Just Fake It

CH1 : Fugly For President

"Hey, Jacey." Mike greeted me when I walked in. There was something off in his tone through and I remember thinking it was weird. He never spoke to me with anything but warmth, yet he seemed on edge. A cheesy part of me wondered if it was because he somehow knew what I was planning to do and felt the same nerves I did.

"I have something to tell you," I said, straight to the point.

"Can this wait for another time?" At the point he really seemed anxious, his eyes glancing over to the bathroom door.

"No, it can't." I don't know why I didn't just drop it then, it would have saved me the unending embarrassment later.

"Okay, what is it?" At least his tone leaned more towards normal. I hesitated before walking right up to him and straddling him right there. Except I did it like a cowgirl with anger issues, crushing his junk in the process. Then I went for it. I ignored his slightly uncomfortable look and went all in.

I would like to blame the fact that I didn't realize he wasn't kissing me back on never having kissed anyone before. The voice that broke through the moment was deep.

"Well, this is awkward." The voice said. When I looked up the room had been brightly illuminated now that the bathroom door had been opened. A super buff guy our age with wavy black hair stood watching us a few feet from the bathroom doorway. He looked like a freaking super model. 

"Who's that?" I asked, my voice a slight dumbfounded whisper. I had taken one look at him and known he wasn't just some guy who caught us kissing.

I felt Mike shift under me before looking down at his crystal blue eyes.

"That's my boyfriend." He finally said, cringing at my impending reaction. The words didn't register for a few seconds, but when they did I wanted to die. I was mortified. Not because Mike was gay, but because I had just thrown myself at him and he had someone, someone I could never amount to. 

And so the cat was out of the bag, or more like out of the closet. That was the first night I got pissed drunk, ever. The following morning, when I woke up next to Mike with the worst hangover of my life to date, everything came out. By everything I would also like to talk about the twenty-dollar bills that spilled out of my bra with no memory of how they got there. Mike told me everything from the story of how he met Jake , coffee shop, totally cute, and how he realized he was gay. He didn't ask me to fake being his girlfriend right away. No, that came later.

It came when I finally realized that my best friend was never going to be more than that and that my push up bra was pretty much going to be my greatest weapon in high school. It wasn't until my parents started acting concerned about my 'new lifestyle', and that Mike's parents started questioning about his love life that we came up with the plan. Appearances were everything for our parents and people we knew, so it only made sense. Plus, our parents had been planning our relationship for what felt like forever.

It had worked out well so far. We both got away with things short of murder as long as we were together, and the arrangement had been a happy one for a while. Well, except when I got lonely and Mike was too busy fawning over Jake.  But that wasn't very often and a few shots of Vodka later all was good in Jacey Town. Not only did I lose a potential boyfriend, I lost a piece of my best friend that night, but I managed to push it aside and make it work. We'd had our one year anniversary a few weeks ago and that meant that our parents gave us even more freedom to be together, if by together meant sneaking out to Jake's house so that Mike could swap spit with him all afternoon, among other things that I didn't want to acknowledge. until we had to leave.

It would have made more sense if I had somewhere to be during their make-out sessions, but the sad fact was that Mike was my only best friend. Sure I hung out with a lot of people, especially when I partied, but never outside of a social setting or without some alcohol in my system.