Falling for my fake boyfriend

7 - So busted

“Adam f*****g Davies?” Jessie only says his name, but her right eyebrow rises threateningly. Crap! I was genuinely hoping that she didn’t make out the identity of the guy I was kissing. I sure as hell didn’t figure out who he was until after I attacked his mouth.

“What about him?” I innocently ask, turning my back on Jessie under the pretext of resuming my coffee making process. 

“I saw the two of you together at the party.” Her tone is accusing, but also playful. Weird combination, but I dare not turn around yet.

“Did you?” I am a bad actor, as it has previously been proven, for my surprised voice sounds fake, and the pitch of my tone doesn’t help my case either.

“I did. I saw you at the party, Lily.” 

“Well, You are at the party, I was at the party, there was a high chance for Davies to be there too since it was the company’s Christmas party.” I try my luck again, but when I turn to face my friend, I find her glaring at me.”

“Contrary to popular belief, being blonde doesn’t necessarily equals being dumb.” Jessie frowns unimpressed.

While I’m sporting red hair and have always had to deal with being a ginger and the afferent bullying, Jessie is a blonde and is constantly battling the stereotypes that come with that.

“Lily, I saw you. I saw you with Davies. You know that I saw you, and I know that you know that I saw you, because you’ve been avoiding me ever since.” She’s being a tad dramatic since the party was not long ago. I’m sure most of the attendees haven’t even sobered up yet.

“I have not.” I squak, feeling put on the spot. Jessie immediately gives me one of her well perfected cut the crap looks. It’s probably the one she used to convince whomever at Vauxhall that the company needed another person in their marketing department, when they weren’t actually hiring.

I’ve known her for nearly seven years and I have learned that she is relentless, which I usually love about her, just not right now when it directly involves me.

“The ten thousand messages I have sent you and the dozens of calls that went straight to voicemail, beg to differ.” She shows her phone in my face to make her point.

“I’ve been preoccupied…” 

“Preoccupied?” Jessie eyes me suspiciously.

“Yeah, you know. Christmas shopping that I have to plan, plus other things that kept me busy…” A simple look around Carrie and mine flat and one can see there is nothing Christmasey in here.

“Things? Or someone?” I remain quiet, my mind trying to come up with a plan, any plan, to get me out of this. “Were you too busy shagging Davies to gossip with me about the party?” She breaks out into giggles.

“I’m most certainly not shagging Davies.” I quickly tell her, though memories of his hard member pressed against my belly still make my cheeks flushed.

“I saw you two kiss.” She deadpans.

“Yeah, that. That was just…” Jessie nods like an overexcited puppy at the sight of a tennis ball, as if to encourage me to finish the sentence. 

When I don’t say anything else, because I have no idea what to say, Jessie sighs.

“Lily, what is happening? Your date didn’t show up, your so called mystery man, and you just took off. I came looking for you and saw you locking lips with Davies. Since you refused to say anything, I can only come up with two different scenarios.” She’s pacing around the living room now, while I settle on the sofa, still wondering how the hell I can get her to drop this.

“Scenario number one. Something happened with your boyfriend and you two broke up, which breaks my heart for you, but I don’t think kissing Davies would solve anything.” She taps her temple with her slim finger. I know I can’t let her believe that, because that would mean she’ll never go out with the guy she likes. Stupid drunken pact.

“Scenario number two, and while this is the most plausible one, it’s also the most outrageous. Lily, are you dating Adam Davies?” The question throws me off, because yes, this is the most outrageous scenario. But also, it’s the only one that could solve everything quickly.

I think about it for a few moments. If I say that I’m dating Davies, and that he was the mystery man all along, then Jessie will go out with the guy she likes, start a relationship and then be too in love to take the silly pact seriously and break up with him. I can always say something came up and things didn’t work out between Davies and I, right?

Jessie’s laugh pulls me out of my scheming thoughts.

“You and Adam Davies, dating.” She slaps her leg. “That’s hilarious. Though, I have to say, out of all the revenge, drunk hookups, I did not expect you and Davies, that’s for sure.”

This whole situation, although depressing, is rather simple if you remove all the irrelevant details. 

For the longest time I have been alone in the world. It feels like a lifetime even though I was left on my own when I was barely 16.

I trained myself not to make a big fuss about it, since obviously there are many people that are alone in the world, for various reasons. I’m certain I’m not the only one listing movie characters and fictitious phone numbers on their emergency contact forms. As long as I don't find myself in need of those emergency contacts to be busted out of my file, I should be golden.

During college and my master’s, focusing on science and research has been my way of coping, and I was perfectly prepared to spend the rest of my life in an artificial lit room, in a tiny cubicle, at a small desk in front of a large screen designing the parts I would be engineering.

At least that was the plan. I didn’t veer off much from not having a social life and talking with my computer more than to other people, but a variable I hadn’t considered entered my life two years before I graduated. That variable was Jessie. 

In a way, it was love at first sight. It was the first day of the new school year, and as per usual we were all trying to get our paws on a key that meant we have student housing on campus.

I remember entering the large auditorium, I looked around, and joined the queue. With my file in hand, I was hoping the process would go quick and I would get my room and hopefully a decent roommate. 

It quickly became apparent that everyone was already paired up, and if you made it to the front of the queue without a roommate you increased the level of irritability of the clerk and that was never a good thing.

I was freaking out yet didn’t dare to ask someone if they would like to be my roommate. I almost accepted that I would be left without student housing and had to sleep in the same cupboard sized, uyet grossly overpriced, room above the kebab shop near campus. That’s where I spent my summer, since being a geek means you need access to campus even during the holidays.

With two more pairs left in front of me, a girl with straight blonde hair and a pretty, round face links her arm into mine and whispers in my ear:

“I need to make my family think I’m staying at the student flats, but I’ll stay with my boyfriend. That OK with you? You’ll basically be living alone provided you don’t rat me out if my mum and dad decide to visit.”

And that was it, we became friends and after 5 minutes we were acting like we’ve known each other our whole lives.

Despite never having actually lived together, because Jessie comes from a different environment than I do. Even after she broke up with that boyfriend she was living with when we met, her family mistook her grumpiness for not getting enough rest in the student infested and thin walled building, so they paid for her apartment off campus.

But we became close, and always supported each other, because for some unimaginable reason, Jessie seems to like me just as much. I will never forget how upon hearing I don’t have any family, Jessie dragged me to her parents’ home for the holidays. 

This year is no exception, by the way. Tomorrow evening both of us are expected for Christmas Eve dinner at her childhood home.

Even the ratty laptop I currently do my work on is Jessies’ dad’s old laptop. He shoved the thing in my face when I flat out refused they buy me a new one.

The point is the day Lily met Jessie, a lifetime friendship was born. 

For a little under a year, we have been including a third member in our little group, namely my currently missing flat mate, Carrie.

The fact of the matter, and why I’m clutching onto this childish pact we made, is that Jessie rarely involved herself emotionally in a relationship. Sure, she fell in love a lot, but not a real, deep love and she has been honest about that.

She never got really excited about a man before they even went out. Until Brandon, that is, the guy that relentlessly asks her out and genuinely seems like a good guy.

Pretending that Davies was my date for the company's  Christmas party is the least I can do to ensure my best friend’s happiness. 

With a smile on my face and a tone as casual as I can muster considering I was a little blindsided by Jessie’s visit, I start.

“Why is Adam and I dating hilarious?” I had to push his first name out and it feels so strange, so intimate and so wrong at the same time. If I didn’t give Davies enough grounds to report me to HR and make sure I’m sacked, now I’ve done it.

“First off, he’s Adam Davies, enough said. Second, we talk every minute of every day Lily, and yet you never mentioned Davies before. I’m sorry for laughing, but my best friend is supposedly seeing the superstar of Vauxhall somehow I’ve never heard of it?” She narrows her eyes suspiciously at me. I gulp, reaching for my cup of coffee just to buy myself some time. Of course it would sound far fetched.

“All reasons why I haven’t mentioned it before…” I mutter with my lips on the mug.

Ignoring my words, Jessie continues.

“You do know his reputation, right? Hell, Lily. Is it some kind of joke? Do you have a brain tumour? Do I have a brain tumour?” Jessie starts with the dramatism. 

But aside from my friend coming to terms with what she learned, this is typical for whenever I tell a lie. It snowballs and before I know it I end up having to tell even more lies to cover the firstone. And that wouldn’t be so tragic if I wasn’t utterly horrible at it, which means that each lie will end up getting worse and less convincing than the previous. Not that me dating Davies, the superstar, as my friend called him, is very convincing at the moment. 

I’m quickly realising that I don’t think I can fool Jessie. Not even with the kiss she witnessed. There is no way I can fool anybody.

Jessie is going to figure me out, then she’s going to get mad.

Shit! She’s not going to trust me, and in her need to pour her heart out to someone she will tell the guy that allowed to approach her as a friend since she refused to go out with him. Basically her guy Brandon will be mad. At the same time, Carrie will emerge from wherever she is hiding when s**t hits the fan and will find out what’s going one. Getting mad at me too, and then I will find myself truly alone in the world. Again.

Spiralling in the span of nanoseconds, I begin to envision that heartbreak and the result of it which will be the same as I am currently facing: ruining my engineering career.