Twisted Deal | A not-so cliche fake dating romance

Chapter Eighteen

Sebastian

Hearing about Hannah asking my fake girlfriend to apologize to me on her behalf wasn't exactly the thing I had wanted to hear. An apology was a form of showing remorse for the thing that had gone down. Hannah must be feeling guilty, but why was she not guilty enough to not apologize to me directly? I didn't like it. I also didn't like remembering about how all of the times an argument went down in our relationship, I was the first one who apologized. It came as second nature to me to immediate feel regret after something happened.

But it didn't come as easy to her. We worked on it for a while in our relationship, but over the years, I guess I had forgotten about it. Let it slide. Let myself be the antagonist every single time in our arguments. I hadn't felt anything by it until I was reminded of it all over again.

It was awkward at the apartment, now more than ever. With my revelation of moving out of this place and our argument hanging in the air, it was hard to even be around the apartment. It was worse that Hannah was the one who was avoiding it the most. But I guess it was normal anyway. She was just better at it now. We stopped doing the normal routine that we had kept after our breakup. How I had kept up with the cooking dinner and letting Hannah handle the laundry on Sundays. We had both fallen on our routines, and instead we do things separately.
 

I order takeout almost every day of the week, and on the off chance that I don't, I scrape together whatever we have in the fridge. Hannah does her own laundry, and I follow suit. It's hard for me to remember about doing laundry though; the task is mundane and tedious. So I don't most days. I let my clothes pile up until I'm forced to do when I run out of sleeping clothes.

Because I was barely going out. I usually kept to staying at the apartment and letting time pass by.

Jennifer texts me when I'm done with finally putting my clothes away after neglecting them for a couple of weeks.

Jen: Fake dating mission #3?
 

As usual, I'm not told about anything beforehand, so I give her a call instead. Moving over to take a seat on my bed, I wait for her to pick up.

"Bash!" she speaks into the phone, and her voice seems faraway. I could hear something in the background—a constant sound of metal scraping against itself. "Hey, thanks for calling. It makes it better to talk to you."

"Yeah," I answer softly before asking, "Where are you?"

Jen doesn't answer for a moment; the sound is louder against my ear now. "I'm just looking for something to wear," more sounds—which I classify as hangers—"give me a second."

"Sure," I answer before studying an old photo on my dresser. I had found it in the living room after my breakup with Hannah. In the photo, we had just graduated from high school. We were smiling cheek to cheek, Hannah already being quite tall and matching my height in heels. Her hair was splayed across my shoulders, and our arms intertwined with each other. We were both happy. I like the photo. But it makes me annoyed to look at it now, so I move forward and grab it off my desk.

Without even thinking about it, I take the frame down and then disassemble it. Pulling the photo out of its frame, I hold the picture up to my face. I almost crumble it up, but then I catch sight of my grin. God, I was so happy. I was so happy, and it makes me sad to think of getting rid of it. So, instead, I shove it in my bedside drawer instead.

"So I was thinking you accompany me on a baseball game this afternoon," Jen's voice suddenly calls out, and it makes me flush to think about being caught. So, I shove the picture under everything in that drawer before nodding panically. It was okay, right? To keep photos that have good memories? Couldn't it just be that? Memories you want to keep? God, I sounded pathetic trying to defend myself.