“I am not his girlfriend.”
She looked at me.
I looked back.
“Fake girlfriend,” I corrected. “And I’ll cut you if you breathe a word of it to anyone.”
“Right,” she said slowly. “Because fake girlfriends wake up blushing at Instagram posts.”
“I’m not blushing.”
“You’re the color of a Texas sunset.”
“I hate you.”
“Love you, too.”
By the time I made it to class, I had already given myself three separate pep talks and one private threat.
No falling in love with the meathead neanderthal with hands the size of boxing gloves who thinks super market sushi is fine dining.
No getting attached.
No enjoying this more than necessary.
The lecture hall was half full when I walked in, and every head that turned toward me seemed to do it with new information.
Last week, I was still the injured freshman soccer player with the messy almost-romance and the mother everyone whispered about.
Yesterday, I was the girl Tristan Vale didn’t choose.
Today, I was Drew Travers’ girl.
Or at least that was what the room decided before I even sat down.
I slid into my usual seat, opened my laptop, and tried to look like a woman unaffected by public narrative, private confusion, or the memory of Drew’s thumb moving slowly against the inside of my wrist.
A girl two rows ahead twisted around and smiled at me.
Not nicely.
Curiously.
“So,” she said, dragging the word out like a fishing line. “You and Drew?”
I gave her my pageant smile. The one with teeth.
“So?”
Her friend giggled. “How did a gimp legged athlete almost lock down Vale and snag Travers?”
“She must have a magic?—”
Before either of them could answer, the door opened behind us and the energy in the room shifted.
I hated that I knew it was him before I looked.
Drew came in wearing gray sweats, a black Stanford football hoodie with the sleeves hacked off because apparently cloth remained his mortal enemy, and a backwards cap that made him look casually hotter. He had two coffees in one hand and a paper bag in the other.
