We're Eating Fictional Pizza Tonight
Somehow I got away with it. Annabelle believed that I had some secret boyfriend who I had kept secret for months and I had spent my Valentine’s with him. The hickey had definitely been enough evidence for her, as had it been for everyone in my classes as I wore every scarf I owned. For a boy who didn’t date, Luke sure knew how to mark a neck.
“Lucy, you ready to go?” Kristin shuffled her backpack over her shoulder, motioning for me to follow her out of the lecture hall. Our ten a.m. philosophy class had just ended and we had developed the habit of grabbing lunch afterwards. After lunch we would branch off in our separate ways towards class or back to our respective apartments. Since it was Thursday, five days after the invention of my “boyfriend,” I would head back to Annabelle and I’s apartment and take a long nap before my study session with my history group.
Kristin and I’s lunch was quiet. She worked late Wednesday nights and I had had eight a.m. class. We munched our salads and discussed some of the harebrained moves our philosophy class tended to make during the two-hour lecture. The most ridiculous was the girl who sat at the front of 500 students and raised her hand after every sentence the professor expelled. It was the reason we always finished at the end of the two hours.
We were headed out of the restaurant, arms linked as our energy picked up from the food, when I bumped into a familiar blonde.
“Lucy!”
“Annabelle!” My roommate embraced me and made the customary action of acknowledging my friend. “What are you doing on this side of campus? The education building is on the west end.”
She tucked a strand of her pale hair behind her ear and adjusted the backpack on her shoulders. Thursdays were Annabelle’s busy days and she usually spent all day in the education building before coming home when I was already in bed. Why she would be so far away was odd.
“My afternoon class was cancelled, so I figured I would treat myself to a real lunch before trudging back there. I’m starting to really get sick of the education building.” We shared a laugh, all three of us knowing how irritating the building your major resides in becomes.
“Well, it was nice running into you. I was just heading back to the apartment for a nap.” She nodded. “I’ll see you tonight though. Don’t work too hard!”
We bid our goodbyes and Kristin and I kept walking the way we had. Until Annabelle stopped us.
“Lucy! I meant to ask you something and it slipped my mind when I was getting ready this morning. Do you want to invite your boyfriend over this weekend for dinner? You know Tyler so well and I want to meet your guy.”
My palms started to sweat and Kristin’s eyes grew to the size of tennis balls.
“Boyfriend?! Lucy Sommers, who is this boyfriend?”
Annabelle chose this time to interject. “You didn’t know about him either? I think Lucy was hiding him from us. I didn’t even know he existed until last weekend when she was at his place.”
My cheeks were heating up and I was glad it was a cool February otherwise I surely would have fainted from overheating. This was meant to have blown over by now so I could go back to being undesirable Lucy who had let ice cream soak through her skinny jeans last Friday. But it looks like Annabelle was more concerned with my love life than I would ever be.
Kristin captured my attention once again. “Listen, I have to go to class, but I want all the details tonight. Deal?” I shyly nodded, wishing I could die in a hole, and watched my close friend sprint across the lawn towards the Spanish building.
YOU ARE READING
The Completely Real Story of My Fake Boyfriend
Humor"I need you to give me a hickey." Twelve years of friendship and this was by far the weirdest thing I had ever said to him. It would also start the beginning of a long lie to the girl who shared my rent. And it was all because of my fake boyfriend...
