“Oh, then I’m extra sorry. I didn’t mean to cockblock sexy time with your boyfriend.”
“No,” I say, looking toward her. “Okay…I’m going to tell you something but you have to promise not to get mad at me about it.”
“Why would I get mad at you?”
I peek over at her. “Because I’m a lying liar who lies?”
Gemma waits patiently for me to finish my thought.
“Arden is not my boyfriend. Well, he is. But he’s mypretendboyfriend. And last night, I was going to have real sex with mypretendboyfriend.”
Gemma blinks a few times before responding. “I’m confused.”
“That’s understandable.” I look back toward the starry ceiling. “Arden is my best friend’s older brother. We met up at the beginning of this year because I needed an apartment and he needed a roommate. Once he found out that Nico was giving me a hard time, he agreed to pretend to be my boyfriend so Nico would leave me alone.”
“That’s nice of him.”
She doesn’t ask me questions. She doesn’t judge. She doesn’t even get mad at me for not telling her the truth up front. Instead, she sympathizes. She understands. She is a friend I do not deserve.
“It really is.” Finally looking her way, I’m met with sympathetic eyes. “In payment, I’ve been tutoring him in statistics.”
“Do you think that’s comparable payment?”
I actually think about it for the first time since we came up with this hairbrained scene. He’s had to go out of his way for me multiple times since we started this. He has had to break out of his comfort zone. He has had to be the one who pretended.
Because really, there’s no pretending on my part. I’ve always had a crush on Margot’s older brother. I mean, the man was my first kiss. You don’t get over that stuff. For me, this was always going to be difficult because I knew I had real feelings for him. But no matter what my feelings for Arden are, there’s no way we could ever truly be together in real life. He’s too angry. Too ready to snap. Too…much like my father.
It would never work.
But the sexual chemistry? It’s off the charts. As I always knew it would be. But sex is easy. Starting a relationship with a man who could snap in the blink of an eye is something I told myself I would never, ever do.
“It works for us,” I say with a shrug.
Gemma nods a few times before taking a huge sniff of the air. “I smell coffee.” She slowly rolls to the side of the bed and stands on shaking limbs like bambi.
We leave my bedroom and the smell of morning greets us tenfold. Coffee, eggs, pancakes. The whole nine yards is set up on the dining room table, and Arden is working on his heaping full plate.
“Morning,” he greets us in between bites of scrambled eggs.
“Good morning, I hear I have you to thank for the transport service last night,” Gemma says, following me to the table where the food is displayed.
“It was nothing, really.”
“Well you have my gratitude nonetheless. And you’ll be getting soap for it.” Gemma grabs a plate and starts filling it with the fresh food. Arden looks over at me and mouths the wordsoapwith a questioning look on his face.
My answering expression is one of resigned understanding. Arden chuckles into his fork.
We fill our plates and sit next to each other across from Arden. All of a sudden, I see the main reason why Arden and I would absolutely never be able to be a real couple.
“Oh no, I don’t think this is going to work.”
“Sorry?” Arden asks, his eyes full of confusion.
“You put ketchup on eggs? Absolutely not. Dealbreaker.”
Arden laughs, picking up a forkful of ketchupy eggs. He makes an exaggerated show of putting the food in his mouth and enjoying the hell out of it. I want to puke just looking at him but Gemma cackles next to me.
“You two are disgustingly adorable.”