No, what? What the hell am I thinking? Noted? There is nothing to note. In less than forty-eight hours this whole charade—and the real parts—is over. Everything ceases to exist. There won’t be a honeymoon period, or any other phases.
Is mourning a stage?
“Dude,” Luke smacks my arm, pulling me away from the question I don’t want to think about. “Seriously, you need to relax.”
“I’m relaxed.” For good measure I shake out my shoulders and tilt my head from side to side. I don’t have anything to prove, but I’ll be damned if I’m not trying to prove it anyway.
“You aren’t. There hasn’t been a time that poor waitress—”
“—Julie—”
“—has come over here and you haven’t mentioned Jordan.”
I lift my chin defiantly. “I’m being a doting boyfriend.”
“You’re being a doting something.” He eyes me up and down,eyes narrowing. “Don’t be an idiot. You know you’re not her real boyfriend, right? You don’t get to go screw her later tonight.”
“Yes, asshole. But to fool everyone that needs to be fooled, I’ve got to play the part convincingly. The aunts are eating this shit up.”
I’ve been the receiver of more than a few looks of approval tonight. Word spread like wildfire at dinner that Jordan and I were together, but Savanna was strategic in placing us away from any family members to avoid questions until afterwards. It mostly worked, though there were a couple of times that different aunts dropped by to make comments and ask about us.
“Nate’s an idiot,” Luke mutters but all it does is make me smile.
Nate is anything but an idiot. Nate is a motherfucking hero.
“You ready to lose?” I ask, taking a swig of my beer. I think most of us are laying off the heavy alcohol given it’s the night before the wedding.
“Ready to eat crow?” he strikes back, moving towards the basketball nets only a few feet away.
My phone vibrates in my pocket as I leave the table to join him. I take a second to pull it out, even though he’s putting the tokens in the machine, discovering a new text from Jordan. A smile spreads across my face faster than I ingest a protein shake after a workout. This dating shit may be fake, but this is my one chance to test waters I’ve never dipped my toe in and still come out the other side unscathed. The aunts aren’t the only ones eating it up.
Entering my password into my screen, I open my texts. At first I don’t know what I’m looking at, but then a second picture comes in while I’m looking at the first, and I swipe over to it.
“Holy fuck!” I shout, my phone flying out of my hands.
It hits the floor with a sick slap, but that’s not what has myheart pounding in my chest so loudly I can hear it thundering in my ears. When Luke makes a move to grab the device off the floor, I lunge for it, waving him off.
“Bro—”
“I’m good! I’m fucking good.”
Snatching it up, I clutch it to my chest like it’s my precious. Right now, it fucking is. There are things on my screen that are not meant for Luke’s eyes. But mine? Mine are about to fucking feast.
“Good, then let’s play, asshole!”
Looking at the basketball hoops, I realize the balls have been released, and the timer is counting down. Luke’s been a good sport about not starting, but he’s not giving me anymore time to recover from my outburst.
I don’t even know if my screen survived the fall, but I shove it in my pocket for the sake of saving face and grab a ball, tossing it at the net. It’s a miss. As are the next two. I’m distracted, and it isn’t the phone screen that’s got me fucked up.
Oh no, that honor belongs to Jordan.
The fucking brat who sent me a picture in which I know she was naked. Not that it showed me any of the goods; I have an imagination for that. How do I know she was naked? Because the first picture I looked at, I now realize, was of her roperdilly. Not on her body.
Luke’s right. I do want to romp her. Right fucking now.
Thirty seconds later, Luke’s jumping at me, an arm wrapping around my neck to pull me down into a wrestling position. He’s feeling the high of winning the battle between us, but I couldn’t care less at the moment as I push him off me. There’s just something wrong with having a buddy jumping on you when your dick is having a hard time controlling himself.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. I get it, you won.”
