One Shots XXX

Faking It XXX

A/N: This one-shot involves the characters Ezra and Asher from my story Faking It in the book One Shots 3.0.

I did it for Asher three times before he did it for me.

I mean, not that I minded. And not that he didn't notice and try to establish some sort of stasis. It was just kind of the way it worked out.

And it's not like I was keeping tally; as we've established by now, I don't do that with Asher. And it's not like I wasn't getting anything out of it either. I was getting plenty.

It started about midway through the summer. We were bored; Bex and Suze had left for China pretty much as soon as school let out; most of our other friends had already departed for their college towns; Hunter was spending all of his time with Lilah Knight, and while doubling with them wasn't the worst thing in the world, more often than not her brother Lewis was hanging around somewhere and that tended to get kind of awkward considering how I'd almost jumped his bones over Spring Break despite already technically being in a relationship with Asher. Not that Asher minded at the time, but he sure as shit minded now, and while I wasn't altogether too opposed to his territorial boyfriend routine, it could get kind of uncomfortable after a while.

Like when Hunter had invited us to Lilah's one Saturday around the end of June to take advantage of the Knights' pool and Jacuzzi. It was pushing thirty Celsius and sitting around in our underwear in the Lynn's air-conditioned family room was getting kind of old, especially considering that seeing Asher's body all nearly-naked and glistening with sweat was doing weird things to me lately and neither of us had the energy to do much about it, what with the heat. And even if we had had the energy, Brandon Lynn, home for the summer to intern with their dad's law firm, was delighting in interrupting us any time we started to even think about fooling around.

'This is so typical of him,' Asher muttered furiously on more than one occasion. 'I call him from BC in the middle of the night all freaked out about you and he's Brother of the Year, making sure we get together. But when it comes to us actually being together, he can't wait to get in the way.'

Anyway, there were more than a couple of reasons that we were glad to have somewhere else to escape from the heat, so we took Hunter up on his offer even though we knew there was a chance Lewis would be around.

'Stop freaking out, dude,' Asher told me casually as he drove us over there, rolling his eyes. 'It's not like you even did anything with him. Plus I heard from someone that you were in love with me at the time.'

That someone being me. I wasn't likely to live that one down any time soon.

Hunter met us out front of Knights' house and brought us through their foyer and living room to the back deck, where Lilah was putting little umbrellas into some glasses of lemonade.

Hunter went to put his arm around her waist; she was already wearing just her bikini with a pair of Armani sunglasses and a large sunhat, and when she looked up she flushed, grinning and offering us the glasses shyly. Lilah wrote for the Arts section of the Hopkins' Prep newspaper and up until school let out Asher had been the Editor - as an outgoing Sophomore, she was still a little intimidated by him.

There were more and more - and more and more and more - things about Asher lately that made my insides squirm, and knowing people thought of him the way Lilah did was one of them.

'Thanks for having us over,' he said easily, taking the glass from her and smiling.

'Oh no, thanks for coming,' she gushed, leading the way down form the deck towards the inviting expanse of the cool blue water in the pool. 'We've been so bored, haven't we Hunter? Most of my friends have all gone off to their summer places for vacation,' she explained, climbing carefully into the pool and sitting on one of the lower steps so as not to get her hair wet. Lilah had taken an internship at our town's local paper for the summer and was, according to Hunter, excelling at it. 'It's nice to have people around.'