As If I Could Ever Fake You

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Chapter  3 – “It’s Just Pretend… Right?”

Jay shut her bedroom door behind her and leaned against it like she’d just escaped a wildfire.

Because honestly? That’s exactly how it felt.

Every second since Keifer watson sat across from her felt like a fever dream. She replayed it in her head again, and again, and again — the way he’d looked at her like she wasn’t invisible, the way he knew things he wasn’t supposed to know — her name, her seat, her pen color — and that half-smile when she said yes…

She slid down the door, burying her face in her hands.

“What did I just do?” she whispered.

She wasn't like the other girls Keifer had dated — the girls who looked like magazine ads, who posted selfies with perfect lighting and perfect lives. She was just Jay. No curated image. No desire to be seen.

So why did he pick her?

Because you won’t fall for him, she reminded herself.

Right.

That was the whole point. She was safe. Background noise. Someone he thought wouldn’t blur the line between real and fake.

If only he knew.

Jay had been crushing on Keifer for months. Silently. From a distance. She watched him joke with teachers, toss his basketball in the quad, sling his backpack over one shoulder like it didn’t weigh a thing. She memorized the sound of his laugh without ever hearing it up close.

And now?

She was fake dating him.

And she was supposed to act like it meant nothing.

Jay stood up, paced to her bed, and threw herself face-first into the pillow with a loud groan.

“This is so bad,” she mumbled.

Because how was she supposed to pretend to fall in love with a boy she already kind of wanted?

And worse?

What would happen when the pretending was over?

She rolled over and stared at the ceiling, arms folded behind her head. For the first time in forever, her thoughts didn’t feel quiet. They were loud, chaotic, tangled up with the memory of his voice, the curve of his smirk, the way he’d looked just a bit too surprised when she said yes.

What did that mean?

Why did it feel like he was the one holding something back?

Jay grabbed her phone and opened the Notes app.

New Entry: “Rules of Fake Dating Keifer Elias”

1. Don’t read into things.

2. Don’t look at his smile.

3. Don’t imagine what it’d feel like if it wasn’t fake.

4. Don’t fall for him.

5. Seriously. Don’t.

6. You're already failing.

7. Oops.

She closed the app and threw her phone across the bed.

Jay mariano  had always stayed out of the spotlight.

But now she was about to become the center of one — beside the boy she shouldn’t want, in a relationship that wasn’t even real.

So why did it already feel like her heart didnt care.