A shy high school senior jock and a closed-off girl battling an immune disorder fake a relationship to win a social media contest.
Being shy isn't easy, especially when you're the new kid at school. Scotts Valley's football program is subpar compare...
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The guys harassed me with catcalls and kissing sounds when I jogged over. One text message from Mom twenty minutes before practice ended rushed mortification through every cell of my body.
Mom: Your girlfriend is lovely. 🧁😍🍪😻🥧
My...oh shit.
A sensation best described as my stomach dropping out of my ass rushed through me. "What the fuck?! How?" I muttered as if my screen would answer.
Mom: 🧀 and 🍚! How could you hide her from me!?!?!?!?!?!? 😡😾🙎♀️👎
Cheese and rice. I blinked at her stupid saying. My sweaty forehead turned clammy, which I wiped with my equally clammy hands and clenched the steering wheel. "Fuck."
I wasn't surprised. Mom worked next door to the bakery, but I hoped my relationship with Paige didn't come to her attention. Lovely was a weird Mom word choice–nice or cute would've been mine–but she called her my girlfriend. How much damage had she done? I stomped the gas pedal, jolted my truck, peeled out of the parking lot, and took the exit turn on two wheels. Paige's text from ten minutes earlier wasn't much help.
Paige 🧁: Your mom's at the bakery.
Shit, shit, shit. How? How did Mom find out Paige was my girlfriend? Or not-girlfriend.
Fuck, she wouldn't try to ground me, would she? No, it was Mom. She'd already inflicted embarrassment. I didn't think about Paige inappropriately, but nothing was immune from Mom's oversharing. Like the ache I relieved in my morning showers. She wouldn't, would she? She would.
So much for the one person I started to feel comfortable around. Paige had probably seen my naked baby ass by now. The thirty-minute gap between her message and me parking next to Mom's car shifted my uncertainty into dread.
This was bad. So fucking bad. She could've flipped through the embarrassing photo reel by now. Twice.
I didn't have to look for them. Mom sat at the bakery's front window table across from Paige. My oversharing mother's head tipped back, and her loud laughs muffled through two layers of glass.
Paige's identical reaction made my feet stop. Her whole face lit up like sunshine. She scrunched her eyes closed, and a soft glow filled her creased cheeks. Her upper and lower teeth exposed two snaggleteeth.
Why hadn't I seen them before? Her throat bobbed as much as her shoulders, answering my question: because I hadn't seen her laugh so hard.
Paige's forearms rested on the table, and her short sleeves showed her thin arms. If I didn't know about the pink on her elbows, I wouldn't have seen it.
I frowned. Even if I didn't see Paige's psoriasis, she still felt it. I'd searched on her symptoms and treatment more than I'd done for my US History paper but had so many questions. 'Everyone's experience is different' being returned on every page wasn't a concrete answer.
