Total pages in book: 83
Estimated words: 84289 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 421(@200wpm)___ 337(@250wpm)___ 281(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 84289 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 421(@200wpm)___ 337(@250wpm)___ 281(@300wpm)
“It’s cute that you enjoy listing out your favorite things, even if you won’t tell me what the secret is.”
He walks over and stuffs his journal into the top drawer of his dresser.
I used to be able to provoke Oliver out on the ice, but I’ve never seen him flustered quite like this. He walks over to the window beside his balcony door, pacing around like he doesn’t know where to go in his own room.
He’s hotter when he’s flustered.
Reminds me of how he always used to act around me.
There’s a little string of Christmas lights hanging in the window, and slowly, the colors dance along the string from red to green to blue and orange. I feel like I’ve stumbled into Oliver’s cozy little cave, with fuzzy throw blankets tossed on his desk chair, the end of his bed, and another one on top of a small bean bag on the ground.
“I like your room,” I tell him.
He glares at me. “Yeah, well, you don’t belong in it. Feels like yesterday you were being a complete dick to me, just like this.”
“You have no idea what I’ve been through. You have your perfect little life. Mine isn’t like that.”
“So tell me,” he says. “What happened to you?”
“You trying to be my friend, now? Bit late for that.”
“Would have been your friend a long time ago if you ever noticed that I wanted to.”
I pause.
I can already tell he regrets how he phrased that, but it makes my cock throb again.
“You wanted me, Oliver?”
He looks nervous again.
More of that, please.
“Wanted you to be friendly to me,” he corrects himself. “I would have been your friend at any time, Niko. You just made it impossible.”
On some level, he’s right. I had surface-level friends in high school, but none of those friendships had any depth.
Welcome to Trust Issues, population: me.
Kids in school envied me because I was popular on Instagram, or feared me because they saw me get in fistfights. But were my friends real friends? Probably not.
“You wanted me to be friendly,” I say, my tone flat.
He shrugs one shoulder. “Why’d you give me the cold shoulder after every hockey game?”
The truth is that I never considered that someone like Oliver would want to be my friend.
Those trust issues permeated every facet of my life. I thought people like Oliver couldn’t possibly be actually nice. I thought he wanted to get an advantage over me, or get on my good side so I’d go easier on him out on the ice.
“Thought we were competitors. Not buddies.”
“Felt more like strangers than anything else. Until the final game, at least.”
My skin prickles every time he mentions that game.
Or maybe I don’t know how to act when someone’s actually nice to me.
“I don’t know what to believe anymore,” I tell him. “But I’m wondering why you’re writing about sex like you’re writing a goddamn wishlist.”
Oliver reaches his hands up to run them through his hair, and I let my gaze linger on his perfect light brown waves.
“Forget about the journal,” he says. “I want to offer you the deal I want to make with you.”
“Please don’t fucking say you want to be my friend.”
“No. You’re going to be my boyfriend,” he says.
I watch the calm look in his green eyes as he stares right at me.
“Funny.”
“I don’t mean my actual boyfriend,” he says. “I don’t want one of those, anyway. I mean my fake boyfriend.”
“Call me crazy all you want, Ollie, but I think you’re starting to sound like the real freak.”
“Listen to the rest of my deal.”
“Speak.”
“I want to have a date for the two winter parties. A good date. Not just a friend. And I want it to be you.”
“What’s in it for me?”
“You want to get rid of your fuckboy reputation, so this is the perfect deal for you, too. We can start fake dating. We look like a couple, and you post pictures of us online, on your public profiles only. We both win.”
I blink at him.
I’m waiting for him to laugh and tell me he’s messing with me, but his words just hang in the air, and no punchline ever comes.
“You’re not serious.”
“Deadly serious.”
I turn the idea of it over in my mind.
It's true that my ex still thinks I want him.
And that I desperately want to eradicate that possibility from his mind.
“So you want me to post pictures of us?”
“Yes.”
“Holding hands? Skipping through the goddamn quad?”
“Fuck off, Berlant. Maybe the holding hands part, though. We will need to post coupley things.”
I chew the inside of my cheek.
“We could post pictures kissing at parties,” I say, thinking out loud. “Maybe ones where you’re wearing my hoodie, too.”
A slight blush falls on his cheekbones.
God, that is too good.
“Whatever,” he says. But I push the matter further.
“Maybe once we have people really believing it, I can post a sneaky late-night temporary photo of me dragging my fingers down your naked back. That sound good, Oliver?"