The Fill-In Boyfriend Read online

  “No. Don’t do this. You were right. Jules is at least a quarter evil. She will crucify you.”

  “It’s okay. It’ll all work out. My other friends will stick up for me. Thank you so much for your help tonight. You were such a good sport.” I stood on my tiptoes and kissed his cheek then whirled around before I changed my mind.

  I went through everything I was going to say when I reached the table. I knew Jules would debate me on each and every truth I spoke, so I braced myself for that as well. I’d been deflecting her jabs for months now. I could handle this. I focused on Claire, her concern showing in her expression. I took comfort in that as I reached the table.

  “Is everything okay?” Claire asked.

  “No, I have to tell you something. Both of you,” I said, looking at Laney then back to Claire.

  At that moment, fill-in Bradley rushed to my side. “Please, Gia, she means nothing to me.”

  My mouth dropped open in shock.

  “I know what this must look like, but please give me a chance to explain.”

  If I’d known his real name right then, I would have said it loudly, in a scolding manner, but I didn’t. This wasn’t exactly the low-key breakup I had been hoping for. He had not only turned my boyfriend into a cheater but was breaking up with me in front of half the school. I felt my cheeks heat with embarrassment. “No, don’t do this. I’ll be fine.”

  “Oh, really? You’ll be fine without me? Is that how you feel? You just want me to walk away like you never existed. Well, what about me, Gia? What am I supposed to do without you?” His voice had gotten progressively louder and by the end of his rant he was practically yelling. A lot of people had turned toward the commotion. I had to turn my back on my friends because I felt nervous laughter bubbling up in my throat and I was pretty sure that wasn’t the right reaction to this. Anyone else and that speech would’ve seemed over the top and fake. But he made it work. He sounded desperate. Probably a lot like I’d sounded earlier with Bradley.

  I put my hand on his chest and said in a quiet voice, “Don’t do this.”

  His stare was so intense that I forgot for a moment this was all pretend. “I can see your mind is made up. Call me if you’ll hear me out.” He lowered his head in defeat and then sulked off like I had really broken his heart. If he wasn’t in drama, he definitely should’ve been. I watched as his sister left the gym after him, glaring at me. She probably wasn’t trying to back up his story, but her actions only solidified everything he’d just claimed. I stood there, breathing heavily for several heartbeats, trying to will my hot face to change back to its normal temperature, when a pair of arms wrapped around me.

  The familiar scent of Claire’s perfume assaulted my senses, bringing me out of my shocked haze.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said. “What a jerk. Was he messing around with that other girl?”

  “No. He’s not a jerk.” And I didn’t even know his name.

  “Don’t defend him, Gia. And don’t you dare take him back. You deserve better.” I nodded absentmindedly, having the strangest urge to go rushing after him. Instead, I turned on a watery smile and faced my friends. Why was I reacting like this? I didn’t even know him. So why did it feel like I’d been broken up with twice tonight?

  I shook my head. I had my friends and that was what mattered right now. I wrapped my arms around Claire and glanced at Jules. Surprisingly, she wasn’t looking at me. Her stare was focused on the door that fill-in Bradley had just exited through. There was that familiar calculating look on her face, and I wondered what was going through her mind. I was sure of one thing—it wasn’t good.

  CHAPTER 5

  My parents were waiting up for me, per usual, when Claire and her date dropped me off. They’d tried to get me to go out with them after prom but I wasn’t feeling up to it. They thought it was because I hadn’t won prom queen. Maybe that was part of it. Or the fact that Jules had turned from grumpy to happy with the announcement. That could’ve affected my mood because I did not want to feel this way over a stupid boy.

  My mom stretched up from her spot on the couch to look behind me. It took me a moment to realize she was looking for Bradley.

  “He’s not here,” I mumbled.

  My dad stood and yawned. I’d made it home. He could go to bed now. “He could’ve at least walked you up,” he said as he gave me a hug and kissed the top of my head.

  I really didn’t feel like rehashing the night even though I knew my parents would’ve been happy if I told them that Bradley and I were finished. “I’m tired. Thanks for waiting up.” I hugged my mom and then disappeared into my bedroom. I unzipped my prom dress and let it puddle on the floor, not caring enough to hang it carefully. It wasn’t really a memory I’d be looking forward to reliving.

  I changed into my pajamas then padded to the bathroom to perform my other nighttime rituals of washing my face and brushing my teeth. When I went back to my room and saw my dress, blue eyes flashed through my mind. I was surprised that was the memory my mind decided to give me with the dress. Why had he agreed to be my fake date anyway? He said it wasn’t my smile but we’d been interrupted before he’d answered what it really was. Curiosity burned in my chest. Maybe he thought I was cute? I did look great in that dress.

  I gently picked it up and placed it over my desk chair. Why was I analyzing his motives anyway? It didn’t matter. My brain was tired. I needed sleep.

  But my brain wouldn’t shut off. It kept analyzing. It thought about prom and how half the school had witnessed fake Bradley’s breakup performance. They’d all be talking about it tomorrow. I didn’t need anyone feeling sorry for me. How could I smooth that over? I pulled up Twitter.

  Guess I’m single again. Who’s throwing me a party?

  There. Now everyone would know I was perfectly fine. Because I was. Perfectly fine. I stared at the screen, an urge to delete that tweet rising up my chest. Sleep. I just needed sleep. Everything would be clear in the morning.

  Except it wasn’t. My mind had chosen to fill the night with dreams of a nameless boy and his mysterious motives. A boy who, even if I wanted to talk to again, was only reachable through a girl who hated my guts. She’d never help me get in touch with her brother. He probably didn’t want to talk to me anyway even if the only reason I wanted to talk to him was to satisfy my curiosity.

  I wandered downstairs to see my dad at the kitchen table with his sketchpad. I knew better than to disrupt him while he was revisiting a left-behind dream. He had once wanted to be an animator for Disney. Apparently that’s a nearly impossible goal. A dream not even close to where he had ended up as a CPA, sitting at a desk, only using the left side of his brain. His pencil glided over the paper with an ease he displayed in no other aspect of his life. He was really good.

  The bowls were in the cupboard behind his chair so I opted for a banana and started to take it to my room when he stopped me with a “Good morning, Gia.”

  “Hey, Dad. Mom at the grocery store?”

  He nodded. Our house felt like a perfectly working clock. We all turned at the right time and said the right things and maintained the same rhythm day in and day out without ever deviating. It was nice to have that routine. To feel grounded in something. Safe.

  “Sit and tell me about prom last night.”

  “That’s okay, you’re in the middle of something.”

  He waved his hand at his sketchbook, the relaxed state he had been in moments before replaced with a straight back. “I’m nowhere near the middle. More like way past the end.”

  I sat in the chair across from him, knowing he wouldn’t give up until I gave him a summary. And besides, it was time to tell him what he’d been wanting to hear for two months. “Bradley broke up with me.”

  His eyes went wide, then happy, then sympathetic, all in under a second. “At prom?”

  I shrugged. “It’s not a big deal.”

  “Do you need me to drive to UCLA and beat him up?”

  I raised my eyebrows.


  “You’re right, he’s way too big for me. I’ll have your brother do it.”

  I gave him the laugh he was looking for then took a bite of my banana, knowing that even if my dad were being serious right now, Drew would never beat up anyone for me. We weren’t close enough for that.

  My dad folded his hands on the table. “Chin up. There are other fish in the sea. It’s a big ocean. Sometimes we need to catch and release a few before we find the keeper. Just keep swimming.”

  “I don’t think that last metaphor applies here.”

  “I was on a water roll. I just went with it.”

  I smiled then stood and threw away the banana peel. “All I ask is that you wait until I’m out of the house before you and Mom throw a party over this.”

  He gave me an overly serious nod as I left the room. There. That wasn’t bad. I could now check off talking to my parents about the breakup from my list.

  I went through the rest of the day in a haze, answering tweets about my newly single status and what parties were happening this weekend where I could celebrate. Bradley didn’t respond to the tweet about being single. He’d probably unfollow me soon. I wondered if I should unfollow him first. I didn’t.

  That night I slept hard, thankful no dreams tried to remind me of prom.

  School would be a good distraction, I thought as I jumped into the shower the next morning. I wasn’t sure how long I stood under the water and it was possible I’d conditioned my hair twice. I picked out an outfit carefully, knowing I’d be on the other end of a lot of staring today, and stood in front of the mirror to get ready.

  By the time I looked at my phone, I realized I’d spent way too much time perfecting my look. I’d have to skip breakfast. On my way through the kitchen I grabbed a granola bar.

  “Running late, Mom,” I called as her whole body turned to follow my path through the kitchen. Her wide eyes proved she was shocked I wasn’t eating breakfast with her like I normally did. “I’ll see you at five. We have a meeting after school.”

  “Okay. Love you.”

  “You too.” I let the door swing shut behind me and threw my backpack onto the floorboard of the passenger seat before climbing into the car after it.

  “Wow, you look good.”

  “Thanks.”

  Claire pointed to my front porch where my mom waved good-bye to us. I smiled and waved back.

  “I swear your family should be on some Perfect Family billboard or something. What’s it like to have the world’s best parents?”

  “They are pretty great. They always seem to do everything by the book.”

  “What book is that?”

  “I don’t know, What to Say to Your Kids 101?” I took a deep breath and opened my granola bar.

  “You didn’t eat breakfast?”

  “No time.”

  Claire backed out of my driveway. “You okay? I didn’t hear from you at all this weekend. I thought you’d want to go out last night.”

  I shrugged. “No, I had homework to finish.”

  “I’m sorry you didn’t win.”

  “Win what?”

  “Prom queen.”

  I gave a little laugh. “You think me not wanting to go out had to do with not winning prom queen?”

  “I don’t know, that or Bradley. I’ve just never seen you upset over a guy before.”

  I started to deny that staying home all weekend had to do with Bradley but in a weird way it did. Or at least with the person who’d filled in for him. He’d taken over my thoughts and was making it impossible to concentrate. Why was that the case when I hardly even knew him? Maybe that was the point—that he had saved me the other night without knowing me at all. And I wanted to know why. “You’re right. It does have to do with him.”

  “Is it because he basically broke up with you first by cheating on you?”

  “What?”

  “You’re just always the breaker-upper. He beat you to it.”

  “I . . .”

  She playfully punched my arm. “Don’t deny it.”

  Bradley. He broke up with me. That tension in my chest was back at the thought of it. No, I was done with him. He’d left me in the parking lot at prom. He didn’t get to make me feel bad anymore.

  Claire grabbed my hand. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to make light of it. He pulled a jerk move. You should be upset. I should’ve taken you out for a milk shake or something.” She squeezed my hand. “But you can’t let a boy ruin your carefully crafted image. Pull yourself together and we’ll mourn in private.”

  “Right. We wouldn’t want that.” Was this how I’d comforted her after Peter last year? “Did you guys have fun Saturday night after leaving prom? What did you end up doing?”

  “We went over to the park and hung out. Tyler surfed on the swings.”

  “That sounds fun.”

  “It was funny. He almost ruined his tux.”

  I smiled. “So, Tyler? Are you feeling like you know him better now? He seemed nice.”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. He’s a solid B, but I still think I have a chance with Logan. He’s A material for sure. Don’t you think?”

  Logan. I vaguely remembered telling her a month ago when no one had asked her to prom yet that Logan was someone she should aim for. He was a star on the football team plus did well in school. But then Tyler had asked her and she seemed to like him so I thought she’d forgotten about Logan. Apparently not. “Logan had his chance. I think if you had a good time with Tyler that you should go for it.”

  “Not that it matters. We are leaving for college soon.” She bit her lip, containing a smile. “Then we will have our pick of college boys. College men. Ones that are way better than Bradley.”

  “Right.” I finished my granola bar and shoved the wrapper in my backpack.

  “Oh, speaking of, my mom bought us a doormat.”

  “For our dorm?”

  “Yes, I tried to tell her that our dorm was inside a building and it wasn’t like an apartment, but she insisted.”

  “What does it look like?”

  “Get this. It says, ‘I am not a doormat.’” She groaned.

  I laughed. “Do you think she is trying to send a message to our future visitors or just trying to be funny?”

  “I don’t think she gets the double meaning. I think she thinks the doormat is saying it’s not a doormat and she finds that amusing.”

  “Your mom is funny.”

  “My mom is annoying.”

  “Between our two sets of parents, we’re not going to have to buy anything for our dorm room.”

  She smiled and held up her fist for me to bump. “One hundred and three days until we’re officially roommates.”

  “I can’t wait.”

  We pulled into the parking lot at school. Right away I saw Laney and Jules heading our way from where they had just climbed out of the car. I braced myself. Jules had all weekend to analyze prom. Surely she’d come up with something incriminating.

  CHAPTER 6

  Laney and Jules joined us at the car.

  “Gia,” Laney said. “Tie breaker.”

  “Okay.” I shouldered my backpack and shut the car door.

  “Which building do you think is higher—the Holiday Inn or the Convention Center?”

  “Um . . . what?”

  “The boys were talking about rappelling off one. Hypothetically, of course.”

  “Which Holiday Inn? Beachfront or Downtown?”

  “Beachfront.”

  “The Convention Center. Hands down. But Beachfront would be easier to rappel without getting caught.”

  “See?” Laney said, pointing at Jules.

  “You act like Gia is the authority on building heights.”

  Great. I’d thought it was an argument between the boys. I hadn’t realized I was going against Jules. It was like she was always on the opposing side from me whether I knew it or not. “But I could be wrong,” I said. “I’ve never measured them.” I walked toward campus, the o
thers following after me.

  “I’ll Google it,” Jules said.

  She was constantly Googling things to prove she was right. The problem was that when she wasn’t right she got all pissy, as if we had personally gone into Google and changed all the answers to go against her.

  She pulled out her phone. “Oh, and while I’m online, I wanted to leave mean messages on Bradley’s Facebook page for what he did to you. What’s his last name again?”

  Here it was—her play. I was surprised she had waited this long. “He isn’t on Facebook. Who goes on Facebook anymore anyway?” He actually was on Facebook, but there was no way I was telling her that.

  “So Instagram? Twitter? You showed me them before but I don’t remember his handle,” she pushed.

  “We broke up, Jules. I don’t want him to think I’m still hung up on him.”

  “But the messages will be from me.” She held her phone poised like I was going to give her his social media information right there on the way to class. I wasn’t sure if she thought she’d find something on one of those sites to incriminate me or if she knew he wasn’t who I claimed him to be. “Did you see our prom picture I posted? It already has forty likes.”

  “Yes, I saw.”

  She handed me the phone anyway and I looked at the picture of the seven of us crowded around that table at prom. My date’s head was mostly hidden by my own and I found myself wishing it wasn’t. I held back a frustrated sigh over that thought and gave her back her phone.

  “I’ve been thinking,” Jules said.

  Never a good thing, I thought.

  “It’s so weird that Bradley knew someone else from our school. Not only knew her but was having a relationship with her behind your back. What are the odds of that?”

  Crap. Our story had holes. Big ones. Everyone seemed to analyze this statement because all their eyes were on me now to explain. One harmless lie. I thought that’s all I’d have to tell that night at prom. I was just changing the order of events. And now here I was, still lying. I felt myself building the web and I was afraid the only one who was going to get trapped in it was me.