Page 88 of Pucking Matt
“Noted.” I scratch my face, suddenly afraid to tell her the truth. I’m stalling by looking at nothing. My sight is fuzzy. I know I have to say it. “Yeah, so my mom is getting married.”
“What?” she says. “It’s your mom’s wedding?”
“It’s not like a wedding. It’s an elopement, and I didn’t tell her about my break up, so she’s expecting me to bring my girlfriend.”
She’s blinking as she looks around.
I mutter the best part of it all, “So, I need you to pretend to be my girlfriend.”
Chapter 23
“I’m sorry,” I blink, sure I misheard. “What did you just say?”
He smirks. “Are you really going to make me say it again?”
He has a flirty yet exhausted look on his face, but I ignore it and say, “Yeah because out of the seven billion people in the world, you wantmeto pretend to be your girlfriend?”
He nods. “Yup.”
“Why not ask someone else?” I start stuttering and scoffing. “Like literally anyone else. I’m sure you have many fans that would fall at your feet. Why not choose someone that actually likes you?”
He’s twisting the pen in his palm as he says, “There’s no fun in that, is there?”
I lean into the phone and whisper yell, “I can’t go to your mom’s wedding!”
“Ah,” he stops me. “You just said that you would go and that you would stay the night.” He seems like he’s not in a good mood. From the moment I answered the FaceTime, I could tell something was off. It’s clear he’s not in the mood to joke. “You gave me your word.”
“Matt,” I scoff, blinking. “That was before you told me what the fuck it was!”
“So, what? It’s just an elopement. It’s barely a wedding.”
I grab the phone and start pacing the room. “Do you have any idea what your mom is going to say when she sees me? I mean, if she recognizes me from high school? She’s going to rip me to shreds. I mean, I would understand too, because I tackled her precious son down the stairs.”
He laughs like it’s actually funny. “Yeah, that’s kind of the point.”
“What?” I ask, confused.
He stops fucking around with the pen and says, “This will be her fourth wedding. No, her fifth? Fuck, I’ve lost count. Yeah, her fifth. She expects me to be there, to support her fully.”
“And you don’t?” I cut him off, making sure that I understand what he’s saying.
“Can you imagine your mom marrying guy after guy?” he asks.
I shrug. “My mom has been married twice, and I think my dad is on his fourth girlfriend since high school–”
“So, yes, Amber, out of the seven–almost eight–billion people in the world, I needyouthere.”
I roll my eyes. “Tell her that you don’t have a girlfriend.”
He clicks his tongue. “Can’t fucking do that.”
“Why not?” I ask, halting.
“You don’t know my mom.”
I catch the look on my face while staring at the tiny image of myself on the bottom right of my screen. I say, flinching, “And I owe you, so this is how I pay you back?”
He nods, hiding his smirk. “Yes. This is my only request.”
