Faking It

Chapter 22: Stolen Happily Ever Afters

I should have guessed that playing fake girlfriend to someone as notoriously popular as Theo Ellerby was going to be more of a chore than a dream. For one, the whispers never stopped. Either I was a social climbing gold-digger who just wanted one of the Ellerbys for their money, or Theo was acting out against his parents by dating a "charity case." But it wasn't the rumors that got to me. It was the fact that everyone knew my name now. Where I'd once been invisible, happily devouring carbs with Audra and Gyeong-Ja and moaning over my schoolwork in study hall, now I was accosted almost everywhere I went. People who'd once ignored me now greeted me in the halls and stopped to chat, even when Theo wasn't by my side. Those times were rare, though, and when I asked him if we really had to be attached at the hip whenever we weren't in class, he just smirked and told me I was cute when I was stressing.

My newfound popularity manifested itself online too, and I was inundated with follow requests the same day that Theo made us Instagram-official with a shot of us snuggled on a common room couch with the caption, When the gf can't keep her hands off you. Much to my annoyance, it had taken us almost half an hour of posing and snapping and rearranging ourselves until he got a picture he deemed worthy of his feed. Worse, he couldn't understand my refusal to let randoms follow me. It was hard enough that so much of the Kingsbridge student body now had access to my goofy, decidedly-not-curated Instagram, thanks to Theo's insistence that I accept all of their follow requests for the sake of our ruse.

"Any girlfriend of mine would bask in it, Emdubs. You're a hot commodity now," Theo said, scrolling through my phone to check for more fellow students in my barrage of requests while we walked to English class. "You sure you don't want to just accept all and be done with it? You'd be halfway to influencer status if you—"

"I don't want to be an influencer." I snatched my phone away from him. "And the rumors suck enough that I don't need Emma and her friends digging up my embarrassing junior high posts."

"Embarrassing junior high posts, huh?" Theo slipped out his own phone and opened my profile. "Now this I have to see."

When I lunged for his phone, he laughed and caught me in his arms to spin me around. Over the past few weeks, I'd gotten used to his PDA stunts, and unless I wanted a lecture on how to be a good fake girlfriend later, I'd learned to play along.

"Keep it up, we have an audience," he whispered, before setting me down with a crunch in the autumn leaves. His hand lingered on my cheek and I grinned up at him.

"Do you ever not have an audience, Ellerby?" I asked through my teeth, still smiling.

His eyes flared a warning before he leaned in to press a kiss to my forehead.

"Hi you two!" came a sing-song voice from beside us. Madeleine cocked her head innocently, a syrupy sweet smile on her face.

"What's up, Maddie?" Theo asked, wrapping an arm around my shoulders.

When her eyes followed his hand as it stroked my arm, he pulled me closer. I leaned into him, mirroring Madeleine's smile with one of my own. The kind a real girlfriend might bestow upon the gorgeous blonde who'd made out with her new boyfriend at last year's prom.

But Madeleine didn't bat an eye. "William's in a council meeting, so maybe you can help me. He invited me to your parents' Harvest Gala, but didn't say if it's black or white tie. Do you know?"

Theo's arm went rigid around my shoulders. I glanced up at him and tried not to frown. All the ease had swept from his face, and now his smile was more of a knife's edge than a grin.

"It's black-tie," he replied, running his other hand through his hair. "So wear your best pageant dress."

"Oh, perfect. You're a lifesaver!" Maddie gushed.

Then, as if I wasn't standing right there, she leaned up on tiptoe to kiss Theo's cheek. I cringed at the flood of her rosewater perfume that invaded my nostrils and bristled at her brazenness. But before I could demand what the hell she thought she was doing, like a good fake girlfriend would, she'd already flounced away.

And then her words actually processed.

My stomach dropped. "Did she just say—"

"Yes." Theo's arm left my shoulders. "Come on, we're going to be late."

He strode off, and I had to jog to catch up to him. "But then that means—"

"I know." He pulled open a door for me, his brows furrowed.

I hesitated. "So...is that it then? Did we fail?"

He glanced down at me, then after Madeleine, before exhaling and scrubbing a hand over his face. "Not even close. He's just...never mind. We can worry about this later. I can't be late again or Mrs. Wiltshire is going to make me read aloud as Hamlet."

But while Theo was able to slide on his easy grin just in time for English, I had trouble focusing on the words in front of me. Even though he somehow thought that we hadn't failed, I couldn't shake the thought that all of this nonsense had been for nothing.

William had asked Madeleine out to some fancy, black-tie party. And if the movies were to be trusted, when your handsome crush invites someone else to a party that requires a ballgown, it usually means that someone else is about to get your happily ever after.

**A/N short one this week so another one will be up tomorrow or Friday!