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“Okay,” he says, seeming unconvinced.
“All right, when we were kids, we had this inside joke he would call me pretty girl. Then, at Sarah’s thirteenth birthday party, this guy refused to kiss me in theLove Shack—” I stop when he raises his eyebrows in confusion. “Oh, um, it’s kinda like seven minutes in heaven. Anyway, he told me I wasn’t pretty enough for him—” Davey looks appalled and surprisingly not at me.
“Who?”
“Jake Anderson.”
“What a douche.”
“Yeah, anyway, I was upset and had a little meltdown, and they all tried to cheer me up. Aaron said I wasn’t pretty, I was beautiful, and he was going to tell me every day so I wouldn’t ever forget. And it just became a thing.”
He narrows his eyes at me. “Anything else?”
Shit.
I don’t want to lie to him. “Um, he kissed me afterward.”
His eyes stay narrowed. “Have you kissed since then?”
Double shit. Ugh.
I take a quick breath. If I sound uncertain about this, it’ll make it worse.
So, calmly, I say, “Yeah, we have.”
“Hold on. Neither of you answered about each other when we asked if any of you have ever dated. Or would.”
“Davey—”
His eyes go wide and he points at me. “Wait a second. I remember. Last year. You guys were walking through the halls kissing, all that. Fuck, how did I forget that? Is he technically your ex?”
Well, fuck.
“We weren’t dating,” I say slowly. But I haven’t exactly brought this up before because, last weekend notwithstanding, that week was probably the closest we ever came to actually crossing the line. Even if we did go right back to normal afterward.
“No, I saw you kissing!” he yells.
He pushes away from me and starts pacing back and forth next to his car.
“Davey, I need you to listen. We weren’t dating. Yes, we kissed, but we werepretendingto date.” I pause and think back to Valentine’s week last year—how Aaron saved my ass, how much fun we had, how I enjoyed kissing him.Shake it off, Rae.
“Why?” he asks, pausing for a moment and glaring at me.
“Because Ryan Hastings had me cornered and was trying to get me to go to Winter Formal with him.”
“That bucket of trash?” He’s yelling again.
“Yeah. And he wouldn’t takenofor an answer, no matter how many times I said it. Aaron swooped in and saved my ass, and we had to sell it. We pretended to date for the week. That’s it.”
Davey softens slightly. “Have you ever pretended to date either of the other guys?”
“Joel, never. Because he seriously is like my brother. It sounds weird, but I think in a past life hewasmy brother. Miles, once. We were on vacation, and I didn’t want to be hit on, so he pretended. He only held my hand and kissed me on the cheek, though.”
Davey runs his hands through his hair in frustration. “All right. You kissed Aaron at school a few times. And that’s it?”
Double fuck.
Because like I said, that was the closest we came to crossing the line. “No. We kissed when we were alone, too.”
