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One: Faking It
Xochitl
Xochitl should’ve known when she’d met her beautiful ex-dormmate Vannah last year, and then infuriatingly hot brother, that the rest of her family would be equally attractive. But she hadn’t anticipated suchunbelievably,knee-weakening dimples on most of Vannah’s family members. It wassounfair. Thankfully, with Vannah being the oldest of all the grandkids in her family, her brothers, and all her other hot cousins, were younger than she was. Typically, Xochitl would be nervous about having to be around so many hot guys. While Xochitl now could embrace the curves she once upon a time considered a hindrance, she’d be the first to admit one thing. With her schedule and focus on school, she had neither the time nor the inclination to work on hergamewhen it game to impressing guys. She just hated times like this when she might be forced to try. It’s why she’d considered bringing a friend with her to all these wedding events. She even asked her mom if she could come with her, but as usual her parents, who owned and ran a youth mathletes summer camp and were workaholics, were busy twenty-four seven all summer. They’d already warned her they probably wouldn’t even make it to the wedding. With her bestie, Vannah, being the bride-to-be, she and her fiancé would be whisked in every direction with little time to stay and be social with just one person,. especially considering how big Vannah’s family was. Xochitl knew she’d be doing a lot of sitting around having polite conversation with Vannah’s family members, who’d she’d only ever met a handful of times.
She glanced around, sipping her diet soda as she sat there by herself, trying to decide her next move. She’d been sitting with Vannah’s twin, Nena, until she, too, was whisked away a few minutes ago to help her mom with something. Now she sat there by herself, but she didn’t want anyone labeling her anti-social.
Turning forward again, Xochitl flinched when Vannah’s brother Taz startled her, as he plopped down on the seat next to her suddenly. “I need a favor,” he said, leaning over, rested his elbows on his knees without looking up, and tapped away at his phone screen. “Act like you’re my girl.”
Her face instantly heated. “What?” Okay, maybe she should’ve put a little more effort into working on her game. This was Vannah’s younger brother for crying out loud. She’d long ago been informed, or rather warned by his sisters on more than one occasion, of what players both their brothers were, despite being younger than her.
“Taz is especially incorrigible when it comes to flirting with our friends,” Vannah had quipped more than once then seemed to blame it on something else each time. “Some girls these days have just made it too easy on my charmingly handsome brothers. Easing through puberty and crossing over to adulthood, when it comes to girls and sex, has been anything but formidable for them. They’ve enjoyedowningit from the day they figured out they could.”
When Xochitl met Taz last year, for the very first time, that dimpled smile had nearly sucked the life out of her. But mercifully, having been forewarned, she refused to get sucked into his nonsense and had managed to stand her ground. Then the handful of times she’d been around him since, she’d avoided being alone with the little flirt. Shewould notget caught up with him. Even if this very recent, high school graduate was nearly a foot taller than her and all muscle. He sat up straight and leaned into her a little. That gorgeous smile, coupled with the smoldering gaze, had her swallowing hard. “You don’t have tosayyou’re my girl. In fact, you can’t. I don’t want Nena or Vannah asking questions.” He glanced around as if to look for his sisters, and thankfully so, because Xochitl took the moment to draw in a much-needed deep breath. Then just like that, he was back to gazing in her eyes with that same unbelievable smile. “Just act so, that if anyone were to be observing us, they might get the idea that maybe we’re hiding something juicy.” He licked his lips, glancing down at hers before bringing his eyes back to him. “A very naughty secret between just the two of us.”
She gulped hard, but as usual Xochitl did what she always did even when faced with the most uncomfortable of moments. She kept her cool and reminded herself how young he was. Because of Vannah, she knew the guy had very recently just turned eighteen—obviously—since he was asking her to help him do something so immature. Yet somehow, she felt overwhelmingly flattered. Despite him being younger than her, she would’ve never thought a guy like him, would ever consider her someone he could make another girl jealous with. If in fact that was what this was about. “W-why?”
She started to glance away, but his hand on her leg made her freeze. “No, don’t look around. I don’t want her to think I’m telling you anything about her.”
“Who?”Jesus, was that all she could come up with? Uneasy, sputtered-out, one-worded questions? She was better than this, damn it.
“Angela. She’s my sisters’ good friend since high school.” He glanced down at his phone again, allowing Xochitl to exhale subtly. “Act like I’m showing you something here.” She rolled her eyes, very obviously because she’d always objected to these stupid kinds of games. He glanced up just in time to catch the tail end of her disapproving expression and smiled. Her eyes instantly zoomed onto those dimples making her breath catch. “Come on.” He motioned down to his phone. “It’s not totally fake. I really do have something you might wanna check out.”
Despite her disapproval of this dumb game in general, curiosity got the best of her. She leaned over to look at his phone screen, inhaling the scent of his intoxicating cologne in the process. It smelled so damn good it nearly had her lashes fluttering. But she concentrated on watching him tap his phone screen, chastising herself for eventhinkingof her friend’s brother in that way. Focusing on the photos he slid across his phone screen, Xochitl was surprised that she was in a few of them. They were photos of the day last year she’d driven out here to La Jolla with Vannah and Byron to drop the bomb on her family that she was getting married at such a young age and she wasn’t even pregnant. In most of them, she, Vannah, and Nena were engrossed in conversation, obviously unaware he was taking the photos.
“She and I messed around a few times.” She glanced up at Taz, not even sure what he was talking about now. He glanced up for a moment and met her eyes, once again indulging her with that smile. “Angela. My sisters’ friend but they don’t know it. She didn’t want them to.” He shrugged pointing at his screen as if he were really showing her what he was talking about. Xochitl froze at the sight of a photo of herself—byherself. She was sitting in his parents’ backyard smiling big as she pulled a strand of her hair behind her ear. He glanced up to meet her eyes and smiled again, only not quite as smugly as he had earlier and cleared his throat. “My mom likes when I take candid photos. Says people never smile that naturally when they know they’re being photographed. This is one of my favorites.” Their eyes met again, this time minus the smile. Instead, he searched her eyes as if waiting for her to comment on this. For the first time in likeever, Xochitl was speechless. She was still trying to decide if she should be flattered or crept out that this guy—albeit hotter than she cared to admit—had taken pictures of herlast year.Pictures that were completely unbeknownst to her.Ones he was still looking at and now making sure she knew it. When she didn’t immediately respond, he shrugged. “I guess I didn’t want my sisters to know about me and Angela either. I knew it wouldn’t work out from the beginning, and my sisters might be miffed about me messing with their good friend.” He glanced up at her, those dimples making yet another appearance now that the smug smile was back. “But no sense in passing up a good time, right?”
The smolder in his eyes was back. She now knew the whole act was for the sake of this Angela chick andnoother reason. Yet, her already thudding heart sped up. Swallowing hard again, she watched as he brought up his contact list on his phone, not saying anything for a moment. Okay, this wasn’t that big a deal. So, her friends’ hot brother took photos of her without her knowledge and said one of them was his favorite. She’d already been warned of what smooth flirts her brothers could be. But Xochitl was confident she could sit there and have an adult conversation without falling for any of the nonsense. And she wasn’t about to sit there and make a total ass of herself over something he may very likely have planned and was expecting her to react like all the other girls did to him. She was determined to keep her dignity here. Ask something other than her piddly one-worded questions. Clearing her throat, she lifted her chin a bit, deciding not to comment on the photos he’d taken of her. “So, if you knew it wouldn’t work out, then it must not have meant much to you. Why do you want her to think you’re with someone now? What’s the point?”
He glanced up at her again and smiled, unnerving her to no end when he dropped his eyes to her lips for a second, before meeting her eyes again. “Notjustsomeone,” he practically murmured, and annoyingly it had Xochitl struggling not to react. “My sister’scollegefriend.” Thankfully, before she could blurt out another stupidwhy, he went on. “Iblewheroff, and she was none too pleased about it. But she was beginning to get clingy and hinting that maybe weshouldlet my sisters in on it. Like maybe she thought it might turn into more. So, the last few times she’s been around, she’s been a little hostile. Kind of a bitch. Made a few comments about being intomen, not little boys. Said most girls aren’t. That kind of shit. I shot back that it’s why I’d blown her off, because I wasn’t into desperate older girls looking to tie me down. Now she’s here with a dude who’s obviously older than me, and I’m sure she did it on purpose.”
Glancing down when he motioned to his phone again, Xochitl could see he’d brought up a new contact screen. She read the name he typed in.
Socheel
Feeling her heart speed up, she did the stupid clearing of her throat again. “Is that supposed to be my name?”
“Yeah.” He turned to her. “Isn’t that how you spell it?”
She shook her head. “No, it’s spelled completely different than how it’s pronounced.”
He cleared what he’d written. “So howdoyou spell it?”
As expected, the moment she said X, he jerked his head back to look at her, brows fully raised. For the first time since he’d sat down next to her, Xochitl felt at ease enough to smile.
“Noway.”
“Yes,” she nodded, smiling even bigger. “My parents chose Aztec names for both me and my brother. But at least his sounds exactly how it’s spelled, Izel.”
She gave him the rest of the spelling. His eyes grew wider with each letter, and he shook his head when she was done. “Your parents are fucked up.”
This time Xochitl all-out laughed. “I’d take offense, but trust me it’s not the first time I’ve heard that. And yeah, imagine me as a five-year-old trying for the life of me to make sense of why my name started with an X, and then me trying to learn to spell it.”
“That must’ve sucked ass.” He shook his head. “I would’ve picked up a nickname or something.”
“I like my name, though,” she protested. “I remember the kids that the teachers had to call out as Juan B, and Juan R, and so forth, because there were multiple in the class. I never had to worry about that.”
“Well,yeah,for good reason.” He pointed at his phone screen. “Who else would wanna go by this?”
