Oh God.
This is really happening.
My heart thundered against my chest. I took my glass of wine and downed it in one. Then regretted it. Now I’d have wine breath.
‘Wait, let me get some gum.’ I rummaged around in my bag.
‘You can’t kiss with gum in your mouth.’
‘Good point,’ I said. The nerves were clouding my thoughts.
‘You don’t need it. Are you ready?’ he asked.
‘Yes.’ I straightened my shoulders.
‘Actually, you should kiss me,’ Ben said. ‘Just do it whenever you’re ready.’
‘Okay.’
I looked him in the eye, counted to three, leant forward, quickly pecked him on the lips, then pulled away.
‘Er, what the fuck was that, Jeffries?’ Ben frowned. ‘Do you really think people are going to believe this is real if you kiss me likethat? I’m supposed to be your boyfriend, not a dog.’
‘You kiss your dog on the mouth?’
‘That’swhat you took from what I said?’ He cocked an unimpressed brow. ‘If you want to make this look authentic, the kiss has to bepassionate. Something to make people think that we have explosive chemistry in the bedroom.’
‘Right… okay.’
‘If you’re not comfortable doing that…’
‘No, no,’ I insisted. ‘You’re right.’
This was exactly how it played out in the fake-dating books I read, but I somehow didn’t think I’d have to actually do it.
Really I should sayfuck it. If my ex and my sister believe that I’m not good enough to get a man that looks like Ben, then sod what they think. I didn’t want them in my life anyway.
But the other part of me, admittedly the petty part, wanted to. I wanted to feel like a winner for a change, not the loser ugly duckling sister that everyone pitied.
I just wanted to show those arseholes that I was better off without them. I wasn’t just surviving, I was thriving. And if fake kissing Ben would help me to achieve that, then that’s what I’d do.
‘Okay,’ I said, my pulse quickening. ‘We should have a proper passionate practice kiss. But this time, I wantyouto kissme.’
44
BEN
This was nuts.
As I stood in front of Sarah and looked into her eyes, I actually felt nervous.
I’d never been nervous about kissing a woman in my whole life.
Even when I had my first teenage kiss, I’d dived straight in with zero inhibitions.
Since then I couldn’t even begin to count how many women I’d snogged. I knew I was good at it, so I shouldn’t even be giving it a second thought. Yet, here I was. My heart hammered against my ribcage and my pulse raced.
I hadn’t even touched Sarah and I already had a raging hard-on.
