon was forcing me to see how much I was missing out on. A reminder of how alone I was.
I replayed Jaxon’s words from the night before in my mind, hoping they would bring me some comfort:You are in no way unloveable. You just know that nobody in the world is good enough for you.But for some reason, they were a lot less comforting when it was Jaxon saying them to me.
Jaxon and I went back to our room after breakfast to finish getting ready. The entire way up, he talked about the Prom Court nominations.
“And Madison was right,” Jaxon was saying animatedly. “We’re definitely the hottest couple at school right now, so we’re basically guaranteed to win Prom King and Queen. Ah, Lewis is going to be so mad! Isn’t this great?”
“Yeah,” I murmured, lost in thought.
Jaxon paused mid-sentence.
“Are you okay?” he asked. As opposed to his enthusiastic voice before, he sounded very concerned.
“It’s nothing,” I said. I headed for my suitcase, but I didn’t make it two steps before Jaxon grabbed my arm and pulled me back.
“Hey,” he said softly. My heart thudded in my chest as I stood so close to him. “It’s obviously not nothing, Evers. What’s wrong?”
I couldn’t just stay silent or pretend it was nothing when he looked so concerned for me.
“I just feel like all of this is a bad idea,” I said. I rubbed my hands over my arms, trying to get rid of the goosebumps that had suddenly appeared. “I mean, I know I agreed to go to prom with you but nominating us for Prom Court makes all of this a lot bigger than I signed up for.”
Jaxon tilted his head in confusion, like he didn’t understand what I meant. Which made sense — from the beginning, he didn’t seem concerned about the possible long-term ramifications of what we were doing.
