“Call me crazy all you want, Ollie, but I think you’re starting to sound like the real freak.”
“Listen to the rest of my deal.”
“Speak.”
“I want to have a date for the two winter parties. Agooddate. Not just a friend. And I want it to be you.”
“What’s in it for me?”
“You want to get rid of your fuckboy reputation, so this is the perfect deal for you, too. We can start fake dating. Welook like a couple, and you post pictures of us online, on yourpublicprofiles only. We both win.”
I blink at him.
I’m waiting for him to laugh and tell me he’s messing with me, but his words just hang in the air, and no punchline ever comes.
“You’re not serious.”
“Deadly serious.”
I turn the idea of it over in my mind.
It's true that my ex still thinks I want him.
And that I desperately want to eradicate that possibility from his mind.
“So you want me to post pictures of us?”
“Yes.”
“Holding hands? Skipping through the goddamn quad?”
“Fuck off, Berlant. Maybe the holding hands part, though. We will need to postcoupleythings.”
I chew the inside of my cheek.
“We could post pictures kissing at parties,” I say, thinking out loud. “Maybe ones where you’re wearing my hoodie, too.”
A slight blush falls on his cheekbones.
God, that is too good.
“Whatever,” he says. But I push the matter further.
“Maybe once we have people really believing it, I can post a sneaky late-night temporary photo of me dragging my fingers down your naked back. That sound good, Oliver?"
“Do couples do stuff like that?”
I shrugged one shoulder. “We’re the ones who are going to be boyfriends. We decide the rules. If it were up to me, I’dpost videos of my cock pushing into your tight little fucking hole, too, but those things have to be kept private.”
“Niko,” he protests.
But he likes it.
He fucking likes it, and all I want to do is make him crazy.
I can tell by the way healreadylooks like he’d be willing to spread for me.
“You should have told me you were as crazy as me, Ollie.”
