It was a rainy afternoon. Rain poured outside and each drop pelted the windowpane. With one hand, holding a white rose, the other, a picture of myself with someone I love the most. It pains me going near, coming closer to him. Seeing him very ill that can barely even stand nor speak in sentences. Opening the door felt like lighting a fire, it burns your whole being instantly just like how I saw him on the bed. Lying down like a lifeless person.
We greeted each other like what we used to do. We stared longingly and maybe even lovingly in each other's eyes. However, it didn't last long. I had to avert my eyes for it seemed wrong but felt right at that moment. After a moment of silence, he asked the same thing he always did when I visited him everyday. "Why do you always visit me?" and I would always brush the question off and avert the topic. As time passed by, I was still talking about our past to him when something triggered in my heart and I had the sudden urge to tell him right away. However, it was too late.
A girl named Hannah Jensen is an outgoing, intelligent, loveable, and a pretty girl. Hearing those characteristics, you would already think that everyone in the world would love her, why wouldn't they?
However, to others, specifically her whole school, thinks she's weird, shy, a nerd, and unapproachable. But, to her best friend, she was more than that. He knew her and every single detail about her like the back of his palm.
Peter wilson, her best friend, hot, cute, muscled, charming, smart, and a boy that everyone loved. Things were going great between them. They were childhood best friends after all. However, as time passes by, things get rough and some people change. They were once inseparable but now drifting apart.
❝I was crazy in love, and love makes you do crazy things.❞
"So, does that mean if I-if I kissed you tonight, you wouldn't feel a thing?"
Emily barely reacted, focused on trimming her nails, but his question jolted her enough that she almost nicked herself. Without looking up, she replied, "No." Then, with a sharp breath and a smile, she met his eyes. "Absolutely not."
~*~
Liam Wyatt never had the life of an ordinary boy. Between his absent parents, a wildly popular twin, and an even more famous best friend, he always felt like the one who had to keep everything in order-even when nothing was. But despite all of that, he loved his life for what it was, imperfections and all.
There was just one thing he wished he could change: the way his heart raced every time he saw Emily, his best friend, look at her girlfriend. He wished, late at night when no one was around to notice, that she would one day look at him that way. But Liam wasn't selfish-her happiness always came first, even if it meant pushing his own feelings aside.
What We Fake explores the tender and raw complexities of unrequited love, self-identity, and the things we hide from the world-and from ourselves. In a world where we think we know ourselves best, sometimes, we're the ones wearing the best disguise.