My Fake Boyfriend PREQUEL TO SUCK MY LOLLIPOP

Chapter 28

So maybe I was a little bit jealous, but it didn’t matter because Chase didn’t like me. Chase liked Poppy; I could tell from the way that she had gushed about the date. We were at school on Monday so that she could tell us. I didn’t really want to know, but Kayla forced me. We were all waiting around before first period and the guys were nowhere in sight. “It was really fun, we were watching the movie and it was a little weird at first. After the first like ten minutes of the movie it was kind of boring so I asked him if it’s a real date and he said it was and like I was really happy. And then later, when the tributes went into the arena we held hands,” she said. “But it was a weird kind of holding hands cus it wasn’t the two hands next to each other.”

“I don’t get it,” Kayla said.

“Well like, I don’t quite know how to explain it, but it was my right hand and his left cus he had the ticket in the hand closest to me,” she explained. “And it wasn’t normal hand holding either, it started out kind of like this.” She demonstrated with her own hands, interlocking her fingers with one hand on top of the other. “And then later we switched so that it was like normal holding hands but there was a little space between our palms.”

“So what else happened?” Kayla asked. I glared at her because I didn’t know why she was showing so much interest.

“Well we kind of stayed like that for a while and at some point I was resting my head on his shoulder and it was kinda uncomfortable so he adjusted his shoulder for me and I put my head back,” she gushed. I felt like this would have been more interesting to Victoria or someone else other than me. I fought back the urge to scream and clenched my chemistry notebook in my hands.

“So did you guys kiss?” Kayla asked.

I held my breath and dreaded the response. If she said yes that would mean that my chances were gone forever. “Well you see there was one point where I looked at him and he looked at me and we held eye contact for like thirty seconds and during that time I thought I saw him leaning in but I could have been imagining it because I wanted it to happen so badly.” I sighed, releasing all of the air I had held captive. There was one more question, however, that I just had to ask.

“Did he ask you out?” I asked her.

She pursed her lips and said, “no. Which is why I need your help. I was texting him after and he was telling me about how we should do it again except with more people. Obviously I told him that just the two of us was still pretty fun and he agreed to that but was still suggesting the group date thing. So then I asked him if he still wasn’t going to ask me out and his exact words were: no, I’m not going to ask you out, sorry. I mean what is that?” she asked in an outrage.

“That is kind of a dick move…” I admitted.

“Exactly, what guy takes a girl on a date, holds her hand and refuses to ask her out?” she asks. “Not to mention he told me he liked me the day before! I mean if you like someone shouldn’t you ask them out?”

“Maybe he doesn’t want to hurt Nate,” Kayla suggested. “You know them, they’re like brothers, and if he dates you then Nate has an excuse to kill him.”

“I guess that’s true, but why wouldn’t he just say that instead of saying it would be awkward?” she asked.

“He could be confused,” I said. “He might be trying to convince himself that he doesn’t like you because if he did then Nate would never speak to him again.” I didn’t know why I was encouraging the idea that Chase liked her. In my head I knew that I should have been doing everything to keep them apart.

“You guys are probably right, and I don’t even care that he won’t ask me out, just knowing that he likes me is enough,” she said before we all headed to our first period classes. Of course, it wasn’t enough for Chase just to like her. Poppy was able to say that it was, but we all knew that what she really wanted was for him to make them official.