tratie one shots, vol. i

[ ex ]

heya, it's been a while (again). thought i'd write this totally-overused theme of "oh no here comes my ex i need to show him i'm not forever alone, quick pretend to date me." anyways, enjoy!

words: 1304

. . .

Travis and I never got along. Not when we were little kids and we constantly scrapped; not when we got into second grade and he pranked me every day at school; not when we were in middle school and he'd pick fights with me on the bus; not when we were freshmen in high school and he spread rumors about me making out with the star quarterback who slept with chicks left and right.

Cruel fate allowed us to be family friends and be forced to grow up together, or else I wouldn't have associated myself with him in a million years.

It was our senior year of high school when our English teacher asked me to tutor him because of his failing grades and my top ones. I hastily told her that I had biology class during tutoring period, but she explained that we could do it outside of school hours. 

Travis eagerly agreed only to annoy me. 

So we sat at a booth in the cafe downtown, his blueberry muffin and our English textbook on the table, on a late Saturday morning. The cafe buzzed with quiet chatter and comfortable breakfasts commencing. At our table, however, frustration grew.

"I told you, Travis," I huffed, "you can't just add an apostrophe wherever there's an 's' on the end of a word. You need to know the difference between possessive and plural."

"Says who?"

"Says any basic middle school textbook."

He furrowed his brow. "This is hard, I don't like it."

"We haven't even gotten past the intro page, idiot."

Travis groaned. "I hate English."

I opened my mouth to retort when I saw him walk into the cafe. Broad-shouldered, dirty-blond hair, a snakelike smile... Kyle, my ex. 

He lived a couple of towns over and went to another school, but we'd met at a summer camp and hit it off. Unfortunately, he wasn't the ray of sunshine he appeared to be, so I broke it off a few months after we got together.

Travis looked over his shoulder to see what I was staring at and frowned. "What is it?"

"Kyle."

"Ew."

He hadn't any particularly kind feelings for Kyle, either. He'd suffered through hearing me gush about him endlessly any time we were together, but they'd never met. Still, Travis harbored agitation for my ex because of the stories I told about him.

"I thought he wouldn't come near town after we broke up."

He shook his head. "He's definitely cocky. I'd be terrified of you if we broke up on bad terms."

"Hey, I'm a pleasure to be around and you know it!" I hissed indignantly. 

Travis shook his head. "Nah." He shrugged and motioned to our textbook. "Let's just get back to English."

But it was too late. I bit my lip as I made eye contact with Kyle, and he abandoned the line at the register. "He's coming over. Oh, no, this isn't good. He's gonna be so happy that I'm still single and he's probably with someone else and..." I trailed off, pinning my eyes on Travis.

"What?"

"Pretend to be my boyfriend."

"Uh, no."